July 23, 2009

“Be brave,” my father would say.

He died thirteen years ago; however his words reverberate beyond death. Lots of messages from the past echo in us: we all carry the spoken and unspoken adages and scripts of our parents. Internalized within us are mantras not of our own making. And the mantras create our personalized family “mythology.” Some of these words we need to live by.

Our parents, our families, if we are fortunate, teach us how to be safe (“Don’t put your finger in the light socket.”); how to get along with others (“Share that toy with your brother.”); how to be respectful (“Say please, say thank you.”) And some of these scripted mantras passed on from generation to generation probably arose out of necessity. Can you imagine a 6-year-old bundled in blankets in the middle of winter on a journey across the ocean in 1895, emigrating from Italy or Eastern Europe to America, being told not to be brave? I imagine my ancestors having to be very brave and not cry as they left the familiar and its poverty to forge a new life in the New World where both the landscape and the language were foreign. Not the time for tears; indeed the time to be brave.

However, what was necessary in certain circumstances, becomes a constriction of feeling in others. Another, later era 6-year-old, crying at the death of her puppy in an American town, doesn’t need the “be brave” admonition as much as she needs permission to feel her sadness.

Many years ago, during a series of miscarriages followed by a time of infertility, I cried in church on Mother’s Day, when roses were presented to all the women in honor of their “motherhood”. My father happened to be present. He looked at me, my tears streaming, and said, “Be Brave.”

Not being a child any longer, I spoke out. “Why, Dad, so you won’t feel my sadness, and be hurt too?” So disarmed, so taken aback, he sputtered, “Well, yes!”

Often, beyond when it is necessary for survival or safety, family messages retain their power to stop authentic feeling. For example, we don’t want our child to hurt. (Or we don’t want our child to be angry, because we ourselves get afraid of anger, and so on.)
Feelings are neither good or bad—they arise, they are, they need to be acknowledged, accepted. What goes awry with our feeling is not finding healthy expression of them. (One feeling we often have difficulty with is anger. Anger can be a symptom of our experience of an injustice. It can be a warning to us about a situation in which we feel distress. Acting violently against self or others is the unhealthy expression of that feeling.)

When we have awareness of our inner messages/mantras from our families, we have a choice of action. Do those words fit in this situation, or are they constricting our feeling, our aliveness?

Sometimes we do need to be brave. On July 7, 1996, I remember whispering in my father’s ear as he lay dying, “Okay, Dad, now’s the time to be brave.” Despite his almost comatose state, he nodded his head, “Yes.”

?  Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to http://www.DrGajdos.com/Articles.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.

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Hello from New Iberia, La.–the Queen City of the Bayou Teche, a tiny center of culture in the heart of Cajun country, just a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico. If you’ve read any of David Lee Burke’s mystery series about detective Dave Robicheaux, you know New Iberia. It’s his hometown. The Konrico Rice Mill and Mclhenny’s Tabasco Sauce Company are also in New Iberia.
 
I blame the fact that I am down here in the land of bayous, sugar cane, live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, 97 degree heat and near 100 percent humidity on both my editor, Rich Schwartzman and Upper Darby Sousa Band founder and director, Thomas J. Hoey.

You see, as Chadds Ford Live is still getting off the ground, the editor and myself have an agreement shall we say, as to my…umm…compensation for this weekly exercise.

It’s not an issue. But I never thought the piece I wrote for the May 28 edition was going to end up costing me a $375 round trip Delta airfare to Lafayette, La. via Atlanta.

It was my May 28 blog on the Sousa Band concert at Longwood Gardens on May 23 and its founder-director, Thomas J Hoey who had contacted me at the Sanderson Museum about Chris Sanderson’s correspondence with John Philip Sousa.

Hoey had e-mailed a link to Sousa’s complete catalogue of works, both published and unpublished including not only his marches but his operas and symphonic pieces. And there among his songs for voice and piano was “The Belle of the Bayou Teche”.

What? How did Sousa know about the Bayou Teche?

I often fly down to Louisiana to visit an old teaching colleague from the 1970s.  We remained friends even when he returned to his hometown of New Iberia, to teach in his Alma Mater, Catholic High School. The meandering Bayou Teche (about the size of the Brandywine) forms a loop around his neighborhood on Hilltop Circle.

Hoey then e-mailed a list of all of Sousa’s concert venues. The closest Sousa ever got to New Iberia as far as we know, were two concerts in New Orleans.  Today, still a distance of a good two hours by car.

Hoey also contacted a colleague at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. to send a photocopy of the original score of the song based on a poem by O.E.  Lynn.

I cannot quote any of the poem to you as it was written in 1911, in a southern dialect and style that is now considered offensive.

So a quick series of e-mails ensued between several of my friends in New Iberia to figure out the Sousa connection. There was even talk of presenting a copy to the new Bayou Teche Museum in New Iberia.
 
At one point I my Cajun friends – I miss New Iberia!
 
The answer came—come on down! So $375 poorer, here I am in New Iberia.
 
Boudin, Andouille, Crayfish, Po’ Boys, crabs, Café au Lait, breakfast at Victors, Sunday Mass, Cypremort Point on the Gulf, Cajun music and fellowship with dear friends. “Laissez les bon temps Rouler!”    
 
And there’s something else about that cursed May 28 blog. It also got me involved…well… maybe that will be the subject of another blog some day…maybe…we’ll see.

About Sally Denk Hoey

Sally Denk Hoey, is a Gemini - one part music and one part history. She holds a masters degree cum laude from the School of Music at West Chester University. She taught 14 years in both public and private school. Her CD "Bard of the Brandywine" was critically received during her almost 30 years as a folk singer. She currently cantors masses at St Agnes Church in West Chester where she also performs with the select Motet Choir. A recognized historian, Sally serves as a judge-captain for the south-east Pennsylvania regionals of the National History Day Competition. She has served as president of the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates as well as the Sanderson Museum in Chadds Ford where she now curates the violin collection. Sally re-enacted with the 43rd Regiment of Foot and the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment for 19 years where she interpreted the role of a campfollower at encampments in Valley Forge, Williamsburg, Va., Monmouth, N.J. and Lexington and Concord, Mass. Sally is married to her college classmate, Thomas Hoey, otherwise known as "Mr. Sousa.”

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