Sounds vs. Silence: Listening To When You Need To Talk (It's Harder Than You'd Think)

When you are a counselor or a therapist and you make a living off of helping people, you are, first and foremost, a listener. And you become good at it. You hear the nuances in tone, read the shifts in body language, and can often sense tears before they start.  You are a confidant, you are a refuge, sometimes you are even a sage.

This skill spills over into your personal life. Listening becomes your default setting; you’re so used to doing it that you often don’t even know you’re doing it, and so it is not unusual for people—all people, not just your clients—to lay their troubles at your feet, deliver confessions in hushed whispers, confide dreams with blushing cheeks and in a halting tone lest you laugh at them (yet you never do. You are a counselor.).

When you listen for a living or, perhaps a better distinction: when living becomes listening, you can forget to talk. And there is a sweeping sort of irony in hearing the secrets of so many while your own go unspoken—even the things that are not particularly confidential. After all, no one can hear while you are listening. The stage is not yours, and you are used to that.

Until you are not.

Last night I had a conversation within which I was asked a reflective question solely about myself, and the query was not perfunctory—the person asking genuinely wanted to know, and what’s more, the question was not close-ended; it was an invitation to talk.

My first reaction—and I am a little saddened to admit it—was surprise. To be given the floor was so unexpected. Counselors are life’s teleprompters, we occupy the stage in a more unobtrusive way than most people, so when someone finds us—and not just what we can do for them, or help them with—but US, as individuals, to be the subject they want to discuss….?

It should not feel so foreign; a personal conversation should, after all, be “personal”, yet the fact that I buoyantly rattled off a five-minute long answer to a simple open-ended question, tells me that the dialogue I shared was far more meaningful—and necessary—than I knew that I needed.

Sometimes we don’t know we’re parched till we’re given a cold glass of water. We don’t realize that the fulcrum has been pushed so far to the edge that now our internal balance beam resembles a ramp (and nasty stuff gets dumped from ramps).  We don’t see that our role has become our reflex and that as such we have trained ourselves—and the people in our personal lives— to always put us in the ‘listener’s chair’ first.

I challenge anyone in the helping profession who reads this to actively remove yourself from the listener’s chair for just one night. In turn I challenge anyone who loves a helper to put yourself in the listener’s chair for just one night.  The impact it will make to talk instead of listen, and listen instead of talk, will be worth any discomfort. Just…try it.

Trauma, Fiction, and The Supernatural - Breaking Hymn, My New Novel

The novel I am about to query to agents (okay, let me be brutally honest: the novel I am currently nitpicking to death because I am actually TERRIFIED to pitch it to agents. Rejection sucks HARD, friends. Courting ‘No’ is never a pleasing endeavor, this I promise) is ostensibly my favorite piece of work to date. It is a heavily romantic, supernatural mystery that takes everything I’ve learned about trauma in the 20+ years I have been a social worker and gives it a dark, other-worldly twist.

      Can trauma go to the dark end of the paranormal spectrum? Answer carefully—for it’s a possibility that may not be as far-fetched as you think. I’ve worked alongside therapists and counselors for years, and a common denominator among us all have been a small, yet consistent, cache of stories that recount the unexplained; supernatural occurrences that seem to be derived from the pain of the psychologically wounded. Trauma, it would appear, can be represented by the mind, the body….or the spirit.

      But…why?

      Perhaps it’s because trauma is a compilation of such powerful feelings: a pain-shock-and fear combination which, when mixed up like a cocktail, can gut a person’s psyche. Re-write their whole future. Trauma derails the heart and the mind, and it is the single most impactful thing that alters what we in the therapy biz know is the mind-body-spirit trinity that comprises every human being under this sun.

      But…is trauma powerful enough to be an energy unto itself…?

      Andrew, the hero of my novel (which I call Breaking Hymn, but my beta readers insist that I call The Summit’s Shadow) has lived a life that’s been loss-upon-loss. He’s had experiences he refuses to disclose. He was once witness to the immediate aftermath of a gruesome suicide that polluted his sacred place of solace and innocence back where he grew up in the Canadian Rockies. In fact all that he’s lived through there, in the place he’d love to still call home, chased him out, away, and into the profession of law enforcement—a call of duty that’s far more self-punishment than any sort of noble mission to serve and protect (after all—one needs to know how to serve and protect oneself before one can competently expect to do it for others, right?).  Andrew has a sullen temper, a sharp mouth, and…a broken heart. I absolutely loved crafting this character and, over the lengthy course of time it took to tell his tale in all its high-concept (that’s a fancy writer-term that means complex) glory, I came to know him as a social worker would know her client. And to care for him, deeply. Andrew’s Happy-Ever-After was a triumph wrought through tears and laughs and many, many exclamations of “Holy crap! I can’t believe he just said that!”

      Because Andrew Gavin was the character I joked with my crit group that I “couldn’t take anywhere”; a loose cannon who didn’t know (but has learned—a bit) how to be remotely appropriate.

      And yet…knowing his history, would you cut him some slack? Here’s his pitch:

The iconic archetype Mrs. Robinson meets The Sixth Sense in The Summit’s Shadow, a 120k word supernatural romantic thriller, a high-concept ghost story with a twist.

Detective Andrew Gavin knows he’s haunted—by violence, trauma, and a horrific suicide—still, it’s only when he’s suspended from the force and returns home to the Rocky Mountains that he comes face to face with his real ghost. The Dead Boy has always been Andrew’s anxiety-induced delusion—until the apparition is no longer just his. When the Dead Boy appears to, and seduces, Andrew’s childhood sweetheart Elizabeth, the specter makes it clear that he’s always been real—and angry. Shocking Andrew further, the thing slithers into the life of a young boy Elizabeth adores, a kid who appears gravely ill, and insists that Andrew knows why the kid’s dying.

It’s specter vs. cop in a race to save the boy’s life, and The Dead Boy knows that every solution hinges on secrets Andrew just cannot tell. Yet Andrew believes the truth will destroy him—and most certainly will defeat any new chance he might have with Elizabeth. The Dead Boy, though, knows that every secret revealed will allow him, the specter, to once again walk amidst the living…

      

      And here, on page 22 of this manuscript-I’m-too-chicken-to-pitch, is a short segment that goes where Andrew’s emotion is, always just rippling beneath his surface of stoicism and sarcasm. In this scene he has walked his sister (Shaynie Grace, the heroine from my previous novel, Divinity & The Python) down the aisle…

‘ …“So,” he said. “How many chickens are we sacrificing for this gig, anyway?”

    His sister slugged him, and her Goliath shifted so the guests could not see. Andrew laughed but as he held her hand out every memory flashed, right back to the day his mother had brought the wee pink bundle home, crouching down low so he could see. “She smiled at me, Mama! The baby smiled!”

    “Oh, Andrew. Shaynie Grace is too new to smile.”

    She’d been wrong. Shaynie Grace had smiled. On that day and every one after. He’d been her hero. She was his little friend. And he’d never been good at anything, but he had been good at protecting her. So now….give her away? But I’ve lost so much.

    Their gazes met and for a moment he wasn’t sure if the tears there were hers or just a reflection of his in their identical eyes. “I love you, Andrew,” she said, hushed.

   Good Christ. He wanted to bawl….’

I cried a million times writing this novel. I laughed a million times more. The experiences that shaped this character and the trajectory of his narrative drive are so incredibly typical of things we (therapists, not writers) hear in the counseling room, that I’m not too proud to say that sometimes Andrew’s story, and certainly his history, broke my heart.

      I hope his novel gets the opportunity to break a reader’s heart too. I’d love to be told that someone cried for Andrew. Rooted for Andrew. Hell, I’d love to hear someone swear out-loud for Andrew (and he’d love that too. One of his many dubious charms is a potty-mouth begging to lick soap).

      I would love to hear that someone (because there are so many someones, too many someones) with their own fractured past at last felt they could bravely recount it—because they have seen Andrew’s story and know trauma can be healed.

Peace, all

b.r Jan 2015

Getting - And Giving - At Christmas

Seek and ye shall find? Or whine and ye shall be reminded why your life and every breath in it is a gift?

