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| Zoe, Aowyn, Atticus, Abe and Carl |
Written By:
Zoe, Second Nature Parent, Northern California
Zoe, Second Nature Parent, Northern California
Wilderness is where we conveyed our child, yes. But, in a metaphorical sense, Carl and I, the parents, are also in a wilderness of our own. While our child is grappling with a raw and foreign place in Utah, we are not physically removed to any new location, and yet our lives have become unrecognizable. We don’t know how we got where we are, and we certainly don’t know the quickest and most intelligent way out. We are partnered with a therapist who, in essence, is a khaki-clad guide. Surprisingly jovial at times, entirely comfortable and at home in the setting that we find so alarming, the therapist is now traveling with us, revealing the way.
The phone that we use to communicate, the computer we use to watch webinars and download and compose letters, the walls of our bedroom that we read in late at night to try to understand the terrain, don’t seem to lessen our own experience of wilderness. We are trekking, some days with gritted teeth, through valleys and up hills that look impossible from the bottom.
The guide doesn’t stay as long as the journey, though. We are together only a matter of weeks. Eventually we have to set off without him and, in our case, in the company of our child. On our own, assuming point, some days go well and include new and striking vistas; some days don’t. At intervals, usually prompted by set-backs, we review what we have learned, not always very sure that we are practicing the skills as well as they were taught. But we keep moving. We refuse to stand still. Occasionally we look around and realize we have been to a particular place before. We must have inadvertently backtracked, or gone in a circle, and that is disheartening. But mostly we are sure that what we are keeping to the right trail.
And then an invitation arrives, sent out to so many individual travelers on trails far and wide. Directions are given to a nearby base camp. With relief, we head in that direction, with
noticeably more energy in our strides. The Second Nature Parent Workshop is held in a hotel. The floor of the lobby gleams, the escalator rises underneath shimmering chandeliers and a conference room awaits, with chairs set out in rows.
The phone that we use to communicate, the computer we use to watch webinars and download and compose letters, the walls of our bedroom that we read in late at night to try to understand the terrain, don’t seem to lessen our own experience of wilderness. We are trekking, some days with gritted teeth, through valleys and up hills that look impossible from the bottom.
The guide doesn’t stay as long as the journey, though. We are together only a matter of weeks. Eventually we have to set off without him and, in our case, in the company of our child. On our own, assuming point, some days go well and include new and striking vistas; some days don’t. At intervals, usually prompted by set-backs, we review what we have learned, not always very sure that we are practicing the skills as well as they were taught. But we keep moving. We refuse to stand still. Occasionally we look around and realize we have been to a particular place before. We must have inadvertently backtracked, or gone in a circle, and that is disheartening. But mostly we are sure that what we are keeping to the right trail.
And then an invitation arrives, sent out to so many individual travelers on trails far and wide. Directions are given to a nearby base camp. With relief, we head in that direction, with
noticeably more energy in our strides. The Second Nature Parent Workshop is held in a hotel. The floor of the lobby gleams, the escalator rises underneath shimmering chandeliers and a conference room awaits, with chairs set out in rows.
But, to us, what it feels like to walk into this event is a return to base camp. We drop our heavy, dusty packs. More parents file in. We settle and begin to regroup, revisit and recharge.
***
The parent workshop took place on August 27th, a year—almost to the day—since two young, burly Pacific Islanders arrived at our door in the dead of night, walked silently down the hall and entered our son’s bedroom. Atticus hadn’t been sober for any extended period in the several preceding years. Asleep, his body was awash in vodka, oxycontin and marijuana. He had run away once, having gotten wind of this plan. The police were involved, two siblings were shattered watching us chase and him dodge. The morning of the transport came as a heartbreaking relief.
Atticus said nothing, objected not at all. He was jostled awake, a few loving words were choked out by his father, and then he slid on long basketball shorts, picked up his iPod and a sweatshirt as he was asked, and walked out uncomplaining, with complete strangers on either side. Yet, here we are, just 354 days later, riding in our car, heading to Millbrae, California. Atticus is with us, an invited guest on the panel of speakers.
A stone’s throw from the San Francisco Airport, the Parent Workshop gets underway. Old and familiar guides are present, organizing the goings on at base camp. They are teaching additional skills and refreshers, and deftly keeping the schedule. But they are also allowing this setting to work naturally on its own, just as they do for groups of kids gathered around smokey campfires out in the field. Today we learn from each other.
