[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ background_color=”RGBA(0,0,0,0)”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Veribeth Brinker<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]I’m apprehensive, but a little hopeful, too.\u00a0 I’m meeting Bruce Cushna today for psychotherapy at the Child Development Clinic, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.\u00a0 I park my car in the parking lot next to the clinic and crunch the leaves underfoot as I slowly walk toward the front door.\u00a0 The director of the clinic offered me a few therapy sessions.\u00a0 I think I can use the therapy.\u00a0 I’m having a hard time managing my two hyperactive, mentally retarded, forever children, sons, plus my other four children.\u00a0 Kris (4) and David (11) are my two retarded sons, while the other three sons and daughter range in age from six to fifteen.\u00a0 Goodness, that is six children in eleven years.\u00a0 The rhythm method didn’t work.<\/p>\n
Therapy is new to me.\u00a0 I walk thorough the sliding doors and take a seat in the small reception area to the right. Soon Mr. Cushna beckons for me to come into his office.\u00a0 I follow and sit in the seat across from the desk.<\/p>\n
He is tall, blonde, and soft-spoken.\u00a0 He doesn’t wear a white lab coat or a suit.\u00a0 He leaves the top button unbuttoned on his shirt.\u00a0 I like that in him.\u00a0 I’m so focused on problems I’m almost oblivious to the surroundings, but I notice steel shelves containing psychology books at his right side; the only window is located near the ceiling.\u00a0 Good thing.\u00a0 Seeing people walk past would be distracting.\u00a0 Why isn’t he saying something, like a comment on the weather or he’s glad to see me?\u00a0 A little small talk would help put me at ease.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Just awkward silence.\u00a0 He’s sitting in his chair gazing in my direction.\u00a0 Finally I get the idea.\u00a0 I’m supposed to speak first.\u00a0 I can go in whatever direction I want\u00a0 “Nice fall day,” I say “Thanks for offering me some therapy sessions.”<\/p>\n
“You’re welcome.\u00a0 I don’t know what you want to talk about, but I’m ready to listen.\u00a0 We have fifty minutes and you can talk about whatever is on you mind,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Right now I’m focused on the horrible fund drive for the Iowa County Association for Retarded Children.\u00a0 I get a tightness in my chest every fall when the drive comes due and I know I have to find volunteers to go from door-to-door for two townships and take some of the territory myself.<\/p>\n
Mr. Cushna shifts in his chair and silently encourages me to continue.<\/p>\n
“It’s humiliating.\u00a0 I dread it.\u00a0 The money supports transportation for the retarded to the one-room country school that my son David attends.\u00a0 Sometimes when I’m working on the fund drive, I think I see people peering from behind drapes when I come into their drive, park my car and walk to the front door to ring the doorbell.\u00a0 Occasionally no one answers.\u00a0 Most of the people are nice but I still hate to bother them or ask for help.”<\/p>\n
“It hard to request help even when it’s for you son,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Yes, and it would be different if David and Kris were retarded but well-behaved, like Down’s syndrome children, who are often pleasant, smiling and affectionate.\u00a0 Dave and Kris prefer you don’t touch them or hold them.\u00a0 They’re like perpetual motion machines, so active they can’t sit still.\u00a0 They swear and use violent words.\u00a0 Where did they get that?\u00a0 Dean and I don’t’ talk that way, nor do their older brothers.\u00a0 I remember talking David into the local hardware store.\u00a0 We went up on the balcony section where they toys are kept and the first thing David did was pick up a toy gun and tell at the people below that he was going to kill them.\u00a0 I remember scooping him up in my arms, not looking at anyone as we left the store, thrusting him in to the he back seat of the car and just sitting for a while.\u00a0 Talk about feeling like a nobody.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Cushna looks at me, then says:<\/p>\n
“I’m Nobody!\u00a0 Who are you?<\/p>\n
Are you Nobody too?<\/p>\n
Don’t tell!<\/p>\n
They’d advertise you know!”<\/p>\n
I can’t believe this is reality. I can’t believe my ears.\u00a0 Is he quoting poetry to me?\u00a0 No man has ever done that before.\u00a0 I lower my eyes and can’t look at his face.<\/p>\n
He continues:<\/p>\n
“How dreary to be Somebody!<\/p>\n
How public like a frog,<\/p>\n
To tell one’s name the livelong June<\/p>\n
To an admiring Bog!”<\/p>\n
Secretly I’m thinking, me on his level?\u00a0 My goodness, he’s going to have his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Loyola this spring. He’s certainly not a nobody.\u00a0 Did he feel like a nobody at some point in his life?\u00a0 I like the poem so much.\u00a0 Like that he can empathize.\u00a0 Like that there’s a pair of us.\u00a0 Like that he’s sitting there and I’m sitting here in this space at this time.<\/p>\n
