Fresh from a glorious vacation in one of my happiest of places, I was inspired to write a “feel good” blog this week. How about a story of attachment gone right? And with the luxury of having my mind free, I could float back in time to some happy memories. Way back in 2014, now amazingly almost a decade ago, driving home from the office, I was excited to catch an interview with the author of perhaps my favorite book of all time, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, (yes a book about food!) the voice of local treasure Michael Pollan. Since then, Pollan has become an even greater hero in my world for legitimizing and putting psychedelics on the mainstream map in a whole new way. In this case, however, Pollan was the interviewer, the interviewee being someone I had not heard of before who has since joined my short list: baker extraordinaire Chad Robertson.
Chad’s delightful and arduous journey could be my whole blog, so I will save it for another day. Suffice it to say, it grabbed me. I love baking, but I had never tried his medium: sourdough bread. Intrigued knowing that his recipe for basic country sourdough was 28 pages long(!) I ordered his then-only book as soon as I got home: Tartine. named after his now legendary neighborhood bakery. Tartine is near my home, and I was accustomed to seeing lines of patient people snaking around the block up to his door. Not knowing what the buzz was all about and never one for waiting in lines, I had never ventured in there.
I was soon to learn that sourdough baking is much like trauma healing, a cautious, painstaking organic process requiring presence, patience, time, and a measure of dogged faith. It begins with a “starter,” or wild yeast. When flour is mixed with water and cared for in its ideal environment and circumstances, it begins to bloom, it ferments into a bubbling living organism, like a thriving child. In this case, it is a requisite blend of temperature, light, regular care, and feeding, air. I am convinced as well, a measure of love. It took me six tries to finally “get it.” But once I got it, I nurtured it like a mother bear, and it continues to bubble and sing to this day. I bake about once a week, my husband having a requisite RDA of bread. And routinely, when the house is filled with the heady aroma of baking loaves, you might hear me wildly shriek: “Thank you, Chad!” I am certain he can hear me!
I also discovered that baking bread, as I was later to find with cheesemaking as well, made me feel connected to people around the world throughout time, who, in some iteration or other, made and “broke” bread. I came to love not only baking but sharing it. And particularly during the COVID-19 Pandemic, along with the cheese, sharing bread with loved ones known and barely known made me feel happy and connected.
On Father’s Day, I was peacefully stirring a vat of cheese and perhaps embarrassedly enjoying the fact that both my husband and I have no fathers and no kids, so a potentially fraught day was simply a gentle Sunday. I happened to hear a radio program that caught my attention. It was an interview with a father and daughter, telling their story. The young girl, Kitty, at the age of fourteen, had been stricken by a bout of ferocious and baffling agitated, doggedly treatment-resistant depression that turned a formerly cheerful and well-adjusted adolescent into a terrified, agoraphobic and nearly catatonic huddled child. I don’t really know enough to understand what happened, but her whole family mobilized into high gear.
Father, Al, took a leave from his teaching job to stay home with her; Mom, Katie, took over the full-time “bread-winning,” and her older sister and brother stepped up to both cope with their parents’ pre-occupation with their sister and help where they could. It all sounds a bit too perfect, but I will go with what they tell us. Al frantically tried everything to help Kitty, to no avail. Until one day, perchance, he happened on baking bread. And something piqued a spark and kindled Kitty’s interest.
When Kitty appeared to be perking up, Al cautiously invited her to join him in the kitchen, and slowly they became a bread-baking duo. Their product, before long at all, was pretty darn good. They became so prolific that the family could not keep up with it all, and they began to share it with their neighbors, all of whom seemed to thrive and clamor for more; and pretty soon were placing orders. Al and Kitty suddenly found themselves with a cottage industry that their little kitchen could not support. Soon, they borrowed their neighbors’ kitchens in the wee hours of the morning, accepting the loan of coveted oven time. And Kitty seemed to be steadily coming back like a plant long parched, finding its nurture and light.
