The rain pounded on the dark and gloomy highway as I went home from Bayberry Hospital one windy night in June of 1974. Butch had been hospitalized for a month. I was driving into the tunnel connecting Hampton Roads to Virginia Beach, Virginia. The wind was blowing hard. The rain was piercing. Darts on my windshield. Think, think, think.
I recognized what I was up against: I was divorced, had no real job, and was looking after my maternal grandfather who had long been suffering after his wife, Anna Wales Maher, died in December of 1972. Anna had been a real force in the family, holding everything together. And now the family was falling apart.
After one month in the psychiatric hospital, it was time for Butch to go home. My head was clogged up with all the problems and struggles ahead. Not much had changed, but May had turned to June. Butch still thought he was a savior, and I said, “Yes, you are the white knight on the white horse.” I understood at some level that was an accurate observation. He said, “You are the only one who knows that.”
To Butch, June was summer and surfing and happiness. But I had no idea how he was going to live. Or, how I would find a better job than selling real estate, the part-time job I had taken on for the past two years.
As I drove through the tunnel, there was an eerie quiet. The rain was gone. I was slowing down and getting clearer. I knew one thing: I needed to get a job in a psychiatric hospital as I lacked knowledge as to how to deal with my brother. Now he was a person with so-called “serious mental health issues.” Even his psychiatrist said, “Forget about him, he will be in and out of hospitals for the rest of his life. You need a friend. Perhaps I can take you to dinner?” Not what I wanted to hear. There had to be better options than dating a psychiatrist.
Yes, the old Butch was gone, but this new guy was still my brother. Facing the facts, I had no money to go back to school. But if I got a job in the hospital, I could learn what they knew, and then I might be better equipped to deal with Butch. That would be one way to move forward, as I had no money to finish college, much less earn an advanced degree.
Butch had become the favorite of many patients, saying, “I could lead a revolution, but I want to get out of here first.” By the end of his month-long stay in the hospital, he stated that he had done as much “healing” for others as he could, but his insurance was running out. He was ready for a new life, and he knew how to pretend to be the way the psychiatrists wanted him to be. Butch had learned not to tell people he was Jesus.
As Butch’s “little mother,” I was programmed to focus on his next step. What terrifying thing might he do? I knew something: Do not tell him what to do. I was beginning to develop a mental compass about dealing with Butch, not about being a self. … yet.
Butch had a rented apartment with our brother Drew, so there would be a roof over his head. But how would he get a job? I was still such a worried sister/mother.
My brain was muddled when Butch decided that he would go back to drinking beer and smoking cigarettes again as they helped calm him more than the drugs that they gave him at the hospital. I was thinking, is he trying to get me to be his mother again? I am just not going to do it, even though it is hard to say “NO” to Butch.
Butch came up with a money-making idea. His friend who worked for the telephone company could get him the wooden spools used for telephone cables, and he could then use the material to make tables. So now, Butch began building resin tables in the backyard of my house and had completely taken over my yard. Was this some kind of special grief, I wondered? Every day, I was reminded that the family was rebuilding itself from the backyard up. (INSERT PHOTO)
I focused on my hope of getting a job in a psychiatric hospital. It may have been wishful thinking, but at least it was a goal that made sense. However, I also knew that any job at a psychiatric hospital required experience. Luckily for me, it just so happened that a friend of mine, Ann Karnitschnig, M.D., had founded a drug-free clinic in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I volunteered there from 1974-1976.
After a year of learning from people, who were strung out on drugs or threatening suicide, I was ready to apply to the various local Psychiatric Institutions. Ann was also working as a medical advisor in the alcoholism unit at Tidewater Psychiatric Hospital (TPI). Gratefully, she put in a good word for me, and I got a job as an alcoholism counselor. This was a major change for me, having never worked as a paid employee.
In one way, I had given up the hope or thoughts of finding a new husband/father and focused more on the fact that I needed knowledge about the family. I was aware that I was not able to solve problems alone. But I had the desire to search for knowledge.
I had been working at the hospital for about six months when I heard that a famous psychiatrist was coming to give a talk about families and alcoholism. One of the social workers there, Marcie Solomon, who was working in the adolescent unit, had requested that Murray Bowen, M.D., come to talk about alcoholism and family problems.
In preparation for Bowen’s visit to TPI, the hospital made two of Bowen’s most famous papers available. I read his paper on alcoholism and then The Anonymous Paper during the night shift. Both papers were mind-boggling. Bowen was writing about things that no one else had seen or even considered. He was researching and observing his own family! In addition, Bowen spoke of alcoholism not simply as an addiction but as a more complex set of responses to relationship issues.
After reading his two papers, I had enough evidence. I knew Dr. Bowen was a genius.
When Bowen visited the hospital to give his talk, I noticed no one was conversing with him. I wanted to speak with him, so I encouraged my friend, Lina Watson, to go with me to talk with him.
