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.