I wrote a post for the “Blogging and Spirituality” series on experience.mhgs.edu. I was going to put the whole thing here too, but apparently there’s some etiquette about linking? Like, if I want to write for them again, I have to send them traffic? Well, I hope they enjoy all six of you.
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO LINK TO THE POST I WROTE.
AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, PLEASE GO LOOK AT EXPERIENCE.MHGS.EDU.
I’m taking a class this term on Multicultural Issues in Counseling, and our mid-term assignment was to write a paper on our own racial identity development.
Part of my white privilege, I’ve learned, is that I never really need to think about my race. I’ve been told through my schools, churches, government, and media that White is normal. Not until college did anyone tell me that I belonged to a race and a culture like everyone else, and that maybe my idea of “normal” was culture-bound and oppressive. And it wasn’t until last month, at the beginning of Multicultural class, that I began to see just how much racism I’ve inherited. Shouldn’t I have known this from elementary school?
I’m re-printing part of my midterm paper on my White identity development. I’d love to hear your thoughts, but please keep in mind that there’s a tendency to change the topic from race into other forms of oppression (gender, class, sexual orientation, etc). I’ve certainly done this, so I’m now trying to stay with the topic of race, even through the intense guilt and anger it brings up in me. Also, know that I’m beginning a process that I wish I had started years ago.
Here it is:
On the first day of Multicultural Issues class, we were asked to discuss the question, “Who makes you dance?” The “dance,” Professor Hollins explained, is one of anxiety followed by awkward cover-up. Two panicked steps back and one embarrassed compensating step forward. A nervous and silly-looking jig. I thought, “does she seriously want us to name an ethnic group?” I hoped, as I had in college, that I could admit to being a white victim of societal racism without naming the particulars of my own unconscious beliefs. I tried to think up a softer answer than the one that jumped into my head. But I knew that the professor was asking me to give that first answer, the one that nagged from the pit of my stomach.
I sat at a table with four other white people. The first person said she grew up in the south with many racist attitudes, then when she went to Africa she understood how hard it was to be a minority. This answer irritated me.
The second person said he felt uncomfortable in large groups when he was one of the only Whites. Then he added as an afterthought that he felt uncomfortable in all large groups, so it was hard for him to tell how much of it had to do with ethnicity. This answer irritated me too.
Then it was my turn.
I was furious. Were these two really going to leave it at that? Give their vague answers that touched the topic of race then revoked it? Were they really sitting there claiming victimhood? How would I look next to them when I gave my clearly racist answer?
I looked at my hands and said, “I, uh, find myself really anxious around… African American men?” I didn’t mean for it to be a question, but I felt like I needed permission to say that. Someone at the table nodded. Then a flurry of words came out of my mouth, about movies and newspapers and the media and how I didn’t mean to develop these attitudes about Black men, but I did. I suddenly felt that it was very urgent to emphasize my victimhood, and minimize the clear personal racism I had just expressed. My table seemed just as nervous as I was. There was silence, then we moved on to the next person.
When I got home I told my husband about this exercise, and started wondering out loud what personal experiences I had with African American men that might have led to my discomfort. I haven’t had close Black friends since grade school. I could name a few interactions with Black men that might have confirmed my stereotypes that they are “dangerous,” “angry” and “seductive,” but I could recall far more neutral or positive interactions. I realized how deeply and unconsciously I must believe advertisements, movies, and news outlets in how they portray Black men.
In the Resistance and Immersion phase, Sue and Sue (2008) write that “for the first time, the [White] person begins to realize what racism is all about…Racism is seen everywhere (advertising, television, educational materials, interpersonal interactions, etc.).” As I become more resolved to name racism where I see it, I realize how daunting that task is. I cannot sit in public, watch television, or browse items at a store without noticing how our world caters to white people, and overtly or subtly oppresses people of color.
As I have read, written, and participated in this class, I’ve experienced a lot of what Sue and Sue (2008) describe as “guilt, shame, and anger toward oneself and other Whites” that typifies the resistance and immersion phase. I worry that I must somehow pay the world back for my privilege, which is a terrifying and impossible task. I feel guilty for how easily I was able to go to college and now graduate school because of my race and social class. I am weighed down by the thought that I have not earned my keep in this world. It’s a relief to know that guilt, shame, and anger are a normal part of the resistance and immersion phase. Perhaps that means these feelings will not last forever (especially since they are helpful to no one).
