A Letter Filled with Concern

Last week I shared with you the gift of a cache of letters and documents—eight in all—that I recently discovered in my safety deposit box. Among the documents was the “Permission for Exclaustration,” which you read last week.

Several of you who left comments noted how formal it sounded and that’s true. It was in a sense a legal document that permitted me to leave the convent for a year. I’d professed a vowed commitment to that convent on January 1963 and so this document was a formal recognition of that and a permission to leave the Mount for a year and live beyond the convent itself.

 The vow I’d taken—along with poverty, chastity, obedience, and conversion of morals—was one of “stability.” That is, I would be a part of that Community of Benedictines for the rest of my life. I was walking away for a year and so I needed permission to depart the convent and leave the Community.

This week, I’m sharing with you the following letter that Mother Mary Austin wrote to me on December 23, 1966, the day I signed the above document. That was the day before I left the convent.

Late as it is, I cannot resist writing a brief note to you. In my own name and that of the Community, I wish to express my appreciation for the contribution you have made to our apostolic work.

Even though you are leaving us, please be assured that the Mount Benedictines are not breaking their bond with you. You will be included daily in our remembrance of the “absent brethren.”

Know too, Sister, that I have faith in you as a person. I believe that you are trying sincerely to bear witness to Christ in the way that seems best for you. Know also, Sister, that if after you have tried to live outside the convent and find that you would like to return, we will gladly welcome you back. In the interim we will always have a prayerful and loving remembrance of you.

I hope you will find the peace and happiness that you are seeking. God bless you through the coming year. Please remember me and the Community in your prayers.

With love in the Holy Child,

Mother Mary Austin OSB

I don’t remember Mother Mary Austin giving me this letter. My memory of her attitude has always been that she was deeply annoyed with me. And she was annoyed on the evening of December 5 when I’d sought her out and said I needed to leave. But it’s clear from this letter that her annoyance was only momentary and perhaps she felt it only because she was powerless to give me peace from my torments. It was only in myself that I could find the happiness I sought.

I had become, in today’s parlance, somewhat of a zombie. I taught my high school religion and English lit classes enthusiastically. I participated devoutly in the monastic prayer of Benedictines. I listened intently to the students asking for advice.

I did all that was asked of me and yet I felt nothing. I was simply acting the role. It was a performance. I had lost between ten and fifteen pounds; I had no appetite; and I wasn’t sleeping. Truly I walked as the living dead from Thanksgiving on.

So I suspect now that I gave only a cursory glance at the document I signed on December 23 and at this letter from Mother Mary Austin. I’m not sure why I kept them or the other six documents I’ll share with you. I was acting on “autopilot” for many months after leaving and somehow these letters and documents must have held meaning for me even though I never again read them.

Note that at the end of her letter, Mother Mary Austin—of the Order of Saint Benedict (OSB)—asked me to remember her and the Community in my prayers. The truth is that rather quickly I ceased attending Sunday Mass and seldom prayed. I felt I was drowning in despair. I suppose my only prayer was “Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord. Lord hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!” (Psalm 130)

I did sorely miss the many friends I’d made in the convent—women who laughed a lot and showed compassion toward all and cared with deep concern about our world. Many of them are dead now, but I’m still in touch with several nuns who became dear to me during those convent years.

I think the truth may be that I was in such anguish for many months after leaving that I drew in on myself—except for when I had to put on a performance of normality at work and with the new friends I’d made at the Loretta Guild for Working Women.

I tell you now that I figuratively died during that time. I existed merely as a puppet, although I don’t know whose hand animated me. Many years passed before—like Pinocchio the marionette—the current of life pulsed within me.

I always think of that when I read newspaper stories about the Magicicada cicadas of eastern North America. They spend most of their life underground. Then after thirteen or seventeen years the mature cicadas emerge and live for several weeks, singing their unique song.

I, too, finally emerged from the dark loam of uncertainty. I left the convent in 1966 between my 30^th and 31^st year. But I think I did not truly live as a whole person until 1976 when I met Doctor Nimlos, who literally saved my life.

