by Michael R. Bridges, Ph.D.
I’ve been reading, writing and listening to poetry for inspiration, enjoyment, and as a balm for heartbreak and grief since I was a teenager. In fact, it was the discovery of the poetry of the renegade, anti-psychiatrist R. D. Laing in books like “Knots” and “The Politics of Experience” when I was sixteen, that made me start to explore psychology as a way of understanding myself and perhaps, as a both a field of study and profession.
Once I became a psychologist and started to accompany and guide my clients on their own healing journeys, I found myself sharing certain poems again and again that described struggles, traumas, or the inevitable loses and joys that we all face on the journey of life. I’ve collected some of those poems that my clients and have shared have been most helpful in therapy and have included these below with some comments and suggestions.
Leaving Home and Learning to Listen to Your Own Voice
Leaving home and starting to separate and individuate from our families is one of the first, most difficult, and exciting of tasks we all face on the road of life. This task is made even more difficult if the families we are trying to separate from give mixed messages, saddle us with guilt, or, worse, involve more abuse, neglect or trauma than love, safety and support. The great poet Mary Oliver, who has been very honest that she had to flee her own family at an early age because of the abuse she was experiencing, offers a beautiful, evocative and ultimately inspiring hymn to the need to take this difficult journey out into the world and in so doing, to discover one’s true self. While this poem speaks strongly to adolescents and young adults that are struggling to leave home and discover who they are, I’ve also found it a very helpful poem to share with clients who have decided that they need to leave an abusive or co-dependent relationship.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice‚
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
Each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations‚
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice,
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do‚
Determined to save
The only life you could save.
The Difficult Work of Love
When I first see couples who are struggling in their relationship, I sometimes share this line from the poet Rilke “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” I share this quote from Rilke to both validate their sense of struggle and effort while providing hope that their hard work is ultimately worth it.
A few years ago, I was asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the annual conference of The Pennsylvania Association for Marriage and Family Therapists. In my opening remarks I said, only partially joking, that I had become so frustrated with how useless the DSM (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association) was in conducting therapy, particularly couples therapy, that I had returned to my first inspiration, poetry, for guidance. I then shared the following poem. The number of couples therapists who emailed me for a copy of this poem afterwards suggested I had hit a nerve, so I decided to share it here.
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
by William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
Stafford’s poem offers a darker and more somber vision of the repetitious cycles and legacy burdens that can be passed on from childhood, or even previous generations, that can get triggered in our intimate relationships as adults and end up, “sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike.” However, I still think his poem harkens to and encourages us to engage in the same “difficult work” that Rilke reminds us is, “…the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
The Difficult Work of Recovering Love for One’s Self After Love Has Ended
One of the more common and heartbreaking reasons that many people decide to enter therapy is due to the end of a marriage or a romantic relationship. This is particularly true when someone starts to realize some version of, “I just lost myself in this relationship. I can’t seem to remember who I was before. I’m not even sure I can find that person again. Maybe I’ve lost them forever.”
Derrek Walcott, who has the distinction of being the only Nobel Prize winner from the Caribbean, in the following poem provides the necessary hope that the pain and heartbreak will eventually recede while also providing the powerful reminder that love does not only come from others. Even if that other person was the one we thought, and perhaps vowed, we would be with for the rest of our life. Indeed, being able to consistently love and support to our “self” is often an important antidote to those of us who have been preoccupied with finding our emotional salvation and redemption through romantic love.
Love After Love
by Derrek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
The Difficult Work of Welcoming Our Painful Emotions
When I was a young man and first starting my own spiritual and therapeutic journey, I imagined that one day, after I had become enlightened and had successfully uncovered and experienced the catharsis and resolution of all my traumas that, well, it was just going to be smooth sailing the rest of my days. These days I can look back with love and appreciation on the determined young man I was, while also shaking my head with a bit of bemusement at his naiveté. While all the work I’ve done on myself has certainly led to a much calmer, compassionate and good-humored inner landscape than when I started my journey, the tribulations and at times, absolute horrors of the external world, and the occasional resurfacing of desperate and howling parts of my own psyche that I thought had been lain to rest, have helped me once again realize the wisdom conveyed in the following poem from the great Sufi mystic and poet Rumi, as channeled through this interpretation by Coleman Barks.
The Guest House
by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
The Poem That Has Been My Mantra for Almost 40 Years
I thought I would close these musings on poetry and the journey of life with a poem that I first read when I was nineteen years old and in the very early days of leaving home and trying to find my own inner, guiding voice. When I first came across The Waking, I had no idea what a villanelle was. But I do remember that the repeating rhymes and refrains were both powerful and soothing. And while I was aware from my readings in philosophy and psychology that an awareness of my own mortality was important, exactly why that was important was an abstract concept that eluded me. Still, I was aware even as a young man, that the sleep that Roethke was referring to, was that bigger sleep that waits for all of us at the end of our journey. But without giving too much away, I’ll let you read and experience Roethke’s wonderful work before sharing more about how much The Waking has influenced my life.
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
My love for The Waking has only deepened over the years and has actually inspired my own poetic attempt at a morning, spiritual practice for several years now. I take Roethke’s advice to “…take my waking slow” literally. I try to always make sure I wake with at least an hour to continue waking slowly. The most hurry I display after I first wake is to get my first cup of coffee. (I’m very sure that Roethke neglected to mention coffee only because it through off the rigid rhyming requirements of the villanelle.) After I fill my cup, I immediately return to my bed where I sit, sip coffee, and give myself time to notice things like fragments of dreams, the way the light comes through my bedroom window, how the light changes with the seasons and the weather. I also notice the way the just waking, “To Do List” managers of my mind start planning our day. But my internal managers and I have reached an understanding, and I remind them this is still the time for poetry and reflection.
As I continue to sip my coffee and take my waking slow, I reach for one of the books or anthologies of poetry that I keep nearby and sometimes scan the table of contents for inspiration, or occasionally just randomly flip through until a particular title or line calls out. Then I read the poem aloud. I’ve noticed over time that certain poems that move me when I read then silently, will bring tears to my eyes when I read them aloud. Occasionally, I will be inspired to pick up my journal and attempt a poem of my own. And, while I am very aware that I lack both the talent and discipline of the poets I’ve shared thus far, I will close with one of my poems that, I hope, in a small way conveys how much poetry has influenced by experience of the journey of my life.
How Did I Get Here? What Have I Learned?
by Michael R. Bridges
I’m grateful I’m learning
To look back on all my
Bumbling, misguided failures
And see them as difficult,
Steep, rocky, dark, and
Muddy trails that still
Led me to the same
Spacious vista
I was hoping for.
Out of breath,
But each exhale
A silent, ragged
Hallelujah.
Michael R. Bridges, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and former professor of clinical psychology at Temple University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a self-described “psychotherapy nerd” who has done research and published articles on what constitutes the “corrective emotional experience” in therapy. He provides therapy to adults as individuals and couples. Michael works with his clients to address a variety of issues, including trauma, attachment injuries, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and repetitious relationship issues. He also specializes in helping clients resolve issues where they feel internally in conflict with themselves. To learn more or schedule an appointment, contact Michael at drmbridges1@gmail.com or 215-868-6393.
