Beginning

Into the Wilderness: Story 7

Barely four weeks into her wilderness program, Catina’s therapist gave us the news. She wanted us to know early, so we had time to prepare, that she was recommending aftercare for Catina. What additional aftercare was there? Naively, we saw wilderness as an ending: six weeks of back woods hikes and bucket showers would surely be enough to fix her. She would come home, a Stepford version of Catina, plastered smile, obedient. The difficult years would disappear, poof!, as if they had never happened.

We learned quickly that wilderness is a beginning. It is designed to be. Wilderness therapy programs create a pause, a reset. Removed from the home environment, negative social influences and other distractions, the teens are suspended in a safe and supportive space. And the hard work begins.

Catina progressed slowly, a pattern we came to know through all stages of her healing. Her first two weeks were spent lying about her age- as if the counselors and other participants wouldn’t know- and pretending she was tougher and badder than she was.

When week three came, and her pretenses could no longer carry her, she was unable to care for herself, refusing to ask to be taken to the latrine or the shower. This was a devastating week for us. She was put on “safety watch,” which meant she had to be within a few feet of a counselor at all times. Week four was much the same.

Out in the woods, untethered to life as she knew it, Catina’s identity unraveled.

She had always molded herself to others. In the first grade, a friend dared her to throw her lunch box off a balcony in the school gym. She did. And went to detention. If a friend liked a certain shoe or outfit, she liked it too. If someone cut class, the idea tempted her like an ice cream sundae in the midst of a diet.

She first cut herself after learning about it from a friend who had engaged in it. She wanted to see what it was like. I found out when I took her to the doctor for allergy tests. She had to pull her arms from her sweatshirt- it was February- and her arms were covered in red wounds at various stages of healing. I gasped.

No matter how much I tried to help her develop boundaries between herself and others, she gravitated to defiance, darkness and danger.

But in the woods, who could she mold herself to? The white oak with its sturdy, deep-reaching roots or the American beech with its squatty trunk and twisting branches? The wilderness was a blank space.

Around week six, she was taken off safety. She responded to our impact letters- letters that detailed the impact of her behavior on our lives.

Week seven, she started to figure herself out. She wrote:

As I lay here in my shelter, the sun creates a yellow-orange and pink layer over the now dim gray-blue sky, turning purple, black and blue. It reminds me of my bruising past.

This was my daughter. She was herself at last. And she was finally healing.