the Silent Treatment -- poetic form

My mother would give my dad the silent treatment,

sometimes for days, when they argued.

The house would shimmer and shake in the deafening quiet

My sister and I never knew what he did

or what she was so angry about

No one in the house knew what would break the cycle

of nothingness. No smile. No looking into the eyes.

Nothing that could suggest connection was necessary.

Curt words dealt with the home

Terse body language everyone could hear

screamed her rage with no sound.

I used to think my own dance with anger was anything but silent.

An F-bomb in quiet prose is more my style

A measured tone with surgically precise language

describing the offense, the affront to my world, my body

Lots and lots of words seems to be more my style.

I’ve learned the verbal choreography of anger

necessary in the worlds of men.

But seven years ago, I woke up to a Reality 

I had resisted seeing for decades:

the centuries’ long abandonment, the inexcusable abuse

of women, girls, little boys, all of creation.

Silenced. Shoved aside. Raped. Pillaged.

God protects us from nothing,

even if He sustains us in all things (says James Finley)

Goddess seems to have lost the battle, if not yet the war (says me).

She came too late, really, for this little girl to not be abandoned.

For many, this signals a rupture of faith,

a departure from the faith community,

errant in its ignorance

culpable in its persistent choice to neglect. 

But how do you leave something that is five decades

embedded into your very cells? your sense of purpose in the world?

You don’t. At least not without spending the rest of your precious years

on this mysterious twirling sphere of abundant grace

fighting what is already a part of you.

Then I realized today that my mother was onto something.

What else can a woman disempowered in a dangerous world

do with her righteous anger, her abandonment as an infant

by the Sacred, a little-girl-to-be who wouldn’t know 

she was beautiful as a girl, she was perfect as the girl she is

until she was an older woman, nearly fifty years old?

She can give All That Is Holy the Silent Treatment.

The Silent Treatment

 Somewhere along the line, I learned that anger required the silent treatment for getting along in a family, in a household, in life for the moment. By and large, folks who know me and my father see I am clearly my father’s daughter. Verbose, inquisitive, service-oriented, intellectual. Those are characteristics of my father. But I’m also my mother’s daughter in many ways. My physical frame is largely hers, for one. I remember seeing on film my 16-year old self walk across the stage as accompanist to a high school choir. “I walk just like Mom!” I exclaimed, startled. I had not seen the physical resemblance so clearly before. My mother is the intuitive, the perceptive, though those things have waned in her later years, as her hearing and speaking have waned. I credit my own perceptiveness and intuitive sense to her, along with deeply repressed emotional capacities I’ve learned to welcome into awareness more often. Today, I’m newly aware that I’m my mother’s daughter when it comes to anger. We give everyone around us the silent treatment when we’re angry. 

Arguments in my home when I was growing up were always tense affairs, but they would also last for days. Whatever the flare-up was about, if Mom was angry, it would linger in the house, unspoken but simmering. You never quite knew when it was over. You couldn’t really persuade her out of it. Dad (the usual recipient and protagonist of this kind of anger) would simply get the silent treatment for ages. And then when it was over, for some unexpected reason, it was over. Life went on. At least until it happened again, which it, of course, always did. From the outside, it always looked like Dad ran the family with his domineering verbosity and intellectual prowess. It’s taken me years to see that actually, Mom’s anger controlled the spaces in a much more impactful way than I ever fully knew.

It’s taken me some time to see this behavior in me, because I’m a hybrid father’s-mother’s daughter. I use the exquisitely honed skills of a verbal-intellectual communicator that I have inherited from my father, softening them up with my own deep-feeling capacities and attuned intuitions, perceptions. The combination of these gifts, skills, tends to stave off much direct conflict in my relationships. My husband and I rarely have firey arguments. We have deeply engaged discussions that can cycle forever instead. Sometimes we just need a fiery exchange to break the cycle because we’re both such good verbal communicators. As such, I don’t give the silent treatment to my husband very much. To anyone I love, actually. I’m more prone to drop an F-bomb in a discussion, to alert to the anger in me, to break up the unending conversational cycle about something.

