Now, I must tell you, I'm sort of a funny case. I'm a chronic hanger-around-the-fringes of yoga communities and other places where people talk with conviction about chakras and energy fields. I'm genuinely fascinated by all kinds of work that integrates touch, movement and breath into holistic healing. I believe in the importance of quiet, intentional laying on of hands. I crave it when I am hurt - actually I yearn for hugs and physical contact most of the time - see twelve a day. But I've never really been a Believer. I'm more of a Dabbler, a Willing Participant. I always maintain a bit of distance; I want the freedom to make a joke about wacky mystical bullshit. Especially when people start getting preachy.
Bernadette asked me to show her the place that hurt. I pointed. She placed her hand gently on my back and we were quiet together for maybe a minute (this was while other clinicians trickled into the room for a staff meeting about to begin). She took her hand off my back and looked at me quietly. I thought: that's it? It still hurts, lady. You were supposed to fix me up in the two minutes we had between our last client and this meeting. What about that healing mojo?
Honey, she finally said, you're holding your breath so that you can avoid feeling the pain, but that's making it worse. When we feel pain, something is calling for our attention. You can't avoid it. You have to breathe right into the place that hurts.
Oh. Right. Despite its obvious appeal, avoiding pain isn't usually a good strategy. I depend on the wisdom of other people to help me remember.
She was totally right and after a few excruciating breaths my back felt better. The pain was completely resolved by the afternoon.
This morning Beatrice was dragging her feet and telling all of us that she didn't want to go to school. She flopped onto the floor and cried when I tried to help her get dressed. She refused to open her mouth when she saw the toothbrush approach.
Finally she mentioned a fire drill. She didn't want to do the fire drill today. It might be scary. Aha. So Gabriel patiently told her all about fire drills. Mike told her there would be no fire as I slid her arms into her rain jacket - even though it's called a fire drill.
She was only slightly reassured, and kept crying on and off all the way to the car. We said goodbye to Frances and Gabriel and with mounting irritation (enough with the fire drill business, good lord) I sighed and looked back at buckled up Beatrice in the mirror. And when I saw her face, I felt my heart, of its own accord, drop heavily in my chest, freighted with love for her.
We watched an old episode of Mr. Rogers recently, during which I listened to the dialogue between two characters in the world of make believe with near-bewilderment. Lady Aviland articulated Daniel Tiger's worry, whatever it was, again and again, mirroring it slowly back to him, giving language to his fear with a kind of patience normally associated with sainthood. Maybe kids need a long time to transfer a worry from the inside to the outside, from feelings to words.
Would you like to snuggle and talk about your worries? I asked. She said yes. We settled in to hang out in the back of the minivan with the doors open to the cool rainy air.
Okay. What are you worried might happen today?
I am worried that my body will be in flames. I am worried that my friends will have burns. I am afraid of a fire truck being pretend but then turning real and coming to my school and there being a fire. I am afraid we won't be able to leave without touching the flames and getting burned. I am afraid firemen will have a truck that makes loud noises and I think someone will be hurt.
Did you catch that first worry? That her body will be in flames?
We had to go right to the source of fear. I had to stop trying to shake off her worry, and rather breathe into the pain with her. We talked about why schools have fire drills, how fires very rarely happen but it's good to know how to be safe just in case, how no one will have a burn today or have to touch flames. She had to keep telling me about the images in her mind that were truly terror-inducing, over and over.
Sometimes clients tell me they don't want to talk about their depression, because that will only make it worse. If they pay attention to it, it will probably get bigger and bigger and become overwhelming.
It is counter-intuitive, really, that the opposite is almost always the case.
Beatrice agreed, after our talk, to walk into school with me. She had a perceptibly lighter step. She ran right into her classroom and greeted her friends with contagious enthusiasm. Magic.
I left thinking about her, about the hugeness of her worries and how she was able to let them go.
I remember the midwife's face hovering over mine during Frances's birth, how she firmly and humorlessly informed me that it was time to stop shrieking, Meagan. Stop avoiding. Vocalize much deeper. Prepare to go through the Ring of Fire.
Mike just barely managed to stop himself from singing the little horn riff from Johnny Cash's song of the same title. It wasn't the time, he says.
I doubt I would have noticed anyway. Sometimes shrieking and hesitating seems so much better than heading into the fire. Oh Beatrice! Maybe sometimes we do have to enter flames, in order to pass through and out of our pain.
After I dropped her off I went to a yoga class with a teacher I admire. She was teaching a series of classes on the different chakra centers and today's was, what do you know, the yellow-hued, fire-associated third chakra.
When I left class, all cleansed by the heat of yoga practice, I walked to my car, parked further down the street. Just as I was getting in I heard sirens approach. I slid in quickly and shut the door to be sure I was out of their way. My heart racing, I counted three fire trucks and then three more fire vehicles scream past me.
I couldn't help myself. Frightened, I drove by the New School, steeling myself to leap through flames to save my kids. Just in case the firefighters needed some help.
But all was quiet, cool, and rainy: a perfect day for a fire drill.
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