For everything there is a season. Peace.

PS: These past two weeks have not been—for me—the season for blogging. I’ve had two bouts of pink eye, a cold, and a sinus infection. I’m hoping that by next Monday I’ll be back to my routines. Peace.

Photographs from Wikipedia.

The Need to Be Resolute

Dayton, Ohio

In January 1967 I moved to Dayton. Two and a half years later—in August 1969—I left Ohio to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota. During those thirty-two months, I mostly enjoyed life: I made many new friends and was “adopted” by a young couple who had two children with whom I played lightheartedly.

I also dated, learned how to manage money, took a literature course at the University of Dayton, explored my emotional immaturity with an astute psychiatrist, flew home to visit my parents, lived through the death of my mother, worked at Pflaum Publishing Company, taught at two schools, attended concerts and musicals, became a frequent visitor at the local library, shopped for clothes, reveled in movies, and moved several times.

My life seemed full and rich. However, there was also the difficulty of becoming fully released from my final vows.

Last week I explained why I’d taken only a year’s leave of absence from the convent. During that time, I hoped to discover why the religious life overwhelmed me emotionally and why I found the vow of obedience so oppressive.

To my way of thinking, I’d been a total failure as a nun. All those other women with whom I’d lived for eight and a half years were able to remain faithful to their vows. They seemed content with their lives. What was wrong with me?

And yet, deep down in my psyche was the thought—one I didn’t want to embrace then or even now—that something was amiss in the convent. That it failed to help people like myself, who’d entered immature, to grow emotionally and spiritually. And yet. And yet. All those other nuns seemed fine. So I was the ugly duckling.

Throughout 1967, I became aware that I’d felt stifled in the convent. That I was unwilling—deep down—to suppress my need to be independent and to follow my own will as to what was good for me.

In early autumn of that year, the prioress contacted me, asking what I’d decided: Did I want to return or be released from my vows?

I wrote to say I wanted to stay “in the world.” She then explained that I needed to write a letter asking for permission to be released from final vows. She would forward the letter to the Roman prelate who oversaw this process at the Vatican.

Writing that letter proved difficult. I was still confused. I felt hamstrung when living the monastic life. Yet, the idea of monasticism continued to appeal deeply to my romantic and idealistic nature. The letter I wrote revealed a conflicted person.

The prelate’s reply came via the prioress. Concerned, he thought I needed more surety in my life before walking steadfastly away from monasticism. And so I was given another year’s leave of absence to think through what I really wanted to do. During that year I was to report to the archbishop of the Cincinnati archdiocese, which took in the western and southwest corner of Ohio and included both the Cincinnati and the Dayton metropolitan area. 

My independent streak rebelled. “I don’t need to see the archbishop. I just need to write a more resolute letter next October,” I thought, putting off the Cincinnati visit. Then, in the spring of 1968, I received notification from the archbishop’s office: I was to report there on the following Saturday morning.

That meeting, my friends, did not go well.

Peace.

Dayton panorama from Wikipedia.

Be Gracious to Yourself

There’s not much more to say about Dr. C. except that at our last session he gave me life-saving advice. I was leaving Dayton to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and he knew my penchant for seeking perfection so as to win approval. He also, I think, knew what graduate school would demand of me.

And so he said, “Dee, do you understand the term psychic energy?”

“No. I’ve never heard it before.”

“It means the energy that comes from your spirit. A Catholic would say ‘from your soul.’”

“Okay.”

“Psychic energy is the deep-down source of your response to life. It’s the force that keeps you going.”

“Like drawing water from the well when you need it?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

I looked at him, not knowing where he was going with this new information.

“Dee, let’s say that we have this much psychic energy for each decade of our lives.” He spread his arms far apart.

“We use up our psychic energy throughout the decade. Then we start another decade and use that psychic energy. Sometimes we have some left over from one decade for another.”

“Okay.”

