“I almost ran out of the theatre!” You should have told me about that scene!”
This was Larry’s response to his wife, after an all-too-common experience from his own brutal childhood unfolded before him, in the movie, The Shack.
This article, and the sequel to it (to be published next week) will feature my interview subject, Larry, who is a man of uncommon resilience. This quality took root, and grew in the incredibly harsh terrain of a childhood where brutality and violence were a near-daily experience. This is an account of what protects and builds back the soul, how it recovers, and how it survives. It is impossible to tell this story without including the brutal context that gave rise to it. Consequently, every effort will be made to provide section titles that can alert a reader who wishes to avoid the kind of moment that caused Larry to want to get up and leave the theatre.
An Introduction to Larry
If you were to meet Larry in his suburban, middle class Catholic Church just outside Cincinnati, you would encounter a man of few words, and a ready smile. Chances are good, he would be accompanied by his wife of twenty-eight years, Lizzie, who is his best friend, and helpmate. Together, they assisted one another in raising his two boys (in their forties), and her son and daughter (in their thirties). They are currently the collective grandparents of ten. “My biggest plus is having Lizzie,” he confided. Nothing about this man, or his…successful-by-every-measure…life gives a shred of evidence of the poverty and brutality that marked his childhood.
The gentle warmth of this retired electrician of 35 years, put me at ease as my questions escorted him back to the most painful moments of his life. So why didn’t Larry turn down my request for this piece? Why not let these sleeping dogs lay? When I explained the purpose of this interview to this salt-of-the-earth man, “to assist others in enhancing their own resilience,” he seemed eager to share that mission with me, in the hopes of helping others. It is his hope and mine, that you will find, in his story, tools, techniques and strategies to assist you in whatever brand of brutality life has presented you, or will one day, present you.
South of Eden
The archetypical story of being cast out of paradise comes to mind when considering the unjust custodial arrangement of his parents’ divorce nearly sixty years ago. Family Research was in its nascent phase when the gavel dropped on Larry’s childhood. The father of two boys (three and four years-old respectively) would only be allowed to welcome them home once-a-month,from 10:00am on Saturdays until 5:00pm on Sundays. This was the framework that allowed the proverbial snake into the garden of Larry’s childhood. That snake’s name was “Dick.”
DICK’S CRUELTY
It would take a very thick volume, or two to contain all of the episodes of cruelty that Dick visited upon his wife (Larry’s mom), her two boys (Greg, 6; and Larry, 5), and Dick’s own two live-in sons (Will, 8; and Rob, 7). In order to map the terrain of Larry’s childhood, just a few significant landmarks of Dick’s cruelty will be provided. Embedded within these stories, we will locate profound elements of resilience that will shine all the more for their contrast with the dark backdrop of cruelty and poverty.
First Blood
Even an average-sized man like Dick would have quadrupledthe size of a four-year-old boy. Despite this consideration, and perhaps because of it, the new boyfriend felt entitled to physically menace a toddler without compunction. Larry remembered standing in the back of his mom’s convertible while she went into the grocery store. Her new friend in the passenger seat up front ordered him to sit. Unaccustomed to the snake that had made its way into his life, Larry behaved like a four year old, and continued to play in the back. For the first of many episodes, Dick’s high school-sized ring (a fake) struck Larry’s, recently formed, four-year-old skull hard enough to knock him on his back. Larry remembered lying there, “staring up at the blue sky.” Had he been a bird, perhaps he would have flown off into its azure freedom. As it stood, he would remain tethered in a cruel cage with a striking snake until the balance of his boyhood was spent thirteen years later!
A “Typical” Christmas Story
Holiday stories turned chaotic and violent are common among the children of abusive/alcoholic parents or step-parents. Larry remembers one particular Christmas standing out amongst the others. Dick returned home from the Christmas Eve party drunk, and enraged. “He went wacko destroying every dish, and every pan in the kitchen. Then he went after the Christmas tree and all the presents.” “As usual, the morning after” one of these tirades, “it was like nothing happened. We woke up to the wreckage. The four of us always had to clean up after him. He never said he was sorry. He would never clean up after himself.”
