A Litter of Kittens by Alyce Barry

Introduction:
Practically Shameless tells the story of an issue I struggled with from childhood into my forties: saying mean, critical things to other girls and women, and believing I was too critical to ever have a circle of friends. I called the critical part of me my Editor.

In this excerpt, from Chapter 8, “Kittens in a Litter,” I have attended my first experiential weekend in Wisconsin, a Shadow Work weekend led by my brother, Cliff. I expected while there to be only an observer, and instead I had the life-changing experience of being a conduit of blessing for another person. Returning home, I have seen for the first time that my ten-year-old daughter is taking on all my fears and insecurities in order to be like me, just as I became critical to be like my father. For her sake, as well as my own, I have decided to tackle a list of my issues that seems “as long as my arm.”

Chapter 8:
When a cat has a litter of kittens, sometimes the biggest kitten isn’t the first to be born.

There was so much I wanted in my life, and I wanted it so urgently, that I put myself on a kind of fast track. In November of that year, I went to Memphis, Tennessee to attend a second workshop—this time as a full participant. Three months later I went to a women’s retreat called the Woman Within Initiation and, with other women who had attended, became part of a women’s group that met weekly. I began seeing a therapist and integrating into my daily life the changes that were happening inside me. The following September I went back to the A-frame in the woods for a third workshop, this time bringing my husband with me. Over that weekend, I realized I wanted to become a facilitator and began adding trainings and practice sessions to my schedule, and adding a career change to my long-term goals.

As I examined each scene of my inner play and empowered or blessed some young part of me, the Editor waited in the wings. Whenever I became aware of its presence, I was filled with fear and loathing, and I shrank from exposing it to others. After years of avoiding groups, I was beginning to feel I might belong in the warm, accepting, invisible arms I found at every workshop and training. How could I show the people in these groups how critical I could be? Surely they would shun me and send me away. I had waited too long for this; I couldn’t take the risk of ruining it all.

Looking back at what I gained from those earliest workshops, I see myself preparing the way for what came later. I gradually felt less fear about being in groups, built a support system to help me as I grew, and acquired some basic tools.

GETTING MY VOICE BACK
The workshop in Memphis is where I did my first Shadow Work process, facilitated by a married couple there because Cliff thought it best that my first experience of Shadow Work not be led by a family member. For the first time I saw one of my inner bad guys played by another person, and at first, I couldn’t even speak back to it.

This bad guy was not the Editor but a less complicated figure: a bully, smacking one hand with his fist, and yelling angrily. It was the athletic coach who had been yelling at me to stay quiet inside my head for years, who had told me just be quiet, just try harder, just focus on something else. My reaction to the bully was not fear, as it was with the Editor, but a feeling of powerlessness. I directed a woman named Denise, who was playing me as a girl, to kneel before the bully and cover her mouth with her right hand. All I wanted was to get my voice back.

When the facilitators asked me if this scene was familiar, I realized the bully was another side of Dad that I had internalized. It was the domineering Dad who cared most about his own needs, who yelled at us to be quiet, and who gave us the message that he wished we weren’t around.

I had grown up feeling that I had no right to talk back or to question authority. I didn’t even feel I had a right to take up space in the world. The young me played by Denise felt powerless and ashamed.

This scene between the bully and the self-stifler had been the source of my anger and my shame during that first workshop when the man with the military haircut took my seat.

Another realization came to me as I looked at the scene. When I looked at Denise with her hand over her mouth, I saw not only myself as a girl, but my mother stifling her anger towards my father, and probably towards her own father as well. I felt sure I had learned this stifle response from her.

Stifling my anger had worked when I was a child, but it wasn’t working for me any more. In order to go further in my training, I had to be able to speak up, ask questions, ask for what I needed. I needed to have my voice back. When the workshop facilitators asked me what I wanted to do with this inner play between the bully and the little girl stifling herself, I thought about Bonnie. She had pushed her demon out of the room. I didn’t care about the bully leaving the room. I just wanted him to shut up. My anger seemed to reside in my throat and I wanted to shout back at the bully until he was the one getting stifled.

Because I had never allowed myself to shout at the top of my lungs before, the facilitators put on some loud music so I wouldn’t feel self-conscious. Two people held me in the safety hold, allowing me to dig my feet into the carpet and feel angry with my whole body without injuring myself or anyone else.

I started shouting back at the bully, while the group enthusiastically cheered me on.

“Go for it! You can do it! Tell him!” they shouted.

Yelling felt good at first, but after about a minute, I had stopped for some reason. I was arguing instead, trying to reason with the bully, and I was getting nowhere.

The facilitators asked me if there was a risk for me to silence the bully once and for all and get my voice back. The room was suddenly quiet. Someone had switched off the music.

