Beyond Broken

Trauma

My Wanting Has No End

 

This phrase comes to me on a walk to the river.  Why is it so comforting?

“My wanting has no end.”

The first thing I notice is there is no judgment attached to it. If I say it this way, “there is no end to my wanting,” I hear judgment.   Judgments I have heard my whole life — “You are a bottomless pit and you are too needy.” I feel the familiar shame of my needs and wants. And almost before I feel this I feel an even more familiar litany of anger at all those who deny me. To be honest this “why haven’t you, why didn’t you?” plays in my head for a great majority of every day in a constant stream of turmoil and unrest.

Today I hear “my wanting has no end.” And I hear how pure and true it is.  Naming it relaxes me. I keep repeating it over and over again as I walk. And I see my wanting as twisty, floppy pipes with big gaping holes belching smoke  – a Dr. Seuss contraption. This visual is comforting too. I usually keep the wanting out of sight as I drive head long into my life.

I know my wanting – this wanting that has no end is because I lost my parents when I was very young. I also know it is because I have no brothers or sisters – very little family.  I honestly have this wanting. I really lost what I needed and wanted.

All the ‘getting’ I have now in my life does not touch this wanting.  It is so young.

OR

Maybe ‘getting’ does touch it sometimes for a moment.

Last week I was hanging out with my grandson Cole. But he did not really want me to mess around with his Lego trains. Happily humming a song he was enjoying himself. So I went to the next room and folding laundry, humming the same song.  Suddenly I felt sheer bliss. My pipes with the holes on the end connected for a moment to him.

My wanting is hard to feel. I small part of me is afraid I will literally fall into it, as if it is a bottomless pit. It also aches and it feels terrifying to be alone and wanting. So I make up my imaginary foes. Those who “should of  done what I wanted.”  They are actually keeping me company. But it is an angry, unhappy companionship.

Instead, I will try and remember to choose the companionship of my wanting that has no end.

And with a deep breath, the two of  us continue walking to the river together.

Follow Your Heart

When I took my first serious writing class I learned a startling fact: To write you must read. “The more you read the more you will be inspired to write and the better writer you will become,” my teacher said. I had never linked these two activities.

As an only child I kept myself company with books. The characters became my friends. The children’s book The Lonely Doll, by Dare Wright in 1957 expressed my dilemma. “Once there was a little doll. Her name was Edith. She lived in a nice house and had everything she needed except someone to play with.” I was four when the book was published.

Now I read and write to keep myself company. Words and worlds drop into the empty spaces inside me mixing and warming into a nourishing broth.

Then the best thing happens. I read something and it inspires me to write.

Reading The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd I am transported to a world of the 1800’s. One of the main characters, a black slave, is a seamstress. The words, “edges sewn with a perfect chain stitch,” jump from the page into my heart. She is describing a red headscarf that belonged to her mother. The perfect stitches made by her mother’s hand. Her mother is missing.

It felt like my mother went missing when she died.

We ran out of time. There were so many things she did not teach me. I was also careless with what I did have of hers. I pretended I did not have a care in the world. I lost things. Her binder with all the Christmas cookie recipes, a pearl ring edged in tiny diamonds my father brought back from the war.

But I have her scissors, a velvet maroon pincushion with tiny roses of porcelain around the edges and her crewelwork. Endless perfect chain stitches make up swirling leaves and flower buds. She did teach me to chain stitch..

Here is what happens next:

My daughter-in-law and I find our grandmothers old handkerchiefs. We cut them into different shapes carefully preserving the beautiful designs on them and sew their borders back together via chain stitch. Then we stuff them with fresh lavender – voila – sachets to freshen a drawer – so fun to give as presents.

When I follow my heart I am surprised how much it sings.

 

 

 

Uncovering Lost Resources

When trauma occurs we look straight ahead. We cannot see left or right. Time seems to stop and our bodies hold our breath. In this myopic, shut down place we often miss the people who were there, who did see our pain, who tried to help. We carry this narrative forward in our psyches and in our bodies ¬– we were all alone, no one understood. This is the story we tell ourselves for the rest of our lives.

This narrative holds us in a grip of expectations of what life has to offer us and we repeat the story over and over again with slightly altered scripts and new characters.

Until…… we go back to the moment of the trauma and ask; what happened next? We move the narrative forward now and look around to see what we might have missed….

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