In a session this week, my therapist likened the state of my mind to an imagery I’ve long forgotten in my depression: a garden full of wild sunflowers with green plush grass. White fluffy clouds decorate the sky. The sun is visible. It’s warm, but not sticky hot. It feels like the perfect summer day, but there’s a sense of peace, and joy. It’s that kind of unexplainable joy kids feel on the last day of school. Bouncing off the bus to a summer of possibility.
“Your mind is like a beautiful garden. The sunflowers you love dance freely there. It’s when you feel your best self. Trauma is like weeds. The weeds are deeply rooted. They suffocate the growth in your beautiful garden. Through therapy we can get to the roots of those weeds. I’ll help you pull them up, face them, and toss them out,” my therapist said.
A beautiful garden. The imagery brought me so much peace. All day I could not shake the idea of my mind being this beautiful garden. My mind has felt nothing like a garden the past 4 months. It feels like a wet, soggy, cold, and windy unrelenting storm. Clouds so thick the sun where my dreams live aren't visible. Whipping rain paralyzes me into a daily monotony of sleeping, overeating, isolating, and doing the bare minimum to survive. I only think of surviving, and enduring this all consuming storm. A storm so intense it clouds everything; how I see myself in the mirror, the words I speak, the future I’ve lost hope in.
But a beautiful garden. It brought to mind something I’ve tried in the past to clear the darkness of depression; hypnosis. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder in my early twenties. I didn’t know half of what I know, but I was desperate for relief. So when I heard of a local woman who did hypnosis, I decided to give it a try. For the first few sessions, I was extremely anxious, a little weirded out and scared. For a while all I did was kind of fall into a meditative sleep. I used the sleeping CD’s she gave me to help guide me into sleep. As I learned more about hypnosis, I started to ease in to the experience. I recall the moment I found my beautiful garden in my sessions with her.
“Close your eyes,” she said in calm voice. “Now imagine you are walking down a flight of stairs. Each time you go down a stair count from 1 and keep going.”
I did as instructed, and as I keep counting, I saw myself descending down a white staircase in the clouds. Every step was slow and measured. When I got to twelve, the stairs descended into a green field. I could feel the warmth of the sun, and a soft breeze. I walked barefoot through crisp grass. I was taken in by the never ending length of the field. The green grass, speckled with every beautiful flower you can think, went on for miles. As I kept walking, I saw in the distance a brown wooden bench, anchored by black steel legs. A woman was sitting there gazing off into the distance. I slowly walked closer to her. Something about her seemed familiar. Her dark drown her, her light skin that we would call high yellow if I was in Mississippi. The closer I got to her the more familiar she felt. It’s life my heart felt drawn to her. Slowly walking from behind the wooden bench, I was shocked at who I saw.
“Aunt Doris, but you’re…” I said.
“In Heaven? Yes, I’m in Heaven, but sometimes I wait here for you,” she said. She turned to me and smiled. She rested her hand on space beside her. An invitation to sit with her.
As a child, I always wanted alone time with Aunt Doris. Her house was a hard, long walk from my great grandmother’s house in Mississippi. But, when you got there, it made every hardship you endured getting there worth it. Her house always had cool air conditioning which was a savior in the blistering summer months. She would give me these special pickles. I now know as a adult they were Claussen. But, aa a kid all I knew it was they didn’t sell them at the corner store for 99 cents, and I felt special getting them. She told my little brother that if he ate them, he’d turn into a tadpole. But for some reason, I could eat them. It was one of the small ways she made me feel special. In my teenager years I learned that Aunt Doris almost adopted me at birth. The adoption would be kept a secret so my 19 year old mother could finish college. When I learned this fact, it endeared me to her even more. The last time I saw her alive, she was dying from cancer. I was twenty-something and making my first real salary as a tv reporter. I wanted to honor her in the way she did through her small acts of service. I recall taking her and my uncle to Golden Corral. I felt so much pride, when I picked up the check. It didn’t matter that she didn’t eat much, and seemed tired. I was proud to do that for her. The rest of the trip I wanted to experience Aunt Doris as an adult. I wanted to sit around and watch television, and finally talk at the grown folks table. I wanted to lay in her bed while she held me, play in her jewelry and hear about her younger self. She wouldn’t let me. At every turn she prompted me to go visit this family member, and be sure to say how to this person. It seemed that as she was dying, she wanted to push me to keep living. One night, I crept back into her bedroom while she slept, and I just watched her breathe. I softly walked inside her room. I ran my hand over the jewelry on her dresser, before leaving her to rest. Her last act of love was giving me the only picture of my biological father. The story around his life and reasons for leaving are sketchy. I had only learned of him when I was 12. He died before I could meet him. Aunt Doris died weeks later after my last trip to see her.
But, somehow under hypnosis, down the 12 twelve steps I could see her. I sat down next to her, and rest my head on her shoulder. She put her arm around me, and for a while we just there.
When I awoke from hypnosis I told the practitioner about the beautiful field, and the bench where I sat with my Aunt Doris.
“That’s beautiful. Just that imagery at night if it helps guide you to sleep,” she said.
Every night for weeks, I closed my eyes eager to go down those twelve steps to sit in on that wooden bench with Aunt Doris. Some time I’d sit with her and cry for heartache, or disappointment. Sometimes I’d rattle off all the troubles in my life. Something about her presence helped me awake with hope. I’d see her in my dreams in varying parts of my Mississippi memories. She was always comforting or caring for something. And, the moment I arrived she’d acknowledge me and let me sit with her.
Somewhere in the broken paths of my life, I lost access to the beautiful field with my Aunt Doris. For some many years I’ve been fighting to survive my depression, my homelessness, the destruction of my charmed life, the battle wounds of trauma, the weeds blocked the staircase.
Last night I as I laid in my bed crying, I whispered, “God, I am so lost, I’m in pain, and I can’t do any of this in my own strength. Your word says you are closed to the broken heart. Father that is me. Please, please Father given me the strength to find my way.”
As I closed my eyes, for the first time in years I saw a familiar sight; a single descending staircase. Each step down, my body remembered the practice from those hypnosis sessions years ago. At the bottom of the twelfth step was access to the field. It was like I remembered. Tall green grass that spanned for miles. The feeling of warmth from the sun, a cool breeze, and a wooden bench with a single occupant.
I ran fast to the bench, and to my surprise there she was; Aunt Doris.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.
As I sat down next to her, I wept.
“Oh, Aunt Doris….so much has happened.”
“Tell me about it.”
And for the rest of slumber, I told Aunt Doris in our beautiful garden the reason all the weeds were in our field. …
“You want to start gardening,” she said.
“Yes, Aunt Doris, I really do….”
