Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [65]
Holly was vulnerable to a common adolescent girl’s mistake—using her sexuality to get love. She needed affection, not sex, and most of all she needed affection from her father. We discussed how she and her father were strangers to each other, and I invited Dale in for a visit. That first joint session he was even more awkward than Holly. He sat stiffly with his arms folded across his chest and said “yes, ma’am” to my questions.
“We don’t talk,” Holly said accusingly.
Dale said, “Your mother was better at that. I never had much experience talking to kids.”
I asked if they wanted to be closer. Holly twirled her hair around her little finger and nodded shyly. Dale choked up but finally said, “That’s all I want. What else am I alive for?”
I recommended that they go slowly. Neither had many skills and both would be overwhelmed by failure. They could cook a meal together or drive around and look at Christmas lights. When I suggested they attend a holiday concert, both looked alarmed. I backed down and suggested they talk ten minutes each evening about how their day had gone.
The next session they reported that the talks were difficult at first but easier with practice. Dale asked about Holly’s school. She told him about lunchtime in the loud cafeteria. Holly asked what her dad did at work, and after all these years he explained it to her.
In therapy we gingerly approached their long-buried feelings about Holly’s mother leaving. Dale said, “I tried to put it behind me. I couldn’t change it, so what was the point crying about it?”
Holly said, “I was afraid to bring it up because Dad always looked so sad. After the first month I didn’t mention Mom anymore. For a long time I cried myself to sleep.”
I asked both Holly and Dale to write letters to the absent mother in which they expressed their true feelings about her leaving. These letters were not for sending (indeed, we didn’t even know where to send them) but for Holly and Dale’s reworking of the painful events.
The next week Holly and Dale read their letters aloud. At first Dale’s letter was formal and emotionally constricted, but later more passionate. Years of pent-up anger came tumbling out, and after the anger, sadness, and after the sadness, bad feelings about himself. He was a failure as a husband, he wasn’t able to communicate clearly or to show affection. He blamed himself for his wife’s leaving.
Holly listened closely to her Dad’s letter and handed him Kleenex for the tears. She patted his arm and said, “It wasn’t your fault, it was mine.”
She read her letter, which, like Dale’s, began in a formal, polite way and built up steam over time. Her first and strongest emotion was loss—her mother had chosen to leave and never see her again. She suspected that something must be wrong with her, some secret flaw she couldn’t identify. She had grieved since it happened, unsure how to express or even acknowledge such painful feelings.
Ever since her mother left, she hated to be touched or praised by women. If a teacher patted her, she cringed. Instead of moving toward women for support, she tried to toughen herself so she wouldn’t need it. She didn’t like to visit girls at their homes. She got too jealous watching them with their mothers.
She blamed herself for her mother’s abandonment. She was “a mouthy little kid.” After her mother left, Holly stopped being mouthy, she almost stopped talking. She no longer trusted that words could help her.
Since her mother’s abandonment, Lyle was the first person she let in emotionally. He gave her hope that she was lovable. He listened to her, held her and told her she was beautiful. When he left, the pain was horrible. It reminded her of her mother’s leaving and convinced her that she was unworthy of the love of another human being.
At the end of that session, both Holly and Dale were crying. I realized that Holly and Dale desperately needed each other. They could