Creative Index

Analysis
“What gets missed is your experience” (Defenses)

Personal
When I Was Seven
My Dad and Me

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When I Was Seven

I’m sitting on a brown leather couch, nestled between two pillows. One of the dogs walks along the shag carpet, and then the other dog, who has been sitting next to me, gets us and leaps — leaps — over the first dog. She lands on her feet and then scurries away. My heart whirls. I can’t believe what I’ve just seen. And no other witnesses, just me, just fat, blubbery me. That’s how my story begins. At least how I remember it beginning. My mom will later tell me about the day I was born, how she was bowling with my bubbie when she went into labor. My dad will tell me how he waited with my mom in the delivery room, and Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night” came on the radio. I remember none of that, of course. Just the brown couch, the shag carpet, the leaping dog. The brown couch appears in my next memory too. This time I’m standing on it, leaning against a windowsill, tears running down my cheeks, snot down my nose. My dad is carrying a suitcase to his car, and then he looks back, and I
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My Dad and Me

Anger I knew I’d been angry with my dad for the past several years, but it was only after I started reading through some old journal entries that I realized that this anger had been with me for most of my adult life. These old entries felt as though they could have been written last week. I like to think that I’m ever changing, ever evolving, but these writings paint the picture of someone stuck in an endless loop. In one passage after another, I express rage that he’s always trying to change me, that he refuses to accept me for who I am. I write that I hate him and that I’m lying when I say at the end of our phone conversations that I love him. In an entry from almost twenty years ago I recount how he told me I was wasting potential at my job. I proceed to explain in detail why he’s wrong, giving reason after reason why I’m working exactly the right job for that time in my life. I admit to myself how much his “stupid words” irritate me and not because I think they’re true but because
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Transformations and Train Wrecks: Some Reflections on Group Therapy

I became a member of a process-oriented therapy group without really knowing anything about these groups. If you know something about process groups, then my first sentence no doubt has you laughing. That’s a good premise for a comedic movie, no? If you don’t know about these groups, then you’re probably as confused as I was that first night. “Process” is therapy-speak for your present emotional experience. If you’re in a process group, you and the other group members are expected to talk about your respective present emotional experiences. It’s inevitable that you’ll sometimes talk about the past or the future, but your goal is to stay in the present. And yes, telling a group of strangers your innermost feelings is as awkward as it sounds. If you acted this way in everyday life, people would unfriend you on social media and make a point to cross the street when they saw you coming. In a process group, however, this behavior is not just tolerated but demanded. And yet things can still
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