Sunshine- Republished

Into the Wilderness: Story 4

When Catina went into the wilderness, we did too. Our wilderness was inside us, the intricate branching of thought and memory that builds up over time. The feelings we had pushed aside- that most adults push aside- sprouted like seedlings in sun.

I became aware of my part. I have had plenty of therapy in my life. I am keenly, sometimes painfully, self-aware. I don’t lie to myself much. I thought I had done the work and had achieved that fairy tale place of “fixed,” for the most part.

But I was holding back. That great, sneaky beast of shame had wrapped its heavy arm across my shoulders. It was walking alongside me.

I was a successful business woman, an executive leading a large, award-winning team. I had been named a Top Woman in PR. I had two graduate degrees. I had published poetry in literary journals. I had a nice house with a pool in the backyard. I had conquered obesity and exercised regularly. By all accounts, a pretty good life. But that’s the peacock spreading its feathers. I never felt good enough.

Nine years before Catina went to wilderness, her dad and I divorced. In three short months, unknown to me, he had spent a sizeable inheritance- my inheritance from my parents- and charged up credit cards in my name. By the time my divorce was final, I had no savings and debt I had to pay, even though I had not spent it.

These were not easy days for me. I was caring for two young daughters, then 5 and 3. Neither had been diagnosed with being on the spectrum yet. They were both delightful, precious, and really, really difficult. Catina was constant whirling movement, impossible to get to sleep at night. At the age of 4, she was diagnosed with pediatric insomnia. Her younger sister was both clingy and distant, one minute climbing all over me, hands seeking the warmth of my skin, and the next, punching me in the gut, pushing me away. I thought it was me.

I thought I couldn’t parent. I would say that being a mother didn’t come naturally to me. And it didn’t. I wasn’t one of those moms who rushed to her child with the slightest scrape of a knee. Sure, I would help them get up, brushing the dirt from their legs, but I would say, “you’re fine, go get a BandAid.”

The truth was, I was exhausted. I had to support my kids and get my finances in order. So I worked a lot. Fortunately, I loved my job and had opportunities for promotion, but my ambition was partly fueled by necessity. No parents. No husband. No savings. There was nothing to fall back on.

And I was sad. Sad may not be strong enough to describe how I felt. I was in the muck of grief. What kind of grief? Go to the beach and stand at the exact point where the waves spend themselves out on the shoreline. If you stand there long enough, you will sink deeper and deeper. The wet sand will suck through your toes, around your feet and up your ankles. It was that kind of grief.

That kind of grief isn’t good for anyone. When I got angry, I yelled. I have never spanked my children, and I didn’t then. But I yelled too easily and too often. And I would have emotional tantrums of my own, temporarily overcome by the swell of it all.

Once, when the girls were both home from day care, and I was working on a particularly challenging project, I did something that horrifies me to this day. Catina was rubbing cheddar cheese into the sofa cushions, and Sophia was using me as a step stool to hoist herself to the back of the couch. I screamed- embarrassingly, I am not sure I was on mute on the conference call I was on- took Catina by the hand and pushed her outside and closed the front door. It took me only seconds to chastise myself. I opened the door and there she was, wide-eyed and confused.

But that incident, and others, had proven to me that I wasn’t good enough. So I carried that with me. Catina knew it. As she got older, she would sniff out the not-good-enough rising in me and she would say, “you’re a horrible mother.” And I would think, “yes, yes, she’s right.”

It was this shame, which was built on so many others- isn’t that the way shame is, layers upon layers of sediment forming into rock- that came out when I went into my own wilderness.

Chuck had his own issues. When he was only 10, he had a massive brain aneurysm. In a coma for 3 months, he lost the ability to do almost everything. He learned to walk and talk again, use his arms. A triumph for sure, but he was relentlessly ridiculed by his peers.

These are the things we haul around with us, an invisible wheel barrow of sedimentary shame. We keep piling on top and it gets heavier.

Wilderness helped us hack it apart. I had to go back to the first layer, childhood trauma. Then my own unhealthy coping mechanisms deposited on top- more about that in another post. Trauma is a magnet for trauma, so next we delved into the dynamic that plays out in many families. We had mastered the drama triangle with Oscar-level finesse.

The drama triangle is a dynamic model of social interaction, defining three primary roles: Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer. Most families have some form of the triangle playing out. If you yell and blame a lot, hello Persecutor. Do you try to fix everything? Rescuer, step right up. You are powerless to change? Victim is your name.

We went deep into all of it. We learned this new language. We learned to identify what we were doing to establish and perpetuate these patterns. And we learned how to help nudge each other out of that familiar coping zone. It led us to communicate our feelings in more direct and healthy ways. It helped us listen better- listen more, because, after all, 45% of communicating is listening. And lest you think talking is the other 55%, let me break it to you: it’s only 30%.

Wilderness gave us that. Wilderness brings all of this out into the sunshine. Where you can see it and expose it to the cleansing light of the sun. So know this, if you put your teen into wilderness, you will go there too. You need to do the work. Your teen will never get better if you don’t. So while you are not at fault- more on that in another post- you own your piece of it. If you are not willing to admit that, then you are not ready to put your teen into a wilderness program. Don’t waste the college-tuition-level cost if you aren’t ready to invest in the return.

By the time we visited Catina more than 8 weeks into her program, we had figured some things out. We had the same language she did- for the teens were working on it too. We knew how to check in with our emotions. That’s a process for figuring out exactly what you are feeling, looking at it, releasing it. We were ready to see Catina. And she was ready to see us.