Despite feeling so much shame, I am finding that I can stay in the hard and messy conversations much more than I was able to as an undergraduate. During the lunch break on the second day of class, one student said that she wished Multicultural Issues had been offered the summer before our regular classes started. But after a pause, everyone at the table agreed that we were glad to be taking the class now and not earlier. The inner work we’ve done in the past nine months allows us to engage in conversations about race.
It’s paradoxical to me that the very privilege I feel so guilty about– the “luxury of the middle and upper classes” of being able to “sit and talk about things” (Sue and Sue, 2008, p.150)– is what allows me, little by little, to be engaged in conversations about race without completely shutting down. When Sue and Sue write that we have all inherited racist beliefs, I am able to understand that this sad truth is not an attack on my right to exist (it helps that Sue’s language is not personally attacking). I do not hear the anger of oppressed minorities as a demand on me to somehow make up for years of past pain. I am slowly able to enter conversations about race as an adult, learning how to be responsible for myself and the harm I’ve done without accepting burdens that are not mine to carry, and without backing out of the conversation in terrified self-defense.
I see my counselor, Susan, on Wednesdays.
On Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, I look forward to my next appointment. I have conversations with Susan in my head, drawing on the memory of our last meeting and the many before that one. I try to formulate her response to the things that frustrate and confuse me, like the seemingly normal conversation I had with a stranger that left me feeling angry and dirty and powerless. Being unused to compassion, I practice it like a stubborn new sonata, transposing Susan’s kindness into the key of my everyday life.
Then on Sunday Jack and I rest from work and everything else, including imaginary conversations with therapists. I read magazines and take a bath, or maybe two baths.
On Monday and Tuesday, I resume my imaginary conversations, but by then it’s been too many days since my last appointment and I’ve forgotten Susan. Stronger and deeper memories eclipse her compassionate words from the previous week. My imagination changes her into a more familiar figure, one whose kindness masks rage and disgust. I try to win over this harsher imaginary counselor by being witty and insightful. Then I worry about what she’ll think of me when I go back to her office and am not witty and insightful, but stumbling and confused. I imagine she thinks I’m incompetent and wonders when someone at Mars Hill will tell me I’m not cut out to be a therapist. On Monday and Tuesday, I’m afraid of Susan and her silent judgements.
When Wednesday comes again, I trudge in for my appointment, hoping to be witty and insightful, but within five minutes on her couch I’ve almost certainly a) stuttered, b) opened my mouth only to let out a tiny squeak, c) giggled inappropriately, or d) started crying.
A couple weeks ago I was in Susan’s office being particularly mean to myself, narrating the contempt that I’m convinced (on Mondays and Tuesdays) she feels toward me. She had tears in her eyes during that hour, which I didn’t notice because I was too busy being afraid of her, but she pointed them out to me. She asked if, in the following week, I would remember her compassion, or if I would instead believe the relentless criticism I project onto her.
I was honest… I told her I’d remember the compassion for a few days, then I’d have trouble holding on to it. I didn’t tell her that Sunday is a day of rest from work and thinking about your therapist, and sometimes I take two baths, because that sounds crazy.
There are more technical ways to talk about therapy, using words like “transference” and “splitting” and “introject.” But those words don’t feel right when it’s your life being examined, your heartache exposed, your butt on that damn couch. I talk about my own counseling in pretty simple terms: I’d like to remember Susan’s kindness from Wednesday to Wednesday. Maybe once I can do that, her kindness toward me will become my own.
This week I had to say goodbye to my practicum group. Before our last meeting, we talked about endings. Our Practicum Facilitator, Jeanette, told us that people usually try to make goodbye less difficult. We find something to get angry about, so we can brush our hands off and be done, good riddance! Or, we create distance, convincing ourselves that we don’t need that person as much as we thought.
As Jeanette went through the list of ways we make parting easier, I heard my own voice at every airport: “I had a great time with you, and I’ll call when I get back.” We’ll talk soon, I say mostly to myself, so this isn’t really an ending. I borrow from the future to alleviate the pain of leaving. And by doing that, I’ve missed so many chances to end well.
Good endings, Jeanette told us, involve remembering. Ending well means telling stories. It means recognizing that we’re at the end, and not cheapening the end by backing away from it. It means celebrating and mourning, together.
