First Comment

Nan Gefen said...
I really look forward to reading more about Florence. I remember driving through the Black Hills many decades ago, awed by the beauty but only vaguely aware of the plight of the Lakota tribe. Florence's story is a way to more deeply understand what happened to this people, mirrored in her own experience. Already I get the impression of her life being so shaped by the land and her tribe.
10/30/2006 6:22 PM

Crying and Praying: Keepers Respond to Crisis

Florence’s Story 2 (Look below for more about Florence)

Two days before I was to visit Florence, I called to confirm our appointment. One of her sons answered the phone and told me that Florence was away and would not be back for a week. She, who rarely left the reservation, had gone to be with her grandson in a hospital fifty miles away. No one had called me to cancel my visit because everyone had been focused on the events of the moment. I called a few weeks later, and we rescheduled our time together.
During our visit, I asked Florence what had happened to her grandson. She told me that she had had to manage intense emotions during this time:
“My parents were Christians,” Florence said, “and I learned to rely on the Bible along with the Lakota traditions. The Bible pulls me through the hard times, and gets me through the day and just recently, I needed those prayers. It was very strong. My grandson, he is only sixteen, and he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. The week you were supposed to come they had to amputate his arm. I was there with him in the hospital, and I broke down. I only could pull myself together because I had to be strong for my son. I told him that they had to take that arm to save his boy’s life. Now my grandson is healing, but we don’t know what is going to happen. The boy and my son have to go back and forth for chemo. I cry, and I pray, and it gets me through. Once in a while I go to the church, but mostly, I pray at home.
“My dad taught me about the Bible. As an old man, he had diabetes, and they had to amputate his leg. He had his Bible with him, but he finally gave up, and he died. When he passed away, I was going to put his Bible in his coffin because he had thought so much of it. My conscience kept saying however, ‘Keep it. Just keep it.’ A cousin of mine came down for the funeral, and I asked her what I should do. She said. ‘Maybe he wants you to keep it.’ I listened to her, and I kept the Bible. A while later I looked through it, and I found notes my father had hidden in different sections. One note said, ‘If you get lonesome read this chapter.’ I thought then that he had meant for me to keep his Bible. I was real glad to have the Bible with me when my grandson got sick.
“The Christian tradition and the Lakota tradition go together because we all pray to one god. The Bible says to spread the word in all directions and this is what we believe too. In our dances, we acknowledge the four directions and this is similar to the Christian way.”
Crying and praying go together for Florence. For her they are as natural as breathing. She also trusts her instincts based on traditional beliefs about what she should or should not do when she has to make an immediate decision in a dangerous moment.
Look for next Post: Florence trusts intuitive wisdom to make crucial choices in moments of crisis.

Crisis --Stories of Keepers -- 1

Introducing Florence

Keepers face crisis by relying on their religious and spiritual beliefs and on the guidance of important family members. Although they may waver in their beliefs for a time, they always return to their religious and family stories.

Florence, a Native American woman has lived her seventy years on the Lakota Reservation in Oglala, South Dakota. I had never been to South Dakota when I flew there to meet with her. Driving from the airport, I was struck by the beauty of the Black Hills where I could see herds of buffalo, deer, antelope, and elk move freely from meadow to meadow without fear. Dark blue lakes dotted the landscape, yellow leaves brightened the trees, that gave off a golden glow as if the yellow of the trees reflected the gold still left in the earth below. It was a peaceful place, especially in late September.

It is not surprising that the Lakota believe that these hills are at the center of their world. It is here, so the Lakota creation story says, that the Lakota people originated. They believe that they emerged from a cave in these hills in a place now known as Wind Cave National Park. This park contains the world's six longest caves, and the Lakota say that this is where they came from 11,000 years ago[i].

In 1869, a treaty was signed between the U.S. government and the Lakota Tribe, which granted the Black Hills to the Lakota forever. In 1874, gold was found in the Black Hills, and the same U.S. government that had made the treaty broke it treaty and took back the Black Hills from the Lakota.

Today though resigned to living on the reservation the Lakota continue to fight for their land. The U.S government has offered the Lakota one hundred and five million dollars to repay them for the land that was taken from them illegally, but the tribe has refused this money. They continue to fight, no longer on the battlefield, but in the U.S. courts and at the UN for the return of the Black Hills. This fight in many ways has drained the tribe of its resources, and at the same time, it keeps alive a hope for a future in which this land so akin to their identity will be returned to them. Life on this reservation has never flourished. It becomes worse each day. The Lakota believe that money alone will not bring good life back to them. Only this land can provide for their future.

