I told her to mentally put Michael in a chair, tie him up, beat him. Shout at him. “How could you do this to me?” Get her anger going. Scream it out.
She said she was too afraid to do that.
“The fear was learned. You had no idea what fear was when you were born. Don’t let it take over your life. Love and fear don’t go together. Enough. You don’t have time to live in fear.”
“If I get mad at him and beat him—there’s going to be nothing left of the chair.”
“He was a sick person. Sick people have sick minds. And you get to choose how long you let a sick person’s choices keep you from the life you want.”
“I don’t want to be so scared and sad anymore,” she said. “I’m lonely. I’ve hidden myself away from making new friends and doing new things. I’ve shut myself in. My face looks tight and worried. I’m always tense and pursed in my mouth. I think my husband would like to have the happy woman back that he married. I’d like to have the happy woman back that he married.”
Sometimes the feelings we run from aren’t the uncomfortable or painful ones. Sometimes we avoid the good feelings. We shut ourselves off from passion and pleasure and happiness. When we’ve been victimized, there’s a part of our psyche that identifies with the victimizer, and sometimes we adopt that punitive, victimizer stance toward ourselves, denying ourselves the permission to feel good, depriving ourselves of our birthright: joy. That’s why I often say that yesterday’s victims can easily become today’s victimizers.
Whatever you practice, you become better at. If you practice tension, you’re going to have more tension. If you practice fear, you’ll have more fear. Denial will lead to denying more and more of your truth. Caroline had developed a practice of paranoia. Don’t drive too fast. Don’t go too fast in the boat. Don’t go there. Don’t do that.
“No more don’t, don’t, don’t,” I told her. “I want to give you lots of dos. I do have a choice. I do have a life to live. I do have a role. I do live in the present. I do pay attention to what I’m focusing on, and it’s definitely in alignment with the goals I’m choosing: what gives me pleasure, what gives me joy.”
I told Caroline, “I want you to practice engaging and observing your senses—seeing, touching, smelling, tasting. It’s time to smile. It’s time to laugh. It’s time to be lighthearted.”
“I’m alive,” Caroline said. “I’m so happy I’m alive.”
“Yes! Now make sure you practice that happiness every day, every minute, in how you love and talk to yourself.”
I gave her one more freedom exercise. I told her to write down what happened, and then go in the backyard with a shovel and start digging a hole. “It’s hot,” I said, “and you’re perspiring. Keep going till you have a hole three feet deep. And bury that piece of paper. Put the soil back over it and go back inside, ready to be born again and have a new beginning because you’ve put that part to rest.”
A month after we spoke, Caroline wrote to tell me she’d been back to Canada to meet her newborn grandson, and she and her husband had driven past their old home, where she had been shot. The oak and maple trees, just slender saplings when they lived there, had grown tall. The new owners had added a front deck. Somehow, it doesn’t hurt my heart as much as it used to, she wrote. The sadness she harbored for all they left behind had lessened.
This is what it means to face and release the past. We drive on by. We’re not living there anymore.
When we’re in the habit of denying our feelings, it can be hard even to identify what we’re feeling, much less face it, express it, and finally release it. One way we get stuck is by confusing thoughts with feelings. I’m surprised how often I hear people say things like, “I feel I should head downtown this afternoon and run a few errands,” or, “I feel like highlights would really brighten your eyes.” These aren’t feelings! They’re thoughts. Ideas. Plans. Feelings are energy. With feelings there’s no way out but through. We have to be with them. It takes so much courage to be, without having to do anything about anything—to just simply be.
The other day I got a call from a man whose father was struggling with a terminal disease. He asked if I could please visit his father and their family. I’ve seen many difficult things in my life, but this family’s suffering really hit me. The father was confined to a wheelchair and couldn’t speak, eat, or move his own body, and his wife and son were so scared, jumping up and down to reposition his arms or legs or blankets, doing what they could to mitigate his discomfort—but powerless to halt the progress of his illness.
I didn’t know what would be useful for him or the family. I was quiet. I asked his wife to hold his hand, to give him a kiss, and just be. I held the father’s other hand. Our eyes met, and I could see all his feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. By simply being present, we gave him permission for it all to come to the surface, without judgment. Together, we did our best to become comfortable with discomfort. We sat together for a long time.
The son called four days later to say that his father had passed. I shared that I felt I had done little to support them, and yet, the son was insistent I had helped them immensely. Perhaps what they found useful was the opportunity to practice presence. To sit