Larry and his brothers occupied a small room off of the kitchen where the bulk of this Christmas Eve mayhem took place. “We heard all of the commotion,” Larry said, “but we stayed quiet on the other side of the wall.” Just like the survivors’ reports in Nazi death camps, the inmates of this house tried to escape his notice at all times. “He was always looking for a place to put his anger.” Larry said. “You just tried to not have him notice you. You didn’t talk, you just sat there.”
Doctor Seuss’ imagination was not dark enough to create a Grinch quite like this one. After he tore up all evidence of Christmas, “mom tried to re-wrap her presents with anything she could find around the house. That year, she had gotten my brothers and me walkie-talkies.” In a scene that was as tender as it was crushingly sad, on Christmas morning, “she handed [Larry] an oatmeal box. [He] opened up that box, and poured out the pieces to a broken walkie talkie set.”
INDESTRUCTIBLE: TWO RESILIENCE TOOLS
Play
What came next in this story contains a universal symbol of a stout kind of grit that is the birthright of children. After they cleared the wreckage, and salvaged Christmas gift pieces, Larry and his siblings went out to play [emphasis added]! They ended up playing with [again, emphasis added] those walkie talkies—”like pretend.” It seems to me that for a group of boys, who were constant targets of violence, play was a profound act of soul-salvaging resistance in the face of injustice and cruelty. I am visualizing their abused mother on that Christmas morning looking out the window and glimpsing her sons’ innate superpower in action. I can see her observing broken toys made whole with the magic of childhood imagination. At that window, I can picture her breathing in just enough hope for one more day.
Companionship: “Just Them Being There Was Comforting”
Another thing that Dick could not get his destructive hands on that night…another thing he could not tear up…was the solace that Larry felt in the company of his three older brothers who yoked themselves together under the weight of a shared burden. “Just them (i.e. his brothers) being there was comforting. It was helpful because you were all going through the same thing. You knew what they were thinking and feeling; they knew what you were thinking and feeling. You didn’t have to say anything.”
At a very young age, those boys already knew something that widows or widower of advanced years discover in grief support groups. By the age of ten, they knew a truth that every AA member encounters when confronting their baffling, cunning disease. What is that truth? When two or three are gathered under the load of a shared suffering, something Transcendent and stronger than destruction manifests.
Preventative Medicine: Play + Companionship
The mixture of play and companionship together provided a kind of prophylaxis for these beleaguered boys. Indeed, this band of brothers maintained a standing weekend ritual. “Saturdays were our days to go to the dump to see what we could find.” Larry laughed as he recounted those mornings.“We’d always have some bike that we had cobbled together, a 26 inch front tire, a 28 inch one in back, one peddle that was a stub. We all had bikes. We were handy like that. During the summer, from sun up till sun down, we would be out. We didn’t want to come home until we absolutely had to.”
TAKEAWAYS FROM LARRY’S STORY
Like Larry, James Finley, is an adult survivor of childhood trauma. He is also a psychotherapist and scholar of Christian spirituality. His podcast, Turning to the Mystics, is an accessible way to learn about the contemplative life from the ancient masters. One of his podcasts has a “good news; bad news” dimension to it. The bad news? Neither the spiritual life, nor God protects anyone from the suffering that is part and parcel of human life. The good news? Echoing ancient spiritual masters, he maintains that God is the very ground of our being, and as such, there is an inborn resilience to each and every one of our lives. It seems to me that the trick is to locate those inborn resilience resources within ourselves, like Larry and his brothers did.
What is the suffering in your own life? Whether it is an endogenous form of pain like a chronic illness, or an exogenous form, like career, financial, or family difficulties, can you learn from the children in this story? How is it that you fold play into your life? What contexts do you provide your inner-child to spend imagination, creativity, and exercise? Could this be the time to intentionally carve out regular time for play? Even better, what is a form of play from your childhood that you can approximate as an adult?
Another takeaway from Larry’s story: with whom do you “yoke together” to share a common burden? Psychotherapy and spiritual direction have their places, but having comrades like Larry’s that “know what you think and feel” first-hand, provides a kind of profound nutrition for the challenged soul.