“The thing is, Dee, I believe you not only used up all your psychic energy for your twenties when you were in the convent, but that you’ve already used up all your psychic energy for your thirties. You’re only thirty-three now and you’ve used up everything for this decade. You’ve asked too much of yourself.”

“What do you mean?

“I mean you don’t have any psychic energy in reserve for the rest of your thirties. And you have several years to go. You’re living on the edge of your own resources. You not only have no psychic energy for the thirties, you have no reserves from the twenties.”

“So what do I do?”
         “Be gracious to yourself.”

I didn’t truly understand the import of what he was trying to tell me, but as the years passed I realized what being gracious to myself meant. I needed to cut myself some slack. To be kinder to myself. Less demanding.

Those realizations spanned years. During the years between 1969 and 1975 I became increasingly suicidal. Then, in 1975—when I was thirty-nine—I began to see a St. Paul psychiatrist and finally talked about hallucinating and suicide. She prescribed an anti-psychotic mood enhancer. That medication changed my life dramatically.

Thirty years later—when I was seventy years old—Meniere’s entered my life. It was then that I truly learned what “being gracious” to myself meant.

In her comment on my posting last Thursday, Friko noted that I seem to have lived with a lifelong loneliness and neediness. I think her assessment is accurate. But because of the help I’ve received during this journey and because I’ve worked hard to grow emotionally, I now cherish my friends but I also know—deep down in the marrow of my bones—that my acceptance of myself is more important than winning anyone else’s approval. This has led to contentment, pressed down and overflowing.

Postscript: Would you like me to continue with those early days in Dayton after I left the convent? Or would you like me to continue to post stories about other psychiatrists and counselors I saw—in New Hampshire and Minnesota?

At some point in the next months and years, I’ll cover all of this. But perhaps you’d prefer that I stick with a single subject—like re-entering the world after the convent or like the counseling that helped me on my life’s journey. Please let me know your druthers. Peace.

Well photo from Wikipedia.

Circles. Centers. Circumferences.

Last week, I mentioned that Dr. C—the Dayton psychiatrist—had said four startling things. One was that I was the angriest client he’d ever had. In today’s post I’ll share the other three.

Number 1

At one point, I was describing my feelings about two friends. He said, “Dee, I’m no judge of spiritual maturity. What I do know is that you’re physically and intellectually mature. But emotionally you stopped growing at about thirteen.”

I was thirty-one at the time.

I asked how he could tell and he explained that the jealousy I expressed about my friends welcoming others into their circle sounded like a young teenager. I felt threatened when they befriended anyone else, as if they didn’t have enough love to expend beyond me. Also of course was my great fear of being abandoned.

Two years later, when I left Dayton, Dr. C kindly said, “Dee, you’re twenty-one now.” As he looked at me, his lips twitching with suppressed laughter, I grinned like the teenager he’d once thought me and felt a warm surge of gratitude to the man who’d helped me amass eight whole years of emotional maturity.

Number 2

A second thing he said also had to do with emotional maturity.  “Clearly I’m not enough for my friends,” I said. “They keep meeting new people. What if they like them better than me?”

He placed two sheets of paper on his desk and drew a set of circles on one—circles surrounded by other circles with their circumferences touching or overlapping a little. Each had a center point.

“These,” he said, “are healthy relationships. We are all the center of our own existence. But our lives touch other lives and sometimes we share a great deal. That’s the overlapping.”

I nodded.

Then he drew a second set of circles, much like the first. But the circumference of one circle overlapped many others and passed through several center points.

“Now here,” he said, “is how you want to relate. You want to be the center of other people’s existence. You feel secure only when you think that you are at the center of their being. You want them to be thinking of you all the time. Making decisions with you in mind. That’s emotionally immature. It’s why you have to perform when you’re in a group of people. To feel secure, you need to be the center of attention.”

Even though I acknowledged the truth of this insight, it saddened me. I took home the two sheets of paper on which he’d produced the visuals and pinned them on a corkboard. Daily, they reminded me of an emotional pattern I wanted to change.

Number 3

One final comment refashioned my idea of what to do with my life. One afternoon, I announced buoyantly, “I’m going to join the Peace Corps!”

“Why?”

Why? Wasn’t it evident? I quickly listed the reasons: I’d had a good life—a home, food, education, love. I’d been a teacher. I could go to another country and teach. I could share with others the gifts I’d been given.

He sat silent for a few moments. Then, “Dee, you just gave nearly ten years of your life to service. You practiced poverty. You taught. You gave to others.”

“That was then; this is now.”

“Look, Dee, you’ve gone through your twenties without having the normal things young people have. You haven’t bought a house. You don't have a car. No savings. The truth is you're about ten years behind other women your age. You need to stay right here in the States and catch up.”

“But people in other countries need help. I’ve been given so much. I want to share it.”

“Why don’t you give some other people a chance to share for once? Why do you need to do it all?”

I didn’t join the Peace Corps, but I did begin to understand that my need to be loved revealed itself in many subtle ways.

You know, I just remembered another gem of wisdom Dr. C shared with me. Next week, I’ll write about it.

Angry? Me?

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things

by Hieronymus Bosch

with anger at bottom of circle.

(From Wikipedia)

Last week, I shared with you what an exceptional listener the second Dayton psychiatrist was. I also wrote about my feelings toward my mother. I plan on writing more about that, but for today, let’s stay with Dr. C. I remember four things he said that startled me and yet continue to help me. Here’s number one.

         Sometime in the fall of 1967, after I’d talked about how  I’d responded with a silent treatment when someone criticized me, Dr. C said, “Dee, you’re the angriest woman I’ve ever had as a client.”

Angry? Me? I never shouted. I never even raised my voice. I never told anyone what I felt when something had been said that hurt my feelings. And I'd been very rational, very reasonable when talking about my mom and dad. Surely these were traits of a peace-loving person. Maybe a saint.

I mention saint because upon entering the convent, I set out to become one. Throughout life, I’d sought love so no one would ever again desert me. If others saw me as a saint, they’d surely love me. Who could resist loving a saint? Who’d abandon a saint?

I protested. “I’m not angry. I don’t yell.”

“You are angry. You’ve suppressed it for years.”

“Suppressed it?”

“Pushed it down inside yourself. When we suppress anger, we dam it up.”

“You think I’ve done that?”

“Yes.”

“What do I do that’s so angry? I don’t hit people or say unkind things.”

“It’s more passive than that, Dee. You walk away from confrontation. You avoid people who’ve displeased you or criticized you. You hold it in, afraid of losing others’ respect and love. It’s passive, but it’s still anger.”

“No one's ever said I was angry.”

“You’re a great suppressor, Dee. You’ve dammed your anger all your life. But ultimately, it’s going to swamp you if you don’t learn to channel it.”

“Anger’s one of the seven deadly sins.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “anger can be deadly. But it’s all in the way we express and use our anger.”

“I don't get it.”

“Think about it. There’s a righteous anger about injustice. But even that needs to be channeled.”

“I don’t understand this ‘channeling.’ I’ve been taught that feeling and expressing anger is wrong.”

“Emotions aren’t right or wrong, Dee. They just are. We get into right and wrong when we talk about the way we express them. Whether we do it hurtfully. And when we suppress as you have, we end up hurting ourselves pretty deeply. I see before me a time bomb.”

“You’re saying I’m so angry I could explode?”

“Yes. One day you won’t be able to suppress the anger any longer. You’ll either explode at someone or your health will suffer. You need to deal with this.”

“What do I do?”

“It’s what we can do.” I must have looked confused, for he continued. “Together we’ll find ways for you to channel your anger. To express it in a way that won’t hurt someone else or yourself.”

So we began. I came to understand that feeling anger wasn’t wrong and wasn’t hurtful. That expressing it in an unhealthy way by word or deed was.

