One of my best friends, Jordan, lives in a semi-rural area of Connecticut. (Side bar, your honor: I would like it noted for the record that I spelled ‘Connecticut’ correctly on the very first try. Take that, aging!) —anyways.
Jordan, I was about to tell you about Jordan.
Every so often, Jordan sends me a photograph of something in her immediate surroundings. Whether it’s from a walk in the woods (like the one below), or cut flowers in a vase in her kitchen, or her dog… the images are never created terribly far from home, and yet she always manages to find and create something extraordinary.
Amazing, right?
I think what I love most about this picture is, it encourages me to be still, and investigate. Makes sense. The artist has taken the time to do so, herself. Before she could make the picture, she first had to slow down enough to notice the mushroom. She was probably chasing after her dog, Breakfast, at the time, so slowing down might have had to involve some kind of truce with a dog who has literal ADHD.
Next, she had to frame it; she may have taken dozens where the mushroom is slightly smaller, slightly larger; super-duper up close. She may have had to adjust her angle multiple times, depending on where the light fell, illuminating hues of green, white, grey and whatever that pink-red color is.
Point is, it took time. She slowed down. The result is, so did I.
Art is like that.
So is Nature.
I grew up in a forest. My homelife (as I’ve described to no fewer than eight different shrinks and therapists) was chaotic and terrifying. As such, I spent a great deal of time in nature. No one told me to go outside, I just went. My little animal body needed peace, and my mind needed to wander, and needed to process what was going on around me. So, if I wasn’t painting, singing, dancing, watching TV, or bugging Andy (my older brother) to play with me, I was in the woods.
I loved to go to the woods. I loved hearing the noises of the neighborhood (landlines ringing, dogs barking, a garage door slamming shut) fading away, growing softer and softer as I walked. I recall listening for that dog, specifically, because it bit me (slightly) once, and it had access (in theory) to all the same woodland paths I had.
The further I got from the dog, the better I felt, and the slower time became. Peace would expand around me. The listening never stopped, so then, as I got further and further away from home… that’s when I’d hear the voice.
As a kid, I loved Barbara Walters. Back then, kids just watched whatever their parents were watching, so I saw a lot of beautiful and famous people interviewed by Barbara Walters in my youth. I loved that show, and longed to be one of them; now, I think, it was because Barbara was so good at making people cry.
I needed to cry. I was not allowed to have my feelings, as a kid. I was only allowed to have an appropriate response (no reaction), or an inappropriate response (big reaction), or, hold space for someone else’s feelings. I remember being told not to cry so loudly at my grandparents’ funeral (their deaths, when I was 7, was by suicide pact).
Makes sense, then, that, once alone, Barbara Walters would suddenly be walking beside me. The camera crew was just ahead. (I understood how it worked, pretty early on.) She’d ask me about my childhood. I would pause, I would look around. Somehow, in an instant, I was a grown woman looking to pour my heart out about my own childhood. I would start to tell her everything, and keep walking, the camera crew slowly tracking us, as they filmed.
Barbara Walters, (or, a figment of) came to me so easily in the woods. I know, now, it was because I needed her. Also, a nervous-system regulator (nature) had been introduced, and relaxed me to the point where I was ready to talk, and process. Sure, I had made up this imaginary friend, but telling was telling, and I needed to tell.
I was a little girl trying desperately to gain some control over her life, in the only way she knew how: by using her imagination.
The interesting thing about it (from my adult perspective) is that this visage would appear … at the ready… with questions. “When you were young,” she’d begin. “How old were you, when…” she’d pry. “And how did you feel, when…” The imagined-Barbara would hold space for me to think, remember, and respond, so I would.
The fact is, I needed her to ask me. I’d been told not to tell anyone anything that might be “embarassing” to my family, and I wanted to be a good girl. But some inner part of me feared if I didn’t tell someone, I would die. It was my imagination that gave me the excuse: “Well, if I’m really rich and famous, and Barbara calls, I mean… I’ll have to tell her everything! I owe it to my public!”
The funny thing is, it really felt like someone was there, prodding me with their questions. Did …all of that come from my brain? Really? Does that logically even make sense? I knew what happened, so I didn’t need clarity. Who or what was asking me? Where was this curiosity, as if it belonged to someone else, coming from?
Now, of course, I believe this was a manifestation of God’s Love; that the questions were real, and absolutely coming from outside myself. Which God? Who knows? Perhaps it was Jesus, or maybe Mary, or maybe it was an angel, or a saint. One thing is for certain: to hear voices, and talk back to them, is called crazy. To hear God’s voice is …prophetic. I mean, honestly, which one would you choose?
In truth, my surroundings were crazy, not me. My parents fought about money, constantly; so much so that I was in traction with a broken leg at eight months old because they’d been arguing. One minute he was changing my diaper, the next minute he’s going after my mother down the hallway to argue some more, leaving me to roll off the changing table and fracture my right femur. Or, so I was told, much later. Only God knows if that’s true.
At the time, they told everyone that the accident was my fault; that I’d been too wiggly and I’d thrown myself off the table. (I only learned about the fighting over money part at the age of 47, after a prolonged bout of depression, during which my therapist encouraged me to ask my parents for more information). In any event, it was a huge lie, one that I heard and absorbed, many times. Because after the hospital staff bought this story hook, line, and sinker (my mother was a nurse, there), they figured the same lie would work just as well for friends and family.
So, over the course of many months, family members and friends would come by, and to my open ears wonder aloud, “What on Earth had happened to Carrie?!” (as they called me back then), to which my parents would reply, “She threw herself off the changing table!”
Yep. I was being gaslit by my own parents before I’d even turned one year old.
Eight month old babies are typically exploring their surroundings, crawling, and putting everything in their mouths. There is a ton of development on a physical level between the ages of 8 and 12 months, but I spent two of them laying flat on my back in a Radio Flyer. Once I’d explored it, the toes I could reach, the toes I could not reach… what else was there?
I believe my mind started exploring something else; something it might not have ever explored, if I hadn’t been immobilized: itself. I most likely leaned into learning more language, absorbing conversations, things said on television, books my brother read to me. Music, too, would have been of more interest; perhaps I spent more time trying to match pitch, or form words. I don’t know. But, I would like to think that there’s a silver lining to my childhood. That maybe, just maybe, some of these adverse experiences were actually, in a way, gifts.
I was able to create an entire future self, for myself, in that forest. The camera crew, Babs, the broadcast later, the whole thing. Which I must have learned how to do, while in traction as a baby. How to create something, out of nothing. I’ve been doing it, ever since.
They say, the truth will out. And whoever “they are”, they are correct. I’m glad to have the full story about my leg, even if it meant realizing I’d been gaslit for 47 years. The truth is important; whether it’s a news article, or a personal truth, it matters. We instinctively know this. That’s why everyone trying to make an “opinion” sound like a fact becomes so bendy and weird while they’re doing it. The truth is just the truth. Opinion twisted around to sound like truth… is a lie.
My childhood taught me great lessons; for instance, sometimes, to get at the truth within, you have to slow down. Retreat. Breathe, reset. Let the natural world be your guide, and listen. Be still. Be purposeful. And, if you really want to grow, be intentional about spending time alone with your Creator.
Or, Barbara Walters. Whatever you call it is fine.