I learned today that my old therapist Richard, the one I talk about so often on here, died this past February.
He was an incredible man.
A gifted healer.
There is an memorial this Sunday on what would have been his 71st birthday.
I feel very blessed to have been a miniscule part of his life.
Our last session together he told me that I was one of his more challenging clients, and working with me and seeing me grow reaffirmed to him why he chose to become a therapist.
It was an honor to work with him...and Ramsey (his collie at the time.)
````````````````````
I am working on the rest of the "(continued)" blogs today. I got a wee bit triggered last week by life and had to stop and get grounded again. My daughter broke her arm and something about seeing it in a cast just sent me spinning. Gawd my head is a nut factory at times.
I think part of it was the sudden fear of CPS being called and the fear of being investigated and having my children removed. I wonder when that fear will go away? The accident happened at school for pete's sake. I hope this underlying stress goes away once their both adults.
As I was getting a few drawings for the upcoming blogs I discovered two things.
dayum I was a good drawer back then. I wish I had drawn more in that head space.
And I totally wish I had the self confidence to have take 100's more of these type of shots...
But at that time...the 1990's I was still listening to all the nasty people out there who were calling me ugly, I hadn't yet learned to tune out their bullying slurs. There so deeply embedded in the subconscious mental chatter that I would look in the mirror and hear them.
At this time, there is only one voice in the sound track challenging them.
Richard's.
His quiet, from a neutral place, comment.
We had just looked at a bunch of my childhood pictures and he commented. "You were a pretty child."
I rocked back and bullied my self, "Yeah and I grew up to be ugly."
He continued, "Your still quite pretty."
I ran in my head at that point, dissociating out into multiple fragments, as this frightened me.
Later as I played the conversation over and over in my head, trying to detect any threats in his words, I realized his tone was one would use to talk about flowers.
His words stuck like a sticky bomb in my subconscious. As the years passed it spoke much louder then those who sought to tear me down.
Thank you for sharing Paja, ya know it's such a small world! I knew Richard as well, I saw in many years ago during a "rough patch". He was such a kind/soft spoken/easy to talk with kind of man. I had no idea he had passed, I was very sad to read that.
ReplyDeleteAgain thank you for sharing your story. You've come a long way, Richard would be proud of you :-)
They really nailed it on his obituary saying: "celebrate the life of this remarkable man" That word fits him perfectly. I have never met anyone else like him. We were pen pals off an on for years after therapy. The last time I wrote him was to update him on marrying Corey. He was so pleased.
Delete