This morning it dawned on me, however. In the area of my most extensive and deeply raging anger, I’ve reverted to the earliest strategy I know: the silent treatment. I’ll get into the specifics in a moment, but it’s gotten me interested in the Silent Treatment as a strategy. I mean, how does it work, exactly? What does the one imposing the Silent Treatment get out of it? What does the one being Silenced get? What are the practical fruits of the whole business?

Looking with my 51-year-old eyes and heart, I realize it’s a strategy that makes sense for women in the society in which we’ve been shaped these last several decades. Women, especially those my mother’s age, didn’t really have an easy road to voice, after all. Financial dependence, fear of being ostracized (especially within Christian circles), deep familiarity with male-on-female violence in the home and beyond it… Anger was a fire that was too costly to let rage much. Better and safer to tone it down, repress it, hone it, use it. So the Silent Treatment is a passive-aggressive strategy quite available to women who wanted to survive the challenges of their day. It is a basic exercise of indirect power over what women could control: easy harmony in the home. 

So how it works… First, you refuse to speak to the one with whom you are most angry. You deny them access to your eyes, and you neglect their needs as much as you can get away with. [We would still eat family dinners together, for instance, but they would be strained and even quiet. Mom still functioned as homemaker, but she made sure Dad was really uncomfortable. Us too, for that matter.] For prolonged periods of time, the one imposing the Silent Treatment gets to create her own world with direct disregard of those who have angered her. There’s a smug feeling of “see? You’re not that important to me after all” while life goes on in as much disregard of the other as possible. There is also a false sense of freedom from the anger, driven by the anger itself.

The one being ignored, if he’s honest, feels the power inflicted or imposed, if unexpectedly or indirectly. There is a daily/hourly consequence for having transgressed whatever boundary was transgressed. A natural reaction may be just that, a reaction. A mirroring of “it doesn’t matter to me either,” for instance. Or more often, we would see a retrenchment and refusal to see that any boundary was transgressed at all. A refusal to get curious about what made Mom so angry. A refusal to consider that it mattered or was important. 

The stalemate could go on for hours or days. Enough time for the rest of us to wonder...what does the Silent Treatment offer? What does each participant “get” for keeping the dynamic alive?

Today, I can empathize with my mother’s need to have some control over her environment, in her own life. Dad is a dominant presence, conditioned to control the spaces with his voice, his curiosity, his intellect. The Silent Treatment reinstated a balance of power, of sorts. Mom controlled the spaces for a while, not him. He couldn’t force her to speak when she simply refused. So this also gave her agency to refuse parts of her life that weren’t of her own agency. She became more of an autonomous person, in that sense. 

The one being Silenced could keep on “being right” by refusing to be cowed in the Silence. I don’t know many human beings who don’t choose the feeling of being right. It’s quite seductive, at least in my family. And a refusal to show that the Silence was any different, that it was uncomfortable or unwanted, meant that no apology was forthcoming or considered warranted. Participating in the entire dynamic meant that being right about whatever sparked the fight in the first place was more important than getting curious, trying to see or sense the feeling(s) of the other, reconciling the relationship. 

So the Silent Treatment creates a holding pattern in which neither party needs to get too close to the rupture, the anger. This ‘buys’ a sense of security or safety that can be necessary, for shorter or longer periods of time, depending upon the boundary transgressed. This strategy also provides a way of being rooted in one aspect of consciousness--being right, at almost all costs--while refusing another level or invitation to consciousness--being curious, being willing to see all things as interconnected, interdependent...which would mean his/her part in the rupture is more significant than “being right.” 

One thing was crystal clear over the years of watching the Silent Treatment control our home from time to time: one never knew what or when would break it open, would end the Silent Treatment.

So there’s the rub for me as I realized this morning that I’m relying on this strategy of the Silent Treatment in a pretty large portion of my life. There is a deep lava flow of anger within me, which can erupt into a controlled but exhausting rage unexpectedly. Whenever the disempowerment, shaming, silencing, neglect, outright abuse, or abandonment of women/girls touches my life, I can be taken over by the fires. Rage. Tears. Sadness. Reactivity. It’s less volatile than it used to be, but it’s always with me.

