Friday, June 8
Don’t know how to start. So odd. I read what I wrote down that Elizabeth said in our phone conversation — “Identity in flux” — yes that’s exactly my experience.
“Attachment repair” — homies seeking to “re-identify” Barking to the Choir p16 Find identity through someone who loves you, not someone who is jealous and threatened and projecting self-hate.
Saturday, June 9
Very intense session with Erica. I read her the two blog entries about “wild and precious life.” (April 2013, August 2010) I cried as I read. There was also a quote from Father Greg about the homies needing to “re-identify” as the repair for the attachment wound. I see that I am struggling to replace the felt sense of myself as someone selfish, unkind, rigidly virtuous, with a felt sense of myself as someone worthwhile, with something to give to others. “I have fought like a demon against oppression.”
Had a very different experience at dinner. I sat at the long table. I think D has had to go to the health center — he’s had too many falls, and his mind isn’t quite right. For me, that lifts a blight. He made lots of negative comments. I sat next to Sabra and across from Margaret and Lorraine. I think because my spirits had been so lifted by the narrative medicine class, and the talk with Erica, I was able to converse easily and even contribute. I talked about the class, and also — I don’t remember exactly how we got to it — Lorraine had said something about how the teacher was important, and I started talking about Miss Hill, and assumptions, and cosmology.
Note: Father Greg Boyle wrote Tattoos on the Heart, about his work with gang members in Los Angeles.