Category Archives: Life Stories

With The Rain In Our Face

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In the 10 years that I have worked in the area of mental health, there have been a number of clients whose stories have stayed with me. I find myself thinking of them often. I’d like to share one of those with you.

“Mary” (not her real name) first found her love for prose, poetry and theater when she was in high school. Later, as she was raising her own children, it became part of her life’s work to introduce the children in her community to the performing arts.

At the peak of her career, she suffered a heart attack that threatened to disrupt everything. It left her with memory loss and many other health complications. Her role as an educator and theater performer appeared to be over.

Over the next few years, she took different jobs, just to support herself. Her world started to shrink around her. She found herself spending most of her time in her apartment alone, leaving only for work and medical appointments. Her suffering and pain were compounded by isolation, grief and the loss of her life’s meaning.

During one of our counseling sessions, Mary remembered an experience that helped us find a new way to confront her significant losses.

She recalled leaving her apartment one evening, venturing out for a short walk in the cold Pacific Northwest drizzle. As she had done many times before, she pulled up her rain hood and tucked her head down to avoid the cold sting of the rain. Then, to her own surprise, she did something different. She lifted her head, pulled her hood back, and let the rain fall on her face. In that moment, instead of avoiding what she thought of as unpleasant, she chose to welcome it.

This experience became a metaphor for Mary. In our counseling sessions, we would reflect upon and come back to that metaphor many times. Her illness and her pain did not disappear, but now she had a way to change how she related to the pain. Instead of avoiding and turning away, she could choose to face it like “the cold rain in her face.”

Over time, Mary returned to a number of writing projects that had been put on hold because of her illness. She went on to enroll in an MFA program and has written several short stories about her childhood. She also has found a meaningful connection within a community of writers.

Metaphors are healing gifts that come to us from many places: from scripture, faith traditions, families, culture, recovery communities, and–as in Mary’s case–from our own lived experience. When we find the courage to walk “with the rain in our face” we are able to live life fully, accepting the presence of pain, loss and grief without being overwhelmed by it.

Mariah’s Story

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Mariah came to Samaritan, lost and out of options. She was homeless and living in her car. Her most recent relationship had imploded. She was using marijuana, trying to soothe her stress. She knew she needed help.

Mariah’s childhood and adolescence was a story of trauma. She was a helpless witness to her severely mentally ill father’s arrests, suicide attempts and hospitalizations. Her mother‘s energy had gone mainly to caring for her husband, leaving very little love and attention for her daughter. The family moved often and Mariah remembers never living in a place long enough to develop real friendships.

Despite these formidable obstacles, Mariah went to college – the first person in her family to do so. After she graduated, she moved to Seattle, taking a job at a community agency that paid less than $15,000 a year. She struggled financially, lived with five roommates, and found herself jumping from relationship to relationship. The stability she longed for eluded her. When she was unable to afford her rent, she began living in her car. She felt her motivation slipping away. She began to lose hope.

Somehow Mariah heard about Samaritan Center and she summoned the courage to call. That one phone call changed her story of loss and trauma to a story of hope and healing. For $15 a session, Mariah met with a therapist who was able to connect deeply with her pain. Together they talked about the trauma Mariah had endured as a child. The therapist helped her navigate healthier ways of being in relationships. She began to believe in herself again.

Mariah has stopped using substances and has some new job prospects. She hopes to find housing soon. Thanks to the relationship she and her therapist developed and the healing that resulted, new doors are opening for Mariah.

What Brings Men to Counseling?

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Samaritan’s Men Counselors Reflect on the Question

It may happen in their 30s, 40s, 50s or later.  Men who have dealt with everything life has handed them – those whom Michael Rogers, a therapist and formerly the clinical director at Samaritan Center of Puget Sound, describes as “testosterone-driven fixers”– find that their defenses are wearing thin.  The pressures come at them from all sides.  Frustration, depression and anxiety threaten to overwhelm them and their relationships.  “At the point when they can’t outrun their fear,” Michael said, “it’s usually through someone close to them who sees or feels their distress – a doctor, wife, employer, or friend – that they come to counseling.”

“In fact,” said Rob Erickson, one of the 12 men who provide counseling at Samaritan, “it’s often the women in their lives who ask them (either lovingly or with some level of hostility) to come to counseling.”

Gary Steeves, Samaritan’s coordinator in South King County, noted that he eventually had to admit that he couldn’t fix himself in the aftermath of an auto accident several years ago.  Physical therapy and “dealing with it myself” was only helpful up to a point, he said.  “It was as if I was carrying that traumatic experience around in my body.  I was like a block of concrete.”  When he finally went to a movement therapist, he said it was transformative.  “First of all, the roles were reversed.  Someone was working with me—not ‘fixing’ me but, rather, helping me manage those forces within me.  I think it is incredibly powerful when we face our limitations and our vulnerability.  We can stop carrying the mantle of having to do everything by ourselves.”

Mar Houglum, a pastoral counselor as well as marriage and family therapist, said that he thinks it is “a huge step for men to seek help.  They resist the notion that talking with someone who listens in a safe, affirming, empathic way could be helpful.  I find that when they take that risk, they find a sense of greater ease with themselves—a generosity with themselves.”

Michael Rogers notes that there are a number of men’s groups in the area.  “I’ve been part of a small men’s group for years,” Michael said, “and I have to tell you that we aren’t nearly as good at self-disclosure as women are.  It takes us a long time to get to an authentic level of sharing.”

“Coming into therapy seems to give men ‘a Walden Pond’,” said Bill Collins, who has been with Samaritan as a therapist and supervisor for many years.  “It provides a reflective space where they can take stock of themselves and consider healing possibilities.  In The Way of Man, Martin Buber notes that Yahweh asks Adam in the garden, ‘Where are you, Adam?’ not because Yahweh does not know the answer, but because Adam doesn’t know the answer.”