I know enough about anger to know it wounds only (mostly) me, but I honestly don’t know how to reconcile my root-tradition’s utter abandonment of me as a woman, of women for centuries, with the so-called charism and gifts of this tradition (Christianity). I do know I cannot ‘leave’ that which is in over four-decades of my body-soul memory. So I remain…and I don’t deny the gifts in (much of) Christian traditions, particularly for so many I serve. But I no longer have access to these gifts, directly, for me. It’s literally been years since I felt I could enter into any prayer of direct-address (to a personal Source-God/de-Spirit) for myself. I hold this space for directees and students all the time without sense of dissonance, but for me? My yearning for the Holy waxes and wanes, in a fragile dance with my grief, my rage. 

Praying in any direct address to either God or Goddess who abandoned me/us feels like complicity in this abandonment. Offering up anything of my own intimate life in devotion to this One? Sawdust in the mouth and airways.

This morning, it dawned on me in no uncertain terms. I’m doing the only thing I know as a woman to do when she’s angry in a world that is dangerous for women: I’m giving God/de the Silent Treatment. You refuse to speak to the one who has transgressed the boundary. You deny access to your eyes, and you neglect their needs/desires as much as you can get away with. For a while, you can pretend that you control the space and you’ll be able to protect yourself from the pain that happened before…

For a while…

...which then becomes an on-ramp to getting curious about what, if anything, might break the cycle, the pattern. I honestly don’t know. Am I right about the abandonment of women by religious traditions over centuries? Pretty hard to argue against the evidence. Is being right the only thing important to me? Of course not. But this Silent Treatment is the holding pattern in which neither party needs to get too close to the rupture, the anger. This ‘buys’ a sense of security or safety that can be necessary, for shorter or longer periods of time, depending upon the boundary transgressed. This strategy also provides a way of being rooted in one aspect of consciousness--being right, at almost all costs--while refusing another level or invitation to consciousness--being curious, being willing to see all things as interconnected, interdependent...which would mean his/her part in the rupture is more significant than “being right.” 

The stalemate holds… Stepping out of the stalemate feels disingenuous, at best. What is 'my part' in the abandonment of women over centuries? could be the question, but it's nonsensical to me. The stalemate holds... What is 'my part' in this rupture?

Younger Me Looked On with a Smile

This younger Lisa learned to navigate complicated family systems of brothers and their wives, cousins, a rigidly religious sister, and the prospects of graduate education--all of which required her to develop a highly cautious genuine voice with the men in her life. Most of the men in my life know me as a woman unafraid to speak her mind, which is visibly defensible to believe. It’s probably even true. Except when it’s not. 

Countless are the times when I decide it’s not worth my energy to confront or contradict the intellectual flow of a man ostensibly in conversation with me, but mostly with himself. My father and my husband, most often here, but I’m a theologian in higher ed environments largely shaped by men, or women behaving like men. I think this discernment and reticence to jump into masculine-intellectual flows was honed by this younger-Lisa, gradschool Lisa. Conversations I loved most, or even gracious dialogues, were less the point than a choreographed skirmish of argument points, wits, or referenced knowledge. Academic discourse, as I learned from sparring with my father and his brothers, is not about relationship as much as knowledge, or being in the Know. Folks will want to relate to you if you are the knowing one. Today, I rarely enter into these kinds of interactions, having learned my relational energies and feelings are best spent elsewhere. 

Except recently, which was a surprise to all involved...a surprise that feels connected and congruent somehow with this welcoming of younger-Lisa back home to my inner table. 

Brian and I were on a walk in the preserve a couple weeks ago, like we’ve been blessed to enjoy for many months of this pandemic pause season. It was late afternoon, the sun was thinking about setting into a luscious, mauve sky. The ground felt good beneath our feet and Nala had already pounced at something at least twice, sadly (for her, not for us) coming up with nothing in her jaws. Then Brian began down a path I’ve come to sense as his own emotional venting or when I’m feeling less charitable, intellectual masturbation. My part is traditionally to nod and cheer him on, both of us hoping for his quick release. But something in me snapped this time. No longer could I let his preference for what he calls ‘European civilization’ and the ‘classical tradition’ stand idly by while the planet and women and children got silenced. 

