Healing Self-Injury

HELLO AGAIN!

Writing – it’s my love/hate relationship.   It takes a very strong wind to get me moving my pen to paper.  Today the wind got my attention and I am back to this blog.  I’ve missed it and I’ve missed you, dear readers.

The power of wind that has gotten me writing took two forms, one literal.  On a work trip to Cheyenne, WY I stole away for a day.  I left the city and drove to Vedauwoo, part of the Medicine Bow National Forest, renowned for its challenges to rock climbers.  I began hiking and soon my eyes moistened with tears as I began to take in this majestic area.  It was stunning, humbling, beautiful and exciting.  Several times I lost the marked trail and hiked up boulders and crawled around in cracks.  I kept moving up, eager to see a bit more of the rock, the sky, and the mountains in the distance.  I bundled myself against the strong wind while at the same time feeling the cold of snowmelt trickling and the warmth of the granite itself as the day got warmer.

Why am I writing about this?  Because this day of hiking came after a day of work during which I had the opportunity to speak about trauma and healing from SIV.  I met some wonderful people, my words seemed valued, and I felt hope that clinicians were beginning to understand those of us who live with scars created by our own hands.  And the following day out in the wild gave me time to appreciate my own journey.  The rock and birds, scrub pine and prairie dogs, didn’t care that I was scarred.  I sat in my happiness, grateful for this life I’ve had, including the despair and terror and rage.  It was all good as it had led to that moment of being out there, the work and the wilderness.

Later I returned to Cheyenne and had dinner with a colleague, poet Gayle Bluebird.  Feasting at the end of a long day we talked of work, of trying to help transform a mental health system that can seem as set in its ways as the boulders I scrambled on.   And I remembered that the change that matters is the one that comes one moment at a time.  Person to person.   And I remembered this blog.  Not being computer savvy I keep forgetting that I can write any time (the newsletter was published quarterly and I think I’m still in that rhythm).  Living in a rural area with dial-up access, using the internet does not come automatically to mind.  I had forgotten the connection I could feel through this blog.

Your words mean a great deal to me.  Every reply to a post, every letter or e-mail.  Sometimes I take so long to write that I worry that I have offended you.  Time seemed to fly by as I was doing others things, having forgotten this blog.  So I was just recently reminded how much I miss it.

As we parted, Gayle gifted me with her most recent book of poetry, written about her daughter and her daughter’s dying.  I read the first two poems and wept, tears because the words were so moving, rich with a delicate celebration as well as sorrow.  How do people heal?  Person to person.

Gayle was the metaphorical wind that has pushed me to write again.  She brought back to me the power of art, written or visual, to speak in profound ways.  I have missed the prose, poetry and art sent in by contributors to The Cutting Edge.  I remembered the poem that Gayle wrote for the newsletter, “For Children Who Keep Banging.”  I am sending that poem out so that it will be placed on the web site and hope that you all find the time to read it.  It speaks to my heart and I hope that it touches yours.  I hope that you are moved to write as well and, if you do, to send it to the rest of us.  Person to person, we heal.

I am coming back home to this blog and web site.  So sorry about having drifted away.  It’s good to be back.