Quotes of the week
It is good
that most people don't understand our banking and financial system. For if they
did there would be a revolution by morning. - Henry Ford
“I’m cuckoo for
Coco Puffs, cuckoo for Coco Puffs, cuckoo for Coco Puffs.” What I hear in my
head every time I eat a certain cereal. Thanks Advertisement demons
Websites of the week
The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
Meditation of the week
--Kate Douglas Wiggin
Most of us think of dandelions as weeds. We buy special tools and poisons when they crop up and complain about them as surely as we welcome the spring that brings them.
Yet is there anything more lovely than a sea of yellow dandelions by the side of the road in June? Or as remarkable in transformation as the filaments of the mature dandelion blowing on the wind?
Sometimes we let someone else define for us what are weeds and what are flowers. We don't have to. Much of the beauty of the world is that we ourselves decide what is beautiful according to our own feelings. How lucky we are that, when we choose to, we can open our eyes and see!
Can I see the beauty in those around me right now?
You are reading
from the book:
Poem of the Week
Phone Therapy
I was relief, once, for a doctor on vacation
and got a call from a man on a window sill.
This was New York, a dozen stories up.
He was going to kill himself, he said.
I said everything I could think of.
And when nothing worked, when the guy
was still determined to slide out that window
and smash his delicate skull
on the indifferent sidewalk, "Do you think,"
I asked, "you could just postpone it
until Monday, when Dr. Lewis gets back?"
The cord that connected us—strung
under the dirty streets, the pizza parlors, taxis,
women in sneakers carrying their high heels,
drunks lying in piss—that thick coiled wire
waited for the waves of sound.
In the silence I could feel the air slip
in and out of his lungs and the moment
when the motion reversed, like a goldfish
making the turn at the glass end of its tank.
I matched my breath to his, slid
into the water and swam with him.
"Okay," he agreed.
and got a call from a man on a window sill.
This was New York, a dozen stories up.
He was going to kill himself, he said.
I said everything I could think of.
And when nothing worked, when the guy
was still determined to slide out that window
and smash his delicate skull
on the indifferent sidewalk, "Do you think,"
I asked, "you could just postpone it
until Monday, when Dr. Lewis gets back?"
The cord that connected us—strung
under the dirty streets, the pizza parlors, taxis,
women in sneakers carrying their high heels,
drunks lying in piss—that thick coiled wire
waited for the waves of sound.
In the silence I could feel the air slip
in and out of his lungs and the moment
when the motion reversed, like a goldfish
making the turn at the glass end of its tank.
I matched my breath to his, slid
into the water and swam with him.
"Okay," he agreed.
Video of the week
Song of the Week
78-Tales from Therapy-CDV
CDV
stands for criminal domestic violence. Those of us who work in this field
shorten it to CDV because it takes too much time to say criminal domestic violence
over and over in everyday conversation, one can’t be bothered. So we say CDV.
In
the course of conducting a group for perpetrators of criminal domestic
violence, I have begun to understand the whole criminal domestic violence
experience. From childhood exposure to it, to adult relationships, both the
passive and aggressive sides, to the attitude and thinking change that is
necessary for victims and perpetrators to lead fuller happier lives.
So
when I saw the look on John’s face the other night in group when I described
common experiences of people caught in this trap, it seemed to be a good idea
to describe what I have learned about criminal domestic violence in the form of
a life story.
I
received John’s permission to tell “his” story with the caveat that he would be
willing to stop me if I got the slightest detail wrong, and he agreed. And so
we began:
“
Remember when you were three or four and you lay in your bed with the covers
over you and you could see your feet sticking up about two feet down the bed
and there was another ten or fifteen feet to the end and you wondered how long
it would take you to cover that distance? “
“And
what snapped you out of this childhood musing was the sound of crashing and of
objects breaking in the next room. There were angry shouts and cursing threats
and then the unmistakable sound of flesh slamming into flesh and then there was
silence. And the silence was almost scarier than the violence because at least
you could tell where the violence was coming from and what it might mean”
“And
you crept up to the door and peaked around to see your father taking another
pull from the bottle and your mother sobbing on her hands and knees picking up
shards of glass as blood dripped from the end of her nose into the puddle
forming on the floor where you played everyday. “
“Get-the-hell-back-in-that-bed-you-little
_________ unless you want some of what She got!” and you scurry back to bed,
your heart and head pounding, and quick, pull the covers up and wonder what you
could have done to cause this madness. You can’t get the image of the color of
your mother’s blood out of your mind and slowly the reality of the scene
expresses itself in the form of your silent, bitter, precious tears”
“And
the next day when you try to ask your mommy about it, she makes excuses for him
and then makes excuses for herself and then gets angry at you and you are more
confused than before you asked. And when you go to your daddy for the approval
and validation that only fathers have to give, all that ever comes back is “
can’t you do anything right—here give me that, I’ll do it myself you
little---HEY!! Can’t you keep him away from me, I’m trying to relax and watch
the game in here!”