Credit where credit is due, I didn’t lash out like I’ve done in these recent years past. I began carefully, with a measured rage. “I cannot go here with you anymore, m’dear,” I said quietly. “What I need to say now I simply need to say. It requires nothing of you. But I am continually stunned at how arrogant we are about a so-called ‘civilization’ that excludes at least half of the world’s population, brazenly murders another portion of the population, and then calls itself ‘civilization.’” I paused with the space that was opening up within me, filling with fire but also water too. “Where does this fascination with the classical tradition come from, still, knowing all we know today? Why does it still beckon so very fucking many of us?”  The f-bomb was my gift to him, because he knows I only drop it when I’m stretched taut and about to let go, should he push.

He began to rise to the fire, like he does. He spoke from his own pain of never being able to say the right thing or be the right way in any conversation where social justice arises. I stopped us walking and waited for him to realize it. He stopped, confused but quieting. “There is nothing for you to do with my words, Brian, but hear them,” I said quietly. “I said them for me. I require nothing of you but to simply allow the words to exist here between us, legitimate, acceptable to you, valid as they are. I will not argue with you about this, nor will I participate in this conversation anymore. I need you to hear me and say nothing.” I didn’t even look at his face to see if anything registered, but simply started walking again.

We walked on in silence, Nala pausing every once in a while to look over her shoulder, insuring we were still coming behind her. I noticed the sunset again, a deeper mauve even than it was before. “Cloud color sure is nice,” I whispered aloud. He murmured agreement. We walked home in what was for me a companionable silence. I felt spacious, free, energized, surprised. I don’t know how Brian felt. I didn’t ask, nor did I feel the need to.

Older me offered younger me something unexpected here, something new. Not only did I refuse to participate in the pretense of a conversation, which was really my beloved working out his own feelings of inadequacy and guilt, projected outward. One could argue I mirrored to him what he was doing with me. Granted, it was a conscious move on my part, to respond consciously instead of shut down or react defensively. I informed him the words he would hear were for me, that I was going to speak and that he had no responsibility for them, nor was it a debate or ‘conversation.’ He simply had opportunity to hear, to receive. I needed nothing from him, even then. If he chose not to hear, it didn’t matter for my immediate needs of speaking for me. So the second gift of learning here was that I spoke for me. I spoke what I needed to say aloud. What I needed to refuse in him or his choices. Lastly, I tended to what I needed in an intellectual-flow with a man in my life, irregardless of how he might feel about it. This is much harder for me to do than most folks in my life imagine it is, for whatever reasons.

Younger me had opportunity to get a little freer from the overwhelming presence of Authority in her worlds of intellect and ‘conversation.’ I was grounded in what we knew--she and I--and didn’t care to be beholden to the classical presuppositions any longer.

I have to imagine she smiled inside me. I certainly did.

January 20, 1999 -- Then and Now

I don’t know how to write three pages of this “stuff.” ... I feel scared. Stupid, guilty, ashamed. And angry, but what else is new? I never seem to be able to get past emotional baggage… I’m embarrassed by who I’ve been and what I’ve done to people close to me. ... I feel like I have no right to feel as I do or to feel with the intensity that I do. What’s wrong with me?

So begins my Artist’s Way journey, January 20, 1999. I recently unearthed these journals from my basement storage shelf, following a hunch that I might learn something from my younger, pre-scholar self. Or that she might want to say something to who I am today, a fiercely feminine circle-way kind of gal.

The first thing that pleases me about this new beginning, way back when, is that I began with I don’t know how to write… There’s honesty in that, even as I was clearly writing those pages I supposedly didn’t know how to write. I was already willing to trust that I knew more than I thought I knew, just beginning. 

