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Landscape Stepping Stones is a journaling tool created by Dr. Progoff. It is a list of 8-12 places that have been important, including residences, environments, places visited, and other significant landscapes. I chose to write a landscape of stepping stones that led to the current drafting of my memoir. When choosing what stones should be on the list, I asked myself: 1) if this place influenced or even altered the trajectory of my work and 2) if I am still living with the result/impact of this place.
Here is my list:
Reflection on landscape stepping stones related to my drive to complete my current memoir manuscript:
I am aware that some of the most difficult places have been some of the most fruitful (e.g., the steps of a former house where I slipped and injured hip is seared in my memory as the beginning of the end of an emotionally violent marriage). I am aware that some of these beginnings took a while to develop and that the beginnings and endings frequently overlapped. So while I was starting on a path to writing the story of becoming a mother, I was saying goodbye to the ideal of a perfect family, the perfect job, the perfect interracial couple identity. I notice that I am a complex woman who is more open with her emotions now than at any other time in her life, and with this openness, comes love and support from those who care for me. I am surprised by the continued tone of forgiveness and healing when my mother pops into my journal. There is a continued softening, tenderness towards her. My body wants to smile at this list of landscape stepping stones and pay homage to its path and to giggle at some of the everyday pleasures I experienced, the orange globe mallow weed I saw on my walks that were re-enchanting my life at the same time that I was mythless and looking for new stories to fortify my life. I feel determined to continue to create a life that is pleasing to me, to seek out places that cultivate aliveness, and to embody this pleasure and aliveness in me so that it oozes into the stories I put on the page.
Poet Stanley Kunitz states “Through the years I have found the gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.”
Our next workshop at The Writing Shed will be Wednesday, September 20 from noon-1:15 (MT), on Zoom Meeting Space. We will use a poem to guide our personal explorations.
Register here: https://jessicamaggiebrophy.com/registration/
For the last twenty years, Cara Dinley has been exploring the miraculous bodymind. Her background is in dance and performance, and she is now a trauma informed practitioner who specializes in embodiment, regulation, and trauma release. She is currently a Lead Trauma and Regulation Practitioner at Heal Your Nervous System.
After I shared my question about “The Life Cycle of Healing” in the Heal Your Nervous System community (of which I am a member), Cara responded with insights I am deeply grateful for her and am still deliciously processing. I wanted to share them here with you at The Writing Shed as they are unique and revolutionary to what you may have learned about healing.
She wrote:
I refer very often to the cycle of life when I am relating to members and clients and it always seems to bring about a softening.
Clients often ask–Why is it we need to be reminded so often of this? It’s so obvious!–and yet we often believe the darkness will never end and that we have been dealt it because we did something wrong.
When in fact the cycle that follows is the only truly repetitive thing in life–that there is a seed that wants to grow, which requires that it changes form and moves into unknown places before blossoming; then once it has given fruit it–at its most magnificent–already begins to die. Very slowly perhaps, yet surely. This is the cycle of life.
Inhalation and exhalation follow exactly.
While this cycle seems obvious to many what often seems less obvious is how this cycle exists in each moment.
While the butterfly analogy is one we are all fed and want, it seems to miss the all important “death” aspect.
I love the word you use: recursive. For me this is very much the experience I have, and I notice it in others too. I feel like the expectation to continually move forwards and get better is actually reductive.
In the arts we call this “endgaming” –our mind creates the vision and we steadily take all the steps towards it; anything that diverts is named a distraction. If I am disciplined, I will achieve my vision. If I don’t, I have done something wrong.
This kind of endgaming removes the opportunity to be awakened by other incoming stimuli/associations which may change your vision. Becoming open to what is incoming, including others words and offerings, in my experience has generated a making that is far richer and indeed a conscious collaboration, which removes the I, the I, set up for perceived “failure”–as we rarely make anything alone.
If we can remove time and measurement, we can experience a kind of flexibility which welcomes an ever unfolding richness in every direction to a different degree.