“Who wrote the poem?”\u00a0 I ask.<\/p>\n
“Emily Dickinson wrote this poem and many others.\u00a0 She’s one of my favorite poets,” he replies.<\/p>\n
For the rest of the session I talk about guilt feelings I have because I feel I’m neglecting the other four since I spend so much time with David and Kris.\u00a0 If I try hard enough may be I can find the cure.\u00a0 I’ve had descriptors like “minimal cerebral dysfunction”, “brain-damage”, “schizophrenia”, and of course, “mental retardation”.\u00a0 I keep trying to find the reason and fix it, fix it, fix it.\u00a0 Hope some day my other sons and daughter will understand.<\/p>\n
Before leaving I repeat, “The author of the poem was Emily Dickinson, right?”<\/p>\n
He nods and I walk away from the session knowing I’ve found a gentle man.\u00a0 A gentle man — I didn’t know there were gentle men.\u00a0 What a gift to be able to share like I’ve never done before.\u00a0 I’m feeling more hopeful, lighter.\u00a0 Maybe he can penetrate the bathysphere iron walls that surround me, that protect me.\u00a0 I’m confused myself.\u00a0 I don’t’ know exactly what I need protection from.\u00a0 I don’t know how to trust?<\/p>\n
The moment I get home, I find the poem in a book and copy down every word so I can memorize it.<\/p>\n
Our therapy sessions continue weekly and the crunchy leaves turn to footprints in the snow.<\/p>\n
After I know therapy is self-directed.\u00a0 I ponder all week about what to explore in the next session.\u00a0 The walls in his office seem to expand.\u00a0 One time it was my first kiss by a boy, a stolen kiss in a closet when we were playing hide-and-seek in his house.\u00a0 Another time it was the high school biology teacher showing me my scores on the maturity portion of a test.\u00a0 The test showed I had a maturity rate of a 30 year-old, the highest maturity rate of anyone taking the test in high school.\u00a0 Now how did that happen?<\/p>\n
No topic feels forbidden.\u00a0 Gaining insights and examining my life, leaving me at times unable to sleep well at night leaves me edgy during the day, depletes my appetite.\u00a0 I can’t turn my body or mind off.\u00a0 I want to totally examine my life, search out every memory and talk about it.<\/p>\n
The therapy is having other effects.\u00a0 One of the other effects is remembering the first time I noticed there was an “I.”\u00a0 I was in Marengo Memorial Hospital and the lab technician took some blood from me.\u00a0 When he looked at me, directly in the eyes, all at one I felt like there was an “I” here.\u00a0 What had I felt before, and why in my thirties did I suddenly feel there was an “I?”\u00a0 I remember reading books on schizophrenia, several years ago when David had a potential diagnosis of schizophrenia.\u00a0 I secretly thought I had a little of it, but I didn’t have auditory or visual hallucination.\u00a0 Flights of ideas I had and have.\u00a0 It’s just that my thoughts keep jumping around.\u00a0 Lots of times I refer to myself as “her” like there is a separation, a division in myself.\u00a0 But what happened that day, when the lab tech looked me directly in the eyes, was sort of like a baptism when the priest pours water on your head and gives you a specific name.\u00a0 There was a \u201cme.\u201d\u00a0 It was world-shaking in my little universe.\u00a0 The top of my skull opened up and an “I” was poured in.\u00a0 Strange that one glance could have such a profound effect.[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Veribeth Brinker I’m apprehensive, but a little hopeful, too.\u00a0 I’m meeting Bruce Cushna today for psychotherapy at the Child Development Clinic, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.\u00a0 I park my car in the parking lot next to the clinic and crunch the leaves underfoot as I slowly walk toward the front door.\u00a0 The director of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"parent":2236,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"original_author":[176],"publication_date":[168],"volume":[],"number":[43],"class_list":["post-8137","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","original_author-veribeth-brinker","publication_date-168","number-43"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/8137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/8137\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/2236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"original_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/original_author?post=8137"},{"taxonomy":"publication_date","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_date?post=8137"},{"taxonomy":"volume","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/volume?post=8137"},{"taxonomy":"number","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/number?post=8137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}