Halloween and some updates

As you know from the last post, I went to YANA armed with (overly) elaborate plans and bags full of supplies. And. . . . .almost no one came in. The few who did were not our more high functioning clients. We tried anyway. Jennifer did a good job, introducing Poe as "a guy from my neighborhood." I talked about the uses of fear and got a little thrill from the way the most ancient of the Pammys nodded and sent me understanding looks from beneath her cascade of gray hair as I said that sometimes our emotions are so big that we can't describe them with everyday words. We need to talk about demons and monsters just so that we can explain how bad something is. Pammy, and for that matter the entire room, seemed to know exactly what I meant.

After Jennifer read Annabel Lee out loud, we tried to do the group poem. I started it off with a line about a demon "on my back." Most of the people who wrote were the volunteers, however. Other, more articulate groups at YANA have done better with this sort of thing in the past. Then, as we talked about Halloween, one of the newer clients said her husband used to dress her up as a princess and the like. She made a few more, grim faced, inarticulate references to this dressing up before I asked her how she felt about it. "Not good," the woman said. "He had a gun to my head." As Sid pointed out later, you know somebody has problems when she forgets to mention that part of the story.

The new client, Mary, held forth for most of the rest of our hour or so together. She had been a military brat herself. Her husband was a traumatized vet. who did terrible things to her and then didn't remember later. He gave her black eyes and a jaw that had to be wired back together. Her parents called to ask if she was all right. She said she was because she was afraid, then she was more afraid that God would punish her for lying. At last a general came to the house and made her husband stop. In court, her husband jumped over the table to attack her, but this time she fought him off herself. The weeping female judge told the bailiffs to stand back and let her do it. Later, her jealous sister got her put away in a psychiatric hospital for two years, but she found a way to do good there. She listened to others and tried to help them.

For Mary's sake at least, we turned out to have exactly the right group of people. They weren't talkers. They weren't judgers. They weren't interested in drawing attention to themselves. They listened in quiet support. Our Sister Mary said the right things about how well the woman had done and what a long process it is to forgive an abuser. I don't think Mary the client could have spent a better hour. She told me so many times afterwords how relieved and happy she felt about being able to talk that way. She said she couldn't usually tell people what happened to her and that we "just drew it out of" her. For myself, I was feeling a little sick from too much peanut brittle and candy, a little disappointed that we hadn't produced a collection of meaningful poems, a little foolish and annoyed with myself for caring about the poems, and more than a little depressed from the experience of listening to the drawn out ramblings of a mentally ill woman with no idea at all of how to help her. Even I couldn't help but notice, though, the relief that filled that woman by the end.

For the rest of the clients -- I don't know. There were so few of them that they got a lot of candy and Halloween socks and little toys. I'm sure they liked that. They could have left at any time, but they stayed. My guess is that actual community, rather than an art project and discussion of metaphors, probably did them good. The point of YANA, after all, is to listen and support. Maybe, in their quiet ways, all the women there felt a little more like family.

UPDATES:

I forgot to mention that Tina came in Wednesday, dressed as her usual rag doll self. She had gone to the funeral, but stayed only briefly. She said that her cousin was so heavily made up that he didn't look like himself. The backs of his crossed hands were more or less flesh colored, but the palms were purple. After she saw that, she had to leave. Tina hadn't talked to Sister Catherine yet, and Catherine wasn't there when Tina came in. I told Sister Mary about her as well, and now there are two vigilant nuns primed to find Tina and reassure her of God's love.

I asked the youngest of the Pammys if she would mind telling the room about her HIV status. She didn't mind people knowing about the disease at all, though she was rather floored at the public speaking aspect once I announced that she had something to say. Pammy was diagnosed about seven years ago with HIV. This past February she became AIDS-defined because her t-cell count had gone below 200. She got on the "cocktail," and her t-cell count went back up to 359. Her viral load is so low that it's undetectable. There may not be a cure for HIV, but apparently you can come back from full blown AIDS. The room applauded her.

Best of all -- I asked Diane if she'd heard anything about the client that the little mean woman said had been arrested for arson and murder. "I haven't heard anything," Diane said. "Since she went into the program." According to Diane, the client had been hospitalized again, then moved directly into rehab. The client really was very sick. This move from hospital to rehab. happens. It makes a lot more sense than the client having been let out of jail. And Diane knew the client much better than the little mean woman did. Of course, I didn't repeat the rumor to Diane. I have the feeling it's nothing more than that.

Another Day at YANA (Almost Halloween)

Today, Heather, our volunteer psychologist, offered to lead a group discussion on anxieties and how to manage them. Unfortunately, I had the bright idea of starting the discussion off by announcing to an already very chatty group that we would talk about anxieties because it was almost Halloween. I said it because I was trying to get their attention, and in that I was certainly successful. The women were all electrified -- but not in the sense of animated debate so much as in the sense of hair standing on end, eyes throwing sparks, tossing information about the Halloween gang killings back and forth as if they were trying to get rid of a live hand grenade. According to the women, the gangs planned to shoot 31 women to death for the month of Halloween. They said that the shootings had already begun and that 13 women were dead so far.

