Embrace the Suck
I am part of multiple groups all centered around addiction, but mostly I’d say these are groups of parents and adults who are living a life where things are not going as planned and none of us were given the skills to navigate an unplanned life. And while addiction may be our theme, it is only a subplot in a multilayered and complex narrative.
In one group, most of us could point to our parents and ancestors whose own chaos created instability and unsafe homes. I trace my instability to 1492 when Jews were forced out of Spain. I list all the women who died in fires on my mother’s side. I go no further than my mother drinking and my father raging. In another group, we all grieve the life we had planned for the one we have gotten. I start with wanting a family and become a single parent. In yet another group, we work on acquiring skills and tools to navigate unfamiliar and uncertain territory. “Don’t manage their feelings.” “Individuate.” “Love yourself.” “Boundaries.” Then there is the individual therapy that opens up a panoply of haunts and desires. “Talk to that child as if she were in the room with you now.”
Within all of this support and learning is a rich interior world layered with a very young Rachel, a teenage Rachel, a young adult Rachel, daughter, sister, aunt, lover, wife, mother and of so many other versions of Rachel. The goal is to integrate all of me under the wings of the current version of Rachel. So I conjure my male version with my female version and allow my creative self to grow, which allows my fear and anger to exist while I open my expanding heart. I am who I was and more.
“…I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”? Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
My integration is coming through my dreams now, and thankfully, I have an A-1 dream interpreter in my therapist. We dissected one of my dreams the other day that now I see as a whisper – he took a dream that has been haunting me and gave it a narrative so much more expansive than my understanding. The takeaway – I am in a good and beautiful space in my life, I am integrating parts of myself – dark and light, male and female – I am creating. I am giving space.
My integration is also coming through my therapy, because I have a great therapist. Highly recommend. Most of Adam’s gestalt method is helping me be aware of how my present moment is informed from my past experiences. There is much work on speaking to the unresolved issue as if it or they were present in the room with me now. It’s an awkward, often times gut-wrenching approach, but it’s thorough and it definitely widens my arena for action and awareness.
All these people I used to be are in me – the scared kid, the outraged teenager, the rejected lover, the angry woman, the anxious partner, the risk taker, the lover, the creator, the force – all are here under Rachel’s wings. One of the many useful tools I’m acquiring is to embrace the suck and to call it as I see it – the not knowing sucks. The fear this brings up sucks. I suck. You suck. Doing the work sucks. Unlearning and learning sucks. Uncertainty – sucks. Being powerless sucks. Yet, being powerful sucks. Loving sucks. Not loving sucks.
– awesome photographer, artist and friend.