My Curriculum Begins

It's two weeks after my first weekend at USM and things are going smoothly. I'm doing the assigned reading (there's lots!) and creating my ideal scenes for my homework. Suddenly, my school is in session.

At a regular weekly meeting with my boss and her supervisor, I am shocked to discover that my boss has been mad at me for weeks about something that I did that I thought was totally okay (I arranged a substitute for a workshop in case my daughter's field trip went long and I couldn't make it back to school in time to teach it). Unbeknownst to me, my boss and her supervisor have decided that I am not dedicated to my job because of this. My boss tells me that my contract ends in December and that she will allow me to finish out the time on my contract but that I no longer have any duties in the Center for Academic Success. The three of us discuss the situation for a while and start discussing next semester, but I am really in shock and literally can't register the words that are being said. We agree to meet in a week or two to follow up.

A week later, I am recalling the meeting to my friend Skip and I realize that I am still angry about it. As a USM grad himself, he reminds me that at USM they teach that underneath anger is a hurt. "So, if I find the hurt then the anger will go away?" I ask him. "Sounds good to me," he replies.

I have no idea what my hurt is and I don't really give it much conscious thought. But 3 days later, as I'm dropping Lexi off at her school I have the strangest thought: I'm afraid that my boss will stop loving me. This idea is so outlandish that I stop in my tracks and wonder about it. What could it possibly mean? The thoughts are knocking around in the back of my mind as I drive to Butte College and drop Zane off at his school. It's about 40 minutes later and by now I've figured that crazy thought out and emotions are welling up inside me. It's all I can do to keep from crying as I leave Zane's school and walk to my car.

I whip out my cell phone as tears start to fall down my face. I reach Chris at work and tell him, "I figured out what my hurt is!" I then proceed to explain to him about my crazy thought at Lexi's school and how I realize that when I was 8 years old I watched my parents disagreeing and fighting. When they separated, my dad moved out of the house. I put the two things together and, in my eight-year-old wisdom, I created the belief that if anyone disagrees with my dad, he stops loving them and the relationship ends. I had recognized this two years earlier in my interactions with my dad, and saw how I had played this pattern out with past boyfriends, but this was the first time that I recognized that I had generalized this belief to everyone and everything: if I disagree with anyone they will stop loving me and will leave me and the relationship will be over.

On the phone with Chris, I share my realizations and re-live all the pent-up emotions surrounding the night that my parents told me and my sister that they were getting a divorce. I re-lived my deep sadness and loved and accepted all the feelings that I had then but had buried deep inside of me. I felt the sadness of loss and the fear of being left, as well as a deep, deep feeling of being unworthy of my parents' love, time and attention. Chris listened deeply and openly and loved and accepted me as I went through the experience as well as honored the feelings that I had had as a child. I also loved and accepted myself and my feelings then and now and honored (and released) the pain I had been carrying around with me. Together, our love healed that deep, old hurt within me.

Thus, I experienced another of the lessons from USM: healing is applying love to places inside us that hurt. Although it was really sucky at the time to feel all those strong emotions (and it took a couple days for my body to physically process everything), the feeling of freedom and release and openness on the other side is AWESOME!

NEXT: What happened at the follow-up meeting?