I was sincerely out of Christmas Spirit today—hell, I could barely scrape up a smile that didn’t look like a sneer, much less any sort of goodwill to my fellow man. I felt put-upon, undervalued, invalidated and then, to top it off, I felt deeply insulted and a whole bunch affronted.

Oh woe-is-freakin’-me. Someone please cue the violins.

Life—or, maybe more accurately, this effervescent thing we call Spirit—has a way of executing a wake-up call just when we’re drowning in the stench of our own pathetic pity pit, don’t you think? And when the Spirit speaks, it rarely—for me, anyway—takes the form of a candy cane, a gingerbread man or a lit up Christmas tree. Just when I think I have become as caustic and cynical as I can possibly get, The Spirit always seems to bitch-slap me with silence…and it is then, upon some inwardly/outwardly driven reflection, that I come face-to-face with true giving and getting, and what they feel like when they touch the heart.

Such as…

Getting:  A text message first thing this morning from a friend whose loved one has suddenly landed—and will remain—in the hospital for Christmas…meaning that she will now be celebrating (if we can call it that) there too. We swapped messages all morning, then shared a phone call late this afternoon as she was traversing the QEII to head home, wrap up work and plans and life before traveling back to the Hospital, several hours north on the highway, where Christmas won’t smell like stuffing and gingerbread and spruce trees but instead like antiseptic and boiled & bland cafeteria offerings.  We discussed her concerns. Fears. Possible solutions. And it was a gift, I think, for both of us; to recognize that our age and stage creates so many similar circumstances, worries, questions-with-no-answers and, thank God, absurdities that we can at last collapse in laughter over.

Because life is serious. But it’s so damn ridiculous sometimes, too. And laughing is a gift that feels good.

Giving: A little container of peanut butter balls and eggnog fudge to the Edson Friendship Centre because as simple as it may sound, it is the highlight of my day to work out in their gym—where I am greeted by happy smiles, and enveloped by a kind and welcoming mojo I have felt at EFC ever since I was a brand new social worker some 20-odd years ago.

I am so grateful there are still places in this world that you just know, intuitively, are pure-of-heart.

Getting: A picture posted on my facebook wall of my novel for sale in a retail shop in eastern Alberta. My sales are slow and my marketing has been a process akin to climbing up Everest (with no Sherpa in sight) yet to hear my friend tell me she felt “so proud” to see my book on sale in a store flooded tears into my eyes.

I’ve been given the gift of my novel in print, something so very many talented writers, by virtue of a subjective business, may never see. I am grateful—and humbled—by this profound, thrilling experience.

Giving: My time to my 12 year old who came to the gym with me today (here we are when she conquered her first triathalon)

There will soon come a time when it is no longer cool to work out (or go anywhere, really) with Mom, but for now she is my shadow, and everything I do seems to be something she holds in far higher regard than it deserves to be.

I’m my daughter’s role model. I think she deserves a little better than a sneering scrooge.

Getting: A girlfriend who, more accurately titled, is actually the soul-sister the Spirit gave me more than a decade ago. She is my confidant, my litmus test, and, thankfully, she is often also my conscience. (Because I can assure you I need one more often than not). When life gets a little too ridiculous or crazy, or insulting, I can always count on her to listen, redirect, and pull my humor up from the depths of the pit it has fallen in.  I don’t know what I’d do without her, and it hurts too much to imagine my life without her in it—so I won’t.

In a life spent in loneliness by far, far too many people, my circle may be teeny-tiny…but the people in it are so much more amazing, and brilliant, talented and compassionate than any I deserve. I love them all with every cell of my heart.

Is it too cheesy to end with a meditation? Mind if I do anyway?

Today I was bitter and hateful and cynical and fed up. I felt forsaken and used and judged harshly. And then….

And then silence, and within it sounds slowly resonated and I heard—

Voices as familiar as my favorite songs.

Laughter that sounded the way being young used to feel.

Rock and roll in my ears and the whirr of the bike spinning beneath my feet as I sweat and catch the eye of my youngest, pounding out stress and energy and life on the treadmill and then…

And then silence again, and within it the deep, soundless resonance of being grateful for getting. For giving.

For being aware of both in a way that allows me to say "Amen".

And "Peace".