At the guesthouse in the park where I stayed, the staff members were young people from Guatemala, Mexico, even India, but not from the nearby reservation. These workers had special visas to work in the parks because the concession owners claimed that there were no people in the area to work in the park. Yet only thirty miles away on the reservation, the Lakota live in abject poverty. There are no jobs on the reservation. Young people have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Life on the reservation is similar to life in other third world countries.

When I mentioned this inequity to Florence during our interview, she didn't comment on the situation directly, as was often her way. Instead, she told me a story of her uncle, who had brought his children to see the Black Hills. At the gate to the park, a ranger roughly asked him for the park entrance fee, which for her uncle was a large amount. Her uncle refused to pay, saying that he had a right to enter free as the land was his tribal land, and that he should not have to pay to see it. He was of course turned away at the gate. For him, the protest, in front of his children, was more important than seeing the park. The Lakota are waiting for their land to be returned before they enjoy the bounty that is rightfully theirs.

After spending a restful night in a log cozy cabin in Black Hills State Park, I drove to Oglala where I was to meet Florence. As I drove south the land became flat and dusty, with little water, trees, or animals, anywhere in sight. The barren landscape led to few towns or houses. Instead, rundown trailers, mostly isolated from one another, dotted the landscape. When I finally got to Oglala, I knew I was there when I passed a small casino near the entrance to the reservation,

I felt uncomfortable as if I did not belong on the reservation.. I was embarrassed thinking about my life of plenty in comparison with the dire situation all around me. In some ways, the tragedy and hardship that I had witnessed in Kosova was less demoralizing. The Kosovars had suffered horribly in the war, yet within a year, aid flooded into the country and everything was being rebuilt. This reservation within the United States had been forgotten for more than a hundred years, and at least on the outside there was little evidence of hope for its future.

(Write to me at ellen@berkeleyfamilytherapy.com for more information about our work in Kosova.)

As I walked up the ramp to Florence's door, I wondered if I would get to know her in any meaningful way. I reminded myself that I had connected with Zepa in Kosova, even across our language differences, and so to calm my nerves, I imagined Zepa beside me as I knocked on the door. ( See Zepa's story below).

Florence answered my knock right away. She was a woman of medium height and build, showing her seventy years in the way she moved unevenly on her injured hip. She had deep lines and marks in her dark skin. She wore a long skirt and a cotton blouse covered by a thin sweater, which she pulled tightly around herself to keep out the early fall chill. Even on her injured hip, her solid bearing gave her the appearance of a woman of substance who knew her way around.

Florence was at ease. Although she showed little emotion on her face, I felt welcomed as she bid me follow her into the house.

Keep Posted for more about Florence and her wisdom for crisis.

---

[i] Red Shirt, Delphine. (2002) Cultural Heritage and Sacred Sites: World Heritage from an Indigenous Perspective, New York University

Stories for the phases of disaster

In writing our own stories of survival we need to prepare for the three phases of a catastrophe; Crisis, Struggle, and Renewal. Each phase requires different things from us. Unlike most of us, the women who tell us their stories here have gone through this cycle many times. Their experience of repeated tragedies could have led them into despair. Instead, they developed life stories that helped them know how to respond even in the most difficult circumstances.

Crisis – betrayed by fate

Crisis occurs when a terrible event disturbs our life in such a way that what we had always known to be true was no longer so. In this state we may be overwhelmed by feelings, often cannot think straight, and feel that what we had expected from life was no longer possible. Our work is to discover how to maintain a sense of the familiar during this period of radical change.

Picture a moment when an unexpected frightening event occurred in your life. You may remember your shock and disbelief, as the world you knew changed in an instant. All of your human systems -- psychological, interpersonal, spiritual, political, and economic were rattled. You struggled to maintain a sense of balance as you moved through shock, denial, and a mad search for solutions that would solve the unsolvable. You needed to express your intense feelings, to tell others what was happening. You tried to maintain everyday life by making immediate decisions, but you kept losing your grip on what needed to be done.

