I had a session with Erica yesterday. I’ve been seeing her since June, but because she was away a lot during the summer, I just had to hold on. When she finally got back for good, it took a while for my inner baby to start trusting her. The work I’m doing with her is about very early experiences, that are not at all easy to get ahold of, and then, because I get opened up to a lot of early stuff that’s never been processed, I can have a hard time just getting through the day.
At the end of August, Erica talked about me developing a relationship with the baby. How can I practice staying connected? Erica said “The baby needs to be acknowledged, appreciated, and responded to.” I wrote at the time, “I feel a lot of warmth. I’m so glad to have the baby in my life.”
But then I forgot about working on the relationship. Last week I became aware that I was “checking in” with the baby, but not really creating a relationship with her. I would notice that she was crying, but then check out again. I never thought of comforting her. I suddenly saw mother, opening the door, seeing that I was crying and just closing the door again. So last week I tried to be aware of the baby all the time. I asked her what she needed, and how she felt about something I we? were doing, and she answered, more with feelings than with words.
So last week when I checked in, I found that the baby was angry. I asked her what she was angry about. She said she was angry because no one had seen that she was in trouble. I wrote a whole passage in my journal about that, about how the signs that were there were things that people hadn’t learned to look for. When I told Erica, I said I understand that the relevant knowledge wasn’t there, even after the Vietnam War people were still insisting that PTSD wasn’t real, Peter Levine’s book about the physiology of trauma wasn’t published until 1997. Erica said “Can you explain that to the baby?” I tried, not feeling very successful. Erica asked if the baby got it. I checked and said yes, that she had relaxed. Erica said “She didn’t understand your words, but she did understand your tone of voice, and how tenderly you are holding her.” So I just sat and held the baby, feeling the tenderness, and it was all rounded and so comfortable that I just sat in silence, savoring it. I didn’t want to break it. At one point a third woman appeared, holding me as I was holding Baby Jenny.
I left the session feeing wonderfully in touch with Baby Jenny. Last night I asked the baby what she wanted to do. She said “Make a clay sculpture of the three women.” So I dug out my bag of clay, that’s been sitting there for a long time. Some of it was still soft, so I cut it off, pounded the pieces flat, sprayed water on them and put them in a plastic ziploc bag. This morning I checked and it’s softened, I’m not sure enough that it can be worked, but I will keep trying.