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In the absolute beauty and remoteness of the Carpathian Mountains of SW Ukraine, I sat with 20 Ukrainian and Russian people in the late light of early summer. Some I knew from two years before when I came to guide
Dying as a Rite of Passage in an old Russian youth camp in the mountains of Crimea at the invitation of Katia and George (Istoki-center, former month-long trainees at SOLB).
Between then and now the Ukrainian country has been torn apart by conflict and ideology. As each person spoke that evening I heard the effects of this tension: displaced families, broken friendships, traumatized children, uprooting, death, and the stress of living with such uncertainty day after day.
There was a couple who had moved their family from Crimea to Kiev to get out from under Russian rule, yet leaving their entire families behind them, and now pregnant again without their support. An angry grandmother in Kiev caring for her two very young grandchildren while the mother was engaged in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, and the children jumping at each loud noise after living with constant bombing in the background. An American from Oregon who is an international Peacekeeper/ Witness, living in a hotel in Eastern Ukraine with other appointed neutral representations from many countries, driving the borders daily trying to help the people who are too poor to move away from the conflict, and is himself exhausted with bombing and death and seeking something to renew himself. A Russian psychotherapist and mother of a 9 year old son, who has been in constant pain for two years and who is afraid she is dying. No doctor or medicine has helped. She feels her son will be ok if she dies, and wonders if part of her illness is psychosomatic. A young Ukrainian woman working for the international peacekeeping agency feeling broken and hopeless and full of despair. These stories mingling with others and the themes of divorce, loss, loneliness ....
I sat listening to what they hoped to take away from the week as they so openly shared their pain, and wondered how a week could possibly support them, wondered if the theme of Forgiveness, Apology, and Reconciliation was even relevant, feeling presumptuous in imagining it could.
The weather stayed pristine and warm despite being high in the mountains. Our meals were cooked over open fires and with food raised there on the land. A goat was sacrificed and slowly cooked for a day over coals. Fresh eggs in abundance from the ranging chickens, fresh trout from a nearby lake, and garden greens freshly picked and eaten raw. Each day we shared the stories of their time on the land, and we cried and laughed together. Human stories that transcended cultural differences of Ukrainian, Russian, American.
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And I am amazed again at how ceremony, meaningful time on the land, the telling and witnessing of the stories, and with nonjudgmental and active guidance, can move people toward healing so quickly. How deeply our nature moves with a healing impulse. By the second day the Russian woman who had been in constant pain, woke pain free, and by the end she said she felt more joy and lightness than she had in many years. The young woman came alive again, and felt her struggle and pain and despair fall away, and remembered the essence of who she was and the beauty that life is that is always there to hold her. The man who was an official peacekeeper remembering why he had chosen to do what he was doing, and lighter for a lot of tears he shed that week. Each with a precious story, each with a renewed sense of hope. Each with deeper understanding about where they tend to get stuck holding on to pain and resentment, how processing old trauma makes room for aligning with new challenges, and how their nature processes the light and shadow of life ... so that they can keep moving.
The School has invited Katia and George to be our guest international teachers in 2017, bringing their developed Four Shields system informed by their extensive Gestalt therapy practice, their years now of rites of passage work, and seen in relationship to how it supports their people in the challenges happening in their country. Exciting. They have also asked if I would return in 2017, and a psychotherapist from Russia asked if I would travel there to offer Forgiveness, Apology, and Reconciliation for her colleagues. We are hoping that our community will be as generous supporting these offerings, but for now ... only gratitude for our common humanity, for beauty that can be found even in the darkest places, and the land that meets us without discrimination around the globe.
Meredith Little
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"I came there completely broken, without strength and courage to move on. I crawled into hysteria filled with pain, anguish and loneliness. I needed a wise friend who can be capable to withstand all the pain and despair I had inside.... I cried a lot and struggled, and tons of accumulated pain found their way out, they left me exhausted body and it became easier, better, calmer.
"Forgiveness and apology as a recognition of own imperfection, as a statement of own vitality and humanity exactly restores self-respect and supports who I really am .... It helped me to apologize without drowning in guilt. Nature held my head afloat and I was able to go through my shame and guilt for what I've done before. Nature helped me to face the offenders, to listen and to hear them, even though their words were so disgusting to me. Nature has allowed me to see the connection of being hurt and to hurt someone else. It's like a children's game where supposedly the hot ball is passed around and a task for you to pass it as fast as you can. So the pain moves from person to person, because it is so very difficult to keep it in one's hand - bakes!"
-- young Ukrainian woman after our time together.
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