Next posting will be the story of a Keeper in crisis. See where she turns and how you can learn from what she tells us.

Stories and time: Keepers, seekers and teachers

I had little opportunity to sit with Zepa, the woman I met in Kosova ( see her story below) and find out more about what made it possible for her to move from grief to action in only three years. Language, distance and time stood in our way. When I returned to the U.S I searched for women who had endured suffering. I was curious about how they described their life situations, the resources that came to them from their family circumstances, and how they understood the dilemmas they faced. Coincidentally, other women who had faced tragedy, whom I hadn't known before, showed up in my life.

I listened closely and recorded the women's stories, hoping to learn how not to freeze in fear the next time I was dealt an overwhelming blow by fate. But, I discovered that in order to learn from other's stories I had to re-examine my basic assumptions about life; to challenge what I had always believed to be true. Only then was I able to see how their stories provided a guide to new stories that I could use.

In comparing the women, I discovered that the element of time -- past, present, and future -- was important to my understanding of where they found resources that they relied upon when most distressed. Margaret Mead's Culture and Commitment[i] influenced my thinking about how cultures relate to the past, present and future. Mead explained a generation gap that developed because young and old no longer shared the same sense of where to look for knowledge. She described three cultural groups; cultures that rely on past knowledge, cultures that rely on the experience of their peers, and cultures that look to the future. Inspired by Mead, I have identified the women in this book as Keepers, Seekers, and Teachers, depending on their view of time.

Keepers reach back into their family history when they need to reset their course. History and traditions guide them as they provide a nurturing presence for three or more family generations. These women place themselves at the center of family life. Through their stories, and memories, they deepen and maintain family connections so that they can be relied upon. They see it as their responsibility to retell family stories and to report on the present day life of family members, even about those from whom they are estranged.

Seekers are women who have known significant disruptions and displacements in their lives, and live in a world of frequent change. They moved away from their families of origin early in their lives, feeling confined by family expectations. They focus on the present, and tend to search across age group and cultural communities to find knowledge that helps them to develop alternatives and to strengthen their sense of independence. They rely on their self-confidence and flexible communities of friends when most distressed.

Teachers are women who since childhood have believed that their lives are connected to the lives of other people in the world who are suffering from loss, or living under oppression. Although these women have suffered pain in their lives, they move through their personal struggles by choosing actions that help others. They live by clearly articulated principles of social action and political justice. They are not deterred by personal or political obstacles from working in difficult situations. They call out to others to join them in their work.

I will post here the stories of Keepers, Seekers, and Teachers. I hope you will comment on these stories and send me more stories to post. Discover if you are a Keeper, Seeker or Teach.

---

[i] Margaret Mead, (1970) Culture and Commitment, New York: American Museum of Natural History

Kosova: Zepa stands up against the fate of war

First Meeting
Zepa an ethnic Albanian woman lives in a small village not far from Prishtina, the major city in Kosova. She is in her early seventies. As we drove into her town and parked the car, a small boy, Zepa’s grandson, was watching for our arrival. He took us down a dirt path to their small house where Zepa and her family were waiting outside to greet us. Barnyard animals ran around, and we had to get through the mud to reach the front door. It was a cold, grey day. We took off our shoes at the door and entered a room saved for visitors with cushions placed around the room. In greeting us each family member shook our hands twice as was their custom. At future meetings Zepa would reach out and take us into her embrace, but that day looking worn and tired, she formally shook our hands with the rest of her family and asked us to be seated.

Story of War
Their story of war began in the spring of 1999, when two Serbs from a neighboring village arrived to tell the villagers that the village would be occupied by Serb forces the next day. They said that the soldiers were looking only for Kosovar soldiers, and the villagers need not be afraid. The next day however, the Serbs executed nineteen men in front of their families, and executed six more the day after that. They burned seventy-two homes.

As part of this attack, Serbian soldiers came to Zepa’s home and ordered her and the other women in the household out into the yard and the men into the barnyard. The Serbs were masked, but Zepa and her family knew some of them as their neighbors. The women heard the shots as the Serbs murdered Zepa’s husband, her two sons, and two grandsons. The soldiers then came out of the barnyard and told Zepa to leave her house because the next day they would come back and burn it down. She refused, and told them that they would have to burn her and her daughter too, because they would never leave their home. The next day she met them at the door in defiance. The soldiers left the house alone.

