I have recently taken the time to reread Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. I suppose it's been more than 40 years since I first read it. My grandmother, who died in 1972, was still alive; I remember talking with her about how unfair the events were, how hateful and judgemental many of the characters were. How sad the story was. How sad that, despite being fiction, it could have easily been fact.
If you haven't read the book, I won't spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, it's a novel about racial injustice, set in 1930's in the fictional deep-South town of Maycomb, Alabama. It's also a novel about social progress--painfully slow--but progress, nonetheless. It's also a story of learned kindness. It's a story so powerful and universal that the author, Haprer Lee, won the Pulitzer Prize for it, her first novel.
In the course of almost a decade of sitting with clients, I can remember many sessions as if they had concluded only this morning. As I've said in previous posts, I am honored that my clients entrust me with the truths about their lives: their insecurities, triumphs, disappointments--and sometimes the horrific events that would leave any human injured, cynical, emotionally scarred.
It's not an easy thing for clients to disclose the injustices of their experiences. Some are so embarrassed, so afraid of judgement, so emotionally bound to their injuries that it can take months of work to bring the pain to the surface so it can be dealt with.
This is part of the work of therapy. To help my clients process past psychic traumas in order to move through--possibly beyond them. The trauma never is erased. Just made less powerful, less present--hopefully, less painful.
In the book, in a pivotal passage about kindness and moral goodness, Miss Maudie one of Maycomb's more enlightened denizens imparts a seminal lesson of kindness to her young neighbor, Scout, also the book's nine-year-old narrator: Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in the corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.
And so it is with most children. And most good-hearted adults. I believe, in my heart, and from my experience, we're mostly good. Mostly kind. Mostly sensitive to others. Most of the time.
Yes, human beings can be unpleasant, even mean. And when humans inflict cruelty on others, the trauma can be devastating. And lasting.
And yet, healing can, and does, take place. In the arms of a loved one. Over countless coffees with a best friend. In sanctuary of a church or synagogue. Or in a therapy office.
As therapists, we hear the worst of what people can do to people. By definition, and of necessity, it comes with the territory. How do we hear it, sit with it, work with it, day in and day out?
For me, I take comfort in my steadfast belief in mockingbirds and the simple joy they bring. And, in the slow, but often sure progress that comes with healing.
And in those moments, I remind myself how privileged I am to sit in the therapist's chair. To all my clients who honor me with their stories, thank you.
Until next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment