Headwaters
Children born into
attuned families
begin with belonging.
Mine began at inception,
with assignment.
In third grade, Mrs. Goerker called on me.
I wiggled at my desk.
The answer was there,
held behind a locked door.
The class waited
while I searched for a voice.
Years later, watching Jodie Foster
in the film, Nell,
a woman whose language was unfamiliar
to those who encountered her,
I recognized the distance
between an inward life
and what others could hear.
Her words reached them without their meaning.
Mine had scarcely left my throat.
Yet something in her predicament
gave shape to what I knew from the inside:
a mind full of meaning
and a voice the room could not decipher.
The words were there.
Fear closed the passage.
At home, my attempts to speak met dismissal.
“Little girls are to be seen and not heard”
carried the force of a command.
In that classroom, my body obeyed
before I could give the answer I knew.
I learned the grammar of my mother’s moods
before I learned to speak for myself—
her face,
her posture,
the change in her voice.
Screaming and cursing taught me
to anticipate the storm.
My father’s restraint held my attention, too.
He managed her rage knowing
I would bear the consequences if he resisted.
I held back my protest
at the injustice I witnessed,
trying to spare him what speaking
would unleash.
Each of us was trying to protect the other.
My silence became part of that protection.
That was my assignment.
My attention returned
to the question of protection:
what would this moment
require of me?
Fight
Flight
Freeze
Fawn
Flop
Looking back, I can recognize
how much intelligence
was gathered into that vigilance—
and how much of my attention it claimed.
Within me, another world was taking shape.
Driving down Broadway,
I looked through the windows of other cars.
While my mother yelled at my father,
I imagined the lives unfolding beside us.
What would it feel like
to ride with that family?
To belong among them?
Through the glass, I pictured peace and joy.
In those moments,
I wished I could disappear from our car
and emerge in theirs.
At four, I remember an awareness of God.
Around eight, I began walking
myself to Sunday school.
At sixteen, my life was interrupted
by a spiritual encounter.
At thirty-four, divine love visited me—
a woman taught she deserved damnation.
An unseen presence entered the room—
a felt knowing that preceded explanation.
It spoke to me in an inaudible voice.
I thought of Paul, caught up to the third heaven,
hearing what he was not permitted to tell.
I am still finding language for what I heard,
and learning how to let it shape my life.
My attention followed the atmosphere around me.
My longing followed a presence within.
The inward life I would later learn to inhabit
was already finding expression
through image, reverie, and the sacred.
Years later, after graduate school,
I wrote a letter to that little girl.
By then, I had language for her accommodations:
the vigilance, the responsibilities,
the parts of herself she had sheltered.
Writing to her allowed the tenderness
I had extended to others
to reach the child I had been—
present as a ghost,
with no claim to her own feelings,
no room for her own voice.
My heart wept for her.
During the last year of my mother’s life,
we wept together.
I had long held her story—
listened,
understood,
made room.
Then an unexpected day arrived.
She let me know she saw me:
who I was,
the woman I had become,
and how she could not take credit
for that becoming.
She opened her heart
with a candor I had never experienced.
Her words carried the weight of confession.
My heart wept differently.
The child who had learned
to read her mother’s face
was being recognized
by the woman around whom
she had once organized her life.
Her acknowledgment entered a history
I had already begun to understand.
Now that history held
this encounter, too.
For Your Own Terrain
HEADWATERS
Early Assignment
Field Notes:
CAPROCK
A resistant layer of rock
can shelter softer stone
beneath it.
As the surrounding rock
weathers and erodes,
the sheltering layer
helps preserve what remains.
At Bryce Canyon in Utah,
harder caprock protects
the softer layers beneath it,
helping shape the pillars
we call hoodoos.
What appears strong
may be sheltering
what remains tender.
So may we.
Within a family
A child may learn
to shelter tenderness
beneath a capable exterior:
anticipating what is needed,
containing disappointment,
appearing self-sufficient,
becoming the dependable one.
As others come to rely
upon that composure,
a protective response
can become an assigned place.
The child’s capacity to carry
receives recognition;
the child’s need to be held
finds less room.
What hardened over
the tender places in you,
and does it still stand guard?
—
What feeling or longing within you
has waited for permission
to find a voice?
—
How might you begin
to give that tenderness a place
in the life you are shaping now?
A FURTHER BEARING
At Bryce Canyon,
footsteps near a hoodoo’s base
can weaken the slopes
that protect its foundation.
Keeping to established trails
helps preserve
what we have come to admire.
Our presence becomes
part of the conditions
a landscape must withstand.
Within a family, too,
how we approach another’s tenderness
can influence what they learn
to reveal or shelter.
A different kind of encounter—
being heard,
having a need taken seriously,
receiving care—
can give an old protection
room to soften.
The ground changes
through the care
we bring to it.