Period of Crisis
When I first visited the family with our U.S-Kosovar team, eight months after the attack, ten family members lived in the household: Zepa, her daughter who is schizophrenic, one adult son who had returned from Germany to help the family after the murders, two daughters-in-law whose husbands had been murdered, and the daughter’s-in-law six children ranging in age from eighteen months to twelve years old.
The family lived in poor circumstances without indoor plumbing or enough room for all the family members. They had to walk a distance to the outhouse, which gave off a strong smell. Yet, in grief, with few resources, the family was proud and welcoming. Zepa, her fists clenched, told us of her outrage as if her pain would never stop. She still feared that the Serbs would return any day. Her daughters-in-law did not speak or look at us directly as they served us drinks and cake that was their custom for guests. During that first session I cried, as Zepa cried, not imagining how they would ever find a way out of their pain. There were also many unanswered questions about how these women would get along with one another and reorganize the household now that Zepa’s sons were no longer alive.

Ongoing Struggle
Some months later we returned to Zepa’s household. This time not only did the adults greet us, but the older children of one of the daughters-in-law joined us in the interview. Clearly something had changed in the family. One of the daughters-in-law had begun to work outside the house. Both young mothers spoke of their children’s successes at school. Although still angry, Zepa was more focused on what the family needed to do to survive. She was able to smile occasionally in the midst of her continued expressions of anger, grief, and fear of the Serbs. She said that the psychiatry team had brought the family a new sense of hope by helping them to speak to each other, first of their grief and then of other concerns. In those conversations, Zepa had assumed a new leadership of the household, a household that had previously been organized with the men as the leaders. In this reorganization she broke traditional rules of male leadership, since those rules no longer served the family, while at the same time she held fast to traditional values whenever possible. It was clear that everyone in the family was inspired both by her flexibility and her maintenance of their traditions.

Renewal
My third visit with Zepa and her family immediately followed the attack in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. When we arrived at her house, Zepa enfolded us into her arms, comforting us and letting us know that she grieved for us and understood our sorrow. In this moment it was she who was taking care of us. In this visit and in subsequent visits the family focused less on their past and more on the present and their hopes for the future, especially the future of the children. Zepa’s grandson read us a poem he had written in school in which he said that when he grew up he would be a Kosovar soldier, but that Serbian mothers should not be afraid because he would not harm them.
In four years, with Zepa’s guidance, this family rebuilt their house and their family life. Although they still grieved, they were again active at home and in their community. Zepa was an inspiration to her family, to the mental health team and to the other villagers.

Looking to the stories of others
Zepa’s story led me to interview other women who knew how to move through hard times. Coincidentally, other women who had faced tragedy, whom I hadn’t known before showed up in my life.

Stay posted for more stories. Tell us about someone you know who uses their resources to face life’s most difficult dilemmas.

The Work of Stories

 

The Work of Stories

When upended by fate, many of us find ourselves lost in a flood of emotions, without a story to guide us through struggle.  We develop stories of resourcefulness in conversations with others.  I invite you to go through adversity with me and the women I have interviewed to find your story of resilience..  

We are all limited by the stories that we know, but we can search for alternative stories in our less known experience and through the stories of others.  Changing the stories that we tell, and that others tell about us, is not easy.  As a family therapist before I had faced personal catastrophe, I encouraged couples and families to search for stories on the edges of their memories or imagination.  I knew that stories that had been forgotten or never told, held answers to current questions.  I did this with others, but I did not know how to do this for myself.  My family stories had been prescriptions for how to avoid disaster, and did not offer me any guidance for hard times. 

It wasn't until I worked in Kosova, following the war there, that I became curious again about living through hard times.  I was in Kosova as part of a U.S. team working with Kosovar mental health professionals developing their mental health system.  Our team met many women who had faced the horrors of the war, but one woman, Zepa, stood out from all the rest.  It was she who led me to want to know more about what it takes to stand up against fate.  Keep posted to read Zepa's story soon.