I’m also drawn in by the intensity of emotions. Most of them negative or difficult, admittedly. Something in me persisted long enough to find a container for what I needed to get outside of me somehow. I’d tried journaling over the years, but my inner critic would always throw sand into the gears, eventually stopping me cold about three days into the ‘new journal project.’ These pages were not supposed to be anything but drivel. How freeing that was for me! How salvific even. I was finally going to get underneath some voice or presence in me that had kept me bound for two decades. I didn’t know it yet, that day, but I celebrate that now.

Then, of course, there is the shake-my-head disbelief and bemusement. I’ve been on the healing journey for well over three decades now. Picking up Volume I of these morning pages, I was expecting to do an archaeological dig into what I was feeling back then, thinking about back then. It was over 20 years ago, after all. I’ve come so far. As I read these words, I was stunned...

I could have written much of what I wrote that day in 1999...yesterday. These voices are still in my head today. I don’t know how to write… I feel scared, stupid, guilty, ashamed, angry, so what else is new? I feel like I have no right to feel as I do… You have to laugh, really. I did, out loud. Brian wondered what was so funny. Humility, I said. The gift that just keeps giving. I still live in this fantasy that as I heal and mature, I will leave who I was behind as I transform, getting free of all that has bound me over the years. I will be smiling into a new, whole ME. Yet never a day passes that I don’t catch myself in self-denigration, that I don’t repurpose the shaming voices, that I don’t see me taking on guilt that is not mine...blah blah blah… A good friend confirmed it, as I shared a little bit with her. “Yep. That sounds like the you I know when you’ve had a bad day.” Sigh. Disbelief, but bemusement. 

Because why would I want to leave any of my selves behind? Each has done the hard and joyous work-play-rest of becoming who I am today. I have been transfigured. I have gotten underneath the voices so many times now that I do know the way out from underneath them. A circle of women, for one. Deep belly laughter with friends. CrossFit in a community fierce about wellness. Staying at the page and staying curious. Always curious. It’s not a very nice myth anyway--to leave behind a self who has served me so well over the years, right? She’s weathered the non-circle years, the years of no feminine companionship and no prospects of it anytime soon. She learned to stay with her passion and to be fierce for herself when no one else really would.

So I’m settling into the journey this semester of finding out more about who she is and what was rising for her in this pre-scholarship time. Writing a dissertation. Reorienting to a creative life first and foremost. Learning the politics necessary to navigate a conflicted department. Looking for love in more of the right places this time. Finding it...or it finding me...much more quickly than I could ever have known. Yes...she’s someone I’d like to invite back to the table, give some space to hear what she has to say.

A Curious Project Begins...

 A curious project is tickling my bodysoul these days, or perhaps irritating or goading it, me, into some old-new words. Rarely have I entered into a circle-way journey with a sense of ‘a project I want to work on.’ Circle has been a journey of healing for me. It opens me, returns me to myself, my feminine wisdom, my own receptivity and balance inside. An agenda or an outcome oriented approach to circle has often seemed incongruous to me. Like expecting to make applesauce out of oranges I'm about to peel. Yet here I am…

...with a deadening problem. A refused anger problem. A buried rage problem.

Before anyone gets nervous, do let me assure you that no one has been the victim of my rage but me. Not even my husband gets this fire unleashed, though there are times he’s certainly earned the right to receive it. :) I’m a connector, you see. A highly relational, honed-perceptive woman who has put these gifts to work in an establishment life. I’ve learned over the years that relational approaches to conceptual problems often work better than solely conceptual work that is not my forte anyway. I basically shamed my dissertation committee and practical theology department into a successful defense of my work, for instance, but that’s a longer story for later.

Deadening is when the lively energy you’ve been given cannot flow, for internal or external reasons. A lot of my energy no longer flows. Lots of reasons for that, I’m sure, but there are some that need speaking that I’ve not spoken plainly enough. For example, the primary mythology-theology I’ve inherited no longer nourishes, except in past tense, a memory or nostalgia. God became flesh, lived among us, dying and rising (being raised) again after the third day. I don’t disbelieve this now, but it’s no longer enough, if it ever was truly enough. Where is woman in this? Where is creation? And was Jesus one who desired worship or adoration? (ed note: No). A dream last year led me to explore earlier stories, origin myths from elsewhere...

Like the Nordic myth of Nidhogg and Yggdrasil, the serpent who gnaws at one of the nine roots of the World Tree. Of late, I can’t help but see bastardized, unconscious white masculinity as the serpent, and the World Tree shaking in that foundational root. Nidhogg’s venom poisons...decay rots the root...threatening the foundation of the universe. The foundation of my universe in these fifty-some years has been shattered into multiple fragments. I no longer have easy access to a personable-divine, God, or Goddess, given each has broken my trust from the very beginning. 

The protective-Father-Figure God “whose promises are supposedly never broken” has neglected and depreciated, demonized and discounted women’s bodies in sacred scripture, in daily life, for centuries. I’m a woman, abandoned, whose sisters have borne the brunt of these patriarchal horrors. I won’t be duped again, nor make nice and pretend we can all get along. Weekly liturgies--led by my husband, of course--are interesting for me, but his journey, not my own. And the nourishing-Mother-Figure Goddess? She came too late in life, having abandoned me as a little girl from as early as birth, or three months’ of age. So I no longer have much energy for the gifts of tradition or the rich liturgical history of the church that abandoned and betrayed me while I dutifully and creatively offered my entire life to it. 

One would think I’d have left by now, but it doesn’t work that way inside of me. I don’t disbelieve or find error in the doctrinal pieces. Sins of omission and commission of violence are obvious, but I’ve no less been guided, led, directed and nudged so care-fully, so clearly. I cannot deny the Sacred Center of it all. Yes, I’ve drunk this Christian chalice all the way to the dregs, and it’s been found lacking. But I don’t doubt the sacred ordering of the Universe in the least...too much sacred abundance, too many stunning examples of scandalous grace have been extended to me. But while I rest peacefully in the roots and branches of the World Tree, I no longer look to any foundations. 

So this curious project is about listening to my earliest scholarly self for clues about what drew me into all this in the first place. I’m embarrassed by her naivete, but I remember fondly her passion, her fierce devotion to stay with it. I’m angry that she--that I--got duped by masculinized tradition for so long, yet I know I could never have survived the feminine awakening until just when I did. It nearly tore me apart at age 45. I want to remember who this young woman was, who burned with sacred fire to do what she did, to know the Holy like she yearned so desperately to know.

So I’m returning to my Artist’s Way morning pages journals, beginning January 1999, to listen to who speaks to me. I will transcribe a couple lines, then write to them in the present tense. I no longer anticipate hearing the voice of God as I read, nor do I feel a strong seeking drive I once knew. But I am curious if there is a path of less anger, digested betrayal, relinquished abandonment. 

My sneaking suspicion is that Joy may be on the other side.

Pantoums -- Musing upon Marcus & the Herd

 #1

I’m full, I said. Now, I think I meant I’m sad, afraid, weary.

Marcus has a bubble, so do I. How do the bubbles intersect or play?

‘Pressure’ means he notices me, but I don’t know how I feel about ‘pressure’

My own capacity to know emotionally what I want simply wears out.

 

Marcus has a bubble, so do I. How do the bubbles intersect or play?

I loved him being in my bubble, until I didn’t, so pushed him gently away.

My own capacity to know emotionally what I want simply wears out.

I spent my life trying not to get noticed, always wanting anyway to be deeply seen

 

I loved him being in my bubble, until I didn’t, so pushed him gently away.

‘Pressure’ means he notices me, but I don’t know how I feel about ‘pressure’

I spent my life trying not to get noticed, always wanting anyway to be deeply seen

I’m full, I said. Now, I think I meant I’m sad, afraid, weary.

 

#2

 

You can play with anything in the barn that you’d like, she said.

Marcus drew close and welcomed a hug, even as he nibbled my paper and looked for crayons

He stood by the gate, nibbling and neighing, seeming to want to be ‘out there’

Is this where I began to feel afraid?

 

Marcus drew close and welcomed a hug, even as he nibbled my paper and looked for crayons

We did a bit of our dance together, he noticing me, me wondering at him

Is this where I began to feel afraid?

