From the Brain of Dr. Nicki: Splinters – Walking the Talk

For decades I’ve been exploring, uprooting, identifying, demystifying, reframing and, eventually, appreciating my own dense historical matters. It’s what I teach. It’s what I do. As a result, I mostly throughout my days and ways, feel the kind of monumental perspective shift that allows clarity, new healthier behavioral choices and, best of all, freedom from reactivity.

Mostly.

Because being human means riding the urgent various and often disorganized waves of our own unfolding inner lives, no matter what age or stage we’re in. It’s our gift. It’s our invitation. It’s our challenge. 

Thus, inevitably there will be matters small and great that have refused over time to be thoroughly approached. They can be superficially regarded. They can be bundled together with other apparently pertinent experiences. They can “appear” to have been dealt with.

Until they manage their way to the surface. 

Until we’re walking around one day and feel their pointy ends piercing the sole of our feet—rubbing against the concrete world. 

That’s how it recently was with a personal historical incident of some importance. I was hugely surprised to see it appear with no warning, like a distant unpopular relative you hope to never see again. But there it came, knocking at my night door, begging entry. So like the gracious host I hope to be I let her in, sat her down by the fire, and entertained her gripes.

As always, there’s a story. I’ll tell the tale as a fable, for indeed as often happens for us all, the “facts” feel by now more mythology than happenstance.

Once upon a time there was a terribly bereft woman-child. Inside the woman-child constant frantic tears streamed down, like extreme rain crashing against a window pane. Early on, however, she’d decided that showing these tears would mean never finding the love she desperately imagined would solve all her hurt. So the tears became her secret – her dark hallway. To the world she instead presented herself as the smart, helpful, funny, sexy girl. In some ways it worked. People liked her. Paid her attention. Wanted her.

One day she met a man-child. This man-child was from a whole different kind of fairytale – an even darker tale than hers, told in a sinister language she barely spoke. But there was some fire the rude man-child and his threatening language awakened in her. Maybe this is love, she thought. Maybe love is pain. Small flickers of her early home life tickled the edges of her memory.

The man-child asked the woman-child to spend her life with him. She said yes. Someone wanted her so she said yes to being wanted. It seemed like enough. In spite of the steady, drunken violence. In spite of the fear.

One day the woman-child discovered herself pregnant. She was neither happy nor sad. She was simply surprised. Life was spinning out of control. Yes, within the so-called love, no ease of inner pain tears had happened. Disappointing.

The man-child too seemed neither happy nor sad. No great new adventures were engaged; no exciting hero’s journeys planned. Instead, the earth beneath them felt ever-more scorched with a furious, blazing heat.

One day the woman-child, in pain, hysterically ran to the hospital. Perhaps the baby was coming. But it was too soon. Stop, she thought. Too soon. Nowhere could the man-child be found.

She was alone when the barely formed infant boy arrived.

Only 51/2 months, the boy was too small to be held with love. Too small, in fact, to survive.

The child, having lived only two minutes, needed both birth and death certificate.

Agony wrenched the almost-mother.

The woman-child told herself the baby would return in future – be born again when the time was right. The time was never right. The baby never did return. The woman-child moved on.

For all the years after this experience I told the story to be mostly about relationship – the relationship between violence and self-hatred; the relationship between addiction and profound pain; the relationship between denial and awakening. But each time I skipped over the conversation about loss and longing. The loss of the mother/child bonding. The longing for healing our own unmet, private tenderness in a way that only a child can. Then the day came when the memory splinter found its way out of its deep hiding place to stab me awake. At that moment I realized how neglectful I’d been of the tale’s true importance. And so I did the only real thing to be done: I looked it in the eye. The result was a letter to the dead baby. I offer this letter to you now. 

Dear One-

   I begin with a simple apology for the decades of neglect. How lightly I have looked upon your passing – have crafted your story/our story into a learning, cautionary tale to be wielded like a long-rusted anvil rather than the narrow, delicate Soul brush it is.

   You’ve been like a secret inside me. Not the kind of secret never told, once, twice, thrice or more – but rather the kind of secret refusing to be cupped gently and held towards the restorative sun. A secret spoken but never deeply tasted. A secret exploited but not explored. A resource abused rather than used.

    And now I bow down before you – sorrow tumbling through me like a desperate night thief, rummaging the house, overturning drawers, emptying closets and stumbling over forgotten dropped items.  

    Truth be told, I have long known you’ve been waiting – lingering in the dark corners as a shadow reminder. I minimized your importance. I underestimated my pain.

    “Will there be a moment,” you must have over and again wondered, “when she will catch sight of my tiny fingers and re-member all that has been lost through me?”

     These unexpected tears have some rhyme but no reason. But this time I don’t need to figure it out, organize it, or turn it into something it isn’t asking to be. No. This time there is only this:

            Forgive me, little one.

Forgive me imagining there have been substitutes for you along the way.      

Forgive me for not honoring profoundly all that you came to teach in that bare five and a half months.

                        Forgive me the initial rage that protected the grief.

                        And allow please my now grace tears to water your never-made grave.

I don’t remember your brief name. I won’t pretend. But I deeply believe                          your Soul and my Soul are eternally conjoined.

Thank you for your patience. I see you now. I know you now. I mourn you now.

Perhaps you too, dear reader, have a splinter poking the concrete beneath your feet. Maybe there’s a cry to have or a letter to scribe or a precious memory to awaken and honor. It takes courage to enter those dark hallways. Yes. But embracing rather than forsaking brings us to a humanity we could otherwise never know. And in a life, that can make all the difference.