Back when Jimmy Carter was President, I heard that his sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was coming to town. She was going to give a healing seminar. When I read the blurb in the Mercury News I thought it said that the seminar was going to be about ways to talk with people in order to defuse their anger. At the time I was doing volunteering as a tutor for the GED program in the local jail. I had noticed that sometimes when I was assigned to work with a frustrated prisoner, as we talked about the lessons in the workbooks I could feel him unwind and feel his anger dissipate, sometimes not. I was definitely interested in learning about the healing power of common conversation. If I were going to work with this population I needed all the tools I could get to help them learn to deal with their frustrations.
When I got down to the Civic Auditorium I realized that Ruth Carter Stapleton's plan was not to teach us how to have healing conversations with other people but rather to have a healing conversation with the people who paid to come to the seminar. Did I need healing? I thought not.
She explained that while her healing techniques relied heavily on her belief in divine intervention, they also relied heavily on the work of psychologist Michael Wright. Like Wright, Stapleton believed that much of our emotional suffering results from our childhood misinterpretation of the causes of traumatic events that we experienced or witnessed. When an individual doesn't understand a situation, the tendency is to put together some explanation from the scraps that come to hand. Such explanations are seldom useful and sometimes down right harmful-standing between the individual as he grows up and his achieving a fully functional life. When all the pieces of a person's life consistently resist fitting together in a way that makes sense, sometimes it helps if the adult can revisit those situations in his mind and take a look at them with adult eyes. If all else fails, Wright's theory suggests that a person take the liberty of rewriting the script into something that he can live with.
Although Ruth Carter Stapleton's work was dynamic, and remarkably effective for many in the audience, including me, the most valuable thing I brought home from that lesson wasn't my experience with God's great voice booming, "IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT." The most valuable thing she gave me that day was a take home assignment.
The idea was that you were to spend some time everyday making friends with the child that grew up to be you. You were supposed to call the kid out to play with you. Tell it you would like to be its friend. Once you became the child's friend you could talk with it. Explain the things that no one was there years ago with time or interest to explain. According to Ruth Carter Stapleton there are several crucial times when children and young people are likely to have reached conclusions that work against their best interests.
These times are:
- Birth A child comes into a world that is not ready to offer him or her a secure place. For instance the parents can't afford a baby either emotionally or financially or both. Such a person is likely to go around saying, "I wish I had never been born."
- Young childhood. Too often when traumatic experiences occur, adults are too absorbed in the heroics of survival. There is no one with time, or awareness to tend to the child's needs. In such events, young children are likely to blame themselves for the trauma that has occurred to others or even themselves.
- Puberty Perhaps because of social taboos, when a young person first experiences sexual interest there is often no one available to talk with about this new phase. Such an individual is likely to intuitively pick up deeply negative connotations about this new phase he/she is entering and to internalize a certain since of wrongness.
- Marriage When a person becomes a part of a second family there can be a major reality conflict. Young people are seldom aware of the vast differences in dynamics of families other than their own. Because every family issue is wrapped in a heavily emotional charge, it is usually a challenge to integrate individuals from different families.
I would add divorce, death, moving to a different part of the country or a different part of the world, and moving from one tax bracket to another.
This is the way I suggest that you go about trying to make friends with the child who grew up to be you. Assemble your writing implements. Then take a deep breath and sort of settle down into your chair, narrow your eyes and try to see the place you used to live when you were just a little kid--age three or four. Ruth Carter Stapleton suggested that you envision the front door of the house where you lived back then.
Remember, this is a discussion you are having with yourself. As I remembered that first week that I knew that little Jeannie would not be hanging around the front door, I could remember the old chinaberry tree with its tire swing hanging from the branch. I would go and stand by the tree and ask her to come out and play. Nothing. Day after day. Nothing. At first I thought it was because she never approved of that swing that Uncle George had put there. Mama thought the swing ropes scored tree branches and hurt them so they didn't grow well. But, I persisted. Some days I could get her to come into my line of sight. I would ask here what she was afraid of. Explain that I was not a stranger and that it would be all right to talk to me. Finally she did come tell me one thing. She said, "Why would I talk to you? You wouldn't listen."
Well. It was a start. I've actually grown quite fond of Jeannie, although she is a bit of a worry wart.
Here is an alternate exercise. Another one I borrowed from Grace Cavalieri
She says, "I like to suggest imaging your parents and quickly jotting down a number of five words phrases which tell about them. Then meditating on the reasons you choose to come through these two people to fulfill your soul journey.
I call this exercise "Scenario" and have gotten wonderful writing from it as the next step.
Am I on the wrong or right path ?"
