No Longer Who I Was But Not Yet Who I Will Be - Part
3
Michael A. Harvey, Ph.D.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
So I come to you, not as one who has personally experienced this kind
of hero’s journey (I don’t have a hearing loss), but as a kind of
story-teller; as one who has had the privilege of bearing witness to the
“tales of triumph” of persons who have hearing loss. To be frank,
after doing this work for 25+ years, I find myself asking many more
questions than when I first started out. On my good days, I view this as
maturity. At other times, I long for the certainty that my auto mechanic
has. It would all be so clear: clean the carburetor, grind the valves,
adjust the timing belt. It would be irrelevant whether or not a
piston-engine is ready to change.
I’ve learned to be less clear about what form a hero’s journey
may take. I don’t pretend to know the “best” way. But what seems
quite clear is that any journey requires navigational tools, like a
compass, to make sure you don’t get lost. So let me talk about some
tools.
Finding vital threads of continuity. A 60 year old man, who had lost
his hearing, once told me, “Although I’ve had many challenges in my
life, becoming deaf was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before! My
wife loves to socialize but it’s impossible for me to function in
social settings. What do I do? How does one “adjust”?
I asked him whether there was anything he had learned from those
other challenges in the first six decades of his life that could help
him. After a few moments, he recalled when he first learned to ski. “It
was absolutely terrifying,” he said. “Just looking down that huge
mountain!”
“And what did you do?” I asked.
“Well, at first I just stood there and was going to chicken out,”
he said. “But all my friends were watching. So I took a deep breath,
prayed, and focused only on the immediate, shorter path; then I went
down that mountain very slowly, trail marker by trail marker.”
We then discussed the “huge mountain” of hearing loss; of letting
go of his hearing self and beginning a hero’s journey toward adopting
a new self. I wondered aloud to him whether, like he did before, it
would be a good idea to break up the task of attending parties as a deaf
person into “shorter sprints.” I read to him a quotation from Mary
Catherine Bateson, a cultural anthropologist:
“Much of coping with discontinuity has to do with discovering
threads of continuity. You cannot adjust to change unless you can
recognize some analogy between your old situation and your new
situation. … If you can recognize a problem that you’ve solved
before, in however a different guise, you have a much greater chance of
solving that problem in a new situation.”
Later that week, this man metaphorically began skiing down to the
first trail marker; he showed up at a party exactly when it was called
for (when there were only a few people) and left when he felt
uncomfortable. He had found a “vital thread of continuity” between
how he had once overcome the challenge of skiing, a previous seemingly
impossible situation, and how he could now, once again, overcome a new
situation - this time, adjusting to hearing loss.
Another tool:
Know that parts of the journey must be done alone, but other parts
must be done with someone else.
e.g. The story of Carol:
"About 30 years ago, when I had just turned 21, I was driving
around with a bunch of friends on a beautiful summer day. We were
stopped at an intersection when a drunk driver hit us head-on. The next
thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital, having been in a coma for several
days. I found out later that all my friends in the car had been killed
instantly. I very clearly remember, as if it were yesterday, lying there
watching peoples' mouths move but being unable to hear their words. My
hearing was completely gone!”
She told me about how her parents helped her:
"I had to take a year’s leave of absence from college to
recuperate. I was living at home with my parents, going to physical
rehab as well as a host of doctors. I remember when it first really hit
me that I was deaf and that I was going to be deaf forever. It was the
middle of the night, about a year after I left the hospital. A terrible
nightmare about suffocating in a plastic bag had just woken me up. My
heart was pounding and my whole body was covered with sweat. Without any
hesitation, I immediately went straight to my parents' room, like I was
a little girl again.
"For a minute I stopped in my tracks and stood there noticing
how soundly they were sleeping and how very peaceful they looked. But
there was no question in my mind that they would want me to disturb all
of that. So I shook them out of their sound, peaceful sleep and told
them about my nightmare. We all knew what it meant.
"My mother held me; I felt her body spasm and we both began to
cry. She began to stroke my hair. My dad was sitting up in bed with one
hand on my mom's shoulder and the other one on mine. He was crying, too.
I felt real close to both of them that night. None of us got any more
sleep.
"As the sun rose, my dad suggested we take a walk. I walked
between my parents - hand in hand - just like I used to do as a kid,
along the same paths in the woods that we had walked so many times
before. The sun came up over the trees, through the mist, exposing the
spender of greens and other colors of the woods.
"We were quiet for a long time. My dad was the first one to
break the silence. As we sat down on a some rocks, he said very gently
and lovingly, 'You know, pumpkin (his pet-name for me), you'll get
through this. You're going to have a full, happy and very successful
life - but not without some pain. You never have to shut us out from any
of that.'
"We all began to cry again and we sat there for a very long
time. The mist was gone and the sun by this time radiated through the
trees. It was then I knew that everything would be okay."
When we are alone, without someone physically present, we can still
have dialogue with that person. Two months after 9/11/01, a
Boston-based, American Airlines flight attendant requested
psychotherapy. She hadn’t been to a therapist since she was 10 years
old when her mother passed away. But now, amidst sobs, she told me that
she was brutally awakened most every night by nightmares of explosions,
being trapped, flying blooded bodies and mass graves. Obviously, no
interpretation was needed. She felt alone and scared. Her best friend
had been trapped on that fateful flight that ended in a mass explosion
of the World Trade Center. Her so-called post-traumatic symptoms began
days afterward.
Among other things, I asked her if she talked to her mother after
awakening from her nightmares. She gave me a angry glare and said, “I
told you my mother is dead.” I replied, “I know. But you can still
talk to her.”
Several days later, I got an email from this woman. Let me read a
section of it to you.
“Dear Mike. I feel silly writing this, but I’ve been talking to
my long deceased mother most every night. When I’m up at night by
myself, thinking of how our world has changed, I think of my mom and I
in the kitchen together. Last night, I asked her, ‘Do you remember
when Johnny called me ugly? You hugged me. Then we made caramel apples
and you let me eat one after I had brushed my teeth. I smile every time
I recall that very special night.’”
Alongside the unfathomable horror of 9/11, that flight attendant
could visualize that special night with her mother. That was an
essential tool for her hero’s journey.
I’m reminded of a movie, “Cast Away,” starring Tom Hanks as a
FedEx worker whose plane crashes on a tropical island. He finds himself
without much of a future and without hope of ever getting back to
civilization. He shouts "Hello? Anybody?" at the sand and
trees. And when he realizes he’s all alone, he paints a face on a
volleyball and names it Wilson. He talks out loud to Wilson and imagines
that Wilson talks back to him. He even risks his life to save his
talking volleyball.
I have imaginary dialogue through my writing. While alone in my
office, I type a bunch of stuff in my computer and imagine how you and
others would respond. And I kind of go back and forth with various
imaginary conversations all day. It’s something I don’t tell a lot
of people about, because it would be taken out of context - but it’s
an essential part of my own growth.
Jill also spoke about the value of relationships for her growth.
During our work together, she decided to move into a new housing
development. She reported that, as the only single woman in the
development, she had the best time of all. “Everyone else was fighting
about what colors to choose, the type of tiles, the rug, the wall, etc,”
she said. “But I made my own decisions and had no one to fight with.”
“However,” she then added, “I didn’t learn as much as the others
did.” As feminist writers have emphasized since Carol Gilligan’s
famous book, In a Different Voice, one important facet of growth happens
in connection with another.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
