Recovery - Step Two: Out the Trauma

With tentative steps, I journey to the next portion of my recovery: Storytelling to out the trauma.

I would prefer a cabin in the woods with a solar-powered laptop, bowls of lentil soup and ginger tea to keep me warm and safe. Maybe I would only need a month there, maybe a year. What I have is a small apartment in Seattle, a routine including work, running and rock climbing, and the beautiful yellow leaves of Ravenna Park moments from my doorstep. Maybe with that lentil soup and ginger tea snippets of time in the evening will be enough.

Of course, maybe they won't be enough. The beautiful thing is that this is my recovery. The pain is inside right now. It's teeth gnaw, it's claws shred. It wants out, I want to let it out. As I walk through my memories, this may no longer be the case. When that happens, I will stop my telling until I am ready. This is my story. This is my journey. I can (and will) determine the path it takes.

And so, it is with this affidavit that I give you an excerpt from Dr. Janja Lanich's book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Berkeley: Bay Tree Publishing, 2006). I plan to use the following 15 characteristics as my working outline.

"Concerted efforts at influence and control lie at the core of cultic groups, programs, and relationships. Many members, former members, and supporters of cults are not fully aware of the extent to which members may have been manipulated, exploited, even abused. The following list of social-structural, social-psychological, and interpersonal behavioral patterns commonly found in cultic environments may be helpful in assessing a particular group or relationship.

Compare these patterns to the situation you were in (or in which you, a family member, or a friend is currently involved). This list may help you determine if there is cause for concern. Bear in mind that this list is not meant to be a 'cult scale' or a definitive checklist to determine if a specific group is a cult. This is not so much a diagnostic instrument as it is an analytic tool.

1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.

2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader.

4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry - or leaders prescribe what typers of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline chilren, and so forth).

5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar - or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).

6. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.

7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).

8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deams necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before join the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).

9. The leader induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.

10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.

11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

12. The group is preoccupied with making money.

13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.

14. The most loyal members (the 'true believers') feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group."

Recovery - Step One: Nurture Something Good

I feel it mostly in my chest.

It builds and pushes against my ribs and upper back, threatening to burst open in flames and ash with each passing day. A deep inhalation releases the tension and shoots through my body with pokes and needles. My breath is the blood flowing to a limb that has been far too distant and deeply asleep; that limb is my voice pushed dormant by tragedy, depression and disappointment.

How many experiences does it take to lose your voice, to have it catch in your throat and burrow down in your heart like a dense and tiny mustard seed? How much time does it take before that same mustard seed cracks open, springing to life at even the smallest rays of hope? Like a whisper in my head, I hear an echo of someone saying that faith the size of a seed can rearrange landscapes. In faith I take that cracked seed in my hands and begin to nurture it toward germination, finding warmth - hope - in the belief that a mustard seed is enough. I am enough.

I take another breath in and with it the pokes and needles. Nothing brings me more into the present than my own breath. I close my eyes. My chest expands with a rush of air into the empty cavity around my heart. I feel the slight vibration in my throat and slight stretch of my ribs. The chair beneath me pushes against my body. My body centers and pushes back against the chair. Breath like blood flows into my body, an awakening, a baptism of my seed in tears, sweat and blood when water flees and dries up.

I read once that our breath forms Ham-Sa, Sanskrit for "I am." The inhale whispers Ham, the release vibrates Sa. Ham -pause- sa -pause- A primordial teeter-totter giving us strength as our lungs mingle the external atmosphere with our body and blood.
I -pause- am -pause- ...
I -pause- am -pause- ...
I -pause- am -pause- enough, my mind fills in the pause between exhale and inhale.
I -pause- am -pause- not damned.
I -pause- am -pause- loved.

As Ham-Sa teeters up and down in my throat and my mind fills in the pauses, I feel something different well in my chest, close to my seed. It also teets and totters with my breath, bringing with it a refreshing rush like cool water, crisp mountain air, rain at the end of a long summer day. Lord Jesus Christ, it starts. Have mercy on me. Lord Jesus Christ inhale... Have mercy on me exhale...

