Yesterday, during my therapy session, I had a totally new experience. Over the years, I've been around the block a few times with counselling and therapy and assumed I knew how it works for me. How wrong I was. Yesterday afternoon's revelation has turned out to be a game changer, and it is just so simple: I was really, really there - and - I was really, really there! I was really in the room, sitting on my safe chair, hugging my cushion, telling my war stories to Sam and to myself. Plus I was really really there as that girl in my stories too, with all if her feelings, doubts, concerns, fears. It wasn't like all of the previous times, with me viewing my story, feeling numb and distant from the audience seats. It was really me there in the story. I was feeling it. Sensing it. Living it just as I did in 1982. As we repeadedly went through some surprisingly painful memories in cell by cell detail, I was not only hearing myself saying the words of the story, but was actually being the person who was saying them. This is so, so powerful and very new. I can see that this is part of my remembering process. For years I could hardly remember any of my war stories. This is apparently fairly normal for a warkid. Over the past few years and particularly during this (amazing) therapy, my frozen memories have been thawing. More details are emerging. The surprise for me was the transition from observing the memories to me being right in the centre of them. This wasn't as a flashback but as a controlled memory. I could start and stop. I could look around and notice other details. At the same time I was being totally aware that I was safe and sitting in the room - both at the same time. How did this happen? One time through the story re-telling, Sam encouraged me to pay particular attention to what I could smell. Then next time to focus on what I could hear. Another it was what words could I hear being spoken? That's where the connection breakthrough really came. By taking a good took at what was being taken into me, not only through my eyes but also via my other senses, a whole new level of reality switched on.
At one point in a story I was in floods of tears while remembering the taste and smell of a fizzy drink that I'd been given as a huge treat during the final, bombardment filled, days of the war. I felt so special for having been given this can of drink all for me. It tasted so fresh and reminded me of summertime at the beach. I have great confidence of being able to view all of my war stories in this way and totally connect with them.
I've already tried it out on my memories of the day when the Argentines bombed an island in Stanley's outer harbour with Napalm. Their Pucara aircraft had a distinctive sound. The smells of the smoke are still with me. These are tough memories that need to be owned before I can let them rest and move on. Painful part: I was really, really there on those terrible days too. It was a real war. With this whole new level of connection comes a whole new level of reality to process. I've learned from Sam to sit with the pain, don't suppress it. Manage the panic. Emotions have motion - it will move on to a more stable and comfortable place. Most of all, my past can't hurt me any more. Phew!
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