Atticus said nothing, objected not at all. He was jostled awake, a few loving words were choked out by his father, and then he slid on long basketball shorts, picked up his iPod and a sweatshirt as he was asked, and walked out uncomplaining, with complete strangers on either side. Yet, here we are, just 354 days later, riding in our car, heading to Millbrae, California. Atticus is with us, an invited guest on the panel of speakers.
A stone’s throw from the San Francisco Airport, the Parent Workshop gets underway. Old and familiar guides are present, organizing the goings on at base camp. They are teaching additional skills and refreshers, and deftly keeping the schedule. But they are also allowing this setting to work naturally on its own, just as they do for groups of kids gathered around smokey campfires out in the field. Today we learn from each other.
***
Paul
Paul comes to the podium with smiles and notecards and a quick and engaging wit. He declares that he’s not there to talk about his daughter. He wants to talk about himself. His daughter has Borderline personality disorder. She has been to Second Nature more than once. Her problems are not gone, the difficulties within the family aren’t neatly resolved, but Paul’s story is surprisingly triumphant.
He speaks of a personal history that includes a desire for control and for achievements that are traditional and measurable. But these aspects of himself are holding him up, they are stalling progress in his family, and so he has worked on letting go and changing focus.
As a result, he feels closer to his wife. Moreover, his relationship with his other child, a son, is transformed. His happiness isn’t any longer tethered to that of his daughter’s. He loves her; he likes her! But he doesn’t know in what space, in what condition, her life will ultimately take root. If he lives by the notion that “parents are only as happy as their unhappiest child,” he may never feel joyful about his own life, and that’s not what he wants for himself.
Paul sounds like someone who has seen a particularly dark and tangled stretch of wilderness, and yet he’s standing in front of us, with humor, humility and strength. It is so reassuring to see.
Paul comes to the podium with smiles and notecards and a quick and engaging wit. He declares that he’s not there to talk about his daughter. He wants to talk about himself. His daughter has Borderline personality disorder. She has been to Second Nature more than once. Her problems are not gone, the difficulties within the family aren’t neatly resolved, but Paul’s story is surprisingly triumphant.
He speaks of a personal history that includes a desire for control and for achievements that are traditional and measurable. But these aspects of himself are holding him up, they are stalling progress in his family, and so he has worked on letting go and changing focus.
As a result, he feels closer to his wife. Moreover, his relationship with his other child, a son, is transformed. His happiness isn’t any longer tethered to that of his daughter’s. He loves her; he likes her! But he doesn’t know in what space, in what condition, her life will ultimately take root. If he lives by the notion that “parents are only as happy as their unhappiest child,” he may never feel joyful about his own life, and that’s not what he wants for himself.
Paul sounds like someone who has seen a particularly dark and tangled stretch of wilderness, and yet he’s standing in front of us, with humor, humility and strength. It is so reassuring to see.
Liz
Liz is a young woman in her mid-twenties who explains that she had trouble with substances at a much younger age. Those years ended, the use of substances stopped, but her feeling of being ill at ease did not abate. There was no glaring problem, nothing at which she could point and know with certainty that she needed further help. And yet that was her intuition. She chose Second Nature for herself; she resigned her job and willingly put herself in wilderness.
Listening to Liz, it is hard to imagine her any other way than she is in the present moment. Liz is intelligent, wry, honest, composed. The courage it must have taken to walk away from a life that was going rather well, going well enough, is abundantly apparent in her voice.
She touches on one further point. Her relationship with her parents had always been good, but now, post Second Nature, it is “amazing.” By turns, I take both comfort and inspiration from this story. I imagine my own child expressing such a sentiment about his relationship with his father
and me.
Atticus
In fact, I can’t tell you what Atticus chose to say, because he requested that we leave the room when he spoke. I heard applause and later saw people approach to ask questions and give thanks. Two fathers shared with Carl that listening to Atticus was inspiring. Has he always been that confident? they asked. We are so glad he has returned to sports, to his passion...
What I thought about in the hall was the parent workshop my husband and I attended in January, 2011, just seven months earlier. At the time, Atticus had been home for only a handful of weeks.