Together the three part orchestra of my body, mind and heart builds a harmony, each part intricately woven into the other by the rhythm of expand and release.
...crescendo: Lord Jesus Christ, I ...diminuendo: Am -enough-, have mercy on me. ...rest...
Lord Jesus Christ, I ... am -loved-, have mercy on me. ...rest...
Lord Jesus Christ, I ... am -not damned-, have mercy on me ...rest...

The music plays on. I see the first hint of growth pushing at the crack in my mustard seed: a very small lime-green fissure in the smooth yellow shell. My voice, timid, out-of-practice, and drowsy with the sleep of 11 months begins to emerge, pushing against my chest and back. Tragedy, disappointment and depression - I feel something stronger - recovery, forgiveness and grace. I am ready to start writing. I am ready to nurture something good.

That, for now, is enough.

Spiritual Infancy

I am learning heaps and bounds about myself on this island. Mainly, I am learning how incredibly deficient any form of spiritual growth is in my life as well as the patience and discipline needed to bring about said growth. I had no delusions that I could flounce to the wilderness and hear God's voice the next morning, but I was not prepared to experience the complete stripping away of everything I believed good about myself. In this strange environment without modern conveniences I have to relearn even the most basic of tasks, such as washing dishes, fetching water, and even bathing myself. Chores are harder in my full length skirt and headscarf. After being here ten days, my monastic honeymoon is over. Feeling desperate and quite literally trapped, I start running laps around the island to burn off steam and defiantly strip off my headscarf whenever I enter my living quarters.

How did I get to this place of frustration and despair? I was doing so well accepting my tasks and discipline with obedience as well as focusing and refocusing my thoughts toward God. They would wander and sometimes I would feel the stirrings of anger or other emotions directed toward one person or another before stopping my daydreaming mind and returning my thoughts aright. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. But apparently, my breaking point comes at ten days and the strength I have to keep myself going completely disappears. Instead, I am tired all the time, my thoughts run taunting circles around my head, and it is all I have left to crawl bitterly into the woods and weep with disappointment and disgust at myself and the situation. Of course, this desperate crawl is after stomping around the island all day making hell for myself and those around me. What went wrong?

Then it starts to make sense. Everything I have accomplished up to this point -and please graciously read this as absolutely nothing- was pushed along by my own strength. Pride puffed up the view of my condition until like dough left to rise on its own, my pride was punched down into a pile of miserable goo. Expressing my frustration to my spiritual mother, she encourages me to have patience and remain diligent in my efforts.

After talking and letting the storm of my emotional condition pass, I wake up feeling ashamed, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I being to understand humility, as I finally see myself accurately. I am a spiritual infant and I have a long and difficult path to walk toward health. My old patterns of seeking affirmation in family, friends, and men is gone here. There is nothing to fill up my sudden emptiness except for the God that I have chased to the wilderness. Lord have mercy on me. Humbly- I hope I can finally claim a small understanding of brokenness- I stand before the icon of Christ and for the first time turn to the desperate cry of the Psalms, "Harken unto me, O Lord" and "The sacrifices of the Lord are a broken and contrite spirit. These, O Lord, you will not despise."

Writing is hard. I feel I have nothing to say beyond the cooings of an infant. Also, being on an island without electricity, computers and internet access makes silence easy. Instead, I am here chronicling the spirit lifted up, broken down, lifted up, broken down. One of the nuns described the process of healing this way. You are given a thimble and you are filled up with grace. Your cup is full and you are on the top of the world. The next morning you wake up and feel empty. But it is not because the thimble is now empty, but you have been dumped into a teacup. You are just given a bigger vessel to begin filling. With my experience, I can say with thanks that perhaps my pinhole was filled and emptied into that thimble. By God's grace may I continue to heal and bring that tiny thimble to its brim.

Communion is Essential

For the first time in forever, I am back in communion. On Saturday, anxious over the truth but more afraid for my sins, I went through my third confession since becoming Orthodox a year and a half ago. Being protestant much of my life, confession still feels foreign and awkward. After all, we spend so much energy covering up and hiding what we really are until we become nothing but a shell stuck in a web of lies - or worse, we become a Pandora's box begging those close to us to peak inside and release our darkness to the surrounding world. However, you can not treat a festering wound by keeping it under a bandage, and confession is that fresh air to the wound. It shines light on the things we desperately want hidden and scatters the darkness within. If confession is the bandage removed, communion is the ointment applied.

Communion is essential. For life, for light, for healing and joy. As I move further into the light, I realize heaven can be here. That life before this is a shadow play of dark greys. But here is color, here is joy, here is life further in and further up. I look forward to stepping further into this light, illuminating more demons in my soul and chasing them away. The fire that burns, that my dark thoughts fear- those dark thoughts sitting like a lizard on my shoulder and whispering lies into my ear- this fire once too bright is made bearable by this communion. Bread and wine made body and blood mingle somewhere between my body and soul and purify both, so I can burn bright like this fire and yet it does not destroy me.

The world around me is not left behind, but brought also into the light. The birds sing stronger, the sun shines brighter and that soft lemon light emanating from the core of everything returns to my field of vision. Yes, the world burns and is illuminated with the presence and love of God. This communion pulls the blinders from my eyes and I see it once again, but only glimmers here and there. Perhaps tomorrow, through grace, I will step further into this light, see life a little more pure, be a little more pure like Christ. "Taste and see that the Lord is good." If this is a hint of what life can be, the beginning to something more and beautiful, I never again want to turn my eyes away and take steps back. For perhaps the first time in my life, I have found something worthy of fighting.

But first, there is the fight. The work, the refocusing of thoughts frustratingly straying, the darkness and weakness of my own story, the habits, the passions, the laziness and necessary discipline. The fear of breaking into myself and finding a hollow inside, the fear of others seeing this inside and giving up on me. Yes, there is much work here, but through grace I am becoming. And finally, with conviction, I know my final destination, my final me, is worth every ounce of sweat, tear and pain.

I desire life everlasting and full, Lord give the blessing!

St. Nilus Island

Welcome to my home for at least the next month. I give you, Saint Nilus Island!

This is the common house. Below is the kitchen and a small living area, above is an office and two rooms for Mother Nila and Sister Julia. The porch overlooks the Muffins and morning sun spills into the windows, when the clouds open up and allow this. I am told this is not often, however the weather has been gorgeous since my arrival.

Here we are, Saint Nilus Island residents. Spruce Island is seen in the back. Remember this, because I have some stories about Spruce Island for a later reading.

Here is Mother Nina and Mother Nila on a spruce and moss-everything path on the island. The other two permanent residents have moved to the island over the last two years, but Mother Nina and Nila have been on the island since the beginning. The fine tuned system that I find in place right now is the fruit of their 11 years of labor. Incredible women, these two.

Mother Nila is the gardener on the island. Here she is with one half of her garden. Due to the rain this year, the gardens have not produced as usual, which means winter will be beans, rice and smoked fish. Mother Nila also has a flower garden close to the beach, claiming that it is the color in her life. I would claim the whole island, glowing of greens and blues, is the color in my life, but I have only been on the island for sunny days, so I really have no say in the matter. The flowers are beautiful, regardless.

Within the last year, the nuns and monks at an adjoining skete on Spruce Island invested in a saw mill to produce their own lumber. Here is Mother Nina in the lumber yard. My first day on the island, I was placed on saw mill duty with Sister Julia. Fun work, although I am told atypical for monastic duties. We are planing the wood for a new one room house for Mother Nila.

This is my island paradise. More pictures and stories to come! Thank you to Extreme Kayaker Hans for the pictures.