So on our last day of practicum, we told stories. We remembered each other, how we were in September, and how we are now. I didn’t console myself that I would see these people next year. I will see them, but we’ll never again be in a group together. I told each person how I would remember them. And I heard their words to me, which were almost too good to bear.
Then, the next day, I had my last one-on-one meeting with Jeanette, and that was a billion times worse. I did not want to say goodbye to that woman. How do you let go of the person who first confirmed that parts of your own story were dark and tragic, and told you your tears were right and good? I just couldn’t. So I didn’t say goodbye for the first 40 minutes. Instead, I found less painful things to talk about while I creatively didn’t look at her. Or swallow.
Then when our time was up, I panicked that if I wasn’t honest now, I might never again say anything that mattered. So I took the world’s shakiest breath in and said, “I was scared to come here today, because I don’t know how to begin to thank you.” I’m not sure if the last few words were audible or not, but she seemed to get it. She looked surprised, choked out a soft, “oh,” and started crying.
We sat for two minutes, and I hope to remember those two minutes my whole life. At the end she said, “You’ve touched my life, Christine, and I won’t ever forget you.” I think she said that because it’s true, and because she knew I would have trouble believing it. Love must be much bigger than I imagine.
Since then, I’ve been seeing endings everywhere. What if I left each visit with my sister saying “I had a great visit, and now it’s finished. We’ll never have another like it.” What if I let myself comprehend that, next time I see my nieces, they will be different people entirely. What if, on our anniversary, Jack and I told stories, celebrated, and mourned the quick passing of our newlywed years. What if I told my sweet 2-year-old nephew, “I remember your first cries, and I will never hear them again.”
Endings are everywhere. Death is everywhere. Sometimes it seems like Good Friday lasts forever, and Easter is only a sad illusion.
When I worked at Peet’s, I would often take a person’s order, and while I was making the drink I’d ask that same person, “Can I get something started for you?”
I have a real problem remembering faces.
Jack is very gracious to me when we watch movies, and I have to pause every five minutes to ask, “Wait… I’m so confused. Is that the new lover or the old lover?”
And Jack will be like, “THE OLD LOVER IS WHITE. THE NEW LOVER IS BLACK. HOW CAN YOU NOT KEEP THEM STRAIGHT?”
And I’m like, “They’re not straight?!? But what about the woman? Or was it two women? I’m so confused!”
Beyond just not remembering faces, I’m not a visual person. I don’t have a mind’s eye, and my real eyes barely work (contact prescription: -7.5). Recently a friend tried to teach me how to wear makeup, and she was talking about rose shades and berry shades and bluish browns and greenish purples and I was like PLEASE just give me a tube of lipstick that doesn’t make me look like I forgot to sleep last night.
I’m intimidated by all things painted, drawn, sketched, sculpted, or visually representative of something else. This is one of the reasons I’ve never read the last book of the Bible. Revelation is just too visual for me. (The other reason is the people who love Revelation. Or more precisely, people who love thinking that Revelation is about them. You know what I’m talking about.)
So when I saw “Apocalyptic Literature” on the syllabus for my New Testament class, I was intrigued. I was pretty sure no one at Mars Hill would claim that the European Union was a sign of the End Times.
At the beginning of the 3-hour class, the TA, Rob, talked about features of apocalyptic literature. Then, for the second half of class, he turned off the lights and read the book of Revelation, out loud, from beginning to end, with no interpretation or commentary.
Image after image bombarded us. Four-headed creatures and fire and swords. Sounds of thunder and weeping and rushing waters. An earthquake. Shining white linen with golden sashes. Pus-filled sores. A woman in labor and a dragon waiting open-mouthed at the end of her vagina to devour her child.
And it was too much. My poor imagination has not been worked so hard in years. It tried to keep up, but like a rusty old bike chain it snapped and got tangled in itself. And whenever it became too much, whenever I was tempted to go get a drink of water or check my email or stand up and beg Rob for mercy–whenever I thought I would burst into tears if my senses were strained any further, one of Revelation’s horrific creatures would cry,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!”
As if they, too, were full to the brim and begging for mercy.
Last month I went to the zoo with Jack, and we discovered the indoor tropical exhibit. The first cage held an ocelot, which I had never even heard of. I took one look at it and immediately told Jack three things:
1) I want one.
2) If I were in Harry Potter my patronus would be an ocelot.
