"It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are.  And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around."

Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney

I am not sure at exactly what point in my recovery that it took place - but it was probably around 2 and a half years.  It was years later before I would understand its' huge significance in my life.  At the time it was just a blessed relief.

I went to a meeting at my home group in Studio City.  I was feeling a little crazy.  Wound too tight and ready to explode.  It was a familiar feeling.  It was a feeling that I had drowned in alcohol or taken the edge off of with marijuana in the old days.  But I couldn't do that anymore so I went to a meeting.

My friends name was Steve.  He hadn't been my friend for very long although I had known him for years.  He had been my agent years earlier and I had disliked him intensely.  I was in the process of getting to know him, and like him, now that we were both in recovery.

He saw how up tight I was and asked me to go outside with him.  He asked me one simple question:  "How old do you feel?"  "Eight,"  I said, and then I exploded.  I cried in a way I didn't remember ever crying before - great heaving sobs wracked my body as I told him what happened when I was eight.

I had grown up on a farm in the Midwest.  The summer that I turned eight I had my first 4-H calf.   4-H was to us rural kids kind of like boy scouts was to city kids - a club where farm kids had projects to learn things.  I got a calf who weighed about 400 pounds and fed him all spring and summer until he weighed over a thousand lbs.  I tamed him and taught him to allow me to lead him around on a halter so I could show him at the county fair.  After the county fair there was another chance to show him at a town nearby and then sell him.  Local business people would buy the calves for more than they were worth to give us kids incentive and teach us how to make money.

By the time I was eight, I was completely emotionally isolated and alone.  I grew up in a pretty typical American family.  My father had been trained to be John Wayne - anger was the only emotion he ever expressed - and my mother had been trained to be a self-sacrificing martyr.  Since my mother could get no emotional support from my father - she had very low self-esteem and no boundaries - she used her children to validate and define her.  She emotionally incested me by using me emotionally - causing me to feel responsible for her emotions, and feel ashamed that I couldn't protect her from my father's verbal and emotional abuse.  The shame and pain of my father's seeming inability to love me coupled with my mother loving me too much at the same time that she allowed herself and me to be abused by fathers anger and perfectionism - caused me to shut down to my mothers love and close down emotionally.

And then into the life of this little boy who was in such pain, and so isolated, came a shorthorn calf which he named Shorty.  Shorty was the closest thing to a personal pet that I have ever had.  On the farm, there were always dogs and cats and other animals - but they weren't mine alone.  I developed an emotionally intimate relationship with that calf.  I loved Shorty.  He was so tame that I could sit on his back or crawl under his belly.  I spent uncounted hours with that calf.  I really loved him.

I took him to the county fair and got a Blue Ribbon.  Then a few weeks later it was time for the show and sale.  I got another Blue Ribbon.  When it came time to sell him, I had to lead him into the sale ring while the auctioneer sang his mysterious selling chant.  It was over in a moment and I led Shorty out of the ring to a pen where all the sold calves were put.  I took off his halter and let him go.  Somehow I knew that my father expected me not to cry, and that my mother expected me to cry.  By that time, I was very clear from the role-modeling of my father that a man did not cry - ever.  And I had so much suppressed rage at my mother for not protecting me from my fathers raging that I was passive-aggressively doing things the opposite of what I thought she wanted.  So, I slipped his halter off, patted him on the shoulder, and closed the gate - consigning my best friend to the pen of calves that was going to the packing house to be slaughtered.   No tears for this eight year old, no sirree, I knew how to be a man.

That poor little boy.  It wasn't until almost 30 years later, leaning up against the side of the meeting room, that I got the chance to cry for that little boy.  With great heaving sobs, tears pouring down my cheeks, and snot running out my nose, I had my first experience with deep grief work.  I did not know anything about the process at the time - I just knew that somehow that wounded little boy was still alive inside of me.  I also did not know at the time that part of my life's work was going to be helping other people to reclaim the wounded little boys and girls inside of them.

Now I know that emotions are energy which if not released in a healthy grieving process gets stuck in the body.  The only way for me to start healing my wounds is to go back to that little boy and cry the tears or own the rage that he had no permission to own back then.

I also know that there are layers of grief from the emotional trauma I experienced.  There is not only trauma about what happened back then - there is also grief about the effect those experiences had on me later in life.   I get to cry once again for that little boy as I write this.  I have been sobbing for that little boy and the emotional trauma he experienced - but I am also sobbing for the man that I became.