Finding the old oak
I woke up this morning to your message saying that you are crying every day and seeking a trauma therapist. Instead of getting dressed and starting my day, I find myself wanting to write to you. I know your pain. I’ve had a hard time owning my mental illness.
You are doing the right thing to reach out. Before I had help, if I even thought that I was being slighted, lied to, or betrayed I would feel my heart throbbing like a stubbed toe, and something would snap in my brain. It was like an electrical current slicing and short circuiting my thoughts, blurring my vision, ringing in my ears, everything exploding from the inside out. Sometimes frantic and desperate to make the whole cacophony stop, I would hurl my head into a wall. Only a violent blow could calm my nervous system. I also lived in a hyper-vigilant state of mind, a wrong turn in the car could set off a fit of rage often directed at myself; why was I so stupid? At the end of my breast cancer treatments I was so tired, weak, and hopeless. I found myself looking up the lethal doses of all of the drugs I had in my drawer. When I learned that one of them combined with alcohol would do the trick, I fantasied taking them all and drinking a bottle of wine in the bath. I could sink under the water peacefully and it would look like an accident. A good friend’s ex-girlfriend died this way, and the horrible idea kept pushing its way into my thoughts.
The best thing that I ever did for myself was to share this with my therapist and accept her recommendation to go to the hospital. It was the most frightening and humiliating thing I had ever done. I didn’t want to go, I thought it was an overreaction. She calmly said if I went home alone she would call child protective services to make sure my daughter was safe.
As I write and remember those times, I am experiencing a wave of emotions. It helps me to occasionally feel them and remind myself that that they come from past trauma and they are not my current reality. I can navigate through them without getting lost in that state of mind. Part of trauma therapy is learning to replace old bad memories with good ones. You learn to bookmark the new good experiences as places in your story that you can return to instead of the traumatic ones. Good friends and a good therapist play a critical role. In trying to describe the way this process unfolded for me I am reminded me of a place where I used to spend a lot of time.
For several summers I rented an 18th-century farmhouse in the Dark Entry Forest with a few friends. There is a trail through the forest in CT that went over a small mountain and through a village that was abandoned in 1820 called Dudley Town. It is said by some to be haunted. My emotions used to exist in a dark and wild abandoned corner of an uninhabitable terrain like Dudley Town. While hiking the trail you go past crumbling stone walls, cellars of abandoned homes, and a small waterfall where there used to be a flax mill. The trail was always overgrown and difficult to find and stay on. Sometimes we would get lost and turn back, never finding the right trail. In these moments we had a creepy and uneasy feeling about the forest. I often hiked there with Anna, my dear friend and cheerful guide to absurd beauty. She would point out strange lichens, creeping moss, tell me which wobbly stones to step on over the mud or cold creeks, and from time to time we would be stunned by the vividly intense green when light filtered through the thick forest canopy. We told stories about our life and a strong bond grew between us.
One day my newly adopted puppy Jack ran away and was missing on the mountain for several hours. I went hiking with my friend Kathryn to look for him. We hacked our way through the forest calling for Jack, knowing finding him this way was futile. We raced along breathlessly, driven by a punishing fear and utterly exhausting ourselves because we could not bear sitting idly knowing he was missing. I was grateful to Kathryn for not letting me be alone at this time, but there was no wonderment or laughter on the trail that day. A neighbour found Jack and brought him home to me. We were extremely relieved, but Kathryn and I were too tired to be around people. Instead of enjoying the weekly Saturday dinner party she went home and I went up to my room to be alone with Jack as I listened to my friends dancing and singing downstairs.
That same summer I met Lee, an older woman who had lived alone on the mountain for many years. She showed me a different path through the same forest. It was a short hike down the mountain that led past monumental rock formations to an enormous old oak tree. It had survived the deforestation that took place in the late 19th-century because it had provided shade to a farmer’s dairy cows. As we hiked Lee pulled down great rope-like vines that hung from high up in the trees and were an invasive species in the forest. I remember watching with amazement as she pulled as hard as she could on the vines with her slight 80-year-old body and then stood still with her head bowed as they dropped to the forest floor around her. She had no fear.
When Anna and I sought the longest, most difficult path through the darkest scariest part of the forest and struggled to make out the path we wanted the rush from the challenge. We had each other to comfort, notice the details, and laugh. A good friend can be a guide and companion through dark emotional terrain like Anna was for me. Going on the trail in the wrong state of mind, like Kathryn and I did on our frantic desperate search for Jack lead to unproductive emotional vulnerability, exhaustion, and a desire to isolate.
Being with Lee was like being with a good therapist. As she guided me through the forest on an easier path, she cleared it of twisted thought patterns, and compulsive behaviour. She pointed out the pillars in my story that formed my personality and informed my value system. She lead me to a confident knowledge of myself, deeper feeling of connection, and clarity when making decisions. She knew that at the end of the trail I would find a place of survival, strength, connection, and peace. The day Lee showed me the tree we joined hands to wrap our arms around it and felt the size of the trunk.
When I start to travel through the dark forest of my mind, feeling abandoned, lost, and scared. I return to the memories of friendship and follow the path to the the oak tree. Like Lee, now I can be fearless. I pull down the vines in my path and then stop to spend a moment with my head bowed in trusting gratitude for my survival and those that showed me the way. When I get to the oak tree, its breadth, vast network of roots, and branching arms sooth me and I feel like I belong there, safe under its canopy.
