I’m stepping back and letting my long-ignored nineteen-year-old Younger Self speak to her experience. Thank you for being here and bearing witness. I know that your life is odd and unusual right now.
Writing this story is an interesting experiment in trust.
I can see more clearly, with our world moving through the Covid-19 crisis, that this young girl/woman’s story unfolds a dream of possibility. Eventually.
Right now, in our world today, we need to believe that we can be different. We need to think differently and allow a new way of paying attention. What has meaning and true worth? What builds character?
I don’t know what my Younger Self will be sharing here post to post. I simply show up to write, however, I do realize that as difficult as it was in these months for her, and for the world of 1968; each next piece of the puzzle did present itself.
I trust each piece of our current puzzle will do likewise with our collective experience with a virus.
When my right arm shattered in December of 2018 I began to hear my Younger Self reminding me that she had an experience that was available to help me. I learned that she would support me throughout my healing crisis.
I invite you to look at your life. Not just today but the collective lessons that you’ve been given. Lessons that support your strength. Lessons that have taught you humble confidence. Confidence to continue to move forward.
The days and weeks at the young widow’s tiny bungalow were mostly out-of-body. I was confused and numb. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what was expected. I wanted to be useful. I wanted to help. I simply didn’t know what to do.
I was exhausted.
I had no bearings.
I had steeled myself while working at the special arrangement house. There I was invisible. There I had space to wander room to room, not being seen. There I slept up and away from everything. I had a quiet private respite each night.
Now I needed two weeks of bed rest. This was a very small house with 5 others. I was worthless to myself and I had no value for the family. Once again I fail mom. I am unable to be helpful.
At this point, I lose track.
I can look at a calendar and see that I went to hear The Jimi Hendrix Experience concert at Cleveland Public Music Hall: March 26, 1968.
…the exact date that I am writing these words and sharing this story.
Today is March 26, 2020.
Yet. I don’t recall how I got to the concert in that spectacular hall. I don’t know who to thank for the gift of the ticket. I don’t know what I wore under the poncho that mom had given me to hide my condition.
I do remember the music.
I do remember the energy of being in a mass of my peers and I remember the sensation of being bombarded with a live sound like none of us had ever experienced.
I remember the dazzle of watching Hendrix move about the stage. I remember this icon of creative genius and how he helped me. He helped me to forget the world.
I remember a transcendent lifting … a bird on the wing … a feeling like something about being happy to be alive.
Ten days later on April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated and the streets erupt in riots.
My heart goes out to that vulnerable girl-mother-to-be. And I weep for all the unnecessary trauma that we experience to satisfy someone else’s idea of ‘right’. Maybe we’ll all emerge from this pandemic experience with a renewed connection to what’s truly important and what blatantly is not.
I truly appreciate your weaving the “vulnerable girl-mother-to-be” story into the current pandemic events.
There is ever the personal story as well as the bigger/universal tale. It does feel as though we are attempting to mid-wife another way of being into the world…birth pains rising.
Thank you Cherry ~ Linda’s reflection knocked the wind right out of me on behalf of the “vulnerable girl-mother-to-be” who has ever been invisible and now yearns to be seen in order to move forward.
I feel like I know her and understand her withdrawal. She is approaching the time when her body is flooded with hormones that facilitate the turning in, the need to create the “nest” of protection and security she knows at a primal level she needs. But she’s been thrust into stranger and stranger circumstances that don’t recognize or support her through that hormonal rush and exhausting physical changes. A normal teen who loved the Jimi Hendrick’s Experience but couldn’t fit that into the fantasy role she was being forced to play.
Where would / could her conversation begin? She needs to be made to feel safe, to be held and loved and told that everything will be OK. That she’ll find the strength to learn and grow from what’s happened and what’s coming. And if she believed or tried to believe the person offering that vision, it would take time to allow that love and support to sink in enough to allow her heart to crack open enough to take the chance of showing any vulnerability or any need. She is in the frozen mode of dealing with something terrifying, as fight and flight are not within her grasp.
To see where she has gone and the brilliant jewel she has become is so gratifying for me. As a former OB nurse who worked in Labor and delivery in the early 70’s, I saw traumatized young girls who came through with little or no support and have not learned what became of them once they left the hospital. I am lighter tonight thinking that they too may have evolved into such a strong leader – their own version of the beautiful, loving, artist who opens the doors of creativity to so many, young and old alike. David Brooks, the columnist and author, says that finding the path to living fully and in community requires 4 steps, the first 2 being that your heart has been broken open, and the second is that you were willing to be led out of the depths of the abyss into which you’ve fallen. You certainly have fulfilled all 4 steps and are truly a community leader, but what an inspiring story of what those initial steps were. I look forward to what is yet to come.
Thank you for sharing the story as it unfolds.
You write: “the need to create the “nest” of protection and security she knows at a primal level she needs”.
In the first reading of your words I felt my throat close on the Young One’s behalf…as if what you say is ‘too much’ and it isn’t safe to consider what you report as valid and necessary.
I’d have to quote line-by-line to move through your comment responding to each and every observation that you bring through. There is much credence in that you share from your life experience.
I’m more than moved.
I’m watching, and feeling, her shame for not knowing how to do better turn to acknowledgment. She has NEVER been seen and yet here you are seeing her.
You’re letting this invisible Young One become visible.
