Carla

I’ve talked several times before about my journey of personal growth.  It started in 2003 and it continues today with my Six Months project and my ongoing involvement in Foundations Workshops. This letter is about the beginning of my journey.

I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on why I do the things I do, though I get hit by my blind spots from time to time. But when I first attended a personal growth program, my own self-awareness was mediocre, and I had very little idea what other people thought of themselves or me. I lacked a sense of empathy because I was self-absorbed in my own little cocoon of shame. (Shame is the feeling that results when one believes that they are inherently flawed and therefore unworthy of love and connection.) But the cocoon was warm and comfortable and I thought it was keeping me safe.

That all changed after I was jolted awake that weekend in 2003. Suddenly I was alive. I realized I needed other people. But there’s a saying that goes, “The curse of enlightenment is that you can never go back.” I had lost my warm, safe cocoon and I couldn’t return to it.

Being with a group of people with whom I could be completely myself was exhilarating, and it came with a downside. It would take only about an hour after I left a group of people before the exhilarating feeling was gone, replaced with a painful longing. It’s like the good feelings disappeared down a black hole in my soul. I couldn’t hang onto to them. I couldn’t savor them.

This is because I didn’t love myself. It didn’t matter how much other people loved me. If I couldn’t love myself, other people’s love was like trying to hold water in my hands.

Eventually I did learn to love myself. But it took years. In the meantime, I needed to find a way to cope.

From the very beginning of my personal growth journey, Carla was there. She was a person I could lean on; somebody I could fully trust with my pain.

As I write this, I wonder if other people know what I’m talking about when I say I was in pain. How can experiencing the love of other people be painful? Here’s my best explanation: I had spent most of my life numbing my negative emotions. The problem with numbing is that it also kept me from feeling positive emotions like joy and love. A person cannot selectively numb negative emotions.  Positive emotions get numbed too.

So when I suddenly found myself feeling good—even high—experiencing of the love of others, a side-effect is that I could no longer feel numb. So I also opened up a Pandora’s box of negative emotions, particularly shame. Shame told me I didn’t deserve the love of others. So the more love I felt one moment, the more desolation I felt the next.

I started serving on the presenting team for the personal growth program the very next workshop after I graduated from the program. Carla was an experienced and steady presence on the team. She could feel and zero in on anyone in the workshop who was in pain, and she knew how to be with them in a way that would help ease their pain.

If you think for just a moment about how she was able to do this, I bet you can guess the answer. Carla has experienced a lot of pain in her own life. She can recognize it and respond. I don’t know the full story behind her pain because I was in my own pain back then, and I took without much giving back. Carla tells me it’s because I didn’t have it to give.

There’s two reasons why I know that Carla’s pain is there, though. The first is because she’s told me she’s had a painful past. The second is because I can see a kindred spirit in her.

Carla taught me empathy. Empathy was a foreign concept to me. Empathy and compassion don’t just happen; they have to be learned through practice. I didn’t practice empathy growing up, like many people do. I was too lonely and alone. I didn’t practice empathy as an adult, like many people do. I found it safer to keep people at arms-length. I spent years actually believing I didn’t need other people.

So when I was cracked open, out came pain. Carla was there to catch me. She wasn’t uncomfortable being with my pain and she didn’t try to fix it. She simply stayed with me in empathy and compassion. I didn’t have to go through the pain alone.

Before the workshop, I didn’t know what other people felt inside, the things they tend to hide from others. During the workshop, I understood that everyone feels pain, and my pain connected with their pain and we were the same. With Carla’s help, I was able to starting using empathy and compassion as tools to connect with others as part of the presenting team.

It was awkward at first, because I could get overwhelmed. But Carla and I worked well as a team because we both engaged participants from a place of gentleness and sensitivity. I was definitely the junior partner. I slowly learned how to self-manage and help others through their pain without getting lost in my own. Sometimes. Then usually. Now almost always. Almost.

After a while, Carla reported that she had developed a serious illness. She told me, “I’m a nurse. When the doctors tell me ‘no treatment, no cure’ I know what that means.” She’s the closest friend I’ve ever had who’s gotten so near the limits of her own mortality.

The doctors put in nerve blocks to ease her pain. She moved to Columbus, Ohio to be with a close friend and continue to search for physical and spiritual healing. We stayed in contact for a few years, but we eventually lost contact. So when I pulled up an old email address, I had no idea whether or not she was still alive.

It turns out that ‘no treatment, no cure’ wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. She’s as engaged in life as ever. We have a lot to catch up on. We’ve already started.

In the workshop, each of us has what we call our ‘contract’ and ‘purpose’ statement. Briefly, it’s a unique statement about who a person is and what the person does to live out her/his life purpose. Here’s mine: “I am a free man letting go of the bullshit, connecting in vulnerability.”

Carla was my mentor, leading me away from the bullshit and teaching me how to truly and vulnerably connect with others. Carla deserves much of the credit for helping me discover who I’ve become and what I do (my purpose in life). I can think of no higher compliment.