Chapter 3: The Healing Year Begins

The journey of my dedicated meditation practice truly began in January 2013, inspired by a desire to deal with my PTSD and Depression.

Transcript

Chapter 3,

January 2013.

Years ago,

I was once handed a superstition that I'm quite fond of and utilize every New Year's Day.

The gist of it is this.

Whatever you are doing on the first day of the year will greatly impact how the rest of the year shakes down.

Call it coincidence,

Call it synchronicity.

I can take no credit for the timing or that what happened next happened at all,

And yet I still wish to place it under the superstition umbrella because the ripple effect of an encounter I had with a stranger the first night of 2013 set the pace for an astonishing amount of healing over the course of the rest of the year.

Though still depressed,

I'd rallied enough energy to go teach a class at a nearby spa where,

For a decade,

I'd been a regular guest speaker leading sessions on a variety of life improvement topics.

The session I led that night was journal writing for health,

During which I discussed the amazing research of my friend Dr.

Jamie Pennebaker,

Then the head of the University of Texas Psychology Department,

And a rock star in the world of psychology.

His studies emphasized the healing power of keeping a journal,

Especially during times of trauma.

Of the small group that gathered that evening by the fireplace in the well-appointed living room,

There was a distinguished-looking gentleman in his 60s.

He had a palpably warm vibe and a lovely accent.

As we talked about writing,

It came to light that George Hallis was a psychiatrist visiting from Australia.

We continued talking after the session ended,

And he told me about a paper he had just co-authored,

The publication of which was imminent.

The topic was relational trauma,

And he emailed me a copy that night.

The subject of the paper,

A Holocaust survivor named Irene,

Lived in a residential facility for the elderly.

Her PTSD was causing terrible flashbacks,

She would only speak Yiddish,

And she pushed away anyone who tried to help.

Only when her caregivers shifted to what is termed witnessing were they able to gain Irene's trust and help her deal with trauma.

Witnessing involves another human stepping into the trauma with the person suffering and being truly empathetic,

Thus allowing the sufferer to feel genuinely safe.

That is an incredibly oversimplified explanation of the research,

Which as I read it in its entirety resonated so deeply with me that I wept.

Here was an explanation of how flashbacks prompt a dissociative state so that the person suffering isn't just remembering the trauma,

But actually reliving it,

Which is,

Yes,

Totally traumatic.

In 2007,

During my second divorce,

When I sat in the backyard,

Chain-smoking and crying and convinced my life was over,

It seemed impossible for me to focus on the present moment.

I just kept replaying all the shitty things my ex-husband and his children had done to me.

I was stuck on a horrible loop,

This too being a symptom of PTSD.

Then one day,

For a fleeting second or two,

I heard a bird sing.

Though I immediately resumed my dark loop of thoughts,

The awareness of my awareness of the bird song flipped a switch on,

If only briefly.

Noah had his rainbow as covenant,

The little whistling I heard was mine.

This storm is going to pass.

I am going to get into the present.

That is what I thought when I heard those sweet notes.

It didn't matter that the switch flipped off.

At least I knew there was a switch and that I would find it again.

From that moment,

Bird song has always been incredibly important in my life,

A reminder that when I am losing my shit that I will,

In fact,

Refine my shit.

Meeting George,

Being listened to by him,

And reading his research provided a momentary break in the loop of my depression,

Which by now had dragged on for nearly a month.

I was still suffering,

But I felt a whistle of hope,

A promise that I would emerge.

A number of other things happened early that January in the days leading up to my birthday on the 10th.

Perhaps most importantly,

Though I couldn't yet know it,

I began my dedicated meditation practice.

This beginning did not look different than any other day of sitting and breathing mindfully,

Which I had done thousands of times before,

But there was a difference.

In past years I would skip meditation when I was too busy or on the road or just not feeling it.

Now I sat every single day,

No excuses.

Two days before I turned 49,

As I was pulling into the bank drive-in,

I did a double take.

A young man ran past me,

And on the back of his jersey,

Above a bright blue 78,

Was this word,

Death.

A die-hard fan of both metaphor and synchronicity,

I immediately perked up.

Here I was,

Tentatively emerging from the blackness,

And death jogged by,

As if you'd been unsuccessful in wooing me,

As if you were on to the next possible victim,

Proof that I wasn't going to die from my grief,

My trauma,

My sorrow,

Or my messed up brain chemistry.

The bird song grew louder.

My burgeoning renewed zeal for life also prompted me to sign up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Kauffman,

Texas.

Michael,

A friend and fellow PTSD sufferer,

Had twice attended these retreats.