He helped me realize that letting people know what I was feeling was a more honest way to live.

It took years for me to learn how to channel anger and how to be honest with others when something they said or did hurt my feelings or seemed out of line or invaded my boundaries.

Years.

And the truth is that my journey toward embracing peace within and without continues. Peace.

2009

Visiting with a friend with whom I've always tried to be honest. 

Two years before beginning this blog. 

The Second Psychiatrist in Dayton

As you know, I had three sessions with the first Dayton psychiatrist. Really only two because I began the third session by telling him that his Catholic bias was destructive. Then I walked out. 

        I do not remember whether someone recommended the second psychiatrist—Dr. C.—whom I saw from May 1967 to July 1969 or whether his was a random name I found in the yellow pages.

         However the name came to me, it proved fortunate because he helped me take the first tentative steps into adulthood. You may wonder what I mean by that. I hope to begin an explanation with this posting.

         This second psychiatrist was a large man. Broad of chest. Tall. Groomed. He never wore casual clothes. Always a suit and tie. His hair always neatly combed. His face clean-shaven.

         When I first entered his office and he rose to greet me, I thought he looked sturdy. Assured. Stable. As time has passed, I realized he looked like a CEO of a vast empire. An executive who’d been financially and professionally successful.

         I do not know how much money or fame he amassed, but he surely had his share of wisdom. In our two years of twice monthly sessions—I couldn't afford weekly—I found him straightforward. Perceptive. Discerning. He listened in a way that made me feel as if he’d roamed the world and found me its most interesting inhabitant. Never glancing at his watch. Never yawning. Never fidgeting.
          In that room, for those fifty minutes, he patiently helped me sift the patterns of my life and decide which I wanted to retain and which I was ready to relinquish.

         What he didn’t do was react to my being an ex-nun. That I’d been in the convent was simply one fact about me. That fact didn’t define the entirety of me. I was more that just one definition. As the poet Walt Whitman said back in the nineteenth century, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Walt Whitman

         Dr. C helped me realize that and realize also that these “multitudes” jarred up against one another. Contradicted one another. Tormented me. Pained me. I needed to find the source of that pain, forgive it, and perhaps even be grateful for some gift it had given me. I needed, as Joseph Campbell has so famously said, "To find my bliss." 

         That was the task on which we collaberated. Of course, in those two years, I didn’t accomplish that. In fact, nearly fifty years have slipped away as I've examined those multitudes and come to peace with most of them.
          Nearly fifty sometimes difficult years have arced my life as one by one I've embraced those fears. As you've seen in this on-line memoir, I've come at length to embrace the whole of my life. Fifty years. Half a century.
          But with Dr. C's help, in Dayton's summer heat and winter cold, the journey began.

        A few years later, I realized that I'd never told him about the three personalities I hallucinated. Nor did I tell him about my adult neighbor molesting me for three months when I was ten. I’ve asked myself why I didn’t talk about those two things. I don’t think I purposely held them back.

         What happened, I think now, is that I was intent on one thing: blaming my parents for my insecurities and for my needing to please everyone because if I didn’t they’d cast me aside like flotsam.

My dad on a fishing trip with friends in the early 1930s.

         And yet, that was another thing I never told him—that my parents had moved to Parsons, Kansas, when I five and that my grandmother told me they’d deserted me. That they’d never come back for me.

         The truth is that I had blocked that episode in my life, just as I had blocked the molestation. Remembrance came only later. And perhaps there is a further truth—that I was too ashamed of hallucinating and being molested and seemingly 

abandoned. I don't know if that's true, but it may be so.

         What I blamed them for and what I talked about with Dr. C. was Dad’s drinking, his violence when he drank whiskey, and Mom’s unwillingness to leave him, despite all my begging. I faulted my mother for enabling my dad. She’d chosen him over her children.

Mom and I feeding the heifers on Grandma O'Mara's farm.