3) That face just turned my insides to goo.
It was seriously the most beautiful creature I could imagine:
A few weeks later I was sitting in class thinking about ocelots when it hit me: what do the babies look like? I googled, “Ocelot babies” and found out that two kittens had been born to the Woodland Park Zoo ocelot in September. I immediately gmail-chatted three things to Jack:
1) Ocelots have babies.
2) Ocelot babies are near my house.
3) There is a God.
Yesterday my friend and co-student asked if I wanted to go to the zoo and talk. It seemed like a good place to go on a February afternoon. Because February is tough, especially for students. It’s a good month for ruminating and brooding. I liked the idea of brooding with Grace while watching otters play. It seemed like such a ironic, both/and, already-but-not-yet, ambivalent, “hold everything in tension” thing to do.
When I saw the sun this morning I thought, “No no no, this takes away February’s usefulness. How can I possibly brood when the sun’s out?” But of course, it was wonderful. The animals were displaying their best quirky/horny spring behavior. AND. The ocelot kittens were to be in their exhibit at 2:30.
We had an hour to kill, so we meandered towards the day-and-night exhibit and talked. February has been hard. Grace talked about her tears, and how she had hoped that Mars Hill would erase them, but instead people call them a gift. I’ve been realizing my own secret fantasy that Mars Hill would teach me how to be bold and outspoken, so I could be seen and heard and fully accepted.
Mars Hill is not known for fixing problems. One of our professors says that a therapist’s job is to make things worse before making them better. I’m beginning to think that the “better” is much more beautiful and painful than I can now imagine.
There’s a little walkway between the zoo’s indoor day and night exhibits. The walls are painted with dark, shadowy forest against a night sky. A Wendell Berry poem leads you from the day exit to the night entrance:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
We stopped. “I’m reading that really differently today,” said Grace.
Yes, I thought, me too. It’s not just about bats and owls today.
Maybe things don’t get better. Maybe I will be lonely and unseen. Maybe Grace will always have tears. Maybe everything is always and forever dark.
We paused, and Grace finished both our thoughts: “But it’s been traveled before.”
Usually when people ask what I studied in college, I say “Russian,” even though I double majored in Russian and Comparative Literature (or, as I delighted in calling it when I was 20, “Cliterature”). If I admit to my literature degree, people ask if I’ve read Anna Karenina, or what I think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism, and I’m forced to admit that I am poorly read and lack critical thinking skills. But people generally don’t know anything about Russian, and I enjoy appearing impressive, so I stick with the short story.
Like a lot of college students, I studied abroad during my Junior year. I flew to Russia in January, because if you’re going to live in Russia you might as well see some real winter. After I landed in the country that had almost killed me 5 years before (see, Anaphylaxis: a severe allergic reaction), I walked out of customs to a swarm of sneering taxi drivers. I was supposed to see a man named Andrei holding a sign with my name, but I didn’t. I still remember his name was “Andrei” because I sat on my suitcase for a whole hour, fending off taxi drivers and chanting his name as if I could will him to appear.
Andrei finally showed up carrying a sign that said “Kristin Kachison,” which was a good attempt at my then last name, Hutchison. A for effort, Andrei! Or if you want Russian grades, 5 for effort. Except Russians don’t grade their children on effort, only performance. You fail!
Andrei drove me to the small city where I would live for the next 6 months, and delivered me to the apartment door of my host family. I had my own bedroom, and there was a good sized living room. But I was to spend most of my time in the smallest room: the kitchen.
My mom once wrote an essay, after my grandma died, about kitchen tables. She said that women’s lives center around kitchen tables: big ones, like the one I grew up with in Portland; or small ones, as my mom remembered from her childhood in a Brooklyn apartment. Being a knowledgeable and righteous 15-year-old, I told her that was ancient and unfeminist.
But then I logged, oh gosh, probably over 400 hours on that tiny, yellowed, plastic-covered table that was crammed against the only free wall in a cramped Russian kitchen. I would drink tea while my restless host mom cooked and sighed and listened to me “practice my Russian.” Which meant I sat and complained about the language. But at least I complained in Russian.
Every once in a while she’d look over the top of her glasses at me and raise her eyebrows, and I thought I might be in trouble. But I came to learn that look meant something like, “This is life, girl. Choose your response.” It was the look she gave me on her birthday, when I came home and asked where her husband was. She raised her eyebrows slowly so her glasses slid down her nose, looked at me over the rims, and said, “He… celebrated… my birthday all day at work, and now he’s lying down ill.”
