The Choice

In her ĕrst sessions with my colleague, Beatrice agreed to get up
every morning, take a shower, make her bed, and then sit on a
stationary bike in her living room for ĕeen minutes with the TV on
for comfort. Beatrice wasn’t in denial about her trauma, as I had once
been. She had been able to talk about the past and to process it
intellectually. But she hadn’t yet grieved for her interrupted life. Over
time, on the exercise bike, Beatrice learned to sit with the emptiness,
to trust that grief is not an illness (though it can feel like one), and
understand that when we anesthetize our feelings, with eating or
alcohol or other compulsive behaviors, we just prolong our suffering.
At ĕrst, during the ĕeen minutes a day on the exercise bike, Beatrice
didn’t pedal. She just sat. A minute or two into her sit she would begin
to cry. She cried until the timer rang. As the weeks passed, she spent a
little longer on the bike—twenty minutes, then twenty-ĕve. By the
time she was sitting for thirty-minute stretches, she started to move the
pedals. And little by little, day by day, she bicycled her way into her
body’s caches of pain.
By the time I met Beatrice, she had already done a tremendous
amount of work in the service of her healing. Her grief work had
diminished her depression and anxiety. She felt much better. But aer
hearing my speech at the community center event, she had wondered
if there was more she could do to free herself from the pain of her
trauma. The possibility of forgiveness had taken root.
“Forgiveness isn’t you forgiving your molester for what he did to
you,” I told her. “It’s you forgiving the part of yourself that was
victimized and letting go of all blame. If you are willing, I can help
guide you to your freedom. It will be like going over a bridge. It’s scary
to look down below. But I’ll be right here with you. What do you
think? Do you want to continue?”
A dim light sparked in her brown eyes. She nodded her head.
Several months aer she began therapy with me, Beatrice was ready