If we apply this concept to arts making (or healing or learning), we value the inevitable expansion and condensing and non-linear leaps of experimentation, knowing that the act of jumping into the unknown can be extremely generative.
Whether we are making arts, learning, or healing, the way we navigate our own journey can only be in accordance with who we are and with what our personal capacity is. So only the individual can make the choice–
And while I love the word recursive (yet I haven’t been using it — so thank you for that!) the image I have is helical but not just one helix as in this pic below–I see learning as following a helical path which never repeats and instead takes a slightly different path–quite close to the previous one perhaps–the path eventually takes and ever wider and deeper trajectory. As if filling the inside of a cone ever, ever so gradually. To me that is learning.
And it is also unlearning in reverse–but not a perfect reverse . . . I feel like we can jump levels and create gaps as you say . . .
Image Credit: Dirk van der Made
We see the spiral unfurling also in this pic of the fern which resembles the Koru (the Maori word for loop and symbolizes the unfolding of new life and renewal).
Jon Radoff, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa…, via Wikimedia Commons
What’s cool about the Koru pic above is all of the little, what will be leaves curled up, as if these are alternative paths which required energy in order for the whole to find flexible strength . . .
And while I love these natural images what I see **in them is something linear–because I can’t see or know the complexity of **what is happening inside them.
However in order for them to grow from a shoot the size of a fine thread into something with luscious, strong girth . . . unbreakable in a torrential rainforest downpour, something has grown and fills within which supports the structure we can see . . .
There is so much that we can’t see . . .
I’m happy to share with you that I’ve been accepted into a poetry therapy credentialing program with the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy 🎉 !
I will work with a mentor for about 4-5 years to plan therapeutic poetry sessions in non-clinical settings, like the community college and The Writing Shed.
Poetry therapy, to me, is mode of healing that holds space for us to express our feelings, to write our deepest thoughts, and to be guided by the poem. By that I mean, the poem guides us to look at our internal worlds or external life circumstances with fresh eyes, ideally with greater compassion and gentleness and understanding.
I applied for the credential because my own healing and growth has come as a result of the expressive arts, and I am a believer in its power to make us present to our own lives.
I will begin offering poetry sessions soon at The Writing Shed. Stay tuned 🔥. . .
I love how Dr. Linnea’s program, The Nervous System Solution, takes us through 5 stages–awareness, regulation, restoration, connection, and expansion. Like the writing process, I imagine the healing process is recursive (i.e., going back to previous steps to refine our practice or doing the steps out of order based on our needs).
For example, I may practice steps in the awareness stage and then learn about my coping strategies in the regulation stage. I’ll jump ahead and try to make flexible boundaries in the connection phase and then return back to the awareness stage once I realize I need more practice in it because my boundaries (I became aware) weren’t as flexible as I intended.
In a February e-newsletter that Dr. Linnea emailed to me, she wrote about the “7 signs your body is healing from dysregulation”:
– You are more in control of how you react to emotions and feel mentally stronger.
– You aren’t drained by other people or by your own negative self-talk.
– You actually live your life instead of constantly feeling triggered by everything.
– You resolve the burnout cycle of taking on too much and then having to withdraw when you have no more energy.
– You can tune in to your intuition and clearly distinguish it from anxiety.
– You finally stop the 24/7 stream of ruminating thoughts and enjoy your free time.
– You aren’t limited (or even resentful) of your sensitivity anymore and start leveraging the superpowers it gives you instead.
Do these “goal posts” resonate with you? Which ones do you hope to live into or already are?