First Impressions on Monastic Life: Thumbs Up

So much has happened in the last ten days that I don't know where to start. I am in Alaska on a small island teetering on the border of the Pacific Ocean and the top of the world. I live here with 5 other women- three nuns, one novice, and another long term pilgrim like myself. There is no running water and electricity is scarce (either gathered by solar or wind power). Life is simple with good old fashion work. Water is carried from a spring and filtered. Food is gathered, grown, or caught. Wood is chopped and stacked in preparation for an Alaskan winter. There is a smoke house for the salmon and a root cellar for refrigeration. Laundry is done in buckets with a crontraption that looks like the progeny of a bathroom plunger and a butter churn. Oil lamps light the table, outhouses and bucket baths are available for hygeine and the ducks by the workshed go quack, quack, quack. And the ducks go quack, quack, quack.

I have stumbled on my paradise. There are a few buildings on the island, which contains an area of about 1sq mile. The guest house is next to the workshop and duck coop. The common house, wich houses two nuns and a kitchen looks out over rock outcroppings affectionately named the Muffins. The smoke house and root cellar are on the path to a one room cabin. The other one room cabin sits by cliffs filled with puffins, a 10 min walk from the wood chapel. Buidlings are connected by foot paths winding through spruce and moss-everything forests. The center of the island contains a natural spring. The silence is profound and deep, with sparrows singing, wind whistling, and waves crashing against the cliffs. It is still here.

Although there is plenty of work, the stillness of the surroundings is finding its way into my core so my soul can honestly respond to the call, "Be still and know I am God."

I am being cleansed by this life.

Slowly I feel everything that I knew before- the artifical neon lights, the buzz chorus of one hundred appliances, the exhaust filled air of constant traffic, the partially hydrogenated oils and the cornsyrup high on fructose, the cell phones, coffee, and lonely nights spent drunk on wine and beer, the necessity to know every moment that slips from numerous clocks into space telling me that I am late for everything, the missed appointments, dashed dreams and broken hearts, the vomit of color, anorexic teenage superstars, and permeating feeling of inadequacy- slowly, everything is untangling itself from around my mind and heart setting me into a freedom I thought obtainable only for the birds singing in the trees. But here I am, sitting under those same birds and listening.

As well as the material changes in my lifestyle, my spiritual life has been ramped into a high degree of activity. I am living in a monastery, afterall. I wake up at 3:00am to pray before the morning service at 4:00. Meals start and end with singing and chanting thanks. After working hard, I attend and participate in another service in the evening. More prayers and quiet time follows the service before I go to bed and start it all over again the next morning. On the weekends and feast days, services can last up to three hours. I read during the service, chant prayers and sing in the 5 person choir. I am beginning to find my voice. I am second soprano. Fast are strict and often- Monday, Wednesday and Friday, no meat, dairy, wine or oil. Yes, this includes fish. I am learning the duties of chapel upkeep and struggling to pray constantly throughout the day. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Breath out. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Like a flower afraid to bloom, I feel a warm sunlight beconning my soul to open up and become more, to experience the joy of an everlasting spring. If I were ever in a place to answer this plea, St. Nilus Island is the place to do it.

Life is becoming inspired, spurred on by the desire to heal and grow. This is my garden, my paradise.

Nesterov and Monasticism

This is a picture by Russian painter Mikhail Nesterov. I have posted it here because it contains a mood or a feeling that is similar to the hopes I have for Alaska.

I fly north on Friday and, God willing, will be at a monastery on an island in Alaska next Thursday. I hope to stay at the monastery for up to a month, in quiet contemplation and prayer, sometimes in manual labor, but also struggling with the thoughts and feelings that pull and torment (as thoughts and feelings often do). I hope to find the center of my soul, a direction for my life, and a foundation to my faith.

It is true, this is a large agenda for only a month long stay, but if anything, I have hope that I am starting a journey that may take my whole life. I am excited for this, life, and the next month trapped with myself and pulled out of myself by God and my surrounding fellowship.