anguished that it frightens me, what awful wounded thing would
make a noise like that? But I can’t stop making the sound. It feels
good. More than thirty years of silenced ghosts come roaring out of me
now, the full-throated outpouring of my sorrow. It feels good. I
scream, I scream, I push against the weight bearing down on me. My
therapist doesn’t make it easy, and the effort makes me cry and sweat.
What happens? What happens when the long-denied part of me is
let out?
Nothing happens.
I feel the force of the rage, and it doesn’t kill me after all.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m alive.
It still isn’t easy for me to talk about the past. It is deeply painful to
confront the fear and the loss all over again each time I remember or
recount it. But from this moment on, I understood that feelings, no
matter how powerful, aren’t fatal. And they are temporary.
Suppressing the feelings only makes it harder to let them go.
Expression is the opposite of depression.
* * *In 1978, my son, John, graduated from the University of Texas, one of
the top ten students, and I earned my PhD in clinical psychology. It
was a triumphant year for our family. I decided to pursue my licensure
in California because it was the toughest state (there I was, putting on
the red shoes again!), and beyond the ego needs of proving my worth
(as though a piece of paper could accomplish that), California licensure
had the practical advantage of allowing me to practice anywhere in the
country. I remembered Béla’s struggle to earn his CPA license, and I
girded myself for a difficult journey.
I needed three thousand clinical hours to sit for the exam, but I
doubled the requirement. I didn’t even sign up to take the exam until
I had six thousand hours—almost all at William Beaumont, where I