All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [134]
I did something I had never seen anyone else do in the now numerous family weeks I had witnessed, and I did it instinctively and quickly. It required not one iota of thought. I turned away, walked very fast, and I exited the circle of the sculpt, the staff, and all my peers and almost went out the door. There were about forty of us altogether, and I went as far away from everyone as I could while remaining in the room. I lay down on the floor, curled in a ball, put my left thumb in my mouth, and began to sob.
Yes. That is exactly what it felt like for me, growing up in my family.
Tennie, with her fierce and gentle brilliance, with her gifted expertise born of decades of this kind of therapy, began to work with me while in this state of regression. I couldn’t believe it when someone put a black cape over me to represent the depression that had both smothered and strangely kept me safe growing up. I had seen this done with other clients, but I was paralyzed when the cape was placed over me to represent my very own disease. Tennie continued to work with me, and together we told the story of my childhood visually, viscerally. Soon, we reached the crucial turning point, the “That was then, this is now. So what. Now what?” I began to use my empowered adult voice and claim my recovery, my future, free from depression and codependepency. I robustly detailed what my solution is today, itemizing the kit of spiritual tools that Shades of Hope had placed at my feet and how I was going to use them. But one oddity remained: I was still on the floor. Tennie was pushing me very hard, challenging me. I was racking my brain, going through every single thing I had learned in my six weeks in treatment: my relationship with my Higher Power, taking the steps, writing with my nondominant hand—I cycled through all my hard word. But I was still missing something, and that woman would not let up.
Finally, Tennie said, “People, Ashley! People! We need other people to recover! God lives in and speaks to us through our healthy interdependence with others. We experience God through relationships.”
Oh. People. I whimpered and could feel the lonely Lost Child place open up in me again. “I’d really prefer to recover without people, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“We cannot recover alone, Ashley.”
Okay, I get it, you old bat! I thought, and I picked myself up off the floor, shucked off that wretched black cape, and smiled at this great woman who pushed me so hard and gave me so much.
My eyes now wide open, I saw the looks on my family’s faces. They were absolutely devastated. Some had physically cowered, covering their heads, they were so disturbed to see the distress I had been in for the whole of my growing up. Perhaps the main new thing that emerged that day is that it was exceedingly, sadly clear that to a very large extent, they had had absolutely no idea what family life had been like for me growing up, so absorbed had they been in their own pain, dramas, addictions, and obsessions.
Tennie instructed me to pick out some people with whom I felt safe and to ask them to join me. First I asked my peers, but soon I was saying family names while firmly instructing them to treat one another with kindness, respect, and dignity in my presence and letting them know I would no longer tolerate unacceptable or abusive behavior. Best, I knew now that I meant it, how to detach with love, take care of myself, and maintain this healthy boundary! I placed those next to me with whom I felt most comfortable and cautiously expanded the circle to include everyone. In this way, we were sitting on the floor when something miraculous