I nodded in surprise. Yes, there was a risk! I was fiercely liberal and had been an anti–nuclear power activist for a brief time in college. I had attended demonstrations and committed civil disobedience, even going to prison once for a few days. If I got my voice back, I might speak out in a way that so infuriated my opponents or the government, they would silence me for good—they would have me killed.

The risk certainly made a lot of sense: nobody would want to get killed for speaking out! As we talked, I realized that I had feared getting killed by Dad as a child. There were times when I had felt his anger seething beneath the surface like lava beneath a volcano. His anger felt very big, big enough to bring the world to an end. Even when he was just a bit irritable, I tread softly for fear of arousing his anger. I realized that when I had said he’d given us the message that he didn’t want us around, what I had really meant was that he wished we were dead. I thought again about my father’s time in the Marines. He had been trained as a killer and somehow his ability to kill, and perhaps his experience of combat, had come through into his family life.

What a good idea, the facilitators said, to stifle myself and not risk getting killed! I had never thought of it as a strategy before. I had thought that I was just too cowardly to talk back or speak out against authority. I thought of it as something shameful, as something wrong with me.

The facilitators went on to ask if not getting my voice back was keeping me from getting killed. Or did I ever get killed anyway, even if it was just getting killed inside my head?

The answer surprised me. Yes! During those darkest hours when I thought about suicide, I had imagined myself dead many times. And in a sense, the bullying athletic coach had even been “killing” me by killing my voice in groups all these years. Clearly, I was getting killed anyway, so I might as well take the risk to get my voice back.

“I’m willing to take the risk,” I said. The moment I said the words, I felt like yelling again. In an instant, the music was back on and my voice rose in volume. I dug my feet into the carpet and yelled for all I was worth. The group had come to its feet and was cheering loudly. My body was releasing anger and frustration that I had kept trapped inside for years.

When my anger reached its peak, the facilitators signaled the man playing the bully to gradually sink to the floor and become silent. The two people holding me let go and I stood free, my feet firmly planted on the floor, breathing hard.

I had won! I couldn’t remember ever having felt truly victorious before, and it was an incredible rush. I felt a new power in my throat. When the facilitators asked what it was like, I described it as a red ball of fire. They invited me to close my eyes and feel the red ball of fire in my throat. Did it have a message for me?

Yes, it did!

It said, “I can speak.”

THE IMPACT
For a few days I was hoarse from the yelling, but I had my voice back. Over the weeks that followed, I felt a new capability inside to speak up for myself, whether it was to reclaim my seat cushion at a workshop or ask for a raise at work. When I tried to tell people what the new capability felt like, though, I found it difficult to describe.

Something Cliff had said that first weekend came back to me: the four parts of the self are like portals we can step through to reach our highest potential. When I spoke up instead of stifling myself, it felt as if a doorway had opened in what had previously been a solid wall, and through the doorway came a cool, bracing breeze. Now that my body had a sensation to match it, the idea of portals made sense.
The doorway was my Warrior portal. Shouting the bully down had opened the doorway to my Warrior self, who was my voice for speaking truth to power, my strength for doing battle against powerlessness and depression, my integrity that took responsibility for my physical and emotional well-being, and my courage for facing the difficult tasks ahead. I had a stronger sense of myself, as if I stood on more solid ground and a thicker line had been drawn around me in the soil at my feet. I pictured my Warrior drawing that line with a sword. I knew, with a Warrior’s good sense, that I had a right to exist and to take up space.

I felt a thrill as I realized this portal was only one of four. An image came to me of a pavilion with lofty doorways facing north, south, east and west. I could step through each doorway in turn and reach new worlds beyond. The future looked more hopeful than it had in years.

When I shouted the bully down and found the red ball of fire in my throat, the scene inside me changed. I no longer had a bully berating a defenseless victim. I had an assertive self asking for what I needed and taking responsibility for maintaining what I had.

Because the scene inside me had changed, my outward behavior changed as well. I spoke up in groups and questioned what didn’t make sense to me. I took better care of my back and my teeth and spent less money on doctors. I wrote essays, book reviews, and letters to politicians. I opened up to people and kept a daily journal for the first time in years. The size of my journal grew from 29 pages for 1996 to an impressive 380 pages for 1997.

Excerpt from Practically Shameless. Copyright 2008 Alyce Barry. All rights reserved. Illustration by Cindy Kalman.

Alyce Barry (WWTW Lake Delavan 1996) (303) 485-5400 www.AlyceBarry.com Author of Practically Shameless: How Shadow Work Helped Me Find My Voice, My Path, and My Inner Gold, October 2007 www.PracticallyShameless.com Email: alyce@alycebarry.com