Long story very short for now, the result was a little bakery, the Orange Bakery, which became a raving success. Kitty discovered herself as an artisan, a culinary artist, and miraculously quite well again. And Al retired formally from teaching and even came to think of himself as a baker. It was maybe a year, and the whole family began to heave a sigh of relief that Kitty was OK and really rising higher and higher. My best friend, so often a few steps ahead of me, had found and gifted me their book, Breadsong, for my last birthday, but it had been buried too far down in the stack, and I had not read it until now. Greedily and joyfully, I have read it now.
I learned that Kitty, although a good five decades younger than me, is another cousin. She was quoted in the book as saying almost the exact words that I have repeatedly expressed over these nearly 10 years: baking bread makes me feel connected to humanity through time and diaspora. And now, I would add through mental health challenges. She also is a devoted of Chad, although I have had the privilege of living in his town, and before he got too famous, seeing him around at his (once) new and grand Tartine Manufactory, where I even got his autograph in my now well-worn book. I also learned that the Orange Bakery was located in Oxford, England! Where many of us will be attending the trauma conference in August-September. I was thrilled! I will be able to meet them! Of course, I emailed them. I got a swift reply. I am not sure why, but the bakery was set to close on 23 July, so by the time we all arrive, we will have to rely on their periodic but guaranteed pop-ups. However, they promised to let me know when those will be. I am not sure why they have had to close; most likely, for so many small businesses, it is Pandemic-related. It is not because of Kitty’s health. She is now 18 and going strong. We will still surely meet!
Who knows what the transformative ingredient was that brought Kitty back? Was it the timeless magic of bread? The devotion and presence and steady love of the heroic Al and the whole family, really? The purposeful action and creative agency, the herculean effort of baking and then opening their bakery? Most likely a heady recipe blending them all. But I do believe, of course, the defining and ultimately winning “active ingredient” was the unwavering attachment that, like the starter, “infects” the host, whatever it may be, with bubbling life.
In our family, we had a ritual prayer before meals, the “motzi: “hamotzi lechem min ha aretz…” thank you for the bread from the earth. Although certainly not one for formal religion, I still cherish that.
Today’s song:
From an early age, I harbored both fascination and perhaps preoccupation with the body. Certainly my own, but really everyone’s. I was curious about sex, obsessed about food and weight, athletics, healing, all of it. I did not think I was smart enough to be a doctor, but I thought about it. In graduate school, I chose a specialization in somatics, even though back then, somatic psychotherapy did not have nearly the foundation of science and neuroscience it has now. I pored over Wilhelm Reich’s Function of the Orgasm because it integrated the essential worlds of psychology, sexuality, and politics in a way that profoundly resonated with me, those being three areas of exploration that consumed me and still do. I am gratified that the body has come to occupy center stage in the field of trauma, and even in a weird way, how the pandemic has forced us all to be mindful of the body and of health. It has also illustrated how profoundly matters of the body affect our mental health and even vice versa and worldwide.
Admittedly, I neglected the vast population of disabled or “differently abled” people. I don’t know if out of fear, denial, or simply oblivion. Another population that is invisible and forgotten, abandoned or cast out. I remember telling my husband early in our relationship, “if ever I can’t move, please shoot me.” I simply could not imagine being able to live if not fully “able-bodied.” (I am ashamed to remember it.) Our office has an elevator and a “disabled” parking space. I figured I was “doing my share.” Oy vey.
I recently heard an interview with a young woman introduced as a blind, queer, African American hip hop artist, Young Ant. She was talking about disability in the music industry, and what it is like to be a blind performer – something I had never thought about. Watching her rap and dance on YouTube was eye-opening. I had never considered how a performer finds their way gracefully onstage, dances, and looks cool moving, not to mention the accessibility issues of most or certainly many venues. Ant is on a mission to awaken the world to this.
I was impressed by the recently released movie, Box of Rain, a movie not about the Grateful Dead, but about the culture of Dead Heads, by the mention that way back in the 1970s, the Dead had a little platform in the audience at their shows for wheelchairs. That was radical in its time: the same era in which then-President Nixon killed what would have been the Americans with Disabilities Act. Many species destroy or abandon their “imperfect” young, and sadly, many human parents and fellow citizens are not much better. I am humbled to find another “blind spot” in my awareness, another big point of neglect and injustice.