Have you ever had a fear of happiness that you could express? It is so brave to put language to these fears, essentially saying, “I see you fear” and “I am staring you down,” even if I have to look away some times. I imagine it’s good to scream at these fears sometimes or welcome them in like a house guest, pulling up a chair and offering it a cup of tea (this is what Rumi does in his “The Guest House” poem):
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
I too relate to lingering fears (perhaps unmet primal needs surfacing from my unconscious) that I “don’t deserve good things” or can’t “allow myself to trust” that goodness is the norm. Sometimes I would tell myself:
These questions remind me of the wisdom of Buddhist psychology, especially of Mark Epstein’s The Trauma of Everyday Life. He uses a lot of Winnicott’s paradigm of the “good enough” mother to explain how those who have experienced developmental trauma as a child can use that relational dynamic with themselves (a lot like the ideal parenting techniques). I was struck by this quote from the book. His ideas have helped me feel more flexible with this ever-changing and holy healing journey:
While some people have it in a much more pronounced way than others, the unpredictable and unstable nature of things makes life inherently traumatic. What the Buddha revealed through his dreams was that, true as this may be, the mind, by its very nature, is capable of holding trauma much the way a mother naturally relates to a baby. One does not have to be helpless and fearful, nor does one have to be hostile and self-referential. The mind knows intuitively how to find a middle path. Its implicit relational capacity is hardwired.
As I’ve continued to heal and grow, I know that I will still experience “little ‘t'” traumas (of everyday life) and will still have my childhood developmental trauma triggered by little things (like going to the very crowded farmer’s market or hearing my son’s screaming). And with all of the re-wiring that my brain can do, I now have the tools to regulate. And my triggers become fewer and fewer. My goal isn’t to attach to the happy zone (although anchoring in it is a more normal experience now); It doesn’t last forever, and I’m okay with that. The sad or anxious states wake me up again to what my body needs, and it can feel good to relate to what wants to be seen (even if my past default was to ignore, suppress).
Now, we can invite it in, and say “I see you.” I may not answer the door at the first few knocks, and I may even keep it “out in the cold” on my doorstep for a day or two. But eventually, I now say, “Come in. Let’s talk. Let’s cry. Let’s see each other.” Maybe this is the middle way?
Imagine you wake upwith a second chance: The blue jayhawks his pretty waresand the oak still stands, spreadingglorious shade. If you don’t look back,the future never happens.How good to rise in sunlight,in the prodigal smell of biscuits –eggs and sausage on the grill.The whole sky is yoursto write on, blown opento a blank page. Come on,shake a leg! You’ll never knowwho’s down there, frying those eggs,if you don’t get up and see.
The Inner Wisdom journaling tool comes from the Journal to the Self course created by Kathleen Adams. You can use the three questions I pose here as sentence starters to activating your own inner wisdom. As Adams reminds us, “Your answers are within. They are as close as your fingertips.”
Dear Inner Wisdom,
Question 1: What do I now need to know about leaving home?
Answer 1: Starting at the age of 37, I made concerted efforts to leave home. I am now 44 and, despite some false starts, have been successful at leaving both my family of origin and, not surprisingly in hindsight, my first marriage. Both were toxic, dysfunctional, and predicated on co-dependency. For example, It was considered a moral obligation to try to be named in the will (One of the mantras I remember hearing a lot was “You know, you’ll be left out of the will if . . .”). Moreover, one elder relative once told me that if she tried to call me 3 times, and I didn’t call back, she wouldn’t ever try again. Both values—following fixed rules to gain a financial inheritance (i.e., wearing a certain Irish wool sweater on Christmas; bringing lilies on Easter; showing up at all marriages and funerals) and not crossing an elder in the family who didn’t have the patience to see you live your independent life—kept me anchored to the family bubble. It was a culture of loyalty at all costs.
And, no longer feeling guilt or like I need to defend this family that I left, because I am happy with my choice, what does leaving home have to teach me now?
David Celani in Leaving Home: The Art of Separating from Your Difficult Family (2005) writes, “There are no ‘family police’ to come and arrest us if we decide to separate and move on in life. The only police we have to fear are our defenses against seeing how bad life in the family has been” (128).
Now my defenses are down, I have learned that I lacked the support during my childhood that I needed, and I am not afraid to admit it or feel the need to frame my childhood with: But my parents were doing the best they could. Of course they were, and I know their behavior towards me wasn’t intentionally harmful (most of the time). I also know they didn’t have the capacity to meet my needs. Fine. Sounds simple.
But, as part of my own desire to sustain healing, I need to remind myself that the upbringing was destructive to me. I received inconsistent feedback, resulting in confusion about my self, thus lacking confidence in how I perceived and judged myself. This is considered an emotional delay. I was also emotionally neglected. I felt invisible or unimportant or only important as I could help my family or parents. I subsumed my authenticity in order to receive 1-2 attachment needs, such as safety and protection and sometimes soothing comfort. But I did not consistently experience a sense of expressed delight from my parents, attunement, or a sense of support in becoming the best version of myself. I was also physically and emotionally abused, which now, seems like the lesser of the deficiencies.
Leaving home has taught me that:
Question 2: How can I now learn from my former split self?
Answer 2: Celani reminds those who leave home about their underdeveloped identities:
“Often, healthy solutions are out of the reach of adults who were not reared in loving families, because these families were not supportive enough to allow their children to develop new and healthy identities. Rather, these young adults are left with a vast inner emptiness inhabited by the two opposite and unstable wounded and hopeful selves [known as splitting or our defensive selves] (instead of a complex personality structure), and their relationships with others are marred by both the splitting and moral defense [defending parents as good]” (90).
Maybe this is what is called the stilted self. I was called this once by a very near and dear surrogate mother. At the time being termed stilted was very painful to hear, but I now see it as a seed that my surrogate mother was planting in me. It was a seed of an idea that I had to face. Would I look away from what she saw in me? Or would I approach it, love it, move towards the fearsome paralysis of my own freezing default I learned as a girl in order to survive?
I’m a lucky one because I was able to move towards this split self and try to understand her. I saw that I wouldn’t always embody the story of the wounded daughter. I would for a time, but not forever. I wouldn’t always carry a toxic optimism in my friendships and romantic relationships because I thought this was the only way others would accept me (as I learned to behave in my family). I did for a time, but not any more.
I now know that I don’t have to anchor myself in the illusion that my upbringing was okay or to cling onto some hope that my family will someday have the capacity to meet my needs. And that is because I have left the family.
I no longer need to be split—a simplistic shell of a self. I know that sometimes I embody and experience 10 different emotions in any one moment, and I can name them: steady, vulnerable, curious, annoyed, regulated, debased, controlled, sad, trustworthy, admired, creative, excited, anticipatory.
I thank my split suffering self for existing so that I can now feel the immense joy of a mature emotional life! I am in my forties and am so grateful that I am finally truly alive.
Question 3: What is my revised personal meaning of hope?
Answer 3: When I listen to others talk about hope, I am jealous. I imagine them having secure attachments throughout childhood and genuinely believing that “tomorrow will be better than today,” as my partner shared with me when I asked him what hope meant to him. He also said that faith is the belief that some higher power will help make tomorrow better. So, he’s got hope and faith! Because I associate hope with my split self, I feel sort of cheated out of this healthy worldview—that things are always getting better. Like love always expanding. Like I love you more today than I loved you yesterday. Maybe I can differentiate between the split self hope, which is really a tool to control one’s offspring into providing unlimited support and service to the parents, and authentic hope, a tool that encourages offspring to continue to add to their “sense of self” (Celani 31) so that it is stronger today than it was yesterday. This tool encourages authenticity, experimentation, leaving home because it is predicated on “an abundance of memories of affection and feelings of success” in the emotionally supported child (31). I have reason to experience this authentic hope as I continue to parent myself and co-regulate and heal in beautiful ways with my blaze of fire, my son, Remi.
The healthy today that I co-create with my son, my mothers, my new friends, my New Mexico family, my partner, my allies in community, will take care of tomorrow. That is the hope I have. By living in this beautiful moment, my faith shows up.
That is an inheritance for which I will gladly open my arms.