He has a bubble too, she said, nodding as I gave him space and he turned toward me again

 

We did a bit of our dance together, he noticing me, me wondering at him

He stood by the gate, nibbling and neighing, seeming to want to be ‘out there’

He has a bubble too, she said, nodding as I gave him space and he turned toward me again

You can play with anything in the barn that you’d like, she said.

 

#3

 

I walked to the opening at the end of the barn, leaning against the gate.

Marcus chewed some hay remains in the center of the space, behind me.

I felt afraid to want anything and shy in being observed or ignored. I couldn’t win.

I froze inside, like I do when I feel a yearning but am afraid to want anything

 

Marcus chewed some hay remains in the center of the space, behind me.

I know this dance with a man—moving to get noticed, hidden in plain sight, deciding to numb

I froze inside, like I do when I feel a yearning but am afraid to want anything

Does Marcus want for anything? Does he ever feel sad because he desires yet cannot be met?

 

I know this dance with a man—moving to get noticed, hidden in plain sight, deciding to numb

I felt afraid to want anything and shy in being observed or ignored. I couldn’t win.

Does Marcus want for anything? Does he ever feel sad because he desires yet cannot be met?

I walked to the opening at the end of the barn, leaning against the gate.

 

#4

 

A herd of horses held my tears one sunny afternoon in November

The mares drew close, eventually lying down around me, holding space

Something ancient touched me that day, in the way I’ve always known as Holy

An innocence too, being seen without needing to listen or learn or respond—just BE

 

The mares drew close, eventually lying down around me, holding space

Of course, I smiled, having held space for women for years. I am weary and sad, I let them hear

An innocence too, being seen without needing to listen or learn or respond—just BE

I feel like I can hide and be held in the herd, which is easier than dancing with just one

 

Of course, I smiled, having held space for women for years. I am weary and sad, I let them hear

Something ancient touched me that day, in the way I’ve always known as Holy

I feel like I can hide and be held in the herd, which is easier than dancing with just one

A herd of horses held my tears one sunny afternoon in November

Who's Skittish Now?

My visit with Marcus at Divine Equines on Saturday was complicated, to say the least. Playful, beautiful, curious, exhausting, triggering, instructive… The holidays were clearly restful because I drove over to Columbus in complete quiet, without music, radio, even a window open. The silence was lively and nourishing. I arrived a little on the early side, pausing in the driveway like I do to observe each of the horses I can see. The field to the right, where I first encountered the herd, held several familiar faces, grazing and pausing. Olive looked up at me from her grazing, pausing to watch for a bit. I got to the barn on time for quick biological body break--restroom!--and to pull on the boots Brian lent me for barn visits. They are more sturdy, stiff, protective of my feet around horse hooves and deep muddy fields.

My first invitation was to return to pastures of choice to observe, to re-enter ‘being a horse’ or seeing the world through horse-eyes. A playful exercise, actually, which offered much fruit of how I was arriving. Beckie handed me what looked like a coloring-book page of a human figure with arms outstretched, facing a horse who rests at the crest of heartlines. My attention was drawn to the running stream--usually a creek, which recent rainfall had turned into a flooding stream. Then phrases of invitation, horse-speak: Graze on what you’re given, or find in front of you. Draw closer slowly. Rest easy. Be beautiful. My mind and bodysoul simply unclench when I draw near to a herd of horses. So much to breathe in, to observe, to receive. I meandered back into the barn, where Beckie invited me to sit wherever I chose. She brought Marcus into the covered open barn space. She invited me to continue to observe, to become present with Marcus in this space, jotting down observations or coloring into the sheet she’d given me. 

