"Ancient Goddesses" Intervene
Dear Harvey,
Thank you for your support of us Asian leaders and the particularly tender way you support me. We had eighteen people at the Asian Early Sexual Memories (ESM) Workshop, including Joan Karp and David Jernigan, who each led brilliantly and put out a lot of refreshing thinking and counseling.
There were two sets of connections that seemed to me particularly clear: (1) ESM and sexual fantasies/current difficulty with sex, and (2) ESM/internalized oppression/current difficulty with function and leadership. A powerful counseling approach was giving permission to hate and protest against (and kill, if necessary) our oppressor and then encouraging us to be an ally to our oppressor, or the oppressor of the one we loved. The approach is a well-established one, but the boldness with which it was implemented gave me all kinds of ideas. One of my other insights was that a pattern is just that - a pattern. It is neither good nor bad nor inherently attached to us. It is always rigid and worth examining in the light of discharge. Asians are inclined to be very careful and in control, and it was good to be encouraged to experiment, to make mistakes, to judge the situation by whether anyone is still thinking and acting thoughtfully, and to consider that we can clean up any messes and take the risk of getting close enough that we will make some messes.
I found counseling on my ESM in Chinese very helpful. I was also given a new understatement, which I thought was great: "No one is completely useless all of the time." I got to see that my fundamental difficulties in standing up for myself and others are rooted in my ESM. I got some good directions for that, for example, "Oppressing Chinese people stops here."
I had a run of luck yesterday that made me think that the ancient goddesses are truly looking out for me. I had an almost very bad car accident. I swerved to avoid something and went into a skid of some kind. My car crossed three lanes of traffic to the right, then I (sort of) got control of the wheel (the interesting thing was that I didn't stop thinking), and the car crossed four lanes in the reverse direction, spun, and came to a stop in the fast lane facing sideways. Traffic stopped, including an eighteen-wheeler in the next lane. None of it hit me. I started the car, waved that I was okay, and drove away.
Thank you for supporting us and me. I get big tears just thinking of you.
Francie Chew
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA