This is the question I've been asked lately--where have you been? Well, two things actually. When I finished writing about my childhood, I was sitting in my secretarial chair in front of my computer when my heart sank into my stomach--is that really possible? Okay, well maybe not, but that's what it felt like. It's taken two months to get some insight as to why I descended into the Depths of Despond.
I think I got in touch with the emptiness of that inner child self, that real self, that got lost when my environment convinced me that I lived to make other people comfortable. Much of my energy went into trying to make my surroundings harmonious, safe, and livable. The only problem was, I was only a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager. What did I know?
What I didn't know was, that no matter what, you don't want to give up your inner awareness of what is true for you and surrender that to those outside you. Of course when those outside you are giants, it's pretty tough to do.
I think my compliance began at the earliest possible moment, when during World War II, life was chaotic, scary and unpredictable. In our family, two immediate family members were killed and one taken into a German POW camp. As a new baby coming into this world, all the adult hopes got focused in my new life, and because all the grown ups in my world were fragile and fragmented, I figured out pretty soon not to make a fuss, not to make a mess, and to ignore my own needs.
The way I see it this morning back at the computer trying to catch my breath from some heavy gardening, I lost my soul very early; and, had I been a member of an ancient tribal group, perhaps a Shaman would have been called for to retrieve my lost soul. Instead, my very loss of soul was actually a kind of initiation to become a Shaman myself, an impetus to follow the pathway from sickness to healing which led to my becoming a modern-Christian-type-Shaman, my own label--Spiritual Director, backed up with a master's degree from a reputable university.
One problem with loss of soul is that the physical body feels deserted and does everything it can to get the soul back. The body does this by getting sick, having accidents, whatever it takes to bring consciousness back into itself, to get the mind's attention. But who in this day and age in America ever thinks like a Shaman? Well, maybe a few are left, but I haven't seen any signs out lately.
One of the books I've read during this cumbrous melancholy is The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller. She verifies my experience when she talks about the "repressed pain" of childhood, "I sometimes ask myself whether it will ever be possible for us to grasp
the extent of the loneliness and desertion to which we were exposed as
children." Don't you hate feeling those old, stuffy, feelings? It reminds me of a poster I used to have in my Persian Melon kitchen in the 1970's--"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable!" Ms. Miller goes on to ponder, "...she learns that the awareness of old feelings is not deadly but liberating."
So that's what I'm currently doing...grasping the extent of my loneliness and desertion as a child...and I'm through the worst of it I think. That part of my soul is no longer lost, and I'm embracing it with compassion and awe for the child I was who could compartmentalize herself in her attempts to survive. How smart she was! How generous! How innocent of any awareness of self-betrayal! She still lives within me, and we are spending time together as I no longer shy away from her pain.
So this is what's been behind my writer's block. Ahhhh...the vicissitudes of the writing life.