         Please understand—I was young. Callow. I’d never truly considered her life. Her needs. Fears. Regrets. Expectations. Dreams. I’d never tried to understand her. Only later did I begin to step into her shoes and view her perspective from the depths of her having lived through the Depression, of her having been raised a devout Roman Catholic, of her undeniable love for my father.
          Only later did I appreciate how much she loved me.

         At thirty-one I didn’t realize that. I placed more blame on my mother than my father. I think now that I truly believed she had betrayed my brother and me.

         I was young. Is that excuse or explanation? Perhaps both.

A Move Accompanied by Music

In late May 1967, the four friends whom I’d met at the Loretto Guild suggested that we find a house to rent. One of them worked at the University of Dayton and knew that during the summer months the University rented the houses in which students had lived during the school months. At the end of May we moved into the house pictured in last Thursday’s posting. We stayed there for three months. During that time I dated a little. By the end of the summer that had ended.

         In August one friend began to study the classified ads in the Dayton Daily News. She found a three-bedroom apartment at a “swingin’ singles” complex that boasted a swimming pool with a concrete surround furnished with deck chairs, tables with umbrellas, and hootenanny music.

         For that swingin’ singles’ pool I bought a two-piece swimsuit. It consisted of a top that was like the modern-day sports bras and a pair of shorts that came four or five inches down my thighs. The suit was modest, its pattern a smattering of tiny pink, blue, and yellow flowers with green leaves on a white background. It suited someone like myself who was still uncomfortable with having much flesh on display. The memory of seven yards of black serge lingered and my body missed the anonymity of the habit it had worn.

         Many days in September and October, after taking the electric trolley bus home from work, I’d don that swimming suit. Opening the door to the pool area, which a tall wooden fence enclosed on three sides, I’d first dip my toes to test the water's coldness then sit on the edge of the pool, making circles in the sun drenched water. Next, I’d enter the shallow end and sit in the water. But I didn’t know how to swim, so after a few minutes, I’d emerge from the pool and settle into a lounge chair, positioned in the shadows beneath the overhanging railed balconies of the second floor.

         There I’d read while humming the songs the local DJs were playing on the radios. When not engrossed in a novel, I’d raise my head and watch the bronzed men and nubile young women flirting with one another in the pool and dancing on the concrete area surrounding it.

         The local radio stations played records by many folk artists, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Glenn Yarborough, and Simon and Garfunkel among them. It was a time rich in music.

         One of those songs—written by Seeger in the 1950s and sung by Joan Baez in the mid-'60s—helped get me involved in the Vietnam War protest.

         Another, sung by Glenn Yarborough, appealed to the men around the pool but spoke to me also. I embraced the independence advocated in the song—the searching for what’s next in life. It became sort of an anthem of freedom for me.

        

         A third song, written and sung by Simon and Garfunkel, forced me to truly look at the world in which I lived. It helped me recognize the alienation around me and the desperate need to find meaning. It helped me understand that I wasn’t the only person lost and confused.         

         The music of 1967 and the following ten years or so is embedded in my psyche. Those songs of protest, young love, human need—of taking to the road and being open to change—helped form the woman I was to become. Just as the goodness of my mother and the prayer and dedication of the convent nuns had formed me.

         Slowly I was finding a life, but I needed help because mostly my mind was muddled. I still disliked myself intensely. So next week I hope to share with you what the second Dayton psychiatrist said to me. It was peace I was seeking and with him I found mostly questions to ask myself for a lifetime.

Unexpected and Unexplained Wrath

Today we are back in Dayton, Ohio, in March 1967. I’ve returned from Washington, D. C., where I visited a friend earlier in the month. She had helped me understand that I needed professional help.

         I know now—after sessions with two psychiatrists in Dayton, one in New Hampshire, and a psychiatrist and counselor in Minnesota, and after having two spiritual directors—that I had deep-seated problems unconnected with the convent. The convent simply exacerbated my fear of betrayal and my belief that I was both unlovable and worthless.

         My friend had searched for and found a Roman Catholic psychiatrist who, she thought, might understand nuns; who might appreciate their answering a call to the religious life and, hopefully, their answering their own inner call to leave that life.

         Several of you in the past have commented on my memory. And it’s true that I have a good one. Often I can remember the whole of a conversation because since first engaging in it, I’ve often repeated it to myself. But with this psychiatrist all I can remember is the content of what he said and my response.

         I entered his office with some trepidation. At that time seeing a psychiatrist was something rich people did. People who wanted Freudian analysis. I wasn’t rich and I knew nothing of Freud.

         Also, at that time, most people I knew believed that psychiatrists treated truly “crazy” people. “Loonies.” Those who’d “gone off the deep end.” Or “around the bend.” Those who babbled inanities.

         None of those descriptions fit me I thought.

         Or did they?

         I was hallucinating—and had done so for many months—three separate aspects of myself: Anna, Dolores, and Dodo. One persisted in berating me; one assured me I was doing the best I could; the third would have, in the 1990s, taken as her mantra, “Don’t worry; be happy.”

         They entered the doctor’s office with me. Each immediately chose a corner. Each kept commenting as I recounted my convent experiences and stammered the muddled reasons why I’d left. Each had something to say as I waded through a quagmire of emotions: Grief. Regret. Shame. Guilt. Contrition. And yes, relief.

         The psychiatrist’s response? Contempt. He ranted about how God calls a person to be a nun. How I’d made final vows. Vows for life. And I’d tossed them aside.

         My memory is of him spewing forth all the dislike he had for me because I’d dared to toss aside my vows and leave the convent.

Sculpture by John Flaxman: The Fury of Athamas.

         I listened, my eyes tear-filled. After fifty minutes he barked that he’d see me the following week at the same time. My three counterparts and I left the room.

         The next week, as I remember, was the same. He cloaked me in shame, insisted I was a miserable failure.

         He commanded me to admit my mistake. Return to the convent. Do penance. Try to placate God who must be so displeased with my tossing aside His gift of vocation.

         I can remember the import of what he said, but not his exact words. I see him snarling at me. Angry. Disgusted.

         I returned to my room at the Loretto Guild and began to center myself in Presence. And as I did, I found a wellspring of peace within me.

         The next week I returned to his office. My three tag-a-longs and I walked in. He invited me to sit. I didn’t. Instead, I stood and told him the truth as I saw it: He did not believe nuns should leave the convent. He was biased. Acting on that bias was unhelpful and unprofessional. He was a sorry example of a person whose job description should have included listening with an open heart and mind. Objectively, but compassionately.   

         Then I turned around, left his office, and found another psychiatrist. 

An Update on Agent's Request

Hello on this final Thursday of July. I’ve been away from reading blogs and posting on this on-line memoir for a whole month. Today, I’d simply like to share with you what I’ve been doing.

         As you know, in late June an agent expressed interest in seeing three of my manuscripts: the Palestine novel, the cat fantasy gift book, and the convent memoir. The first and second manuscripts are completed and I sent them as attachments in late June.

         The convent memoir, however, is a work in progress. So for the first two weeks of July, I continued to write stories for it. I then sent the agent a partial that presents an introductory arc of those eight and one-half years plus stories about the novitiate and my first two and one-half years in the scholasticate—so four years of my convent life.

Dad, Mom, and me as a postulant in 1958.

         I’m pleased with the partial. I asked a friend, who used to be in the convent, to read it. After she read the 37,000 words of this submission, she e-mailed and said the following:

I just finished reading the opening part of your memoir and it is very moving and interesting and so well written. I think this is going to be a "best seller" because you are setting the record straight about why we entered and why we left. 

Your writing is clear and focused and your examples are wonderful. 

Sister Madonna and the Good Samaritan analogy was right on about how we are good Samaritans to others and others have been our own good Samaritans, binding up our wounds. 

It is wonderful and I would not change a word of it if I were a copy editor!!!

Of course, this review pleased me mightily. She later sent another e-mail with her final thoughts on the partial: “Dee, It was like I was reading my own years in the convent.  I could relate to everything. Keep on writing.” Her words are just what I need right now to continue and complete this memoir.

         I’ve gotten no farther than the partial because after those first two weeks of July, I flew away for a vacation with friends. I’m home now and recuperating from vacationing. You all know how that is.

         Next week I hope to begin reading your blogs again. If there are any postings that you especially want me to read, please let me know via a comment or an e-mail.

         Next week also, I’ll continue posting on my life after the convent. I want to share with you my three sessions with the psychiatrist who catapulted me into feminism.
        Finally today, I want to thank you for all your encouraging thoughts, visualizations, vibes, and prayers for me as I work on the convent memoir and as I await word from the agent. I haven't heard yet, but I continue to be hopeful that she will choose to represent my writing. Please do continue to send me your support for I can feel it as if it were, as the song says, "the wind beneath my wings." Peace.

The photograph of the red kite was taken by James Barker for FreeDigitalPhotos.

        

Help with Taking Baby Steps

Several comments last week asked what statement of mine Sister Mary Dennis quoted on that March Sunday back in 1967. I have only a vague recollection that I’d said something about higher education; something that she felt was “patronizing.”

I can remember being confused when she’d quoted to me what I’d said. I didn’t see how I’d been smug. But clearly that was how she saw the exchange I’d had with her friends.

By 1967 I had a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in mathematics, history, and philosophy. That degree had been conferred on me when I graduated from Mount Saint Scholastic College in May 1958, right before entering the convent next door.

While in the convent I’d spent four summers taking classes at the Mount so as to become certified in Kansas and Nebraska for teaching.

The following three summers I’d gone away to study for two master’s degrees. I spent one summer at Marquette in Wisconsin taking English courses. For two summers I studied Benedictine spirituality at St. John’s University in Minnesota. However, I left the convent before completing either degree.

So in March 1967, when I spoke with those women who were studying for doctorates, I can’t imagine what I said that would have been condescending. There were far ahead of me educationally and arrogance had always been abhorrent to me. But I can vaguely remember Sister Mary Dennis saying something about how what I’d said disparaged their family background and roots.

That didn’t make sense to me. She quoted me and yet the import of what I’d said eluded me. What I remember are foggy tendrils gliding ominously into the labyrinth of my brain. Suddenly, then, I  fell apart—as I explained last week.

At some deep level, my anguish touched Sister Mary Dennis. Immediately and instinctively, she put her arm around my waist and led me over to a nearby bench where we sat together. I continued to sob uncontrollably.

She didn’t try to persuade me to stop crying. She simply waited, holding my hand. Gently.

The Child’s Bath by Mary Cassatt

Finally, I began taking deep, gulping breaths. My tears waned to a simple trickle. It was then my friend spoke.

“What’s this about, Dee?” she asked. “This seems out of proportion to what I said to you.”

I was unable to explain because I truly didn’t understand why I was crying. I just knew fear consumed me. Fear of what? I didn’t know. Several years passed before, with help, I unblocked the memory of when I was five and felt abandoned.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Mary. I’m just so afraid. I don’t know why.”

“Has this happened before?

“This is the first time I’ve cried since the day I left the convent.”

“I’m worried about you,” she said. “Worried you might be in the midst of a breakdown.”

I looked at the concern on her face and simply nodded. I felt like a baby, crawling into a new idea. Unable to walk independently. “What do I do?” I asked. I trusted she knew and could tell me.

“I think you need to see a psychiatrist.”

“Here?”

“No, back in Dayton.”

“I don’t know how to find one.” I remember gazing at her, sure that she’d know. Sure that she knew so much that I’d never know.

“You go back to Dayton and I’ll ask around and I’ll find someone there.”

Child in a Straw Hat by Mary Cassatt

That’s what happened. The following week I received a letter in which she gave me the name of a Dayton psychiatrist. Next week I’ll share with you what happened when he and I met.

Photographs and paintings from Wikipedia.