“As
the years go by and you feel more and more inferior and wounded and incomplete,
your rage grows and grows and grows. You want to kill him and sometimes you
want to kill her for not leaving him, and all the while loving them both,
achingly. You wonder what you did to deserve this family and what you might do
to change it. Sometimes, especially if you have discovered alcohol or other
drugs, you don’t feel anything at all. You just want out.”
“So
one beautiful spring day you meet the love of your life and she fills a void in
you that you didn’t know was so deep. And you can tell that you fill a void in
her too, you two are a matched set; it was like you found each other with radar
across a smoky and tattered landscape. At first it is all that Love is. But as
she draws closer and closer, you become more and more afraid and insecure,
because if she gets too close she might see you for what you really are and let
you down like everybody else.”
“You
find yourself doing the angry things that make you feel less scared; “Won’t you
wear that blue dress tonight, honey, I like you so much in that one.” ”They are
not friends to you; I don’t like them; I forbid you to see them anymore.”
“Don’t you worry about how much my check is this week, I’ll take care of the
money, haven’t I always taken care of you, baby?”“ I saw the way you looked at
that guy in the store, is he the one you’re messing with!?!”
“Familiarity
gives you license to express the Rage you’ve held inside and Blame is a ready
ally in your fight to ward off your fear and insecurity. And she falls right in
step; she’s done this dance before in her family of origin. Sometimes in quiet
moments you ask her why she puts up with you. But her plaintive and softly
offered “Because I love you” only makes you feel worse somehow.”
“Imagine
the mixture of feelings, then, when one night you find yourself standing over
her, your fist (and your heart) all balled up, screaming your father’s hate
filled words into the frightened, saddened face of (Mother?) the love of your
life and you realize you have become the man you hated and feared all these
years. Imagine the feelings you feel when you look yourself in the eye in the
shaving mirror (if you can). And the dread you feel when you understand that
your son is learning from you what you learned from Him; the language and
actions and feelings of the evil you despised all your life…”
“But the Blame and
Rage push those feeling aside pretty well… until you find yourself in a group
for criminal domestic violence perpetrators. You can lie to those kindred
souls, but it makes it really hard to lie to yourself. Not when they tell your
story back to you every week. And when you begin to get the idea that they are
talking about your behavior being wrong and not about your soul being evil, you
sit up in your seat and listen because if it is something you can change then
you might be able to stand to think about it.”
“You find yourself
coming to group early and sometimes, after it is over, you stand talking to the
group that forms in the parking lot. The words that are said in-group fade
fast, but the ideas remain and you find yourself acting differently to your
wife, your employer, and your friends. And she reciprocates sometimes, though
sometimes she still provokes you to see if you will get violent again, like a
bee stung hiker searching for the ground bee nest that got her before.”
“Change is hard
and feels unnatural but you stay with it and things get better, by and by. Life
hardly ever feels like a Jerry Springer show anymore. And one night, you see a little pair of eyes
peering around the corner of the living room to see what you and mommy are
doing. You call to him and padded feet come running toward you and he jumps and
lands in your strong arms. And you can imagine the changes you two have made as
they echo and spread through future generations of your family. The pebble of
change you have thrown into the pond of your family will resonate in
ever-growing circles to reap benefits reaching far beyond your lifetimes.”
When I finished
this story, therapeutic silence filled the room and all eyes were turned
inward. John was in tears and hiding it well (“big boys don’t cry” his father
screamed into his head again for the thousandth time). Finally a new man spoke,
one who had been so characteristically defensive at the beginning of tonight’s
group. And he said “Well… I guess if I have to be here and I’m paying for it
anyway, I might as well try to get something out of it…”
Dave Seward
August 31, 2002
Disclaimer: I am a therapist in a
small town in America. Over the years I find myself guiding people with the
same problems down the same path to wellness, over and over and over (I guess
that’s why they call it a practice). The characters here are fictional
compilations and if you imagine that you recognize the people I talk about in
these tales, you would be mistaken. ~Dave
