Impostors

Posted on April 7, 2013 by harasprice

It was 7:45 a.m. as I walked toward the table, balancing my breakfast plate and glass of orange juice along with my work bag filled with conference materials, and my head overflowing with new knowledge, inspired ideas, and a growing to-do list. I was cautious about not spilling food, juice, or inexperience all over myself as I sat down amid the group of well known doctoral program directors in my field. I sat at a table with Kia, the former doctoral program director whose shoes I will be endeavoring to fill; she is also my professional mentor and chair of this conference. Next to her was our colleague Patti, her long-time friend and our new field education director at the University where I work. Patti had come from Houston, where she had completed her PhD a few years back with a dissertation committee that included Kia, as well as this morning’s keynote speaker, Brene Brown, whom Patti was soon to introduce. I was grateful for the comfort of their familiarity at this breakfast, along with the other 80 or so doctoral program directors in the room, most of whom had years of experience and professional notoriety behind them. Although I was now an invited participant into this group, and had been welcomed with open arms by the other doctoral program directors attending, I was experiencing that gnawing sense of insecurity, the vulnerability of newness, the worry that I would be found out as an inexperienced novitiate among the well-known and respected of my profession. An impostor.

This past Monday morning, the day after Easter, began with a meeting with my Dean where I was appointed the next PhD Program Director for our School of Social Work. I am grateful and thrilled for this opportunity, and delighted to work with faculty and doctoral student colleagues in this leadership role. I am also nervous as hell about taking on this position at the start of my early post tenure years, and about balancing an administrative role with my other valued professional activities and personal life commitments. I have been very well mentored for this position, I have amazing and supportive colleagues, and I have wonderful doctoral students and invested relationships with alumni even before this formal leadership appointment. I also am a human being deeply aware of how different life in the academy is from life on a farm, in a small town, as a social worker in tiny non-profits where staff hold yard sales to generate sufficient funds to buy office supplies. Humble beginnings, for sure. Being humble in the academy is a way of life, too, though. Someone is always more experienced, better funded, higher ranked, more widely cited. Peer reviews can cut you off at the knees or make you feel relieved to have earned a thumbs-up in a forum to which you wondered if you could even submit. Academia is an institution of hierarchy, even among social work academics for whom empathy, self-determination, and professional helping are at the core of our value system.

As I sat there at the breakfast table making professional small talk and attempting to keep my impostor feelings at bay, I heard my colleague say, “isn’t that Brene?” and she stood up to welcome her and escort her to our table.

Because I am a fan of Brene’s work in my everyday life and world view, as well as recognize her as a professional colleague, this announcement offered a mix of awesomeness and further humility for me. I am keenly aware, and was even more aware at that moment, that I haven’t written any well known textbooks, nor do I have a TED talk, nor have I appeared on Oprah. Brene walked over, sat down, looked over at me and said, “I am so incredibly nervous being in this group!” and I realized at that moment that she was completely serious. She even waved off breakfast or coffee saying she can’t eat before she speaks. I absolutely know that feeling.

We go on, the small group of us, chatting about our kids, our jobs, the coming of spring. Then, Brene says again, “seriously, I am so nervous!” and I start to become aware that we are all nervous. We all harbor the impostor instinct. We are all judging ourselves in the face of who we are not. Brene goes on to talk casually about the challenges of traveling too much, being away from her kids, figuring out how to be connected…yet not connected…to the academy. Her path is circuitous, just like many of ours. We take in our best intentions to make a difference in the world and try to embrace that. Sometimes doors open and we step through, and sometimes amazing opportunities appear. Sometimes, we sit with a student or colleague and unpack the details of their journey with them, and a small light bulb goes off or a seed is planted which may later bloom into something of stellar beauty. Either way, a path emerges and in faith, we step through the open door.

We all feel like impostors in a world where we are striving to be something bigger than what we are. It doesn’t matter if we have a high school diploma or a doctorate…we are still keenly aware of what we lack, what we haven’t yet accomplished. Yet, we might actually do these very things some day, and may surpass our own self-expectations in doing things we cannot at this moment imagine. The impostor instinct is pure humanity, but left untamed it can also breed fear, and keep us from courageously living.

There is only one way to stop being an impostor: to show up as our authentic self. To stop being an impostor, we have to be vulnerable and authentically human and live. We put our best self forward, take a step back from ourselves, and see what happens from there.