The first thing Marcus did was sort out a place to drop a load, not far from where I was sitting. It made me laugh aloud. Beckie too. “You may want to sit somewhere else,” she said smiling. I considered it, but it didn’t smell that much and moving felt bothersome. I wrote onto my paper, “Drop a load when and as you need to.” Not bad advice, actually, for human beings leaving 2020 and heading into the New Year. “Trust others can sit with your shit” was the next one I heard in my head, though I wrote “droppings” instead of “shit.” Something about writing “shit” in crayon on a coloring book page was too much for me. Another truism I’ve needed to learn in my life there, though always difficult for me to practice. Letting others sit with me in my shit, not the coloring book page with profanity on it. :) Beckie continued to care for him, removing some leg-pads he had on and working some of the muscles and skin around his mane, up to his ears. I wrote down on my sheet “Let others care for you.” “Enjoy neckrubs.” As she did so, I noticed a change in his body I didn’t quite know how to observe or name. “Let your sex be seen” were the words that arose. Part of his penis had extended for a time. I smiled and decided the words fit well for a human being awakened as feminine in midlife, with an inherited bodyshame history and conflicted experience of the beauty of human sexuality. Let your sex be seen. Marcus let out a neighing sound, almost a playful laughter. I noted, “Speak freely.” He noticed some distant sounds for a while, turning his head toward the road to learn more. “Notice distant sounds.” Then he turned his whole body, facing me. I gazed into his eyes for what felt like a long while, he standing about 15 feet away. “Face new friends.”

Beckie and I began to listen together to all that I had observed. I offered up the phrases, with some playfulness about what I was receiving, observing. We laughed easily and mused with what I had noticed. At one point, Marcus walked directly over to me, putting his head into my lap, nibbling at the paper (and crayons), moving clearly into my space. It was a welcome way of being with him for a while. I embraced his large head and smiled into his eyes. I breathed in his scent and enjoyed his grounded energy. Not sure when or why, but something in me then needed my own space again. Smiling and with a gentle tone in my voice, I pushed his chest back and said something like “Alright then...that’s enough.” It felt good to push his strong body away and he moved easily away from my chair. He may have walked over to one of the empty hay-bins in the center of the covered space. Something in me smiled to have learned how to hold my own space like that, remembering a training exercise Paula Jeanne Teague had invited me into during a CPE group session.

I reminisced with Beckie about that day 20-some years ago. Paula invited the only man in the group, Jeff, to walk slowly toward me. My task was to tell him to stop when he was ‘close enough.’ Seemed easy enough, particularly as I liked Jeff and felt easy with him. He walked slowly, but he got too close before I could say “close enough.” A deep belly sob arose in me as my arms flew up to push him away. I hadn’t been able to discern my own body space and the distance I needed to feel safe, even with a safe man. 

The experience with Marcus was reminiscent but different. As Beckie and I explored it a little bit, I realized I have a basic, unadulterated trust of horses. I trust their being-ness somehow, even if I don’t know horsespeak as well as I eventually will. In other words, I may not understand their body language well enough yet, but I trust that they are ‘speaking’ honestly and openly, without malice or hidden agendas of any kind. I may even get hurt in an exchange with such a large animal, being a prey animal and startle-able with unexpected sounds or interactions. But even that prospect doesn’t feel disingenuous or deceptive in any way. Unpredictable, yes, but untrustworthy? No. Marcus came right into my space and it was incredibly welcome...until it wasn’t. And then he moved away when I pushed. It was a beautiful moment for me.

Curious, isn’t it? At some most basic level, I live with a skittishness around human beings that I don’t experience inside myself with horses. Or animals in general, perhaps. Nala, certainly. Part of her gift to me is this sense of unconditional presence, being-close, simply for being. As Marcus moved into my space, I mean really close into my space, I experienced no fear or threat, just drawing close. A beautiful gentle feeling. For whatever reason, I then reached a need to redefine my own bodyspace away from him, so did so. No energetic charge. No sense of boundary-crossing. A simple dance of two sentient beings, drawing close then creating space. 

I now see how skittish I am inside all the time around human beings, with whom I yet seek to belong, to be connected with, to know and be known by… I see more clearly how prone I am to distrust, how I am constantly seeking signs of what someone is really feeling or thinking or intending...or signs that we are really connected, that they are thinking of me, that I matter. A restlessness resides deep within me somehow...but not around horses. Or Nala. Is it possible to release a soul-posture like this, to relax around human beings like I can around horses? Nala? I wonder…

And there was so much more...but I think that energy might best be named in more poetic form… Enough for now...