Goddard
College Individualized Master's Thesis by
Anna L. Hawkins
Anna's thesis is lovely, powerful and
delicate. I'm discovering that that's how truly embodied
writing feels. I always want to be prepared. But isn't
always trying to be prepared leaving the moment? Isn't it a guarded
non-trusting stance, a readily made stance instead of a posture of
authentic impromptu response to the present feeling? Isn't packing
everything we think we'll need a way to remain invulnerable? Yes.
Control. Again. This time control of the moment and of the
future, rather than yielding simply to what occurs. But giving
up control is a fearful proposition. I'm dealing with this
issue now, and struggling to open myself up to my process as it
unfolds.
Bill said I seem heavy and morose since starting
at Goddard, and I gasped, like he'd stabbed me in the heart, because
I didn't feel that heaviness in myself until he said that. So now
I'm struggling to make the process fun and organic, rather than
getting constantly caught in my desire for control and the closest
I can come to perfection. Marty says the best way to learn is through
play, so I'm looking for ways to incorporate more play into my
learning.
I can hardly even feel my anger, my feelings,
nothing but a vague fuzzy disoriented sadness. I'm angry that I
feel numbed to myself, to my life. I remembered my mother saying
she felt erased by age eight; looking at photographs of herself,
she saw a wiped out reflection of who she once was.
This is such a powerful, sad, visual image.
The struggles of my female lineage were also
my own. They continue, like a soft insistent murmur, ...and I'm
not sure if its my own, or if it's the murmuring of generations
of hearts. ...a reflection
of the blankness of my mother, and her mother, and who knows how
many mothers ahead of her. a sensitivity to the numbness passed
down through families, and a generalized feminine experience of
loss of feeling.
I'm not sure if I can relate to this image
personally, as my family's feelings and emotions were never smudged
this way. Instead, my family's feelings stuck out vividly. But
this nonetheless, this is such a lovely
image that it made me cry with kind of old recognition that
I still don't understand.
Dissociation
differs from denial in that denial signifies a kind of blindness
or obtuseness in the face of the obvious-consequences of actions
that we are fully aware of but would rather not face. In dissociation,
we literally don't know what we know; and the process of recovery,
now illuminated by the biological and psychological studies of
trauma, centers on the recovery of voice and, with it, the ability
to tell one's story...
Gilligan tells us that the "I don't know" and the "You know" showed
a struggle for meaning which "was often a struggle with language:
how to say what you mean and be heard and understood" and these
phrases often pointed to imminent dissociation, when "psychically
we separate ourselves from knowing what we cannot bear to know"
In dissociation,
we literally don't know what we know; I wrote this in my
notes to the same quote in Birth
of Pleasure,
but they apply equally here as well: Yes, and it's always when
we DO know! I've started noticing how often I'll be engaged in
a conversation, saying exactly what I know, and then I'll feel
a stab of fear and inhibition. A shutting off, and my voice will
drift off quietly into an, "I
don't know... ".
Now when I hear myself doing it, it's a signal that this is
something I know and desperately need to know I know.
...what could I reach for. a cigarette,
mmmm. Then, it struck me. The cigarette is about a fulfilled reach.
It's not just about comfort and soothing sadness. It's about the
satisfaction of thinking about something you want, physically reaching
out for it, attaining it, enjoying it, being fulfilled momentarily
by it. A desire met, a received reach.
Desire again! A couple years ago, I lost 55 pounds,
and I've kept it off, but I still want to lose more weight. I keep
thinking back to that period, and how I lost the weight. It wasn't
a matter of willpower. Willpower doesn't work, especially with
someone as willful as I am. What worked for me was being ever mindful
of my needs. Mindfulness, my therapist kept telling me. Mindfulness
was the key, she said, and she was right. I would deliberately
schedule "Love Myself" days. Doesn't that sound stupid now? my
friend Pam called on an announced Love Myself day, and started
the conversation by saying, "I hope I'm not inter-RUPT-ing
anything..." It wasn't like that. I would just keep
asking myself what Ineeded next. Ice water with lemon? A foot massage?
YOga? A walk? My eating plan became part of caring for myself,
and after all those years of trying to lose weight, and failing,
the weight came off practically on its own.
I need to get back
to doing that, but I've become accustomed to once again living
with unmet needs, and never questioning the rightness of a life
of always reaching and never feeling fulfilled.
Reaching is what the infant does, showing
us through her reaches the undeniable vulnerability of being a
needy, wanting human being. Reaching is what we all do in relationships,
and reaching is what probably ultimately scares us... I contemplated
this idea of reaching, and I realized that desiring, reaching,
and feeling were all intimately connected, almost in a circular
fashion. It was only after I changed my focus to pleasure in my
studies that my authentic feeling was able to take the lead; everything
then unfolded in a smoother, less pre-ordained manner.less controlled, less rigid.
This is like what Marty told me about
having fun while learning...
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