On this gray January day, sometime around mid-morning, a Second Nature alumnus came to the front of the conference room. He was tall, handsome, his collared shirt was pressed. He stood with stunning poise, told his story and spared himself nothing. He took question after question, carefully repeating each one so that people at the back could hear. Wisdom and self-awareness poured out of this 19-year-old young man and I hung my head and wept. Would we ever get here? Would our son ever sound like this?
This is the memory I had as I stood waiting in the hall. My son was now in the conference room, collared shirt on, telling a painful story and giving a new gathering of families more insight and hope.
Liz is a young woman in her mid-twenties who explains that she had trouble with substances at a much younger age. Those years ended, the use of substances stopped, but her feeling of being ill at ease did not abate. There was no glaring problem, nothing at which she could point and know with certainty that she needed further help. And yet that was her intuition. She chose Second Nature for herself; she resigned her job and willingly put herself in wilderness.
Listening to Liz, it is hard to imagine her any other way than she is in the present moment. Liz is intelligent, wry, honest, composed. The courage it must have taken to walk away from a life that was going rather well, going well enough, is abundantly apparent in her voice.
She touches on one further point. Her relationship with her parents had always been good, but now, post Second Nature, it is “amazing.” By turns, I take both comfort and inspiration from this story. I imagine my own child expressing such a sentiment about his relationship with his father
and me.
Atticus
In fact, I can’t tell you what Atticus chose to say, because he requested that we leave the room when he spoke. I heard applause and later saw people approach to ask questions and give thanks. Two fathers shared with Carl that listening to Atticus was inspiring. Has he always been that confident? they asked. We are so glad he has returned to sports, to his passion...
What I thought about in the hall was the parent workshop my husband and I attended in January, 2011, just seven months earlier. At the time, Atticus had been home for only a handful of weeks.
On this gray January day, sometime around mid-morning, a Second Nature alumnus came to the front of the conference room. He was tall, handsome, his collared shirt was pressed. He stood with stunning poise, told his story and spared himself nothing. He took question after question, carefully repeating each one so that people at the back could hear. Wisdom and self-awareness poured out of this 19-year-old young man and I hung my head and wept. Would we ever get here? Would our son ever sound like this?
This is the memory I had as I stood waiting in the hall. My son was now in the conference room, collared shirt on, telling a painful story and giving a new gathering of families more insight and hope.
***
Two familiar facesAfter lunch—and lunch is so pleasantly chaotic with stories and candid accounts that notebooks could be filled with the material—we break up into smaller groups. We face each other in circles and introduce ourselves and our individual circumstances. This is another time to reflect, a time to pick up pearls of wisdom, and offer one or two if you have them to spare.
It was during this part of the day at the January Workshop, that my husband and I regarded a couple that we will never forget. They were attending the workshop as part of a decision-making process. The father struggled to share his son’s story of internet addiction and social isolation, and he seemed so enveloped in sadness and grief as not to notice the comfort of his nearly silent wife. He too hung his head and shed tears, freely admitting that he didn’t know what to do to help and protect his son.
It was one of the most moving expressions of fatherly love we have ever seen, and we could sense that he was straying far from his own personal norms, talking about acute problems in
front of perfect strangers.
Carl and I spoke to this couple at the close of the January meeting. We tried to offer encouragement. We expressed our hope that they would make the decision to send their son to Second Nature. Since January, we have wondered about them many times and when they walked into the room looking for two open seats, broad smiles spread across our faces.
On August 27th, they were the last to arrive to our afternoon circle. They took the last two chairs. They didn’t have to utter a word to convey how far they had traveled since winter. They smiled, they laughed, they carried themselves with so much less wooden tension it was remarkable. Their son was doing very well in therapeutic boarding school. Their whole family was doing well. Both husband and wife were eager to share. They were here at the conference to give back, to encourage the next parents, the ones who might be in that now familiar fog, where they were only nine months prior.
***
And so we rise to leave. We have Paul’s Power Bar of energy, we have fresh stores of I Feel Statements and Reflective listening techniques, we have courage from Liz, grit from Atticus and the smiles of two people who feel like old friends. We are back out on our own trail. Hopefully the climbs we make won't feel impossibly steep. Maybe we will make it to a mountaintop. Maybe we will make it there with our son, to take in a sunrise together.
Wonderful! Thank you very much for writing this, and best of luck to you and your son. We have a son of our own who is making great progress right now at Second Nature.
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