On this day, Patti stands up in front of the group and acknowledges that giving this introduction is like a nightmare where you have to give a speech and two members of your dissertation committee are there staring at you…because they actually were…but she gives a beautiful introductory speech anyhow to which we all applaud. Brene stands up to give her talk and the first thing she does is acknowledge how inferior she feels in this group, because she is not a traditional academic and doesn’t have the same standing in the academy as those in this room. I stand up when it is time to introduce myself to the group and acknowledge that, unlike their collective years of experience, I am exactly 72 hours into my new academic appointment. I add that I am grateful to be in a room full of people from whom I can learn, and the woman next to me reminds me that this is true for all of us. Later, after Brene’s inspirational keynote on this subject of storytelling and vulnerability, one of my students, volunteering her time to scribe notes for the group, tearfully tells me how meaningful it is for her to be there and how Brene’s talk resonated with her. We all go on to be ourselves this day, with occasional moments of both egoism and vulnerability, but we all learn something, share something, and realize we have a common goal in advancing doctoral education. No one with a that goal is an impostor.

Another open door, another opportunity. And into it I step….

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Confirmation

Posted on March 30, 2013 by harasprice

I sat in the front of my church, along with people I had come to know well and care for deeply. Bishop Gulick was presiding, and for this I was grateful because I had met him before when I sang for his granddaughter’s baptism. He had seemed authentically human and deeply kind, exuding the kind of radical compassion that has drawn me in to this Episcopalian faith community. I had friends present to encourage me, clergy I deeply respected who supported and challenged me, and a congregation filled with amazingly interesting and diverse people around me. This community was an amazing place, and I was deeply grateful to be a part of it. But, as I imagine the followers of Jesus who wandered in the garden felt that first Easter morning, I was also there filled with a sense of anticipation accented by twinges of fear, looking for something that I was not entirely sure I would recognize even if I found it.

It was after I settled in to another chapter of my life that I considered rejoining a faith community. I had moved from the mid-west to Virginia with my spouse and daughter, who was still a toddler at the time. We spent weekends driving around and getting situated in our new state of residence. We began to joke that we may as well start going to church, because everything was closed on Sunday mornings in the south. But, in all seriousness, there was a growing desire for community and belonging that extended beyond my immediate family and my work-place. I had heard good things about the Episcopal church in my neighborhood. It was relatively easy for me to open that door, considering the radically loving and open experiences I had encountered both working in, and singing in, this faith tradition over the years.

One Easter Sunday, I wandered skeptically into St. Thomas’ and stuck my toe into the water of this faith community. Soon, my body was in a pew. Then, my voice in the choir. My hands started serving in a ministry to homeless persons, and my feet hiked up a mountain at a parish retreat. I held my daughter’s hand as she joyfully ran to children’s time each week. Pretty soon my heart even began to trust again. But, I struggled immensely with the idea of confirmation. I passed on the invitation to attend faith formation classes several times. I felt a wall between myself and commitment to organized religion. I envied the people for whom it was easy, and I felt the weight of the baggage I carried (and I hadn’t yet come to realize my parting gifts). I had open and meaningful conversations with clergy about whether it was necessary…or helpful…to go through confirmation. I alternated between “what’s the big deal?” and feeling like, “this is a huge, big, massive deal.”

One spring, after being an active congregational participant for many years, I received yet another invitation to attend Explorer’s classes from one of my clergy. Maybe the time was right, or perhaps her persistent yet open-ended invitation spoke to my soul. This time, I said yes. During this time, I learned my own questions that I thought were so far out there, so reflective of my own baggage, were actually the same questions and struggles shared by many others. I began to realize that there was a still, small voice that had been with me all along my journey. I heard this voice in music, in myth, in childhood wonder, in acts of compassion and social justice, in my forgiveness of others and their forgiveness of me, in my own quest for belonging. One evening, in the midst of a contemplative, candlelit Compline, I realized this persistent and patient presence was God. And I knew that I never had, nor would I ever be, alone.

At my confirmation, I thought about that quiet realization. Not every faith journey has a dramatic moment of conversion. The presence of the divine may be felt more like the wind rustling the trees than the fire of a burning bush. The most joyful moment of the Christian faith…resurrection…was by all accounts a quiet resumption of life, an event of great mystery between human and divine. The first people to notice the risen Jesus were quiet, beloved mourners seeking solace in memory, making an early morning visit to his tomb. Even after the resurrection, there were still doubts amid belief, and uncertainty alongside miracles. Such is the journey of the faithful, and this journey can be filled with great joy and light if we walk with our minds and our eyes open.

Confirmation for me, like Easter, was a walk through a door held open. The invitation is extended, and the journey will continue whether we take that direction or another. Walking through the door to see what opportunities present on the other side is an act of faith. But it is an act of faith performed in community, where we are all learners and teachers, the weak and the strong, the faithful and the doubting.

