A Pivotal Moment in My Life
This past March I was on the Zoom virtual tour that Tim Jackins gave of the buildings and grounds of the former Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources (RCCR). During it I posted in the chat something about myself as a large woman and about a contact I’d had with Harvey Jackins. (You can view the Zoom virtual tour at <www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubL6g-kNEYY>, until December 1, 2021.)
THE CHAT POSTING
I shared in the chat that at my first Intensive at RCCR (about twenty-five years ago), I had walked up four flights of stairs to Harvey’s office in the belfry (top) of the building for a session with him. The last set of stairs was very narrow. I said in the chat that “I am a large woman, and I needed to walk up the last set of stairs sideways and felt embarrassed about my size and needing to walk up sideways.” When I got to the top of the last stair, there was Harvey beaming at me with a big, warm, welcoming, and accepting smile. He said in such a caring and pleased tone, “I put them there just for you!” I said something like, “Oh, really,” somewhat surprised and unsure but not offended. I then had the session with him that changed my life. I said in the chat that “That’s a story for another time.” This is more of that story.
ALL OF WHO I AM
Since posting in the virtual tour chat, I have discharged many times about the session with Harvey. I have had a new thought—that it was what Harvey said and showed in his accepting tone and manner as I arrived at the top of those stairs that suggested that he knew that I was all right and did not need to feel bad about myself in any way. I think that allowed me to look at a lot of feelings I had put out of my mind (“forgotten”).
I remember at some point in the session thinking, “Harvey thinks I am okay!” I was thinking from the position of being African heritage/Black and taking in that this white person knew I was okay. After discharging recently, I now know that it was also about all of who I am, including my being African heritage/Black, large, and female. All of how society has seen me in these ways, all of the oppressions for each of these groups, and all of what I have internalized are collectively what have accompanied me on the course of my life.
I got several responses thanking me for my post in the chat. I had hesitated about a minute before writing it and again briefly before posting it. The “fruit bats” [negative feelings] of worry, doubt, and indecision—”Should I?” “Would it be okay?”— had been trying to get their wings up and encircle my brain. Then I’d had a thought that became a decision: “It would be good for me to be visible with this experience that happened to me, to show the feelings I had as a large woman, to show Harvey’s ability to see my unease and offer such a contradiction of acceptance.” His greeting, tone, and manner had led to that memorable moment in my life in which I could move to trust him whom I had not met before and put myself in his hands as my counselor.
The statement he asked me to say in my session was, “It sometimes happens that someone likes somebody!” The journey my thoughts took was deep. They went to a place where I had buried feeling good about myself and central in the world. In that place I had given up expecting a white person to think that I was okay. In the session with him I felt like I had to push aside barriers in my mind to take in what he was reflecting back to me—that all of who I am is okay. He kept beaming at me relaxedly and pleased, kind and loving. I cried and cried hard, my mind taking in this thought: “This is a white person who knows that I am okay.”
SOME BACKGROUND ABOUT ME
I grew up on a small family farm in rural Georgia, USA, and attended a segregated school. My parents worked hard and were good farmers but could not support our family on the small amount of cotton and tobacco they were allowed to grow, so we worked on farms for white people.
My high school and college years were during the middle of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. I went to college on a full scholarship, with hope and dreams inspired by the civil rights efforts. It was an awakening to embrace “Black and Proud,” and I began to feel more powerful and okay about myself as a human.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in April 1968, and I graduated from college in Atlanta, Georgia, six weeks later. The decision that many fellow students and I shared was clear in my mind: “This will not stop us!” So a week after I graduated from college, a raised-poor African-heritage/Black woman raised in rural Georgia boarded a train to New York (USA) to work as a reporter with a big city newspaper. I had tucked away hard feelings and made a rigid decision to move forward.
As I learned RC, I understood that regaining my flexible thinking about who I am meant noticing where I’d had to move forward without fully discharging the effects of racism, the many things about segregation, and the harsh images from our fight for civil rights. To be my most powerful self, I had to look at what messages I had gotten from the beginning of my journey in the world and what life had been like for me, including feelings I had pushed aside. I began doing that the day when Harvey’s face mirrored what was true about me and I could move forward with an expanded expectation of connection with all humans.
After the session with Harvey, I began to share my feelings more fully with all my Co-Counselors, to take risks to show more about all of me—Black, female, raised poor, raised rural, Southern—all of which I was pleased about. I began having sessions thinking about my body as a large woman. I had many thoughts and feelings I did not share with anyone. The sense of personal failure and blame and being on my own [alone] to figure it out—a significant part of large women’s oppression—was huge. I also enjoyed thinking and discharging about the memory from my first Intensive.
I wanted to share the story of my connection with Harvey and its wonderful effect on me because it was a pivotal moment in my life as a large African-heritage female and it framed my Co-Counseling journey. It highlighted the importance of reflecting back what is true about me/us. It was a reminder that we bring to our Co-Counseling work all of who we are, all of how we have been affected in our journey from birth to now.
A GIFT, A FAREWELL, A PRIVILEGE
What a gift to have that wonderful memory of Harvey during the virtual tour of RCCR and to share a couple of statements about it with the folks on Zoom. I will not again get to be in that building in Seattle (Washington, USA) where I worked as an Intensive counselor for twenty-one years. We closed quickly because of the pandemic, and I left thinking we would reopen sometime last year before we moved away from the building. But that was not to be. The move has happened, and the building has been sold.
So this is part of my farewell to that place where I had several Intensives and had the privilege to be part of a wonderful staff and counseling team, listening to and thinking about so many, many wonderful humans during their Intensives. It has been a privilege to support other good humans, and all of who we are, on this journey toward healing from the effects of hurtful experiences. I love that we take on [undertake] recovering our genius-sized flexible intelligences and noticing our inherent expectation to be close, connected, and cooperative with all other humans and live in harmony with each other and this planet.
A FINAL NOTE
In that session with Harvey, I did not tell him what I had cried so hard about. He did not ask. He just beamed his delight at me upon our parting. In 1999 I decided to write him a note to thank him for the session and the difference it had made in my life and the difference all my RC experiences had made. He sent me a kind note back. He died less than a month later, and I am so pleased that I got to tell him what that session meant and the differences it had made for me.
With love to all,
Lawrenceville, Georgia, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 205, October 2021)