(Written in June 2004)
In a session of the “Wave Work” at Kripalu: there was a confusing struggle with my body’s tendency to cramp up (esp left hand) and kick, shake, jump. Finally I let it shrivel up into a crippled, spastic child (I could see the starving baby from my collage book) — and it felt, not exactly good, but valid, solid, like this is who I really am. I stayed with it for a while, feeling huge compassion for that shriveled, spastic, starving baby.
written in January 2006:
Somewhere in here, I had an experience of committing myself to the traumatized baby. I didn’t write it down so I don’t know exactly when it happened. I was imagining a war zone, wrecked buildings, burning cars, dead bodies, a few people wandering dazedly around, smoke drifting, colors all grey and black except for the fires. I see a shriveled dark grey baby lying on a garbage can. I think of picking her up, but I realize the orphanage has been bombed. There’s nowhere to take her. If I pick her up I’m stuck with her for the rest of my life. I spend a moment wondering if I really do want to take on this task. Then I pick her up.
Written in June 2009:
I’m reading The Shell Seekers, and it brings home to me how barren my life is. Good healthy loving supportive relationships between mothers & daughters. Wonderful loving sexual relationships. People who can cook and garden. Sadness at the loss of real relationships. Although I notice that they don’t let themselves cry, it’s seen as admirable not to cry.
I sat in Karen’s office and cried for half an hour with no idea what it was about. “You don’t need to know,” says Karen. But I think I have to justify it.
I don’t have to know what it was about.
I don’t have to know what to do about it.
I only have to be there for it, be there with it. This is the traumatized baby I picked up from the garbage can and she has a right to her grief.I think this grief must be from a very non-verbal place. I think it’s coming up now because I have healed enough so that the baby feels safe having her feelings. I have to remind myself to keep her safe, to allow her to grieve (even though I don’t know where it’s coming from — I can guess at how barren and stony was her infancy) to allow her to grieve and to soften around her and hold her in her grief. There, there, dear, you have a right to grieve. You deserved to be cherished, loved, comforted, supported and guided, have your real self be seen and mirrored back to you. What you got was a mother whose narcissistic wounds did not allow her to love, or even see another person accurately. You were expected to love her, make everything OK for her, and she projected her self-hate on to you and treated you like you were someone you weren’t at all. You never developed a real sense of your strengths and weaknesses, you grew up believing that you were unlovable and that you had disappointed your parents. You’ve spent your life trying to prove that you deserve to live.
What’s truly astonishing about these three entries is I’m describing Inner Family Systems work, I’m aware of a baby part of me. It will be years before I start working formally with this technique.
The first two writings were posted in July 2010, parts of a longer post. Possibly the “Wave Work” helped me begin to get the idea of an inner baby.
The third writing, from June 2009, was part of a longer post. I just went back to read all of that longer post and found an astounding piece of writing where I commit myself to this work, writing in January 2006:
I had seen that the heart was shielded because it needed to heal, and then the heart needed to connect with the baby, not turn outward again. Then it came to me — the baby is in the heart! That’s why the heart is all grey like the baby was. That was very exciting — it’s not the grey of stuckness, degeneration and death, it’s the grey of a frozen traumatized baby. Even writing it down I can feel the shift — from being angry at myself for waking scared again to compassion for the terrified frozen baby, and willingness to stay with it as long as it takes.
And if it takes the rest of my life, I’m willing to do that. It’s amazing that I care so much about this baby, who is me, as though the baby were the earth, or all the babies traumatized by war, and not Jenny who I’ve never thought was worth that much focus and effort. But the baby doesn’t seem like “me”, more like the task I’ve been given and I’m willing to take it on. My work to heal this traumatized fragment of the universe is meaningful. And I think one thing that’s helped this shift is Sharon Salzberg quoting the Buddha as saying there’s no one more worthy of your love in the whole universe than yourself.