I have felt unsafe most of my life without realizing it. Growing up, I felt safe in a book, and in the woods. Books and nature have remained places of safety for me. Looking back, I realized I felt safe at college, and even safer when I moved to the dorm where the outsiders lived. I didn’t feel safe traveling in Europe after I graduated, or during the years I spent in California. I don’t know that I knew safety was even possible. I do remember once, probably in the late ’90’s, driving from Franconia to Littleton, I suddenly realized that the landscape didn’t feel hostile. That was when I realized that most of the time it did feel hostile, and I didn’t notice because that was just how it was. The first time I consciously set out to find a safe place was when I had just started seeing Erica and she was going away for three weeks. The first time I realized I felt safe in a strange place was when the person signing me in at Caron told me there would be someone up all night.
When Erica would be gone, I decided to go to Rowe for Kindred Spirits. I chose Rowe because I knew I would be with people and food would be taken care of, so if I didn’t really get along with the people, I would still be safe. By that time I knew it was because I had been traumatized by being left alone too many times, and my cries for food were ignored because it was the time when mothers were told to feed their babies every four hours. One result is that I rarely feel hungry, look at the clock to see if it’s time to eat.
Thinking back to when I began to realize that these things were important, I remembered when I went to Caron Institute for their weeklong workshop in co-dependency. I think that was back in the late 1990’s, before I realized I was dealing with trauma. Checking the site, I find that they now have a program they call the Breakthrough Program, which sounds like it’s similar to the one I went to. When I arrived at the building where we would sleep and do the program, they took my car keys away, saying that I would have to talk to someone if I wanted to leave early. I was told not to go outside by myself, but always with someone from the program. There was a bus to take us down to the building where meals were served. Finally, they said there would be someone up all night if we needed to talk to someone. That last made me feel very safe, but I realized that the other things did too. They were creating a very firm container.
I started going to Kripalu in the 80’s, and began to see it as a home away from home. I knew it well enough that I knew just how to settle in when I got there, and what I needed to bring with me. I was with a community devoted to spiritual practice, and meals were taken care of.
Looking back, I can see that my first experience of that kind of safety was when I went to the Rochester Zen Center in the summer of 1971. I didn’t write about it in my journal at all. But I remember being part of the community, meditating three times a day in the zendo, eating meals there. I also had work to do, preparing food in the kitchen, and sewing meditation cushions. I remember gradually feeling better and better emotionally. I assumed it was the spiritual practice, but it was also the community, the healthy food, the daily structure.