Sylvia's Journal

I still wake up at 4:30 AM. I then realize I don’t have to get up and roll over. But at 5:30 I am really wide awake. Instead of the morning routine that has me out of the house and into the car to work by 5:30AM, I can now make myself a cup of tea and write, or go for a walk. There is that liberating feeling of not having to do something; making choices for this, not that.

It is our second morning on the Cape. A friend of a friend lent us her cottage in Brewster for the week. We are attending a week long course offered by the Cape Cod Institute’s summer program. The courses are mostly for therapists to satisfy their professional CEU requirements. Over the last 39 years this program has been led by Gil Levine who finally handed the baton to his son. We have known Gil for nearly half of those years. It has been one of our favorite learning experiences as a couple: classes from 9-12 and then play in the afternoons. The playing has included kayaking, biking, talking and digesting the material offered to us over a simple lunch consisting of smoked fish and good bread and wine, reading, writing, drawing, walking, followed at day’s end with a sundowner somewhere on this magnificent peninsula.  We always camped at the Audubon campground in Wellfleet. This year is the first we are not camping or biking – our bodies not quite up to the experience. 

Classes are held at the Nauset Regional High School in Eastham, here we have sat at the feet of some of the great pioneers of OD, leadership and coaching: Marvin Weisbord, Ed Schein, the Seashores, Meg Wheatley and many others. The OD offerings are a bit slim this year and this may well be the focus of a piece of writing one day.

Because of the many snow days the high school is still in session which makes for an interesting mix of young energy and white haired elders. This is probably also the reason why the invasion of New Yorkers hasn’t started and so the Cape feels wonderfully quiet and restful. 

When the date was set for my final day at MSH (June 15) Axel suggested we celebrate this on the Cape and attend Linda Graham’s course on the neuroscience of coping and bouncing back after disappointment and catastrophe.  Axel has been re-reading her book (Bouncing Back) that we both read after the crash. It is bringing back many memories but especially the ones that we know were responsible for our bouncing back: the healing power of community, the circles of friends, family, acquaintances and sometimes total strangers who built a scaffold around us so we could focus on healing our bodies and our minds. We are learning why EMDR (a therapy technique that is used especially to address trauma) works. EMDR helped me to stop the endless replaying of the last few minutes before the crash in my mind, wishing a different ending, the ruminating that happens somewhere deep inside the brain. EMDR is still helping Axel with memories loaded with emotional charges that are stuck in his mind, predating the crash by decades.

We may no longer do the camping, kayaking, or biking but we are enjoying the good life: learning, friendships, the beauty of the Cape and good food, especially Wellfleet oysters and a glass of good wine.