And so, the journey of faith goes on for me. The small points of light illuminate my path and create waves of light rippling through those that I know all along this journey with me. It really is our human journey, with many paths and many turns that bring us into relationship with amazing people and serendipitous events encountered along the way. I have enjoyed taking time to write about many of them deliberately during this Lenten season, although there are also many more stories which will still find voice in this forum from time to time, I am sure.

I am grateful for my journey, for the persistent and loving presence of God, and for all the diverse community of the faithful in this world, and in my life.

May the first light of Easter illuminate your soul and sustain you on your own journey of faith.

Sarah

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Good Friday

Posted on March 28, 2013 by harasprice

It had been 40 days since my first ashes. Well, almost 40 days. It was Good Friday and I was home from college for a long Easter weekend. My clandestine basement foray into lenten ashes was still gnawing at my soul. I was not in the custom of celebrating Good Friday, but when my dear friend Carlos called and asked me to have lunch with him, I eagerly said yes and wondered if we could go to Good Friday service together afterwards, a community ecumenical service that was going to be held in a local theatre.

I loved any opportunity to see Carlos. He had appeared in my life unexpectedly, through the church I attended with my parents. He had been in jail, had befriended another family in our congregation through prison ministry, and now released had come to live and worship in the community. He was older than I was, which drew me in even more…I was, after all, nineteen. We had an instantaneous and soulful connection that grew over time. I was mighty attracted to him, I must admit, but we weren’t involved romantically. In my mind, that seemed destined for the future, somehow, but not actualized in the present. What we did was talk for long hours into the night on the phone in my dorm or occasionally in person over long walks or endless cups of coffee. We spoke of God and poetry and theatre. But on this particular day, I was just excited for the opportunity to lunch with him, to share space and conversation.

He picked me up and we drove to a little diner the next town over. I ordered a tuna sandwich…it’s funny what detail sticks with you and how vivid that memory can be. He was quieter than usual. I look a bite and looked over at him, and it looked as if he had a tear in his eye. My tuna sandwich became a lump in my throat. “What’s wrong?” I asked, because obviously something was wrong. He shook his head. Being a teenager, I thought I was about to be dumped, or informed that he had fallen in love with someone other than me. As these adolescent thoughts were racing through my mind, he reached across the table and took my hand. “I have to tell you something. I am sick. I just went to the doctor. I had the tests. They told me I have AIDS. I am dying.” The tuna sandwich lump in my throat now seized my soul. It was the 1980’s. I was young and blissfully falling in love, or perhaps just trying to figure out what “love” really was. This was small town America and I was a naive pedestrian in it, strolling carefree toward adulthood. Then, suddenly, the world of grown-ups, of sickness and death and pain, that world was becoming my world. And I rose to the occasion, as best I could. “I want to know everything. And I want you to know I am not going anywhere.”

I learned the whole story that day, and we walked to the church-in-a-theatre and sat together, listening to the narrative of Good Friday. We held each other’s hand as if clinging to life itself…and perhaps we were. That day, like the ashes of lent placed on my brow 40 days earlier, was burned into my soul. Death was suddenly not a foreign concept to be avoided until a long way down the road. The shadow of death was present, and real.

But death is not the end.

Ironically, I was playing Mrs. Gibbs in a production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at that time. I spent many rehearsals of Act III as the deceased Mrs. Gibbs, “detached but not maudlin” (Wilder’s specifically written stage direction) looking out onto the life still happening around her, the scenes of love and life and loss continuing to play on. I worked out a lot of inner monologue during this accidental drama therapy. Some lines from that play remain with me to this day: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute.” And, of course, my beloved friend Carlos came to watch every performance. Life becomes the drama, and the drama becomes life.

Every Good Friday, I go viscerally back to these moments in time, and I relive these stories. The passion narrative seems inextricably linked with my own life narrative. The words of Jesus take on personal and symbolic meaning…perhaps exactly as they are meant to.

We all have a time where our own mortality comes into clarity. It is one of the most frightening, yet most formative, moments of growing up. But, I also learned that looking death in the face was deeply liberating. The core of forming one’s soul, one’s sense of self means looking squarely at the fragile nature of human life, and choosing to live within that risk. It transformed everything about my daily life, it altered my perspective on life and living. It allowed me to choose to move forward into a life that could include death. It caused me to struggle and figure out by trial and error how to live…and love…in that world. It has not always been a smooth journey. But it has been filled with many, many lessons. And, as I have come to realize this Lenten season as I write these stories, many points of light.

Perhaps the ashes at the beginning of that first Lenten season were an anointing of my body and soul for what was to come. It was an invitation to grow, to live deeply and soulfully, even through the shadow of death.