 

From a reader:Already prepared to write a new life story?  Check out well-known Buddhist teacher Sandy Boucher's workshop:  Write your story or any part of it. -- Sunday, November 12, 2006 … 9:30 a.m.- 4:30 p.m    FEE: $65-95 sliding scale

                        Bring lunch. Tea provided

                                        LOCATION:  1725 Francisco Street

                                 Berkeley (near No. Bkly BART)

 

To register:   Send the full fee or ½ fee to: Sandy Boucher…3912 Forest Hill Ave…Oakland, CA 94602.  For more information, call Sandy at (510) 530-0812 or email her at sandbou@sandyboucher.net.

 

 

 

Stories for when the well is dry

Blowing on Embers: Stories for Hard Times

October 8, 2006

 

My mother told me before she passed away

After I'm gone don't forget to pray.

Son, there will be hard times

Talkin' about hard times

Who knows better that I.

-- Ray Charles

 

Stories for when the well is dry

Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Fatima.  She was the daughter of a prosperous spinner.  One day she and her father set out on a journey.  Her father had business in islands away from home.  He hoped that this trip would bring him wealth and a good husband for his daughter.

On their way to Crete, a storm blew up and their ship was wrecked.  Fatima barely survived, but somehow she dragged herself to shore.  Once there, she found her father dead.  Destitute, she wandered lost.  A family of cloth-makers saw her and took pity on her.  They took her into their home and taught her their craft.  Thus, it was that she made a second life for herself.  For a time, she was happy and reconciled to her lot.  One day as she walked on the beach, alone, a band of slave traders kidnapped her and carried her away, along with other captives.  They took her to Istanbul where she was to be sold.  At the slave market, a successful merchant, who owned a wood yard, bought her, intending to make her a servant for his wife.  When he arrived at home, however, he learned that he had lost everything when pirates captured his cargo.  He had to let all his workers go.  Fatima and his wife were forced to work at the heavy labor of making wooden masts, as he tried to rebuild his business.  Fatima worked so hard that her employer gave her freedom.  Once again, she made a new life.  One day the merchant having great confidence in Fatima, asked her to go with a shipment of masts to Java.  As before, disaster struck.  Off the coast of China, a typhoon wrecked the ship and Fatima found herself once again cast up on the seashore, in a strange land.  

"Why is it" she cried out, "that whenever I try to do something, it comes to grief?  Why should so many unfortunate things happen to me?"  There was no answer.  So she picked herself up from the sand and started to walk inland.

It so happened that when Fatima arrived in China, many people believed a legend that one day a foreign woman would arrive, and she would know how to make a tent for the Emperor.  He desired a tent, but no one in China at that time, knew how to make one.  Once a year, heralds were sent out in search of any new foreign woman arrival.  One of the heralds came upon Fatima, wandering lost.  He took her to the court where she was brought in front of the Emperor.  He asked her if she could make a tent.  "I think so," she said.

 She began her task by asking for rope.  Since there was no rope, she collected flax and, remembering what her father had taught her, she spun the flax into ropes.  Then she asked for stout cloth, but there was none.  She wove stout cloth, as she had learned from the cloth makers.  Since there were no tent poles, she made them using the knowledge that she gained as a mast maker.  When all her materials were ready, she searched her memory for tents she had seen during her travels, and lo, a tent was made. 

The Emperor rewarded Fatima for her labors.  She settled in China and as far as anyone knows, had a good long life there.  It is said that she realized she could use the knowledge she gained, as a result of horrible experiences, to create her future happiness.

Adapted from: "Fatima the Spinner and the Tent" in, Tales of the Dervishes by Indries Shah E.P. Dutton: New York (1970)

 

Nature works to keep things the same.  Humans are not unlike the large red ants in West Africa who defend their mud anthills from invaders by banding together and beginning to make repairs before assessing the damage.  We work madly to do something that might erase the events that have disrupted our lives.  We hold onto our expectation that our life story will come together into a logical narrative, and we continue with this story long after our lives have changed. 

Even when our lives run smoothly, we are bombarded by news of tragedy near and far.  We wonder how we might survive after losing a loved one in 9/11, or after Katrina, or the tsunami that washed away so many lives.  We want to help others, but we avert our eyes after the first shock of an event has passed, overwhelmed by the enormity of their problems.

But we can learn from others, who, like Fatima, have lived through hard times.  They have lost and found the threads of their lives and have grown stronger as they faced adversity.  Their diverse backgrounds offer us a wide view of the many pathways through hardship.  Keep posted here for stories that provide a map through Hard Times.