from my journal for December 9
Erica said my system is so open that the moment I unbend, and see the part as separate from me, I offer a hug and the exile runs into my arms. All my life I’ve had sympathy for the wounded, the outcast, the poor, so it’s easy to offer compassion. Though I do remember one time with Karen when I was working with a baby part of me — I think it was a gestalt exercise — and I said “It’s not OK to be a baby!” and threw the pillow away from me. Gosh! I wonder if that’s where the image of the baby on the garbage can came from.
from my journal for September 18, 1992
At one point I said something about wanting to do a dialogue with the inner mother. Karen set me up with a cushion to represent baby Jenny, who is feeling upset and powerless and doesn’t know what to do. When I switched to the mother side, I found I had no good “advice”, no useful thing to say, I felt equally upset and powerless and didn’t know what to do. I held the “baby” and told her that. Karen said “You don’t have to say anything, just be with her, just tell her it’s OK to be the way she is.” I tried, but I couldn’t do it, I threw the cushion on the floor and pounded on it shouting “It’s not OK to be a baby, it’s not OK. I don’t know how to take care of you, I want you to grow up fast and take care of me.” Then I collapsed into sobs, I couldn’t believe I was saying that, in fact I stuck my butt up in the air like a baby pose, and cried and cried. I went back and forth between trying to comfort the baby, and telling her it was not OK to be a baby. Finally I got to the place where I could see that it was silly to tell a baby that it was not OK to be a baby. Karen said something about the difference between not feeling OK and not being OK. But I can see that I haven’t got it yet, though I’m glad to have the whole dynamic up in the air where I can see it. It explains a lot about my pain about my mother, my expectations of myself.
from my journal, written in January 2006
Bleak. Cold stony wasteland bleak. This hard cold stoniness is not who I am. It is the product of trauma and adverse brain chemistry. This is what a baby feels when she has been left too long by her mother. The hard cold stoniness is a defense, and it’s also how the world feels when mother is gone: no hope, no warmth, no love. My job is just to stay with her long enough for her to get it that I really am here for her. Until she gets that, my attempts at self-soothing aren’t going to work. So I need to just sit next to her, with kindness, reassurance and patience, understanding that her anger and rejection and mistrust are because of her pain at being left for so long. I know and understand that pain.
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.
O gosh, it’s so clear that when I said “I don’t know how to take care of you, I want you to grow up fast and take care of me,” I was picking up how Mom felt, but never became conscious of.