Healing childhood trauma is the vocation of many gifted mental health professionals who I have encountered and collaborated with over the years. Wounds from our childhood stay hidden in our bodies (or not-so-hidden) for the rest of our lives, manifesting as many forms of cancers and blood disorders, headaches, digestive issues, cardio-vascular or neurological dis-ease, and many other bodily, psychological and emotional dysfunctions (Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment, Norton: 2000). Many spiritual maladies of our adult experience also reflect our childhood trauma, and it is for this reason that spiritual companions often work hand-in-glove with the sage wisdom of our counseling counterparts. It may be that the psychophysiological and spiritual aspects of a sojourner’s odyssey fold into and emerge out of one another, such as stomach-aches that mysteriously manifest when religious artifacts or even odiferous triggers like incense are present. In one such case, a woman’s counselor and her spiritual companion helped her work through her childhood trauma of clergy abuse and subsequent denial and shaming on the part of her religious leaders. In another case, a young husband’s male God-language triggered such violent reactions in his early married years that his wife wondered if we could “exorcise” him by praying the prayer known as the “Our Father.” As it turns out, the young man had been abused repeatedly by his step-father, and was bearing the wounds with outbursts that revealed his trapped and helpless boyhood experience. The “Our Father” was not going to help in his case. Just the opposite, in fact. We worked with this young man’s counselor to imagine and foster his most loving human experiences, transfer them to his spiritual awareness, and re-language his experience of the Divine in the process. His prayer became more like his impassioned art, woven with color and vibrancy, shot through with intimate glimpses of Beauty and Joy. In the process, he worked with his anger and helplessness with his counselor, and his desire for spiritual healing and rebirth with his spiritual companion. All the issues fed into one another, of course, and like all of us, his progress toward integration would be a lifelong journey.
Sometimes, the buried and unspoken hurts of our experience come raging forth when we least expect them. Trained counselors can help us address these and lead us into practices for coping, integration and healing. It is also the case that our spiritual companions can walk with us when our inward spiritual journey, our prayer or our desire for connection with Mystery is somehow blocked or truncated, like spiritually arrested development. What causes such blockages is often so deep down, so tangled and bound up with ineffable fears that we can barely recognize, acknowledge or understand, much less articulate them, and this blockage renders us paralyzed. We don’t know how to scrape the surface, much less plumb the depths. While spiritual companions are not usually licensed counselors, and will most often refer their soul-companions to a psychological counselor for appropriate help when the need is clearly out of their realm of expertise, spiritual companions can “listen deeply,” and sometimes hear what’s not being said. They can read between the lines of what might seem safe and acceptable to say, and what might seem taboo because their experience of God/Mystery/the Divine seems somehow inappropriate. Such was the case with a woman I might call Mary. I will never forget her.
About twenty years ago, I encountered Mary, who came seeking spiritual companionship. She had been referred by a professional acquaintance who was a licensed psychological counselor. The counselor asked her to see me because much of her self-expression revolved around God-language, God’s expectations, God’s demands of a Christian wife and mother. The counselor was working with her on some childhood trauma, and couldn’t get past a refrain that the woman continuously used when she would relapse into a state of catatonic lethargy. She said she was “hiding behind the rain.” Over and over again, “hiding behind the rain.” And “God is watching.” It took one or two sessions with Mary to discover that her rigidly punitive Christian upbringing, coupled with an abusive father and an alcoholic husband, had crippled her psychologically and spiritually. But what could the refrain “hiding behind the rain” be all about? A mystery, to be sure.
After a few sessions, I suggested we take a walk together and she could share anything she wished about her spiritual journey. Mary encountered a wounded avian-friend by the river while we were walking and immediately went to her knees in tears. I waited while she cradled the little sparrow with such tenderness, looked at me through her tear-stained lenses, and sobbed, “hiding behind the rain.” It dawned on me immediately that she was referring to her experience of “hiding” as a child behind the “rain” of her tears. She had constructed an umbrella, of sorts, to shield her from the abuse. When I asked her gently about the rain, she said it would protect her and the little sparrow from hurt or pain. And God would watch the whole scene unfold. For subsequent years, she worked through her childhood trauma and her adult experiences with domestic abuse with her counselor and social worker, a very gifted physician, a spiritual companion, and a very dear, very trusted elder crone-friend who was like her second mother, a healing image of the Divine if there ever were one. She had access to a magnificently wide NET of Love and care to provide the balm that can heal only when the wounds can come more to the surface. And, the little mystery of her mantram-refrain, “hiding behind the rain,” was tied into the big Mystery, where Love acts as a sort of shield for the life force to endure, a combination of stabilizer and composter, transforming what seemed hopelessly lost, damaged or dead, into something—someone—alive with wonder and hope.
Sometimes, our pain and woundedness can be best tended by the gentle presence of One we can trust, sometimes in the form of a counselor, spiritual companion, physician, social worker, mentor, friend or other care-giver. Each of us is infinitely loved in the most unexpected ways, in places where we dare not go alone, places of fear and devastation, loss and confusion. What mysteries unfold in the process of bringing those places into the light manifest the deepest Mystery in which we are all embedded, the Mystery that is Love. We may all be “hiding behind the rain” until we encounter the Net that offers so much Light and Warmth, we can finally come out to play in the puddles.
What Mystery lies hidden in your heart and soul? What “rain” is shielding you? When might you come out to play?
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator