The movement in our words

One of the many gifts my long term supervisor and mentor has given me is in developing my skill and expertise in how to bring play and curiosity to the words which show up in therapy. 

They might be wholly inadequate for the task. Conversely, they might be beautifully articulate, gaining gravitas when said out loud, opening a gate to long trapped feelings which tumble out behind them. There can be so many of them that a game of now you see me now you don’t ensues, with what needs to be understood confidently hiding in plain sight. Shrouded in words which let nothing be known, let no-one in. 

Shy and faltering, in a rush to be welcomed and known, confused and stitching themselves together as they are spoken, repeated and repeated on repeat trying to work something out … 

As a therapist I have learnt, am still learning, when my words are needed, when space is needed. When to match the pace of what is said to me, when to slow something down. Bringing respect and patience to what is said, not rushing in assuming I’ve got it, instead letting something unfold. When does one word jump out at me, either because it doesn’t quite fit in the sentence, or its an unusual usage for it, or it holds so much feeling that my whole body tingles in response. What does that words say. 

In my own musings and process I also enjoy playing with words. I enjoy the ambiguity of poetry, words which have no attachment, available to each reader, whatever their interpretation. The impact on each reader unique, as words land and are used just as they are needed, in that moment, for that reader. 

Something akin to this feels available in the therapy room. Guided by an experienced therapist, curiosity is brought to your words; the way they arrive; which words need to really be held tight; which words need to be examined; and which feel a relief to let go? The flow of your words offering a gateway from what is known to enquiries beyond that which was assumed, that to which we thought we would arrive becomes where we actually arrive, in an upside down twisting of time and consciousness.

What a gift it is to daily practice this art.

As humans we are natural born sense makers, and I played with the words of this in a poem I wrote some years back now -

The sense making from no-sense

The sense making of non-sense

The sense making which makes complete-sense

The grieving of non-sense having to make complete-sense.

I returned to the poem recently wondering what it would be like to subvert my own words. Commonly we say to make sense and find meaning. Currently the world makes little sense to me, most definitely the task of making it make sense, or finding sense in it, would be a time consuming one. But within my own life, where I can bring more impact, what value is there in playing with these words? To find sense and make meaning?

My poetic answer to this would be that I find sense in acceptance and tenderness towards myself, and I make meaning in finding a humility in my losses. And I could leave you there, to play with the words by yourself. You might choose to leave me here to do just that. But for me I want to go on.

James Hollis suggests every 5 to 7 years we undergo a major change in our lives, I don’t know how he has gathered data to support this statement, but having lived for several decades now, it feels experientially accurate. Change and loss rearranging my life, in regular waves. In a similar rhythm to the waves of a tide, these waves of change and loss come in different sizes and velocities. Some gently wash me to new shores, bringing ripples of change, and some have untethered me from all I thought I knew and hoped for. 

A more accomplished poet than myself, Mary Oliver writes - 

Every year

Everything

I have ever learned

In my lifetime

Leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation

Playing in my words finding sense and making meaning, have gathered up loss, scooping it into the enquiry.

It’s personal, I am not coming up with a universal truth, but for me, for now, there is something about finding sense, and making meaning in the waves of change and their rhythmic pulls between loss, regret, and possibility. And in the humble acceptance of it all as me, not me and more than me.

I am writing this at a point of mourning in my life, the ending of an important relationship having catapulted me into a grieving process for my own youth. I look back over a life which has brought me an astonishing distance from where I started. Younger, or are they older, versions of myself, and the me of now, hardly recognisable to one another. Woven in the waves of time; waves of change; waves of regret; waves of possibility. Woven into and through the waves of loss in my life.

I cannot go back and relive those days. But nor would I want to. Not even to bring the wisdom of  hindsight, for it would change the pathway of my life. My life has not always been wonderfully sunny, but with each wave of change, and the losses therein, I have grown into a richer, more fuller version of myself. This is my journey of becoming - me, and without them I would not be recognisable as the me of now. And I want to be that me.

However, whilst I can not go backwards I can carry myself forward in time. In my reflections I realised accidentally I had started to resurrect and live some of my childhood dreams. Nearly 60 years on from first telling my parents when I grow up I am going to live by the sea, I now do. It has made me wonder what other lost, or delayed possibilities might accompany me as I rethether, and grow through another wash of changes at this point in my life.

Perhaps what is truly important never gets lost, it just lays dormant waiting for the right time?

When I started writing I thought I’d write about grief, the universal, inescapable accompaniment to life. It was my starting title, but my words took me elsewhere. I end reflecting, sense finding and meaning making are relative, personal, evolving, refusing stasis.

I have enjoyed the reflective journey that has guided me in this piece of writing. I sit allowing myself to feel both the sadness, and a sense of the miraculous, in how I have been fashioned in the regrets and possibilities of my life’s losses.

In Hozier’s poetic lyrics  -

All things end, 

all that we intend is scrawled in sand

Slips right through our hands

And just knowing that everything will end

Should not change our plans when we begin again

We begin again

Perhaps one of life's biggest challenges is living with its uncertainty, intangibility, and the inevitable losses that come with its changes. In the writing of this piece the knowing that I would not go back and change anything has stayed with me. How do I bring that knowing into my future? Life, when truly lived, is full of both joy and suffering. How we respond to our own suffering, is essential to our full becoming.

My parting Questions -

I love Emmy van Deurzen’s quote ‘Life, if we take it seriously, can be a work of art that is ours for the making’

It brings to mind life as a collage, what gets intentionally placed, and what gets washed away in waves of change? How do we live creatively, in the changing landscape of our life? What are we attached to, and what was never ours to keep? How do we hold on to ourselves when we get untethered? How do we bring a tenderness and acceptance to ourselves so, with each wave of change we can mourn, reflect and find the courage to step in and begin again?

These might not be quite the right questions for you. Others might have emerged. Please get in touch if anything you have read has sparked an interest to look more suearmstrongtherapy@gmail.com