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I overheard someone telling one of our students that she loved her.  40 of us were packed into a room at a transition ceremony. We had formed a big circle, standing up, and the graduating student was going from person to person, hugging each one goodbye. As the student approached my right, she hugged my friend (staff) and my friend said, “I love you.”  The student, crying, said, “I love you too.”  Their hug lasted about 10 seconds.  Was this appropriate?  What would I say when it was my turn to say goodbye?  After all, I was a 30-plus-year-old man and she was a 16-year-old young woman.

Why does the word “love” carry such a taboo in treatment?  Do we really think that we can wall-off our hearts to those we serve? Do we really think that we can remain unaffected by their journeys, their stories?

As a relationship progresses, I believe it’s important to define what is happening.  It’s especially important because many young women in treatment have had inappropriate, unhealthy relationships and they become confused about what they are feeling. Particularly as a male therapist, I have to be constantly aware that the intensity of the emotions shared during healing process can be confusing to young women. So I am constantly defining what I mean and why I choose to use the words I do.

For example, if I tell a client, “I care about you very much,” I will immediately clarify that statement.  ”You realize that this is not a sexual kind of caring,” I’ll say.  ”The feelings I’m expressing are like those I might feel for my own daughter.”  Usually, the girl will become uncomfortable:  ”I know it’s not sexual!  Why do you even have to say that?!”

I’ll press forward.  ”You’ve certainly noticed where my eyes look.”  ”Yes,” she’ll usually say . “Your eyes never leave my face.”

“Why is that?” I’ll ask.  And we’ll talk about how my feelings toward her are fatherly, as if she were a daughter.  We’ll define the differences between platonic love and amorous love.  We’ll dissect the friendship that is developing.

I tell her that I am okay with the conversation being uncomfortable as long as we can take use that moment to be clear with each other about what kind of relationship is developing between us.  I submit that this is good therapy.

One student I worked with years ago had had a boyfriend ten years older than I.  It was difficult for her to reconcile her growing feelings of love for me with what she’d experienced with her perpetrator boyfriend.  As we grew closer, it was vital that I teach her the differences between what she’d felt for him and what she was beginning to feel towards me.

At times the conversations were painfully direct.  ”I am not aroused by you,” I recall saying when she provocatively suggested that there might be more to her feelings than would be appropriate. Whenever I noticed confusion in her eyes during a group where a male staff member might have expressed compassion for her situation, we would take a moment to define what was going on for her and for him.

Years after treatment she came to an alumni reunion.  We had a few quiet moments to catch up on her life and she said, “You’re about the only man I trust.”  I was taken off-guard by that statement.  She explained that she’d caught her father looking at pornography, that she’d been “used” in every intimate relationship she’d had since treatment, and that she just couldn’t look at men without feeling sexually unsafe.  ”But not you,” she said.  I attribute that to the hours and hours we spent working at understanding the difference between appropriate and inappropriate love.

All of this and more flashed through my mind as I stood in that circle during that transition ceremony and anticipated how I would say goodbye to one of my favorite students.  It only took a few seconds for her to hug the person at my right and then be standing directly in front of me, but I relived every moment we’d shared during treatment.  I felt my heart swell in my chest.  I felt my eyes sting.  This was a student who would have been dead, had she not received care.  I thought back to the day she had arrived.  Images of her – angry, bitter, depressed – flashed in my mind:  her dark clothing, her darker countenance; her fear of connecting, her fear of others never wanting to connect to her.

I thought of the arguments we’d had, the times she’d screamed at me until she was hoarse.  I thought of the quiet moments when she’d trusted me enough to tell me something she’d never told anyone before.

The feelings within me burned stronger as I reminisced about the magical moment when something had seemed to “click” for her. I remembered her change of heart. I recalled the light that shone in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before, but which her mother said had been there up until only a few years ago.  Her face and demeanor had relaxed and she had become gentler with others – and with herself.

And so, as she stepped in front of me and reached up to hug my neck, without shame or pretense I wrapped my arms around her back and pulled her tight to my shoulder and said, “I love you.”  There was nothing sexual about me using that word, and she knew it.  ”I love you too,” she said.  There was no confusion in my mind about what she meant. For five seconds we enjoyed the connection of that hug.  We felt the bond of friendship forged in the heat generated by months and months of intensive psychological and emotional healing.

Then she pulled away and moved on to the person at my left.  I’m pretty sure I overheard them use the word “love” as well, but I can’t be sure.  I was distracted with trying not to cry.

Navajo definition of beauty

About a year ago I sat in a large circle in a group therapy session. The leader started with this: “Tell everyone in the circle something beautiful about you.” I was startled and a little uncomfortable. I had never thought of any part of me as being “beautiful”. That group got me thinking about the meaning of beauty.

The Navajo have many ceremonies that are designed to help them achieve a state of Beauty. For them, Beauty is not a manner of dress nor a way of appearing. It is a way of being. Their ceremonies help them to return to a state of balance, respect, and healing with the universe. They define this – balance, respect, and health – as Beauty.

