Fear of Fire

It is a hot and sultry summer night in Charleston. I am about three years old. I’m wearing the red polka dotted dress that my Nana made for me. I am sitting on Nana and Papa’s porch in my little wooden chair with its rattan seat. My chair is painted blue with pink, yellow and red flowers. Now that the sun is setting, the porch awnings are being raised to let the cooling breeze float through. My parents and grandparents are talking about an explosion and the resulting oil fire in Texas. “So many people killed . . . spreading even faster now. . . . The winds have picked up. . . . out of control . . . heard on the news . . . not certain when they will be able to contain it . . . get it under control. Houses are going up in flames all around.”

I feel the fear rising in my body. My tummy begins to churn and my heart beats faster. I see the flames licking the earth moving towards us. It is growing bigger and bigger. Will it burn all the way to Charleston? My house could burn down. I could burn up. Daddy and Mommy could burn up. Nana and Papa could burn up.

I am getting sleepy and want to crawl into my daddy’s lap and be safe. Instead, I sit in the chair, rocking with my thumb in my mouth. The air is cooling down and I can hear crickets over the sounds of traffic. The noise from passing cars comes from the bridge beside the house; sounds also come from the boulevard in front of the house. The air hangs heavy with the sweet smell of freshly watered plants and damp earth coming from the large concrete planters behind my chair. As darkness falls, I can barely see the large goldfish bowl behind the glider where my parents are sitting. Sometimes I get to feed oats to the resident fish. I feel the difference in textures under my feet where the straw carpet meets the smooth gray concrete of the porch. I don’t tell anyone that I am afraid.

I go to sleep that night and dream that the earth is burning. I can escape the fire by climbing a tall ladder up to heaven. I am afraid of open stairs and ladders. I begin to climb and I am very afraid. I don’t get very far when the quill from a bird’s feather scratches my leg. I am now marked to remain on earth and burn up in the fire. I awaken and I am afraid. I tell no one. Little do I know that this will be a recurring nightmare for several years.

July 2006

Deciphering the Messages

“It is quite possible to be so influenced by the ideals and commands of your neighborhood that you don’t know what you really want and could be.” Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth


“You can’t become a psychiatrist because all that education would be wasted on you. You will simply get married, have children and stay home”
And , , , in almost the same breath, “You need to be prepared for whatever life brings you. You never know. You need a college education so that you will be prepared.
“Be smart. Don’t let him know how smart you are.
“Get an education. If you go back to school, it will destroy your marriage.
“An eye for an eye. Turn the other cheek.”
So many voices, so many conflicting messages in the neighborhood . . . trying to heed them all became so self-defeating that I stopped listening. I remained confused about the conflict/peace dichotomy of my life until I read about Mahatma Ghandi’s life. He grew into the peace-making person he became as an older man. I worked on a psychiatric unit. For some reason, I ended up with many victims of sexual abuse and violence. When I questioned the spiritual meaning of this, my mentor said that I was just good at what I do. Years later looking back, I can see the patterns and spiritual meanings of my life.
My parents always had their “discussions” behind closed doors. As a child, I never heard my parents argue. Indeed, the first “adult” argument I remember hearing was on a hot summer night when I was nine. The windows in my bedroom were open. I could hear the neighbors next door. I don’t remember what the argument was about, but I heard threats of violence between two alcoholics, an elderly mother and her adult son.
I was afraid. My stomach churned and I called out to my parents to comfort me. I was so profoundly affected by this, that it wasn’t until I was doing co-therapy with a cohort in graduate school that I began to lose my fear of loud, verbal conflict–unless I was the aggressor.
As an adolescent, I seemed to attract all sorts of conflict with my mother. Conflict followed me for a number of years, culminating in a study on domestic violence. I was married to an abusive alcoholic for thirteen years. That marriage taught me a lot about conflict and violence. It took me six years to realize that if slept in another bedroom when my husband was drunk, I wouldn’t get thrown out of bed in the middle of the night. That marriage led me into a growth group and the decision to go back to school. Because of the abuse in the marriage, I did volunteer work getting women into a shelter. The first semester of my doctorate program, I began my study of family violence, culminating in a dissertation on the effects of and meanings made by children who were exposed to family violence.
It was then that I realized I couldn’t be a peacemaker until I understood conflict from an emotional, mental, physical and spiritual level. Consequently, I discovered my life’s purpose: to create peace, one person at a time, beginning with me. I have moved from the neighborhood.

July 2006

Therapist and Client -- The Reluctant

“This is where we met,” Ellen said as we walked around Lake Ella. I have found that movement is often a good way to begin a first therapy session. Ellen continued, “I was walking off a dose of self-pity because my playmates had gone away for the holidays. Anyway, I was walking along when this man ran up to me and, seeing my sweatshirt, said, ‘Western Carolina University, that’s in Cullowhee, isn’t it?’ I stopped dead in my tracks. Most people have never heard of Cullowhee, much less known how to pronounce it. We talked about twenty minutes before he asked if he could buy me a cup of coffee. Over coffee, we discovered that we had many things in common. We were both runners, private pilots, and loved to go boating and hiking. We even had a North Carolina connection. He owned a cabin located about an hour from where I had lived and gone to school.”
Ellen was a lively, elegant woman. With her red hair and green eyes, I could see how any man would be attracted to her. As we walked, Ellen continued talking as if stopping to take a breath would make her story disappear. “We talked about our interests, our philosophies of life, spirituality, and even our views on relationships. Before we parted, I asked him about his marital status. ‘Divorced for fifteen years.’ I even checked out his views on committed relationships. He was adamant that he never wanted to remarry, but he would like to live with someone in the future. He was so open and genuine with me that, when he asked if he could call me, I gave him my phone number. I don’t remember giving out my number to a man upon first meeting him.”
As Ellen talked about this man, her energy picked up and her speech became more and more animated. “He called me a few days later and we began seeing each other on a very limited basis, maybe once a week, sometimes two. He became my playmate. We would rollerblade, bicycle, fly, go canoeing or sailing his Sunfish. Whatever we did, we had fun. I didn’t think much about not seeing him because I certainly had little time to become too involved. I was still taking classes and struggling with a complicated statistics course. He even made me dinner and brought it to me one night when I was knee deep in statistics. ‘You have to eat, don’t you? What if I fix us both dinner and bring it to you?’ What could I say? That certainly endeared him to me.
“We began having sex after about six months, but I wouldn’t let him spend the night until it became almost time to go to his cabin in North Carolina for a long weekend. Still, I wasn’t getting too involved with him. He was great fun to be with, but I had a doctoral program to finish. He was very understanding whenever I needed to work.
“A recent physical in January revealed a nodule on his prostate; the diagnosis was prostate cancer. He came over the night of the diagnosis, and we knew we could get through this together. When I told him I loved him, he said that he’d been thinking that for awhile.
“The other night, he told me that he is still married,” Ellen said with eyes welling up and lips quivering. “I don’t know what to do. I feel hurt, angry and betrayed. I can’t leave him while he is going through this. What should I do?”
“What’s this man’s name?”
When she told me his name, my heart stopped and anger rose in my throat. “I’m sorry, I will have to refer you to another therapist. I am his wife.”

The Unreliable Third - An Exercise

The Trip from Tampa to Jacksonville
An Exercise: the unreliable third


He was upstairs on the third floor of their home, working in his office, when the phone rang. He picked up the phone and heard her voice like tendrils traveling through the line to reach him and grab his heart. God, how he loved this woman. “Hi, I’m leaving Mother’s now and should be home in about three and a half hours. I will see you then. I love you.”
He really loved this woman to whom he had been married over five years now. He felt so lucky to be married to her. She was twelve years younger than he and looked even younger than that. It made him mad when she was mistaken for his daughter, and yet he was secretly pleased that she looked so young. Tammy was a very attractive woman at thirty-nine years old. She hadn’t aged much at all in the six years they had been married. At thirty-three she was still being carded when the drinking age was eighteen. He liked having her on his arm when they went out.

Tammy was not too tall, slim, with a body that showed her years of yoga practice. With her short, dark hair and penetrating blue eyes, she turned heads whenever she entered a room. Tammy had a presence about her that attracted all sorts of people to her. He was really glad that he could afford to have her dress well and provide her with good jewelry to show her off to his friends.

Hmm, she is really a sexy lady. I know all the men at the construction sites like to ogle her, particularly her breasts and her behind. Just yesterday, I overheard one of them talk about getting her into bed. I know she is having an affair with him. I’ll bet he is the one who calls and hangs up when I answer. It’s either him or that professor she is seeing at school. I know he calls her every day. He calls her on the private line, like I won’t know what is going on. It’s getting late. I know she has stopped and is probably having sex with one of those drivers on the interstate. That is just like her. What a slut. That bitch. How dare she! She thinks I don’t know about all those affairs she has had since we’ve been married.

“It’s about time you got home. You have been screwing one of those truck drivers you flirt with on the interstate, haven’t you? How dare you, you bitch!”

“I stopped for gas in Ocala like I usually do. I may have spent an extra five minutes because the woman at the pump next to me discovered that her credit card wouldn’t work and she didn’t have any cash with her. Since she was from here, I put her gas on my credit card and gave her my name and our address so that she can send me a check. You’re drunk again.”