Tina, who I believe has lived in the area all her life, was astonished. Almost all the other women seemed to be in the know, echoing the numbers of dead and soon-to-be-dead and reminding each other that there would also be a lot of rapes. They said the women were shot all over the city, and that anyone could be killed. They advised Heather and me to drive straight home, and they advised each other of where to hide and what to scream if the hiding wasn't successful. Heather, who turns out to be an impressively patient young woman, sympathized briefly, and asked what else, besides the possibility of being shot, made them feel anxious. A woman whose name I haven't bothered to learn yet, preferring instead to think of her as "the little mean woman," treated the room to a discourse on her fear of being shot while sitting with her aunt in the front row of church. She justified this by reference to a robbery in a different church something like a year ago. As I've written before, not many of our women go to church -- or maintain a particularly good relationship with their families for that matter. But at least they all got to know that the little mean woman did both.

"Worry about your safety in the street and in church!" Heather said kindly. She gently prodded for other causes of anxiety. Kiki began a rapid fire explanation of someone who owed her 7 dollars and who had the nerve to accuse her of having an attitude when she needed the money back, and she really needed the money, and she wouldn't have asked if she didn't, and . . ." "Worry about money," Heather said with grave sympathy. "A lot of people worry about that." The other women filled in eagerly with advice. "You're not getting the money back," Tina swiftly informed her. There was prompt and enthusiastic agreement on this point. Kiki still wanted to watch out for the debtor after he got his check, but, again, she was warmly and swiftly advised to let the matter go. Grudgingly, I will admit that even the little mean woman was helpful on that point. And as for Kiki, there really was nothing petty in her concerns. She's pregnant, collecting free baby clothes from our donors, and genuinely worried about her own ability to give and withhold. She was afraid of not having enough. She was afraid of becoming the sort of person who wouldn't give anything to a person in real need.

Somebody else said something about people who died in Pakistan and praying for them. We don't have the kind of group that talks about pet peeves and minor annoyances. It's gang killing, rape, robbery, betrayal, poverty, and war with them. Heather and I sort of had manageable little phobias in mind. Finally, in reference to I don't know what, Kiki said something about claustrophobia. I loudly (and truthfully) announced to the room that I'm very claustrophobic. Nearly all the other women said they were too. "How about fear of heights?" Heather asked. Another problem for most of the room. It rapidly became clear that murder, rape, and the rest don't preclude all the other fears. Mentions of snakes, spiders, mice had most of the women shuddering.

Heather began a discussion on how people's bodies feel when they're anxious (racing heart, shallow breathing and the like), then asked what we do when we get to that point. "I used to just sniff dope," Jennifer told us. "But I don't do that no more." Other people talked about going to their "happy place." Heather talked about deep breathing. Some women had to leave. Another woman, Lilian, came out of the bathroom wearing a very attractive pantsuit she'd found in the donations. The rest of the group burst into a frenzy of praise. "Now I have something to wear to church!" Lilian said. "Last week I wore jeans." At this point the group was divided between continuing to praise the church clothes and reassuring her that it didn't matter what she wore as long as she went. Not too much else got down in the anxiety discussion.

The little mean woman managed to tell me about a neighborhood woman who set fire to an abandominum, planning to kill one person and accidentally murdering a man who was asleep down stairs. The woman she mentioned was a YANA client who hasn't been around for a while. She was troubled. She was living in an abandominium. She was involved in some fires, and Liz told us months ago that the police were looking for her. I said nothing to the little mean woman. It's possible that the rumor is true.

Patient Heather was pleased with the initial discussion. She plans to hold further groups on how to implement some of the anxiety strategies. Pammy came in with her mother who is also named Pammy and with an elderly friend also named Pammy. The three women seemed fairly pleased with their names, and the eldest Pammy smiled in genuine amusement when asked if she was the great grandmother. The youngest Pammy (herself a grandmother) had been diagnosed with AIDS earlier this year because her t-cell count was so low. Apparently, it's back in the healthy range now, and her viral load is undetectable. She beamed as we exclaimed over her obvious health and well being. Lilian hugged me for a long time before she left and said that she thought of us often. Another woman, Sheri, came in just at closing, and I gave her a birthday card from Daniel (son in the pictures) and myself. I got a lot of hugs from her too. She said her birthday hadn't been very good and that she would "cherish" the card. Excitedly, she told she was making something for me and Daniel for Christmas. The women, especially Lilian and Tina, took it on themselves to clean the room and take out the trash, then filtered out for another day. As we left, Tina told us again how afraid of elevators she was. She said that the emergency phone in an elevator at a hospital didn't work, and when she got stuck she ripped it "down to the wires" trying to call somebody. People heard her screaming, though. She left for her sister's house before going back to a shelter. It was another day with pretty much the usual mix of women at YANA