Biscuit

 

 

“Biscuit”

 

“When someone is walking beside us, we have more courage to walk into the unknown and to risk the dark and messy places in our journey.” ― Henry Kimsey (House)

 

 

 

 

This week has been a little challenging for me.  I recognize that in the past, it would have been the kind of week that would have sent me into a tailspin, but today it caused some bumps and discomfort rather than a complete derailment.  I was talking to Joe this morning and was able to see I need to allow myself props for how far I have come. I don’t give myself credit enough and have to make it an intentional exercise.

I got some news about my mother this week that threw me off.  To be honest, any news about my mother throws me off.  I haven’t been in contact with her for years and so any contact with or about her is jarring at best.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about her to say the least. I also carry a lot of societal expectations about what a good daughter “should” do and perceive judgement from others about not being in contact with her. Of course others don’t know our story and don’t live inside my head and didn’t live my childhood and I can tell myself over and over again that I don’t owe anyone an explanation for my actions or lack thereof.  Yet the baggage of the “good girls should” still weighs me down from time-to-time. Understand I wish her no harm, in fact I hope she is well and I still love her on some primal level.  I just can’t be around her because it causes me physical and emotional distress of epic proportion.  I deserve to be happy and I couldn’t do that when we were in contact and I also saw that having her in my children’s lives was not going to be healthy for them at all.

Beyond this news about my mother, I had a few instances at work where I began to feel like an imposter. I was challenged by a few clients and this week it stung.  I wasn’t as able to not take it personally and I began to question my capabilities as a therapist.  My insecurities grew inside my head and crowded out the work I know I have done with clients who have made progress or whose lives have improved.  Momentarily blinded by my affect, I made it through the rest of the week by leaning on my colleagues in peer supervision and talking through what I was feeling. In fact, I made it through the week in general by leaning on others.  I went to meetings, I talked to my best friend, Tony, Frank and of course Joe. 

This is what brings me to Biscuit.  Biscuit is the family dog.  She is a golden retriever we got in 2011.  She lives at Frank’s house even though I was the one who bought her at a charity auction (when I was drunk – long story for another day). Frank is her person and she follows him everywhere. She is loving and sweet if not too bright. She is an old girl now and you can see from the picture, her muzzle is lovely and frosted. She is going deaf and she has some trouble with her joints that makes it hard for her to get up and down the stairs now. Frank bought some carpeted stair runners for her so it’s easier for her to get a good footing and she has an orthopedic dog bed on a platform.         

What happens with Biscuit now is that she will come down the stairs in the morning when Wren feeds her and lets her outside.  When she has finished this part of her routine she wants to go back upstairs to be with Frank but she gets stuck at the bottom of the stairs.  She sits in the hallway and barks and complains until someone comes down and gets her.  You don’t have to carry or lift her, you just have to give her words of encouragement, walk up the stairs beside her and sometimes place your hand on her back or pat her and then she can do it.    

I realized that if nothing else, I do this week in and week out for my clients and I do this really well.  If I never get to evidence-based practices in a session, or work on a skill or confront a fear or process a trauma… I ALWAYS walk beside them.  I always give them words of encouragement and show them they can do more than they think they can. 

All Biscuit needs is moral support and it is what everyone needs in life – it’s what I needed this week.