Yesterday evening, I contacted my old friend Claudia, whom I first met in 1986, and who co-counseled with me during the seven-year period when I was concentrating on healing my own “traumatic imprint” from early childhood — the original psychic wound we all endure internally; and if we’re both fortunate and grateful for all experiences, no matter how easy or difficult, then sooner or later, not only will we feel courageous enough to allow our own original wound to surface, but to then consciously work to heal it.

Most people see therapists.

I work alone, while at times “co-counseling”  with a close friend.

To begin this inner work (the most crucial of my ultra long life), I named my traumatized child “Orphan Annie,” the little girl who, subliminally, felt utterly abandoned when young. “Inner child work,” we call it now. I was one of the pioneers, as usual.

 

Long story. In part, it involved me coming to terms with my own father, who was a strict, stern, German medical doctor who left for World War II nine months after I was born, and didn’t return until I was 2 years, nine months old. Meanwhile, Mom was so fearful he would not return that she fell into depression and couldn’t mother me.

As an adult, I was once told by one of my siblings that Dad said to him: “It took me a long time before I could get Ann under control.” Something like that. Not the exact words, but the word “control” is crucial: because that’s what I tried to do as an adult with every man who came into my purview as a possible partner! Not that I ever succeeded! Instead, I was frustrated: I just thought that I was attempting to work it through with that person so that we could successfully partner! In actuality, I wanted him to mirror me, pretending to be “in control” of myself, as my father demanded.

Okay, fast forward to yesterday, speaking with Claudia. And I must say, I’m patting myself on the back a bit, because I actually helped her for once, rather than the other way around. She said she had been ruminating on how every male partner she had in life was “wonderful, sweet, kind.” And she’s been asking herself now, laughing, each time: “Why did I leave him?”

We were both laughing at our younger selves. So much fun, at the age of 83, to be aware of oneself as the pulsing center of a radiating presence within ever-enlarging time-space cycles! Reflecting upon memories, noticing the glitches, watching them resonate, harmonize, grow, shift in importance with continuing exploration. Really fun!

So with yesterday’s remark to me about her partners’ invariably wonderful, sweet, kind nature, I suddenly spoke up, blurted: “That’s because your experience of your father was that he was ‘wonderful, sweet, kind'” — (and a “functional alcoholic” as she then reminded me, who died relatively young).

Wow. My remark blew her away. She had picked partners that reflected her dad’s qualities! About time the psychological/spiritual scales between us (which she has probably not even noticed) started to come into balance (and on the balancing eve of Spring Equinox, day and night of equal length!).

Because, were it not for Claudia’s continuous emotional and mental presence in my life during the time I was working with Orphan Annie, without her recognition of the the authentic self underneath the conditioning that had torqued me into a certain dysfunctional configuration, I wonder if I would have made it, intact! Likely not. I would have addled with addictions until I died, which would likely have been decades earlier than now. (Check tendrpress.com: essays on Addiction . . .)

What prompted me to call her in the first place yesterday, was an old essay that I had just read over again. I had put it in the Tendre Press archive, but now I see that it didn’t get in there yet . . .

“Well, Are you coming?”_

And while I’m at it, I might as well broaden the reflective herstory with, once again, an acknowledgement of what is likely the most crucial essay I ever composed. It was so then; it remains so now. In fact, I’d say this essay documents my coming to terms with the purpose of embodiment.

Again, is it in the archive? I’d better check!

Discourse on Love

Yes, it is! But I see tendre is spelled wrong . . . “tender. . .” so many glitches yet to iron out!

DISCOURSE ON LOVE