Perhaps our time in the shadows of life allows us to see even faint rays of light more clearly.

And perhaps, that is the lesson within Good Friday.

“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.

-stage manager, in the play OUR TOWN”
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

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Music of the heart

Posted on March 28, 2013 by harasprice

My cousin, Jenny Trometer, is my point of light today. Her talent and her gentleness and kindness of spirit make me know that there is light in the world. Jenny brings her own gift of music and affection to all those she meets, especially the residents of a local nursing home where she plays her music to brighten their day. Thank you Jenny and congratulations on this television debut. You are a shining light in the lives of so many people. Please watch and listen:

Sharing her Musical Gifts | Wingingit.tv.

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Strong Women and Little Children

Posted on March 25, 2013 by harasprice

I have been thinking a lot about my Gramma today. Viola Mae Hauber Hudson, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, matriarch, farmer. Gramma and I bonded from an early age over an identical left leg birth mark. One round, small spot on our left leg we shared that seemed to mark us indelibly as kindred spirits. I still see her puzzling over her crossword puzzle as I catch glimpses of myself pondering over the precise selection of words when I write. I still hear her barking orders to the cows, the milkmen, the barn cats (scat!) and as I age, my voice takes on her deep tone and wistful humor, particularly with my students. I still smell her cooking, and taste her apple pies, baked in her own well aged pie pan. I often say, “It takes all kinds…” when I agree to disagree with the many kinds of people who pass my way and push my buttons. This strong woman, my Gramma, is always close in spirit.

In my spiritual journey, I am grateful to my Gramma for her pragmatism, inspiring faith formation within ordinary, daily activities of life. She was one of the women always hosting the church bizarre, planning the strawberry festival and dolling out fresh berries over home-made biscuits and ice cream. She cooked nearly every after-funeral gathering, except for her own. She probably would have done that, too, if she could have. She would speak her mind to any clergy person, not in the lofty language of abstract theology but in the practical, everyday reality of how to live in harmony and respect each other. She lived for each day, and focused on the needs of the present moment. She attended church whenever she wanted, and didn’t attend when she didn’t want to. We said grace before big family meals, and she meant it when she thanked God for harvests, crops, weather, and health. We had what we needed, but often little more than that. And, for what we had, we were grateful.

Did she pray? Did she doubt? She was a young widow who had to raise a family and run a farm. You could argue she didn’t have time. But you could argue that her daily steps forward to live and work in stubborn strength were, in themselves, both prayers and acts of faith.

I am sure that my Gramma cried sometimes, although we didn’t see it…well, other than when she fried strong onions, perhaps. Those were the only tears I saw for years. Until she was dying. I remember that time vividly, turbulently. My Mom and my Aunts, especially Joyce with whom she lived, were caring for her to the very end. They were doing everything possible to maintain her strength and integrity. Cancer was making their job harder by the day. I was visiting from out of town, along with my daughter who was, at that time, a playful and oblivious 18 month old with chubby cheeks and mischievousness oozing from every pore. She would play peek-a-boo around the walker and oxygen tanks. Gramma, in a haze of pain medicines, would moo like a cow and send her little great-grandchild into peals of laughter.

But, it eventually came time for me to leave. My flight was scheduled, but I didn’t want to say good-bye. I sat on Gramma’s bed and held her hand. I promised her I would live true to our shared birth-mark. I assured her I was raising the next generation of strong women, present there at bedside full of her clumsy and lavish unconditional toddler love. Gramma cried, big tears. So did I. My Mom and Aunt Joyce had to leave the room. But all of our spirits stayed and lingered there together, strong women of four generations. All struggling to put something beyond words into words. We never did find the words. But we shared those moments.

A few hours after our flight returned us safely home, Gramma died. We returned for her funeral barely 48 hours after we had left her bedside. In the meantime, it had snowed and there was ample toddler playtime in the midst of funeral preparations. It was like a vintage picture, the whole family walking from small church to the cemetery down the road through swirling snows and moist eyes. What I remember the most from all the blurry funeral moments, though, was my little daughter in the old country church, waving and playing peek-a-boo toward the casket. She didn’t see the death. She saw the life, just as she had seen it around the bedside and the oxygen tanks. I actually have no doubt (nor did my spouse) that she was seeing what we could not that day: the loving, present, playing spirits of the strong woman and the little child. The archetype of mother, grandmother, strength, family. The eyes of the young are open even when ours are closed.