The Navajo Unity Chant is a perfect example. (Navajo chants are not easily translatable into English. The chants are made up of “vocables” – sounds sung to drum beats that don’t translate well.) Here is a translation of the Unity Chant which communicates the power of the concept of Beauty in Navajo tradition: “You will walk in Beauty; the Beauty will walk before you; the Beauty will walk behind you; you will be surrounded by Beauty. We have beautiful things and now we must have beautiful minds; with beautiful minds we will have beautiful hearts; with beautiful hearts we will talk in Beauty. Those who speak with beautiful speech will lead the world to Beauty.”

One Friday evening many summers ago, after a family weekend event, I was lying on my back on a grassy slope at the South Campus with a therapist friend. We were laughing together and comparing profound experiences from the two-day family weekend, and then he became very sober. He said he’d been thinking about innocence. To this day I don’t know why he decided to share his thoughts on that topic with me, but it had a lasting impact on how I think. He said he felt that people could reclaim the same innocence they once had as children. He felt that people who had been hurt deeply, people who maybe felt like their innocence had been robbed from them, forced from them, or taken from them could reclaim their innocence. What he was saying was not that teenagers and adults could (or even should) become ignorant or childish again; he was saying that he felt that wounded people could become childlike again; that they could be in balance with the universe; that they could respect themselves again; that they could heal. He was saying, in essence, that people who feel like their Beauty has been robbed from them are mistaken – everyone can become beautiful again.

In the middle of the winter of 1863, 9,000 Navajo were forced to march about 400 miles to one of our nation’s first experiments with an “Indian Reservation”. They were compelled to march away from the lands between their four sacred mountains. They were forced to leave the spiritual protection of their homeland – something they had believed for centuries that they must never do. On a march that lasted weeks, they walked to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico – a million-acre reservation on a poplar-wooded curve in the Pecos River. To this day they refer to that forced march as “the Long Walk”. The reservation at Bosque Redondo was a horribly planned location. The Navajo suffered disease and dehydration from drinking the putrid waters of the Pecos River. The first summer, their crop of corn was destroyed by worms. The rest of the winter they lived on meager rations from the army. The second year was the same. The third year a hailstorm ruined the corn fields. By the fourth year the Navajo simply refused to plant anymore.

Barboncito, a diminutive, thinly mustached Medicine Man, assumed the position of leader among the Navajo at Bosque Redondo. He kept the Navajo’s faith alive. Even though they were heart-sick because they were living hundreds of miles away from home, he encouraged them to remember their ancestral values and traditions by leading them in sacred ceremonies. He renewed their hope daily by advocating for them with the government and the soldiers stationed at the Bosque. In the face of enormous obstacles, his message was consistent – never, never give up.

By the summer of 1868 more than 3,000 Navajo had died – most of starvation. One third of those who had marched to Bosque Redondo had perished. General Sherman visited the failed reservation experiment in 1868 and was astonished at the misery and death he witnessed there. After an historic and emotional meeting with Barboncito, the general almost immediately authorized the Navajo to return to the sacred lands of their inheritance. Those lands are near what we call the Four Corners area of the west, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico all touch at the same point. The Navajo were ecstatic to return to their homeland. In a caravan of natives that stretched over ten miles, they made the 400-mile walk home, this time willingly and joyfully. As soon as they reached the Rio Grande and saw their beloved Blue Bead Mountain in the distance, many of them fell to the earth and wept . As they continued homeward, they spoke a healing chant, sometimes known as the Night Chant. Imagine their feelings as they spoke the Night Chant’s words, as their eyes gazed on their sacred mountains, and their feet crossed the boundary into their ancestral homeland:  “In beauty I walk. With beauty before me, I walk. With beauty behind me, I walk. With beauty below me, I walk. With beauty above me, I walk. With beauty all around me, I walk. It is finished in beauty.”

It is significant to me that they chose a healing chant at that moment. It is significant that they were homeward bound. It is significant that after all they had suffered they still believed that they could reclaim their balance and their respect. They believed that they could heal. They could reclaim their innocence. After all they had been through, they had preserved their way of being – they still had Beauty.

Like Barboncito, I believe that we should spend time reminding our clients – especially our adolescent girl clients – of the Beauty that surrounds them. Through the process of therapy, many of them learn balance. They re-learn self-respect. They heal. They reclaim innocence. They “return”, in many ways, to the way they were when they were more childlike. They walk in the way of Beauty.

*Navajo information taken from Hampton Sides’ book Blood and Thunder

Photo by beaniebg17

I heard about TWLOHA last year. I was alerted to it by a student of mine who struggles with self-harm.

On Facebook there are over 315,000 people who have committed to being a part of TWLOHA Day, which takes place tomorrow, Feb. 12.

Tomorrow, let’s all help raise awareness of those who choose to deal with intense emotional pain by harming themselves. Let’s all help raise awareness of the reality of depression.

I spoke with a young woman yesterday who is beginning to find hope in the trusting, loving relationships she is building in her life. For the first time in three years, she sees the possibility of living a life without thoughts of suicide.

Another young woman slipped a notecard into my box at work a few weeks ago. Inside the card read, “Dustin, I haven’t cut for six months now. Thank you for talking to me and encouraging me to do hard things.”

Tomorrow, let’s go out of our way to reach out to those who are suffering silently. Healthy relationships are the best ways to begin healing self-loathing and depression.