All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [59]
Speaking through Mimi, who held a phone to each ear, Seane advised me to lie on the floor with my legs placed up a wall and reminded me of the simple, consoling relief of a cold cloth on a fevered forehead. Then she gave me the lesson I really needed.
Seane said what was actually making me sick was the devastation I had witnessed during my trip and not setting and maintaining appropriate boundaries as I did so. I had left myself too open to the suffering of others, extending myself beyond empathy to vicarious trauma. My body was manifesting the emotional pain. She said it was critical that I pray every morning before I left the hotel and pray upon my return, to ground and protect myself. Mimi agreed. They reminded me I could not take on the pain of everyone I met, the HIV-positive prostitutes, the orphans, the sick mothers in their huts, my farm friend trapped in a brothel.
Seane’s words flowed through Mimi’s voice. It said, “You can carry the message. But you are not the message. God’s love is the message. Quit taking on people’s stuff. Pray for the spiritual wisdom to have discernment between empathy and enmeshment. There is a God, and it’s not you.”
When I realized what had truly been bothering me, I broke down in sobs. I bawled and bawled until reasonable people would think a body would be dried out to its bones, then I cried some more. I wanted to forget, to go home, be in my yellow kitchen, wearing my great-aunt Pauline’s apron, baking a cake. I wanted desperately to lie with our dogs pulled up against me, their bodies running perfectly down my core, all of us breathing and sleeping and loving as one person. I wanted to sit on Squeaker’s little grave and fiddle with my roses, accompanied in the garden by our cats Bunny, Amelia, and Albert, and see Agnes on the upstairs porch, waiting in our spot for me to come brush her. I wanted to lie down on soft, old cotton sheets and share my pillow with Percy, who purrs in his sleep while we hold hands. I wanted my husband to hold me and for sex to be all that it is meant to be, beautiful and kind and fun and fascinating and a union between two bodies, characters, and souls.
Seane and Mimi were right. I had been trying to take on the pain of the world without realizing it, making myself sick—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I had been praying for the exploited, their abusers (well, sometimes), and those who try to help them, but not for myself. I had no mastery over my own trauma and unresolved grief, which was being seriously triggered. (It would be a while before I would even begin to understand what that meant and know what to do about it.) I had even done something genuinely embarrassing, perhaps the most embarrassing thing I have ever done in my life, because of my immaturity in this work. Holding that first HIV-positive, transgender sex slave in Svay Pak, unsure of what to do about her tremendous display of vulnerability, keen to help in any way I could, in my mind I had whispered, Give your pain to me, I can handle it. Give it to me. Now my own grandiosity took my breath away. Although it was well-intentioned, it was nothing less than overweening hubris! When I put all of this together, lying on the carpeted floor, words rushed to my mind: The Lamb of God is the One who takes on our suffering, having chosen to die that we might live. Cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
I had felt the unmistakable presence