I'm sorry I let you go

This is my third psychodrama workshop, and here is what I felt.

I hosted a group psychodrama therapy event at my home this past weekend. If you’re not familiar, psychodramas are explained in Chapter 18 of The Body Keeps the Score.

It’s done in “structures” where we go into the protagonists’ past. As the narrative unfolds, group participants are asked to play the role of people in the protagonists’ lives, like the mother, father, etc. In that drama, we create the ideal scenario, where the abuser had support, or the father had an ideal father to learn from.

This was my third psychodrama, the second of which I attended about six months ago.

The third veil

Trigger warning - this story includes elements of colonization. It’s not about you, and you may have some feels. Don’t read if you’re not ready. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re enough.

This third time was a continuation of my last one.

I sat down in the room, facing the view of the water.

I asked Jean to sit next to me. He’s a refugee from Burundi, a small country in Africa. I asked him to be my soul brother, someone to be with me in this journey.

I cried asking for it, because I have always been alone.

And you can see the pain in his face because he too has always been alone.

When I collected myself, I asked a person to play the role of my mother, she’s in the riverboat that set sail out into the sea.

She’s pregnant with me.

I can hear her screams of terror.

I can hear the gunfire in the background.

It’s muffled because I am inside her.

I’ve worked on this many times, and yet it still hits me hard every time, especially to see it physically in front of me.

Then I asked another person to play Lt. Commander Data, from Star Trek. At age 10, I created this part to shut down the emotions I felt. He held the screams because androids don’t feel emotions. And for most of my adult life, I felt nothing, but yet it lived in my body.

I looked at him.

Although he’s a robot, he’s actually just a 10 y/o kid.

He held that burden for 30 years.

I asked Data to sit beside me, and hold my shoulder.

I asked my mother, to stand behind me, and hold my other shoulder.

They were now a part of my team.

Then the second veil, I placed my father in front of me, to the right. He was curled up, protecting himself from the torture in the prison camp. He was ashamed, belittled, his humanity stripped from him.

I was ashamed of him.

I didn’t want to be him.

So I created Dan, modeled after the Don, or Donald Trump. Dan did whatever the fuck he wanted. He wins. He’s not a loser. Winning is all that matters.

I looked at him.

I cried.

The destruction he caused.

To me, to others.

That I needed to create something so horrific to compensate for something even more horrific.

The toll he caused on my body.

I asked Dan to come behind me, and support me. He is me. He got me far. He also kept me from the pain beneath it all.

I asked my dad to come join my team.

So now I’m surrounded by my parents, and the parts I created to compensate.

I then asked John to play the role of the French colonizers, who came to my country, and brought the evil they held inside. They did not know what to do with it, so they passed to my people, and I hold it inside me.

Up to this point, I thought the bubbling up to the surface of my chest was rage. It sat there, heavy and dark.

I looked at John, but I was not angry.

His eyes glared at me.

It rumbled in my chest.

It started to boil over.

Then I bent down, my head on the ground, and I screamed out. I cried. It was primal. My mouth was frothing. The scream kept going and going, pent up from generations before me, that could not cry it out.

The group behind me held me. They created a counter-shape, to the shape I was becoming.

I felt my dad’s hands on me. I felt my mom.

And I kept crying.

As the bottle became empty, I looked at John.

The workshop lead told me to say go away.

Go away!

Leave us!

I felt the weight off my chest.

And yet something lingered.

I sat in that emptiness.

And slowly it emerged.

And I cried again.

My grandfather’s pain boiled up.

He lived through most of the colonization.

And part of my survival, I casted him aside to become more American.

I asked John to de-enroll as the French colonizers, and become my grandfather.

I looked at him in the eye.

I cried.

I asked if I could hug him.

He reached out, hugged me.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I let you go.

I put my hand on John’s heart (who is playing my grandfather), and he put his hands on mine.

And I cried again.

He’s always been with him.

All along these years I casted him aside.

He’s been waiting for me. It took this long, and it was always meant to be.

And in that moment, with my mother and father’s hand on me, and my grandfather in front of me, we reunited the lineage, that was broken, and I cried the cries that they were not able to cry.

I turned to each person playing the role, and I thanked them.

Data, thank you.

Mom, thank you.

Dan, thank you.

Dad, thank you.

Soul brother, walking along this path with me, thank you.

And to my grandfather, I’m here with you now, and thank you for always being there with me.

The journey ahead

I thought it was rage.

That would’ve been a cool story to tell.

But instead, it was anguish. Oh how we put things into buckets, mask it with layers, and mold things to our wish. But it was anguish.

The path ahead now is to grieve the loss.

To hold the sadness that flows through the unnamable losses. The damage that was done, the things we never had.

The grieving now becomes a lifelong process, to create the expansive heart, to open myself to the world, and to bring compassion and love.

Thank you for being here with me. This one hit really hard, and I have a long road ahead.

My calling is to bring this work to the world.

To call you in.

To help you hear that knocking on your soul.