No More Cross to Bear ...

Crossing the Vineyards, a photo by Vainsang on Flickr.

A thread of an awareness about a particular Truth got illuminated today in a healing session with a dear friend/classmate.

"I don't have to save all the retarded people."

In fact, I don't have to like all of them or work with them.

I have had a gnawing at my interior around inauthenticity. It began, actually, last week when I was illustrating the use of a Genogram and using my own family tree as the example. On my dad's side of the family, there is extensive alcoholism and depression. Except in 1 person: my aunt Judy. Her primary "flaw" was being born with mental retardation. My students asked me: "Do you think there's a relationship to the alcoholism and depression and the fact that a child was born into this family that perhaps brought stigma or shame?" Fantastic question. I had never connected up these pieces before.
I responded: "I don't think it's necessarily linear - meaning one caused the other - but I suspect that there is a relationship in the co-arising of this stressor (my aunt's disability) and the other patterns."

And then, as I drove home from seeing clients at a new agency this week, I feel this place of falling out of integrity, not living in my Truth arise. This is how I begin my healing session today. I got into this field, working with people who have developmental disabilities, out of an affinity for my aunt Judy AND from a place of wanting to rescue. I watched kids make fun and bully her in the neighborhood. I witnessed the maltreatment of her by my grandfather and grandmother, my Uncle and at times, even my own father. I never understood fully, until today, about this burden I had been carrying -- a duty, a sense of moral obligation to advocate and protect people with developmental disabilities. Perhaps because I couldn't save my family from the dirty secret of my Aunt Judy. Or the even dirtier secret of all the hidden alcoholism.

There is a guise of goodness, upstanding citizenship because of doing work with these "special needs people". Hell, it was what I hid my own alcoholism behind ! And, I am increasingly more aware that this is no longer the cross I need to bear. I don't want to abandon people with disabilities completely AND I do want to be clear about which folks I no longer desire to work with and cannot help. I don't want to be with people who wreak of urine. Or who pick at their legs til they become grossly infected. Or who bang their heads on pavement. Or who drool profusely. I am no good for them ! I want to engage with the folks who can -- there is something very alive in this for me and THIS is what feels true. I can no longer pretend to be the "friendly visitor", feigning a compassionate face while cringing and nauseous on the inside.

There is tremendous freedom in the allowance of the Truth that is staring me in the face.