Mind Matters: Thoughts at a barbeque

Posted by Dr. Kayta Gajdos on August 15, 2012

As I left the house to go to the chicken barbeque at Birmingham Meeting, I heard on NPR that foreign visitors expect the U.S. to be a facsimile — or the real deal — of Desperate Housewives, Dancing With the Stars, Friends, etc.

Forty-five years ago I traveled to Italy as a college student. Even though their son had been an exchange student in the U.S., the family I visited asked me if life in the U.S. was just like the Westerns. I said no, not at all, and then thought, “but I have no idea what the West is like”—surely not like the 1880s Westerns but certainly not like my Mid-Atlantic hometown either.

Eighteen years ago, I hosted a Hungarian high school student and later got to visit her family. Now the TV serials had morphed from Westerns to Dallas — still the wild west of sorts, maybe? And again I was asked if America was like Dallas. I said, “Hardly!” Maybe some of the wealthy in Dallas act like crazy kings but the rest of us do not.

When I arrive at the chicken barbeque I am already deep in thought about America and the state of things. Memories churn. Although I am an occasional attendee at this Quaker Meeting, I am neither a member nor a volunteer.

I know many of the people here and I think back to how long I have lived here and known these people, even these trees. We moved to this area 26 years ago. It’s a beautiful place, with so many rolling hills and horse farms that one could forget we are also surrounded by four-lane highways and numerous shopping malls. When we came here, it was much quieter, but Birmingham Meeting is still a peaceful and beautiful place overlooking fields of green. (A revolutionary battle fought here, of course, tells quite a different story.)

This place and these people are not depicted on any TV sitcom or drama. What sitcom deals with donations for removal of landmines in foreign countries such as the little peace table here does?

This is the U.S. for foreign visitors to see: these pockets of life that belie the TV norm. And this bucolic piece of Chester County is hardly the whole story. I grew up in a small mill town in New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia. My storefront row house did not have vistas of trees and pasture and, therefore, no sunrises or sunsets to speak of.

It was not until I left home and eventually lived on a small plot of land in Western Pennsylvania, and then here, that I could find landscapes of beauty. There is a quote I like to savor: “The beauty that will save the world is the love that shares the pain.” No, the beauty and the pain of American life are not to be confused with TV renditions of our so-called selves.

* 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 www.drgajdos.com.

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.