He reported back that the results were incredible.

I filled in my application with some trepidation.

Could I actually sit and breathe in silent meditation for 10 hours a day?

I wanted to try.

I was also afraid of failing.

And I wondered if they would even take me if I were fully honest on my application,

Told them about my depression and PTSD.

I laid it all bare for them and hit send.

I received confirmation from the Vipassana Center on January 10,

2013,

My 49th birthday,

That I had been accepted.

This was a great gift,

Even though it prompted nervousness on my part.

I liked the idea that I was pushing myself,

That I would pursue something that scared me,

That maybe this would be the thing that helped me once and for all silence the PTSD symptoms,

Lay them to rest,

Keep them from ever taking me down again as low as I had been the month before.

Ira and I celebrated my birthday quietly.

We drove half an hour south to San Marcos to visit an art gallery and to take in a collection of photographs,

Stark and charming and wrenching portraits of real Texans in their everyday settings.

The trouble began as we drove home late that afternoon heading to dinner at my favorite French restaurant in Austin.

From the time we first started dating,

Ira had sung a couple of refrains repeatedly.

One was that the day was coming when he would take off traveling the world and that most likely he would do that without me.

Sometimes I imagined selling my house so I could go with him.

Other times I imagined just letting him go.

Almost always I felt agitated having to contemplate this at all and often interpreted his plans as a lack of commitment to me.

The refrains started up as I drove us back to Austin.

Ira decided to toss out an idea he'd mentioned previously,

An idea that hadn't sat well with me the first time he brought it up and which didn't sit well with me now.

The current version of his tired song of freedom sounded like this.

Ira was planning a trip that summer to see his sister Rivka in Israel and then the two of them would head to Italy.

I was not invited because Rivka hated me,

Something she determined when we had visited her in 2010 and she spent every waking moment striving to make my life a living hell.

Whenever I came into the room,

Even if she had been speaking in English,

She would switch to Hebrew to shut me out.

One night at dinner in an act of bait and switch she executed like a world champion sadist.

She brought out an old photo album after dinner,

Ostensibly to show me photos of Ira as a kid.

But within moments she had zeroed in on photos of herself,

Pointing out how adorable she was and actually holding up one of these pictures and kissing it.

The final photo album blow came when she pointed out a picture of a 20-something Ira sitting at a table with his parents and a young woman.

Do you know who this is,

Rivka demanded?

With such venom you could practically hear a hiss.

This is Marisol.

We hate her.

She didn't need to say aloud the rest of that sentence.

I could hear it clearly between the lines.

That one day soon I would join the ranks of the hated exes,

That she could not wait for that day to come.

That in fact she would enjoy expediting my exit.

Not getting invited to return to Israel wasn't a problem for me.

I had no interest in seeing Rivka ever again.

But the idea that I was being excluded was a big time trigger for me.

I had gone through my life feeling the same pain over and over and over again.

With my own family,

And with a parade of families of boyfriends over the years,

There always came a point when I felt cut off and kicked out.

Here came the rain again.

The discussion in the car moved fast toward argument territory.

This is how it came to pass then that my birthday,

An annual personal holiday I always carefully plan out to be joyful,

Did not go well.

We salvaged the day as best as we could with a nice dinner.

But this announcement that I would be left behind for a big chunk of the summer while he went off with his mean sister,

Coupled with my lingering anger over the PTSD triggering Facebook photo,

Drove me further away from him.

Reviews

Thoroughly enjoying these chapters and the story. Keeping me company while I iron and reaffirming why I meditate and the improvements I have seen in my mental health since meditation became a daily part of my life. Thank you x

Thank you for sharing this. I can relate to these kinds of feelings.

Thanks for sharing this story of your life! I look forward to hearing more from you.

Thank you so much for sharing your story <3

I am loving your open honesty & tentacle-free sharing.
Thank you Spike. I resonate with much that you are talking about & you have put more light on my condition.
Am finding more & more research being done on childhood trauma as related to depression & auto-immune conditions later in life.
Thank you for being braves enough to put this out there ❤️

Her realness is refreshing

Thank you for sharing your experiences Spike.

I love how real this is. I made myself suffer for years from anxiety disorders I didn't even know I had. Once I found out I was able to combat them. I find refuge in guided meditations now. These "talks" are the best!

More please!!! Xxx

I wish there were more

I'm hooked (& Ira's sister certainly has issues! :D)

I want to hear more...

Good. Thank you for sharing. Blessings, ☺

Great story! (Make sure you go back and listen from the beginning...in the related tab.)

Thank you. Can't wait to hear more.