“Okay,” She said, her blue eyes offsetting her light hair, “What I want to do is try some distancing. I want to take you back there in that room, where you are . . .” she paused delicately, “In that situation. And remember last time where you flew above and fast-forwarded away, farther and farther?” “Yep.” “I want you to do that. Float away. And this time, tell me how you feel.” She flipped the EMDR machine on and I [...]
He fidgets. We wait. He jumps up, runs over to the machine and looks all herky-jerky, happy, just wanting to play with one of those toys they give to kids. You know the toys, right? They’re packed into this glass case, and a kid deposits a fake coins into the dispenser after he gets done with the pediatrician. In the old days, we got lollipops for our troubles, but modern kids, they’re all obese, or heading that way, so they [...]
Last week, as part of my ongoing spiritual journey, I embarked on a systematic rereading of the New Testament. I took a break from reading Mark and read Deb Bryan’s post about learning compassion from a woman who massaged the head of an old lady whose skull was covered with lesions. I mentioned to Deb that this reminded me of Jesus touching lepers in books Matthew and Mark and that I’d struggled with the same sort of aversion to illness [...]
This is an excerpt from my final chapter from I Run: Running from Hell with El Many people have asked me, often with great exasperation, what I was running away from. For years, friends told me to stop. Over and over and over again, people told me to rest, to stand still, to stop. But I was too scared. I was scared of myself, of the demons that danced and pranced inside me. I was scared of dying, perhaps by [...]