I Rise

A mind fragmented by childhood abuse.  An adulthood in tatters because of prejudice and betrayal. Yet we put the fragments back together and out of the ashes of her past life was born someone beautiful to tell a story both heart breaking and inspiring.  When we bid each other goodbye I gave her her  "diploma" and never before Maya’s words sounded more true, more palpable, more heartfelt.  

Here is to S. and all of you who overcame obstacles and  Still Rise:

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

News from the little Silver Christmas Tree

I have written before about my little silver Christmas Tree; the bearer of wishes?  the reminder of Hope?

Well it is not as little any more, it has grown, along with the number of Well wishers and the ornaments they have lovingly hanged on it. 

This year however, there will be one ornament that will take center stage and one wish, wrapped in determination and bolstered by hard work, that will be heard the loudest:  The wish that our  mercilessly  struck and deeply scarred by the storm Jersey shore will recover and rebuild fast.  We will wish that the coming summer will find our beaches shinning again under the bright sun and that the people whose homes were devastated will shoot new roots and build new memories.  We will wish that our communities, like the mythic phoenix,   will be reborn stronger and even more beautiful out of the rubble of the disaster.

This Is my special wish for the “little” Christmas tree this year.  And have I told you?  It always comes true….

The stain of suffering

Those of us who have accepted the responsibility and privilege of being health care providers, whether in the medical or mental health fields, know all too well how heavy human pain can often be and how demoralized it can leaves us.

I was in such a dark place myself a few weeks back. Hour after hour, patient after patient the human suffering seeped deep into my mind leaving a dark stain. Like the mythical Sysifus hauling the boulder up the hill only to watch  it roll right back down, I watched the despair leave the eyes of one patient to only come back in the face of another.

By late afternoon, my emotional spine was pent too and my mind was traveling a very treacherous and spiraling down road. Am I really making any difference? Can I really hope to defeat this monster called depression or anxiety or existential angst? Am I good enough? And so it went, down the hill.

It was at this point, as if by some cosmic providence, that a woman walked into my waiting room. She seemed very familiar but I could not retrieve her name from my by now tortured brain. Dr. Urban, she said, I am Kathy. You may not remember me, I saw you about 10 years ago. I have wanted for such a long time to come by and tell you that you saved my life! I am happily remarried now and my kids are in college. I just wanted to say THANKS.

Thank you, Kathy. Thank you for rescuing Sysifus, for setting me back on course. Thank you for reminding me that my words have power. Maybe I can not kill the monster, but every fight I win against him does count, a lot.

And in case I haven’t said it to my own doctors emphatically enough: Thank you, for being there whenever I needed you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

In the words of one of my Idols:
Learn from the past,  Live in the present, Hope for the future.
Albert Eistein

The lights of Hope

“I hate Christmas” she said, tears of sadness and anger welling up in her eyes. “What is so wonderful about this season? Take a look around: people are out of work, they walk with scowling faces, and a kid a wonderful young man is diagnosed with cancer” now the tears are streaming down her flashed face. They can take their cheer and shove it…”

 She is right you know, in a world where Europe, the cradle of Western civilization, the Alma Mata of many of us, is collapsing like a house of cards; where the Middle East remains a Tinder box ready to explode; where our young men fight and die in a back water country where women are killed because they had the temerity to get raped; In a world where USA has 13 million people out of work it is definitely hard to find the cheer in Santa’s HO, HO, HO.

 And yet, and yet… I look at the Christmas tree in the corner of my office heavy with lights and ornaments. Every single ornament lovingly unwrapped and placed on just the right branch because every ornament has a story and a wish attached to it. From time to time I allow myself to get lost in a fantasy of glitter and sparkle. There is the golden ball of hope, and the red one for our most treasured passions, and the glittery sparkling stars to guide our quest for self-understanding and tolerance, and the bells to remind us of something, although I don’t quite remember what, maybe responsibility? And yes, I believe everyone should have a tree. It symbolizes the part of us that has remained tall and proud and untarnished by the toxicity of our world. It is the part of us, the part of humanity that every now and then stretches its branches to the stars, like it has done for hundreds of thousands of years, and yearns and demands to be adorned with the ornaments of appreciation and the lights of hope.

 So, all the sorrows and pains of this world notwithstanding lets trim the tree and light it up with as many lights as possible because we all need a break from reality and a magical place and time to nurture Hope.

THE INVISIBLE GORILLA

THE INVISIBLE GORILLA

Freud was famous or infamous (depending on how one chooses to look at it) for saying that his job was not to make people happy but instead to get them rid of their illusions.

Whether we dare to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that we all fall victim to a large number of illusions some of which we begrudgetly acknowledge and rationalize while others we are totally blind to.

Our brain is “hard wired” by evolution to be prone to illusions. Many of these illusions have been sanctioned, reinforced and promulgated by societies and religions from one generation to another through time immemorial. It is an indisputable fact that many of these illusions have helped us survive as a species and flourish. On the other hand, it is also equally and painfully indisputable that a number of these illusions have led to massive injustices and genocides (race, IQ, gender, religion just to mention a few).

Science has managed and continues to unravel many of the dangerous illusions while others continue to defy proof and logic in most stubborn ways. The latter include: Beliefs in the accuracy of memory and the infallibility of eye witnesses, our convictions that we are too smart to be manipulated, that we always have free will and choice, that we know a lot more about events and people than we really do, the belief that our personal moral code is or should be a universal dictate and I am afraid a lot more. Based on these illusions we make decisions about who to marry, who is innocent and who is guilty, when to terminate a relationship or marriage, who to vote for, when to go to war, the way to rear our children and many other decisions from the smallest to the largest.

Now, I am not saying all this because I woke up in a bad mood this morning and decided to spoil every one else’s day too. I am saying it because I believe that with a bit of knowledge and a good deal of courage we can rid ourselves of dangerous illusions. Therapy goes a long way in opening peoples’ minds and so do science and education.
What prompted me to write this blog today is a book that I just finished reading: “The Invisible Gorilla and other ways our illusions deceive us”. It was illuminating and in many ways shocking. I highly recommend it to all brave souls out there who wish to free themselves from the fetters of illusions and/or misguided assumptions.

The tears the eyes will not shed the body will weep

I have for years preached to my patients that grieving does not start
when you lose a loved one or even when you burry him. Grieving begins
when you really let the beloved go, in your mind.

I thought I had cried enough, I was convinced that I raged plenty against
the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune, but his food bowl stayed
on the floor, his favorite pouch next to the fireplace, his bed on the
family couch and his toys strewed all over the place. Any well meant
suggestion that I should be putting these objects away met with a mix
of tears and anger.

I constructed a mausoleum and Sadness and Guilt, the inseparable
companions of Grief, fanned the flames of an irrational, primitive
illusion: what if he is really not gone? As the flames of this insidious
illusion strengthened the headaches started, like a vise around my head
squeezed tighter and tighter every day for 2 months.
Then the “core could not hold anymore” the walls of denial crumbled.
In-between my sobs I heard myself asking: He is not coming back, is he?
No, sweetheart, he is gone my husband said.

As the tears subsided the vise around my head began to loosen itself.
In my mind’s eyes I saw Him prancing into the woods, his tail held
straight up like a little periscope, his ears erect. He turned his
head back to look at me: It was a great life, mom, thanks, and so long…..