A man featured in Box of Rain, a longtime Dead Head, was Jim LeBrecht, who worked as the sound engineer for the Dead for many years. He is also a longtime friend of my best friend. Of course, I was excited to tell her about seeing Jim in this new movie. She asked me if I had ever seen another movie he had produced, Crip Camp, about a summer camp in the Catskill mountains of New York, specifically for disabled kids. I was intrigued.
Rarely have I seen a more moving and graphic depiction of the power of affiliation, what it is like to be in a group of others with a similar experience to one’s own. In the world of trauma and neglect, we are well aware of the power of the group: what it is like to be in the company of others with some sort of similar experience who understand without any words. Some of us have had the good fortune to have been in such a group and found it indescribable. I am not much of a movie person, as I always say, “I am way too stingy with my reading time,” but this one is a must-see (and it is available on Netflix).
The film also makes a powerful point of how (yes, we ever return to it) the original attachment with primary caregivers so profoundly affects the sense of self. The film opens with Jim narrating,
“When I was born,” he says, “they did not expect me to live more than a couple of hours.” In the visual footage, a grainy old black and white home movie, we see little Jimmy as a toddler, blissfully happy, laughing and ambling, climbing and tumbling on his plump little arms. Although we do not see his parents, it appears that he feels secure and safe enough to explore widely, move and grow, even to become the teenager who has the gumption and grit to imagine and aspire, hope, and actually become the sound engineer for his favorite band. And those parents obviously got him to Camp Jened, lovingly referred to as “Crip Camp.”
At camp, everyone had one or another disability, and for the first time ever, felt free and accepted. They did what all kids do at summer camp: sports, art, music, experiencing nature and the outdoors, and communal living. With a culture of non-judgment and helpfulness, they pushed each other’s wheelchairs, carried those that needed it, and understood each other’s sometimes strained or challenged speech.
In the larger world, apparently, there is a definite hierarchy or pecking order of disabilities, with the “Polios” at the top rung and the “CP’s” (those with cerebral palsy) at the bottom. Not here. It was moving to see how carefully and thoughtfully the “CP’s” difficult verbalizations were both listened to and comprehended, sometimes “translated” or summarized by a comrade. And my memory was jogged.
I remembered a time, the one time in my long and sweaty waitressing career, that I waited on a really famous person. I worked in a fancy place not far from UC Berkeley and had the honor of serving a large dinner party celebrating the luminary physicist, Stephen Hawking. I watched the tiny man in his wheelchair, fitted out with many super-high-tech devices to help him communicate with the throng of scientists and other intellectuals fawning over him, myself included. What a rarity in today’s “ability-supremacist” world.
My favorite part of Crip Camp was when a “CP” named Judy laughingly told the story, in her somewhat garbled speech, “I was getting older, and I did not want to die a virgin! With a twinkle she declared, “So I had an affair with the bus driver! A week or so later, I had a terrible abdominal pain. I went to the doctor and turned up a diagnosis of gonorrhea. The doctor was flabbergasted, incredulous! He could not imagine that anyone would want to f— me! As soon as I got well, I went back to school and got a master’s degree to become a sexuality educator.” Judy became an activist and vocally championed the cause of disabled sexuality. She also married happily, although she laughingly added, “my in-laws accepted me, but they said to their son, ‘couldn’t you have at least married a ‘Polio?’”
Admittedly, I neglected the vast population of disabled or “differently abled” people. I don’t know if out of fear, denial, or simply oblivion. Another population that is invisible and forgotten, abandoned or cast out.
Our dad, when he had throat cancer, required a complicated surgery where they had to break his jaw and build a new one, out of steel. Always vain and proud of his strapping good looks, he was now disfigured. He was 50. Amazingly it did not seem to phase him (the insulation of narcissism?). Years later, I even asked him about that. He said it never bothered him. By then, he was fond of saying, much like Keith Richard, “I’m happy to be here! I’m happy to be anywhere!”
I once had a client who finally accepted his history and the idea of being a survivor of childhood neglect. He said, “I want a disabled placard for my car that says “Child of Neglect!” It is a blessing and a daily challenge to accept who we are.
Have a look at Young Ant rapping and dancing with her white cane. And thanks Jim!
Today’s Song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!