You’re doing the one thing that no one could do at the time. I can sense that your acknowledgment reconstructs her. I can feel that it gives her a sense of existence.
Her path grows more entangled and utterly despairing up ahead, your report of what you know coupled with what she has to move through may very well support her in being able to say what she has never been able to say before…which is the whole truth.
Thank you, Diane, yes. Music for the times, defining the times, giving the times a context. Seeing Jimi Hendrix and being in that truly exceptional venue was definitely a highpoint in this increasingly challenging journey for this girl.
I haven’t commented on these entries or many of the recent ones because they seem to take their place without annotations from the audience. So often we try to identify with another’s Story through talking about ourselves. These posts stand well in their own space.
Of course my love for who you are and will be and were remains without ornamentation.
Hello E ~
I wonder if it is her isolation that prevents dialogue. An interesting mirror as she attempts to share and make herself and her situation known. Not to receive sympathy or even acknowledgment so much as to stop the cycle of not being heard.
I’m making this up. I don’t know for her. I can do no better than she is.
I can only say thank you to all readers.
And I appreciate your reflection that “These posts stand well in their own space.”
This is uncharted territory for my creativity.
❤️
~ Thanks, Jen ~
My heart goes out to that vulnerable girl-mother-to-be. And I weep for all the unnecessary trauma that we experience to satisfy someone else’s idea of ‘right’. Maybe we’ll all emerge from this pandemic experience with a renewed connection to what’s truly important and what blatantly is not.
Thanks, WC.
I hear you.
I truly appreciate your weaving the “vulnerable girl-mother-to-be” story into the current pandemic events.
There is ever the personal story as well as the bigger/universal tale. It does feel as though we are attempting to mid-wife another way of being into the world…birth pains rising.
Beautifully expressed Linda!
Thank you Cherry ~ Linda’s reflection knocked the wind right out of me on behalf of the “vulnerable girl-mother-to-be” who has ever been invisible and now yearns to be seen in order to move forward.
I feel like I know her and understand her withdrawal. She is approaching the time when her body is flooded with hormones that facilitate the turning in, the need to create the “nest” of protection and security she knows at a primal level she needs. But she’s been thrust into stranger and stranger circumstances that don’t recognize or support her through that hormonal rush and exhausting physical changes. A normal teen who loved the Jimi Hendrick’s Experience but couldn’t fit that into the fantasy role she was being forced to play.
Where would / could her conversation begin? She needs to be made to feel safe, to be held and loved and told that everything will be OK. That she’ll find the strength to learn and grow from what’s happened and what’s coming. And if she believed or tried to believe the person offering that vision, it would take time to allow that love and support to sink in enough to allow her heart to crack open enough to take the chance of showing any vulnerability or any need. She is in the frozen mode of dealing with something terrifying, as fight and flight are not within her grasp.
To see where she has gone and the brilliant jewel she has become is so gratifying for me. As a former OB nurse who worked in Labor and delivery in the early 70’s, I saw traumatized young girls who came through with little or no support and have not learned what became of them once they left the hospital. I am lighter tonight thinking that they too may have evolved into such a strong leader – their own version of the beautiful, loving, artist who opens the doors of creativity to so many, young and old alike. David Brooks, the columnist and author, says that finding the path to living fully and in community requires 4 steps, the first 2 being that your heart has been broken open, and the second is that you were willing to be led out of the depths of the abyss into which you’ve fallen. You certainly have fulfilled all 4 steps and are truly a community leader, but what an inspiring story of what those initial steps were. I look forward to what is yet to come.
Thank you for sharing the story as it unfolds.
Linda ~ your reflections stop me.
You write: “the need to create the “nest” of protection and security she knows at a primal level she needs”.
In the first reading of your words I felt my throat close on the Young One’s behalf…as if what you say is ‘too much’ and it isn’t safe to consider what you report as valid and necessary.
I’d have to quote line-by-line to move through your comment responding to each and every observation that you bring through. There is much credence in that you share from your life experience.
I’m more than moved.
I’m watching, and feeling, her shame for not knowing how to do better turn to acknowledgment. She has NEVER been seen and yet here you are seeing her.
You’re letting this invisible Young One become visible.
You’re doing the one thing that no one could do at the time. I can sense that your acknowledgment reconstructs her. I can feel that it gives her a sense of existence.
Her path grows more entangled and utterly despairing up ahead, your report of what you know coupled with what she has to move through may very well support her in being able to say what she has never been able to say before…which is the whole truth.
Thank you. Thank you so much for your gift.
Thanks for sharing, little girl. Music can be enlightening, especially the 60s classics.
Thank you, Diane, yes. Music for the times, defining the times, giving the times a context. Seeing Jimi Hendrix and being in that truly exceptional venue was definitely a highpoint in this increasingly challenging journey for this girl.
I haven’t commented on these entries or many of the recent ones because they seem to take their place without annotations from the audience. So often we try to identify with another’s Story through talking about ourselves. These posts stand well in their own space.
Of course my love for who you are and will be and were remains without ornamentation.
Ellis HW
Hello E ~
I wonder if it is her isolation that prevents dialogue. An interesting mirror as she attempts to share and make herself and her situation known. Not to receive sympathy or even acknowledgment so much as to stop the cycle of not being heard.
I’m making this up. I don’t know for her. I can do no better than she is.
I can only say thank you to all readers.
And I appreciate your reflection that “These posts stand well in their own space.”
This is uncharted territory for my creativity.