This is life, girl. Choose your response. That look bore so much love and sadness.
One of the best days in my life was on my 3rd trip to Russia, last year. I walked the old route to my school and thought about how many people had loved and sheltered that wide-eyed 20-year-old Christine. My host mom. The American missionary who invited me to live with her, even though I never cleaned anything. The Russian teachers who couldn’t live off their salaries yet delighted in their students. The other wide-eyed 20-year-old girl in the English class that I visited, who raised her hand and said carefully, “I would like… to meet you… to drink coffee and talk.” She ended up coming to my wedding four years later.
I like to think that one of the best days of my life was characterized by gratitude. As I left on the train later that night, I was overwhelmed with it.
Jack and I started looking for a regular church right after we got married. We had a tentative list of qualities we wanted: thoughtful and scholarly sermons, a small Bible study group we could join, diversity in age and background, as well as other young married couples.
Conspicuously absent from my list was “women.” I didn’t realize how I craved mentors. Whenever I joined a new church, I would immediately sniff out an older, educated and often, well, unusual Christian woman and attach myself to her.
My first mentor was a missionary that I found in Russia. She was over six feet tall, single, and fluent in Russian despite having begun studying at age 40. I lived with her for a few months during my first year of being a Christian, and we spent many evenings at her kitchen table as she listened patiently to my stories and questions.
When I came back to the states, I began tagging along with a half Native American woman with long silver hair. She had finished her PhD in her early 40’s, then she and her husband had two kids. They had a sign outside their front door that said “Welcome to the home of Dr. and Mr. Bentley.” She home-schooled her boys, teaching them Greek, Latin, and how electrical circuits work. They practiced “attachment parenting,” which meant all four of them slept in one bed. Even though I found that a little creepy, I loved her brazenness. Some part of me thought, “all this, and you’re a Christian? Then maybe I can break the mold too.”
When I got married two years later, I thought that I had lost my chance of breaking any mold. I worried that I had married because I feared independence. My life story was looking too similar to others: I had been a good Christian college student, then I had a good Christian wedding where we sang “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and it would only be a matter of time before I learned to cook and had babies. And even though I loved the song “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and wanted to learn how to cook, I was terrified of becoming invisible amidst all the other Christian wives who cooked and sang and went to church.
So, with all this insecurity about being newly married, Jack and I tagged along with two old Intervarsity friends to their church. During the “meet and greet” time, I turned away from Jack to the person next to me, who smiled and introduced herself. She was in her 40’s and wore hiking boots and no makeup. She had been going to this church for nearly a decade. I was stunned… a functional member of a church who didn’t have to fight to stand out? In fact, it didn’t seem to occur to her that she wasn’t “typical.” She was just herself, friendly and smiley and wearing hiking boots to church. I asked what she did, and she told me she was a professor. I nearly proposed.
Instead, I blurted out, “I really want to go back to school! But I have to pick something to study first, and I don’t know how to do that.” She empathized. She used to be an engineer, after all, before getting her master’s in Communications.
After church we met the associate pastor, another single woman in her 40’s, who, I later learned, will listen and not judge even if you bitch and moan about her church for an hour. Jack immediately liked Andrea too, but I was fascinated. I could not comprehend how these women learned to be so comfortable in their own skin, without measuring themselves against others.
When Jack and I got home that day we talked about how much we liked the church. The pastor referenced two outside sources in his sermon! And did you see all the young married couples! And we already have friends there! I didn’t say, “I met women I actually admire!”, but I think that was why I went back, and back, and back. As someone who is swayed by the tide of others’ expectations, I’m startled by women who live without apology.
I’m speaking at my church’s women’s retreat in a couple weeks. My talk, ironically, is about being comfortable in your own skin and not living in the tide of others’ expectations. I feel simultaneously very qualified and not at all qualified on this topic. Let me know if you want to come. You have to be a woman, but it doesn’t matter if you’re a typical one or not.
One horribly awkward Thursday evening in college, I was heading out of my dorm to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s worship service, which we called “Large Group.” About five of us were walking there together, including one of the Bible study leaders. Really nice guy. Biggest heart of almost anyone I’ve met. This might be the only less-than-stellar memory I have of him.
As we crossed the first street, he said, “Hey, let’s invite everyone we meet on the way to Large Group!” We all responded with varying levels of fake enthusiasm. No one would dare admit to not liking evangelism. Partly because we didn’t know how to express emotions (”I feel embarassed and afraid!”), and partly because we already knew the response:
“you should really pray about that.”
So we headed onto campus and our fearless leader greeted everyone with, “Hey! Do you want to go to the most awesome worship service on campus?” After the second response of, “Uh, no thanks,” I think even he wished we could just walk the rest of the way in silence. But instead we all pretended we were having a great time, we just conveniently forgot to make eye contact with anyone.
We had an unspoken taboo against honesty. I hope that’s changed.
I genuinely did (and do) like having conversations about God… but inviting people to church has always been about as enjoyable as throwing up. Mostly because it is very, very hard for me to be honest and authentic. I start by asking someone if they’d like to come to church with me and suddenly I find myself quoting C.S. Lewis, then I force a laugh for no reason, then I tell them to just let me know if they want to come via email. Or text message. Or restraining order, if that’s more convenient.
But this week I had been talking with my sister-in-law about Christmas. She said that she hoped to teach her little boy that Christmas is about more than Santa and presents… she wanted him to value the sense of community and generosity, the idea of peace and love and helping others. And I had the strangest realization… she might actually want to come to my church’s Christmas eve service.
Normally I think, “if I invite Carine to church, we’ll probably sing ‘Grace like Rain’ for 17 minutes, then she’ll hate Jesus.” But this time I thought…what if I invited her and didn’t feel responsible for what happens there? What if I gave both of us the freedom to enjoy or not enjoy the service, without trying to fix or explain anything?
Joris, my not-quite-two nephew, came too. I’ve always secretly wanted to bring him to church, because he’s so darn cute and I like bragging that I’m related to him. He didn’t disappoint. At the end of every song, he clapped and yelled, “YAAAYYY!”, which often overlapped with the Scripture readings:
[song ends.] “YAAAAYYY!”
“For unto us a child is b–”
“YAAAYYY!”
Halfway through the service he found his blue fishy sunglasses in the diaper bag. He put them on and head-banged for the rest of the carols with his stuffed tiger, Coco.
The service ended with the song “Silent Night,” and a reading from the book of John:
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
What mystery, I thought.
And then.
A young pastor stood up and said, “You may have asked yourself, ‘where is God?’, and that’s a good question. Well, God has answered that question!”
I glanced over at Jack, who gave me this look:
Oh shit, I thought, the pastor is doing that Christmas-and-Easter thing. His church is packed and he’s going to try to convert as many people as possible. My sister-in-law is going to hate me. She’s going to hate Jesus. She’s going to think I manipulated her.
It was the ultimate test in emotional boundaries. Mine are very poor. I wish I could listen to that sermon and think, “I’m not sure that I like this homily, and it’s okay for me to disagree.” Instead I thought, “Oh no! How will I please both my sister and this pastor that I’ve never met? Have I disappointed her by inviting her here? Am I failing my church by being angry? Will I be kicked out for sighing audibly?”
I felt like I was again walking with my Bible study leader from Intervarsity, watching him bravely invite strangers to an awesome worship service. I didn’t know then how to speak honestly without abandoning him. And I still don’t know how to sit in church without the fight-or-flight instinct.
Carine, of course, didn’t hate me for the pastor’s sermon. She’d had a great time singing and was more than willing to wait out the 10 minute homily. Besides, she was too busy keeping a toddler quiet to really pay attention. Thank God.
All of my counseling sessions start pretty much the same way. My therapist asks, “So… where to today?” And I say that I hate that question. I spend every Thursday morning worrying about how to answer it, and after our hour is done, I worry that I didn’t answer it right. I tell her that she’s the expert, why can’t she start us out? She should be telling me what to talk about.
Then she says something like, “it sounds like you want to conform yourself to my agenda. What if I don’t have an agenda?”
And I say that of course I know there’s no agenda, no right and wrong. But I don’t know how to operate as the leader, the expert of anything, even my own thoughts and feelings. The she asks about my history of conforming myself to others, and my stories spill out. In that office, I have this strange feeling of terror and freedom. I am who I am, and there are no unspoken expectations.
Then my hour is up, and I leave, thinking, “Did I do that right?”
