Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver-)
So if you see me on the street, cupping something as I lean into the wind, don’t be shy . Come over and help. For it’s God I’m carrying, or at least that portion of God we call the soul. So come and help. And I will calm your fear of what’s chasing you. And, perhaps, we can put whatever books we carry down, and open our small flames to the sun. (-Mark Nepo-)
On a recent morning as I stopped by the local convenience store to pick up a cup of coffee, there was a lot of laughter swirling around the room. Evidently the clerk had mentioned that our local “gentlemen’s club,” an establishment with the unlikely name of Paradise City, just across the state line about 20 miles to the west, had been a candy store when she was young, and that she had hung out there a lot. The guys in the store were being guys, punching each other and saying things to the effect that, yep, Paradise City is still a candy store, just different kinds of candy now.
Where it took me was back in time to when I did an internship in New Orleans, and stood in breathless awe at beholding my first “ladies of the evening,” gorgeous to the small town girl I was. While I learned later that these elegant creatures on the street corners were probably cross-dressers, it in no way dimmed my admiration for their resplendence. I resolved then and there that this was one of my secret fantasy professions, right up there with being a park ranger. And later, much later, when I met my first “ladies of the evening” at our local fitness center, who, as it turned out, were employees of Paradise City, I began to learn the human stories behind the oldest profession in the world.
What struck me first about these women was that they were highly indignant that some young women from the local university were trying to earn their way through college by dancing at Paradise City, and giving them some unwanted and highly resented competition for jobs. The second thing I learned was that they could use a good dental plan, probably because of the drug usage that was part and parcel of their doing this type of work. And the third thing I learned was the human story of the need to survive that drove each one of them to do what they felt they had to for themselves and for their children.
I came to love these earthy, real women, who “danced where they were lame.” Their woundedness from childhood was usually extreme, and their need to survive in their here and now world intense, but the courage and determination they demonstrated was a tribute to the human spirit. And what became more and more apparent was that the way they told their stories, what they believed to be true about themselves, determined, at least in part, what stories they were in fact living out.
Doesn’t storytelling have an enormous power over us? It conveys meaning in a way a mere explanation never could. How you tell your story, whether to yourself or to someone else, determines how and what your life is like right now, and what it will be about in the future. Your early woundings and later losses, your victories and loves, your wanderings in the desert — all of these do indeed shape your life, but do not have to determine your future.
The music of a generation shapes and forms our values and beliefs in interesting ways. Coming to age in the idealism of the ’60s, the Beatles’ song “Hey Jude” impressed me no end as a way to live one’s life, to “take a sad song and make it better.” I think sometimes that the work of counseling that I did for 40 years is just about this. We work with stories such as the ones these women are telling themselves, stories that have to do with feelings of pain, and rage, and self-hatred, and helplessness . . . Stories that speak to the sense of disempowerment that has controlled their lives. And our task as counselors was to “get in the way of” these stories. We say, “NO, that is not who you are. You have a choice. Understand the pain out of which your choices have come in the past. Experience the anger and fear and grief about what those past choices have meant for you, and then release it, let it go, and know that you can make new choices . . . Choices that have to do with living your life in way that creates some sense of well-being and happiness for you.”
The reality may be that the outer lives of women such as these does not change at all, or it may change remarkably. But the difference will be that they now have a choice, it is their choice, and that makes all the difference.
Getting in the way of a story. Getting in the way of our own story. Taking a sad song, and making it better.
And the last two lines? Remember to let her into your heart Then you can start to make it better.
.artwork by Susan Seddon Boulet.