During this Holy Week, we are challenged to walk through the last days of the passion narrative, to hear Jesus ask for the cup to pass from him. I imagine the words of Jesus reflecting the human desire to live and avoid death, the same way my Gramma’s tears showed her desire to cling to life. Jesus became more real for me during my spiritual journey when I began to stop heading in a bee-line of expectation for Easter. Instead, Lent and in particular, Holy Week ask us to take in the doubt, the denial, the struggle, the pain, the mockery, all wrapped together in the the deep and abiding love present in this narrative.

In my readings and meditations this week, I began to notice the strong women, the women of faith who were at the last supper, at the cross, at the tomb. Were there children in that scene, too, whose stories and experiences were not able to be fully captured by the words of the grown-ups? Were they able to see past the suffering and death, and seeing, instead, light and life?

I believe they were there. And they saw something the adult disciples could not. And they still do.

Strong women and little children are profound sources of light in my life, and in the world. In them, we see the Kingdom of God present here and now in the everyday wonder of living.

“Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17)

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Parting gifts

Posted on March 25, 2013 by harasprice

I have been reflecting on my spiritual journey as Holy Week begins. At times in my life it has been easier to consider what faith traditions I am NOT than to articulate what I am, what I do believe. That is my current challenge, actually, which perhaps is what inspired my blogging during this season. So, as I have been blogging these stories of light I have brought to mind those paths I have started down, the identities I have tried on, the places of worship I have visited, the boxes into which I have been placed or into which I have crawled for comfort. As I start on this final stretch of Lent, I pause to reflect not on the reasons I left or what didn’t fit. I want to describe what went with me from these experiences, the parting gifts to my spirit along my spiritual journey.

My earliest memories of church are a small congregation that called each other “brother” and “sister” and in which the code of belief and behavior was highly prescribed and strictly enforced. There was a freedom of expression in spirit…and that is a gift in Pentecostal worship, even if the beliefs and practices themselves did not take with me. Music was my solace, my own personal expression and I took this with me as my own parting gift which has brought lifelong spiritual connection. When my family left this church as an adolescent, I believe in retrospect that my mother felt sadness, my father felt anger, and I felt relief. The parting gift in that experience, though, was that I realized a family could be in different places spiritually and yet still be together and support one another’s growth. So, it became OK to question, to move, to try to find one’s fit, to see God in multiple expressions of worship. This has made me a different kind of person in my relationships, and in my own parenting. These may not have been intentional gifts, but they have been instrumental on my path nonetheless.

The second church of my youth had active youth ministry, music, and drama which resonated with my spirit. This time allowed me to explore being a church musician, a camp counselor, a youth leader, a young but involved church participant. I jumped into membership. I began to recognize the gifts of leadership, and of service. And then, I became disillusioned. This seemingly living, growing faith could only be framed as acceptable within a particular ideology. This period of my spiritual life aligned largely with both my high school and early years of college, which were at a similar religiously affiliated school. My parting gifts emerged from within profound challenges between beliefs of the soul and practices of the people. I learned that faith for me was radical. If I was going to believe in the stories of Jesus on which I had been raised, these stories had to become real through uncomfortable, mind-stretching, consciousness raising transformative love.

Unfortunately, I did not find many people who shared this view. So, in my next chapter of spiritual life, I was a wandering spirit. I took the term “spiritual but not religious” very seriously. I took classes in world religion. I read the Torah and the Qur’an for myself to understand these sacred texts. I studied Buddhist thought and meditated. I practiced incantations with pagans, and took in the stories and myths of nature-based religions. I went to spiritualist meetings, and humanist lectures. I got over the ideology that any of these traditions were “bad” or “evil” and stopped allowing others to pontificate on perhaps well-intended, but ignorant, misrepresentations of the many faith traditions in this vast and amazing world. I received a parting blessing of peace, understanding, and radical tolerance during this time of wandering. I learned, to the core of my being, that we all share an authentic human quest for knowledge and experience of the divine. What an amazing gift.

In my wanderings, I had stepped foot in several progressive Christian churches. I sang in a choir for many years, and was employed by a Health Care facility with deep ties to the Episcopal church and particularly transformative and radically loving clergy. I had stuck my toe into those waters of something familiar to my upbringing, yet different in acceptance and inclusion; but I couldn’t jump in. I couldn’t see my parting gifts at that time. I could only feel the frustration and take a self protective stance where formal religion needed to be kept an arms length away. So, I became deeply cause oriented, and found spiritual growth in advocacy and social justice, aligned with my profession. I sang music I had loved and played piano to center my spirit. Music, myth and mystery, and social justice. These gifts sustained me, and remained with me.

They remained through times of darkness. They illuminated my path with points of light.

Eventually, I would recognize these parting gifts as parts of my journey, and I would begin to reclaim my faith. But, this too is a journey. Perhaps one that begins with the waving of palm branches, and leads to a cross. The small flicker of faith and hope barely visible on the horizon. And yet, I keep moving forward.

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Peace. Bubbles. Light.

Posted on March 23, 2013 by harasprice

When I stood in my assigned space in the alto section of the choir loft, across from the organ, it was Michael’s tenor voice that I heard behind me. The choir at St. John’s-Grace was an eclectic combination of people: old, young, gay, straight, questioning, sober, never sober, dignified, unkempt, and ever changing. Most of the people were in the choir because they were in the church and liked to sing. I was in the church because I was in the choir, and I got paid to sing. To clarify, I was paid very little, and sometimes I was not paid at all. But, the job I had been recruited to do, whether paid or voluntary, was to sing and to teach the alto members of our choir their respective parts. That duty kept me coming back week after week, even though I didn’t necessarily consider myself a worshipper. I am reliable and social, a true Gemini-Dog in Western and Eastern astrological assignment. My voice and body were there every week. My spirit still wandered.

Michael, who stood and sang tenor behind me, was there to worship not only with his voice but with his whole spirit.

Choir is a good place to get to know people. I knew that Michael was gay, and that there was some unrequited love with another person in our musical group. This I learned when I asked why he seemed so sullen at our early choir gatherings. But, time passed and Michael fell in love with another wonderful man, Kim, and the two of them created delightful conversation and a life together that was a joy to behold. We celebrated their union and committed some well meaning deviance by openly blessing their union years before the Episcopal church sanctioned…or even allowed…these decent, human and divine blessings. Our priest, nearing retirement, had decided not to ask permission and in this case, found it unacceptable to ask forgiveness. He and the church took heat for this, and being the rebellious and non-aligned person I was, I took delight in the whole thing. I attended the ceremony, sang, and danced at their reception, and I felt true joy in my spirit.

Each week during the service, I turned at the passing of the peace and hugged Michael. He was always thin, but seemed to be getting thinner and frail. His gentle spirit began to show signs of being worn and weary. He didn’t openly discuss his HIV status, because the early 1990’s were a difficult and challenging time for HIV positive people. I knew that familiar story, and that disease progression, all too well from both my personal and professional life. One Sunday, I hugged Michael at the peace and he held me just a little closer, a little longer. He felt like skin and bones. He smiled, but his gaze seemed far away. By our mid-week choir practice, Michael had ended his life. I knew from the first moment I heard, and I felt to my core of my being, that his suicide was not an act of hopelessness. It was an enancted choice in when and how to move from this world to the next.

Michael’s funeral was a time of great sadness, and great joy. We wept and people wondered “Why?” Some tried to judge or question, which made me angry. Who among us felt they had the right to question or to judge? It was an emotional, raw and authentically human memorial service. Again, we held a ceremony. We held a reception. We embraced Kim and wished we could still embrace Michael. Kim invited us to dance. And, we did. Before the night closed, Kim also produced several cases of bubbles: little jars of soap bubbles with a wand inside. He asked each of us to take one with us, to live our lives and travel to beautiful places. To blow bubbles while we were there, and to think of Michael when we set each bubble off on its journey, knowing he would be with us and delight with us in those moments. I still have bubbles with me in my sketch bag, which comes with me to beautiful places where I travel. And I still blow bubbles and think of Michael.

But, the bubbles are not the only point of light in this story. As I said, I knew in my spirit from moment one exactly why Michael left when he did, as he did. At first, I kept it to myself because I simply thought it was my way of coping. In retrospect, he and I had shared several end-of-life conversations. He knew I had lost people I loved to AIDS. He was a pharmacist, and had extensive medical training. He knew. But the next few Sundays at the passing of the peace, when I would viscerally miss the embrace of my friend, my own internal sense of knowing would grow as well. It couldn’t be silenced. I just didn’t know how to give it voice.

Then, one choir practice evening, a member of the choir made a disparaging remark when our director told us that Michael’s ashes were going to be placed in the columbarium at the entrance to the church, and we were invited to join in a final prayer of committal. Someone made a dogmatic statement about suicide being an unforgivable sin and questioned the sanctity of church burial. As happens when I get righteously angry, words trapped inside tend to find their way out very quickly. My eyes flared, my voice shook and I spoke with some authority that wasn’t entirely my own about Michael’s choices, his perhaps desperate…but not selfish, heartbreaking…but entirely realistic, desire to keep control of his living and his dying. The debate went on for entirely too long. But, in the end, consensus was reached to lovingly commit Michael’s remains within our church walls. I went to the committal, and I prayed. Shortly after, life took me away from that choir and that church, but our parting was with peace and love and understanding.

Several days after Michael’s remains were committed, I had a vivid dream. I dreamed that I turned around in my choir stall and Michael was there. He was radiant, and filled with light that reflected divine love from within and from beyond. He smiled his gentle smile, and embraced me. I felt his embrace and his body, flesh and bones, as I whispered “peace be with you” and then, in my dream, he became a dove that flew away into the light. I awoke in the night, the light bringing me sharply into full consciousness. That dream has remained vivid even after many years.

Sometimes, even now, I see a dove, or I hear its coo, and I return to that dream image of light. Other times, I release a soap bubble and watch its iridescent radiance grow, and shrink, and drift, and float away, finally dissipating into the air.

And, I think of my friend. And I feel peace and faith and love.

And there is light.

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Present moment

Posted on March 22, 2013 by harasprice

There is usually a point on the journey where things get hard, and I knew that I would probably hit a point this Lenten season where craziness would ensue. I didn’t set out to “blog” as an intention in itself; this blog has been an unanticipated outgrowth of an intention to nourish my spirit as often and as much as I nourish my body. I have been reading, meditating, engaging in centering prayer and contemplative thought. Time has always seemed to present itself, and stories have been in my mind when I carve time to write them.

Then, there is this week. My to-do list is growing, I have been away from my home more than in it, stressors abound at work while my daughter is not feeling well at home and just wants her Mom, and I am not there in the ways she wishes I would be. That elusive work-life balance (a term I am beginning to abhor) is no where to be found. So this morning, I walked in spite of the coldness that has re-emerged after we thought spring was here. It was difficult to motivate myself, and never felt pleasant to be honest. And, I am writing this note as much to myself as to anyone who might read it. It feels disjointed and unpolished, but I am writing it nevertheless. I am then going to shower and pack and drive to city number three in as many days. And I am going to push through this time and stubbornly try to focus, to keep writing and reflecting and spiritually centered in an attempt to not give in to the frenetic pace of life that so often sends me spinning out of balance. Sometimes, the journey involves doing the best we can in the moment, with a faith that the moment will bring us what we need either as we live it, or when we get through it.

Maybe that is the point of lent, too. It is easy to give up something or take on an intention when the stars align and all is working in our favor. Then comes the hour when it we feel like it is too much, when we want to cry out to a God in which we believe, or hope, or trust, or wonder is there and ask that divine inspiration to figure out how to make it through intact to the other side of the swirling, raging storm for us. Then we realize, this is life. It has to be lived in the highs, the lows, and the just plain ordinary. All are aspects of this life.

To stay on the journey requires faith and forward momentum, even by a single step. And so, I rise to greet this day in the present moment. Let there be light.

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200 People

Posted on March 20, 2013 by harasprice

I have spent many years working both directly, and in advocacy roles, with families who have experienced a tragic loss related to SIDS or other sudden and unexpected infant death. These losses are sudden, devastating, and life altering for families. One unspoken worry when a death happens to someone so young is that their potential will be lost when death happens so early in life. And yet, I believe, every life has an impact. I don’t just believe that, actually. I know it.

I read one time that the death of an infant impacts 200 people. That assertion was not backed up with rigorous data or social network analysis (I think I may have read that statistic before ‘social network’ was a familiar term, let alone a methodological approach). I have quoted this estimate to families as a comfort, but in reality I think it’s an under-representation. Let me just take one small, tiny case in point. There are many others, too. But tonight, let me look closely at just one of these tiny children. I will call him “Jack.”

Jack died, unexpectedly, at age 6 months. His parents were devastated, and his family was in deep mourning. They lived in a very rural community. One of their neighbors, who happened to be a social worker, had met a woman in the nearby city while she had been in school. That woman had recently expanded a program to support grieving families to reach beyond the city and into rural counties. That same woman had hired me, from another state where I had supported families living through these same challenges, just a few weeks prior. And so it was that the neighbor of the woman whose baby had died called me on the phone during my first week of working (and living) in a completely different state to ask if I could drive down to visit and provide counseling. Which, of course, I did.

When I visited this grieving woman in this tiny, rural town, she showed me Jack’s picture and I was grateful to see his image and connect her stories to this image of a beautiful baby. I also took time to meet the neighbor who had referred her. We kept in touch and I began to learn more about the high infant mortality and corresponding support needs of this rural area. Being from a rural area myself, albeit halfway across the country, the needs and capacity of the rural community reached out and took hold of me. Eventually, we conducted a formal needs assessment and I wrote a grant. We had the good fortune to be funded. I hired that neighbor to work on the grant project. That grant touched over 1500 women through education and depression screening, and offered direct intervention to 200 depressed and/or grieving women over five years. And it reinforced what I wanted to do with my newly emerging research career.

I took my knowledge from that program and have gone on to another state and a faculty position to conduct research integrating mental health support into maternal and child health home visiting programs that support women and families, especially in areas with high rates of fetal and infant mortality, significant poverty, and sometimes few resources. Hundreds of women (and hopefully thousands over my career) will have better access to education, services, and support from the amazing organizations with whom I partner. Today, our research team made the first visit to our four newest partner communities around the state. We are poised to do even more meaningful work in partnership with these communities. The potential and expectation is palpable.

I also became involved with an amazing organization, the Pregnancy Loss and Infant Death Alliance (www.plida.org) and eventually served on their board, and later as President, now past president. I tell the story of families (like Jack’s) to professionals around the country. So now, I work daily to build better bridges to support grieving families as well as mothers who experience mental health challenges in pregnancy and postpartum. And, I work with professionals internationally doing the similar things in their own communities to support their own contributions to quality care and compassionate practice.

The point of light here is not about my past, present or future work. It is about babies like Jack, and people like Jack’s parents and family and friends. It is about what happens after a death when feelings and experiences are shared and people begin to care in different and more expansive ways. It is about what happens when we are touched and transformed and are willing to act on that transformation and make a difference.

People are changed. Lives are impacted. Light is spread.

For Jack…and for all the amazing yet short lives who have touched my journey…your lives have not only impacted 200. Your lives have impacted thousands.

Each one of you is a small, but brilliant, point of light.

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Broken Heart

Posted on March 19, 2013 by harasprice

A colleague of mine at our counseling agency had a brother who had become a Buddhist monk.  He was visiting with her, so she invited us for an evening of meditation and conversation at her home.  The group was eclectic, and the time spent in group meditation was centering and calming in the midst of a rather hectic work week.  In retrospect, though, the evening was eclipsed by a television news story that broke that same evening regarding a horrific traffic accident.

At that time, the grief counseling agency where we worked was a major crisis intervention and grief support provider for the region.  I mostly stopped watching the news entirely, since it would often foreshadow the events of the next work day and keep me from resting.  On that same evening of centering meditation, however, we could not avoid the news of an accident between a tractor-trailer truck and a van carrying disabled passengers coming home from a sheltered workshop.  Only the centered place where I’d spent a portion of the evening allowed my body to rest that night.

The next day, those of us working for the agency met together and reviewed the community requests for crisis intervention and bereavement support.  At times of crisis, we all were deployed in some fashion based on availability, expertise, or need.  Sometimes we went in pairs, but this time there were more requests than personnel.  So, I drove myself to a group home for adults with developmental disabilities where two of the residents had died in the traffic accident.  I do not have special expertise working with people with developmental disabilities; but I do have the pleasure of having a lifelong friend with a developmental disability.  Our growing up together, and our knowledge and support of each other over the years gave me fuel to understand what the people I was about to spend the day with might be experiencing.

I acknowledge that my memories of crisis response are generally a blur; adrenaline has a way of dulling the detailed long term memory which is actually psychologically helpful.  However, there was one incredible moment during this otherwise tragic day that has remained with me since, a bright light in the midst of a dark day.  That point of light…and love…is today’s reflection.

All the residents of the group home were invited to a support and processing group.  Most of the people attending had some intellectual and cognitive challenges, but all were first and foremost human beings with deep, grieving hearts.  I chose to run this group as I would any other: with integrity, factual knowledge, supportive reassurance, toleration of all emotions, and processing of all feelings.  We went around and told stories of who each person was, how each person was feeling, and how each person remembered their friend and co-resident.  Some people were talkative, some were silent.  One woman cried, and her friends put their arms around her.  She described one of the men who died as her boyfriend.  She asked if she could go to her room and get something to share.

She came back into the circle and showed us a painted, ceramic heart.  He had made it for her a few weeks ago, for Valentine’s Day. She held the heart out and showed it to everyone.

“My heart is broken.  But his heart is still here with me.”

Her words spoke truth that day, and brought me back to the same centered moment where I was the day before.  The deep, abiding humanness of love, and of loss.

We feel deep loss because we have experienced deep love.  We can rage at the reasons (or lack thereof), we can cry at the felt injustice, we can feel relief when pain and suffering ends, we can feel guilt or regret for words said or actions left undone.  The human emotions are seemingly endless.

But, once we love deeply, that heart remains with us.  Through life. Through death.  It changes who we are to the core, and doesn’t leave us even when those we love are no longer here to share our common spaces of life.  Love remains.

There is no brighter light than that realization, spoken in simple and elegant words that have resonated in my heart ever since.

Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm: For love is strong as death.  (Song of Solomon 8:6)

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