September 1, 2015 – My Donna

Donna and me at my 50th birthday.

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When I was 25 and making plans to marry my first husband, my mom asked me to go see a therapist named Donna. She wanted Donna to talk me out of marrying him. I was marrying an alcoholic and my mom was – understandably – pretty much beside herself, that I was choosing to spend the rest of my life like this. I don’t remember anything about that session, except that she ended up connecting me to the musicians, who played at our wedding ceremony and for the dancing later – and she sang a torch song at our reception. So much for changing my mind! I’m forever grateful to my Mama for bringing her into my life. I just talked to Donna on the phone yesterday, which has me reflecting who we are to each other and what she has meant in my life. I can’t imagine how things would have turned out without my Donna.

After the wedding it took me about seven years to circle back. Life had become unbearable and I needed help. It was an hour’s drive to come see Donna, so I thought I’d see if I could find someone close to home down near the San Francisco Airport. I was so alone in my emotional pain living there – and everyone around me was so asleep in their lives, there wasn’t anyone to ask about a therapist, so I got this guy’s name from the phonebook. One session, I did almost all the talking. I paid him $85 – a LOT of money back then – to have him tell me that he’d see me again. Wait, what? No reflection, no encouragement, no nothing. So I made the drive to Marin to see Donna. She helped me find my way through the irrational, but very real fear that if I left my marriage I’d die. It was she who helped me see that my panic attacks had a message for me. It was she who asked that day, 20 years ago in August, if I needed a break – which was the invitation to step through that door to leave. It was she who then told me after I did leave, not to take life one day at a time, but one hour at a time. It was she who helped me see my way through the loneliness, when I was single (I love being married.) Then later, it was she who first said I am a teacher.

It’s impossible to know how many hours I spent, on the salmon-pink velveteen couch in the little partially -underground room behind and beneath a house in Kentfield. I’m so grateful it was that kind of space, rather than a generic office, with a doubled door and a waiting room filled with magazines outside. All those sessions, walking in knowing relief was on its way. All the time I spent in that room – the glimpses out the window through the wooden shutters at the “First Prize” rosebush, and the blue agapanthus, her fluid, lyrical watercolors on the walls, the candle flickering on the corner of the old oak desk. I was safe in that cocoon as I awoke, bit by loving bit, with her guidance and cut-through-the-murk clarity. I learned about the process of transformation in that room, by watching myself, my consciousness, grow and expand. Donna has always seen who I am to become – or who I have always been, but not had access to – before I could. She’s held that vision of me, for me until I grew able to step up to claim and embody it.

This past weekend, I had some emotional turmoil come up – relationship challenges. And my first impulse is still to call Donna. If I call her I know that I’ll be heard and gotten, and will see how the situation ultimately serves me. She’s done her work with me, such that I already know what she’ll say and I can mostly conjure it up for myself. This weekend I was able to sit with the pit in my belly and my tears, witness myself and my pain much in the way she has for me over and over, for 28 years.

Donna and I have spent wonderful times together, apart from that sweet space in Kentfield too: we share the watercolor journey and have taken a class or two together; my parents and I prepared all the food for when she and her sweet, funny Allan got married; she did my makeup and put gardenias in my hair when Joe and I got married. And we’ve been to each other’s milestone birthdays and many other family celebrations.

My family is culturally Catholic and as such, I have Godparents who held me as a baby at my baptism. And I have a Goddaughter. When my brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Vernona, asked me to be their daughter Amanda’s Godmother, I said of course, I’d be honored. But then there was a real church ceremony! At her baptism, I was asked to promise that I’d help them raise her as a Christian. Said like this, it seems like I’m agreeing to make sure she’s indoctrinated with the teachings of the church, which felt inauthentic and incomplete. I’d not choose these words, so I consciously translated this promise for myself, privately, in my heart. In being Amanda’s Godmother, I was agreeing to look after her spiritual well-being. I was going to care for her heart, her spirit, her inner-self. I’d be a receptive place for her questioning and struggling – when she wanted and needed it.

I appreciate this opportunity to re-define for myself, what being a Godmother means to me, because it’s given me a way to hold who Donna is to me. It seems so inadequate to call her my “therapist” after all this time – and for her to call me a “client.” We call each other Spiritual Godmother, Spiritual Goddaughter. Though she didn’t hold me as a baby at my baptism, I have in her what I hold as what a Godmother really is, in the most important and valuable way.

She has two sons, but no daughters, so it’s sweet to think that she holds me in a special way as I do her. I’m certain that she has other long-time clients for whom she is their Donna. Remarkable people like Donna, are gifts to the world, to so many of us. I’d never selfishly claim her as my very own! But I can claim who she is to me, and in my life as special and unique. She’s my teacher and guide, my Spiritual Godmother, my sister Enneagram type-two; she’s bawdy and lusty and girly-girl, just like me!

Getting to mid-life gives us the opportunity to reflect on what has made up our life-so-far. There’s still promise of more to come, but also enough traveled through to have collected treasures. Shining brightly in my collection is my Donna.

My Donna, I thank you, I cherish you, I love you.

Cara