Bowen was drinking coffee and eating a powdered donut. I was asking questions about his paper when suddenly Lina put her hand up and wiped some stray powder off his face. I was so shocked, but I was unable to stop her. I said kind of sternly, “Lina! Maybe you should ask him first?”
Everyone laughed but me.
That may have made Bowen decide to do a little research and find out more about me. He asked me to take him up to the stage. Halfway down, he stopped, turned, and said, “What should I say to the audience? You know the people here and have read my chapter on alcoholism.”
I told him, “Most of these people are not going to get what you are saying and probably prefer AA to your ideas, so you might as well just say what you want to say.”
Bowen gave me a big smile, turned, and walked up on the stage. Hmm, I thought, I must have passed some strange test for him to smile like that. I sat down and listened carefully.
First, he did not talk that much about alcohol as a problem. Alcohol, and addictions in general, amplify and cover up the difficult challenges that a family is facing. They could not see the system. Therefore, they weren’t dealing with the problems but blaming the drinking person and trying to control them. These reactions were creating more problems.
Bowen went on to say, “If you want to cure alcoholism, then you need to learn to de-twitch mice. Mice do not make up stories to tell you “why” they did this or that and became alcoholic. They just get twitchy then they go for the alcohol. What happens if you focus on the “twitch” and try to do something about that? The twitch can be a stress response that appears in mice and men. I heard this as Bowen saying to pay attention to managing your anxiety. The twitch is a reaction to the environment that you may not know a lot about.
If that was not enough of a head shift, he follows up with another challenge, “Are you at this meeting to gain more CEUs, or do you want to learn how to de-twitch mice? There is another conference down the hall, and you might prefer to be comfortable and take the AA road.”
The way I heard it that afternoon was that the only way out of the bind of focusing on what is wrong with others is to encourage lifelong learning and not get “snookered” by thinking you know it all.
Bowen went on to say having a terminal degree might also make you a little more vulnerable to this kind of thinking. As humans, we are “snookered all the time,” it is important to recognize where we are programmed to, under stress, believing, “I am right, and you are wrong.” Knowing what others should do is a BIG problem.
Reflecting on his talk, I saw how, over the generations, people were pressuring others to conform. I was aware of the automatic ways in which both myself and my brothers were conforming and then rebelling. We were all reacting automatically more than thinking. I was just taken by his honesty and the challenges he posed to the current way the mental health community thought/thinks and was/is organized. I couldn’t wait to learn more.
After the talk and being slightly intimidated, I waited until all the people who wanted to speak to him had left so I could have some time with him. I approached Bowen and asked him if he had any courses for “officially uneducated people.” I had only two years of college, and I wanted to know everything there was to know about families. What kind of courses did he recommend for someone like me? He took my name.
In a few days, I received a multi-page questionnaire for entrance into the Georgetown University Family Systems Post-Graduate Program. My first thought was: “That could not be right.”
I called the Director of Training, Mike Kerr, M.D. When he got on the phone, I said, “Dr. Kerr, there has been a mistake. I have not finished college and have no advanced degree; therefore, I cannot be in a post-graduate program.” Dr. Kerr said, “No, Dr. Bowen liked you, go ahead and apply.”
In making the required family diagram for the application, I saw the cluster of deaths. No wonder Butch went crazy. I began to see how things were happening that I could not perceive or deeply understand. My family history felt like a burden, and I imagined it made me a high-risk applicant. I thought for sure I would be ruled out. What a relief when I was accepted and what challenges remained.
First, I had to get my friends to help me convince my grandfather to pay for the tuition. I knew he would be against a program that did not offer a terminal degree. He had told me his brother; Horace had dropped out of Georgetown University to go into WW I and the family did not approve of his decision.
But I needed $300.00 and, of course, my grandfather’s support, so I enlisted my friend Lina. She could see that Bowen was very unusual and was determined that I should go to Georgetown University to study Family Psychotherapy. Our families had been close for several generations, and we had known one another since 8th grade. Lina’s husband had also worked for my grandfather at the Lambert Point Coal Piers, so that was another plus. She convinced my grandfather to pay for this education. Somehow, she also talked my grandfather into lending me his car.
I asked my friend Ann to look after my two children, Martin and Michelle. At that time in 1976, Martin was 13 and Michelle 12. Ann had four children of her own, and her youngest, Jennifer, was my daughter’s best friend. My grandfather admired Ann as a physician, so her approval counted too. Without knowing what I was doing theoretically, I used the positive aspects of triangles to influence my grandfather. Now I was cleared to go to Washington to learn.
I was feeling nervous about going to Georgetown University Family Center, knowing that I would be the only one without any degree. But then I focused on the fact that I was there to gain knowledge and that I could ask any question that I wanted to. Knowing just a bit about Bowen, I knew I would have to find the answers for myself.
There were about thirty-five people in the class, all with advanced degrees. Yet, I found myself at an advantage in this way because I had fewer preconceived notions about the field of psychiatry – I came in open and ready to learn from Dr. Bowen. There were no notions as to what would make things work out. I just knew I was there to learn to be myself and to ask questions for which there may be no answers.
For sure, I stuck out as “different” and being different reminded me of all the things I felt growing up and being on the outside, unable to tell my friends that my parents were alcoholics but obfuscating the truth to allow me to fit in. The feelings of being 10 years old came back to me, but now I knew there was the possibility that I could be more myself. It would just take courage and effort.
Bowen described this pressure to get along as togetherness, a universal survival instinct to belong. I had only a beginner ‘s grasp of the pressure to conform to the group/tribe. I knew I had to deal with this urge to go along in order to truly be myself in this new group. However, this organization was still a far cry from the closed and anxious training meetings held daily at the psychiatric hospital. By comparison, the Family Center was an open and curious place, at least so far.
My first supervisor was psychiatrist Bud Andres, M.D. After the yearly symposium, we had supervision for several days, in which we discussed what we learned and how we were managing ourselves in our own family. There were four of us in our small group and each one had to draw a three-generational family diagram. Since I was new, I got to go last.
Family diagram
Dr. Andres looked at the diagram and said, “Whom do you have to hold onto when your grandfather dies?” Good grief, I suddenly thought, was he going to die? Oh yeah, he was 86, and I was unprepared for him to leave me. I was as blind as a bat to the changes in the system and the impact on me. Thankfully he lived another year.
Turning to the board, I said, “Let’s see, who did I know in my family? I got along with my mother’s family more than my father’s. My mother was an only child as was her cousin, Dana. But Dana had five children. Three son’s, my age, followed by a daughter and the youngest son. Dana will always be the same age as my mother as they were both born in 1918. Dana lived in Cincinnati, I explained, as to the lack of contact. “That’s not too far to drive, and who knows what might happen if you get to know these people. Dr. Andres said. “How about your father’s family?”
I responded that they were closer by living in Williamsburg. I have some younger cousins and my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Betty, who is the mother of my cousin Liz. Jimmy never really liked my father and might’ve still been mad at my father for his drinking and not looking after his children. Then there were these sisters of my father’s mother whom I had never met. They lived in Elyria, Ohio. Dr. Andres said, “Did you know they are your great-aunts?” And on it went. There was a lot of cut-off, drifting away, and distance in my extended family. The family roots were drying up, and I had not considered that a problem.
After the last day of the three days of supervision, I went to get my car. I had parked the car in the back of the building on a mild-looking slope. During the class, it started to snow, and it was building up fast. Better go get that big heavy Chrysler Imperial before it gets stuck, I thought. And when I got in to drive home, that lovely car was just slipping and sliding down that little hill.
Being practical, I went up to the office to call a tow truck. Dr. Andres was there and said, “Let me see if I can help you push it out.” Before I could say anything, he went downstairs and told me to get one foot in the car and steer it and push with my other foot. I was holding onto the steering wheel while both of us were grunting, groaning, and with all our might pushing, and yes, out came the car.
I paused, looked at him and said, “You know, at the hospital where I work, you are not allowed to ride in the elevator with the psychiatrist. There is a lot of concern as to your breaking the transference. And here you are pushing my car out of the snow.” He laughed and said, “I’m your coach, and this is a different world.”
Chapter Two
Meeting Murray Bowen and the Family as a System
The rain pounded on the dark and gloomy highway as I went home from Bayberry Hospital one windy night in June of 1974. Butch had been hospitalized for a month. I was driving into the tunnel connecting Hampton Roads to Virginia Beach, Virginia. The wind was blowing hard. The rain was piercing. Darts on my windshield. Think, think, think.
I recognized what I was up against: I was divorced, had no real job, and was looking after my maternal grandfather who had long been suffering after his wife, Anna Wales Maher, died in December of 1972. Anna had been a real force in the family, holding everything together. And now the family was falling apart.
After one month in the psychiatric hospital, it was time for Butch to go home. My head was clogged up with all the problems and struggles ahead. Not much had changed, but May had turned to June. Butch still thought he was a savior, and I said, “Yes, you are the white knight on the white horse.” I understood at some level that was an accurate observation. He said, “You are the only one who knows that.”
To Butch, June was summer and surfing and happiness. But I had no idea how he was going to live. Or, how I would find a better job than selling real estate, the part-time job I had taken on for the past two years.
As I drove through the tunnel, there was an eerie quiet. The rain was gone. I was slowing down and getting clearer. I knew one thing: I needed to get a job in a psychiatric hospital as I lacked knowledge as to how to deal with my brother. Now he was a person with so-called “serious mental health issues.” Even his psychiatrist said, “Forget about him, he will be in and out of hospitals for the rest of his life. You need a friend. Perhaps I can take you to dinner?” Not what I wanted to hear. There had to be better options than dating a psychiatrist.
Yes, the old Butch was gone, but this new guy was still my brother. Facing the facts, I had no money to go back to school. But if I got a job in the hospital, I could learn what they knew, and then I might be better equipped to deal with Butch. That would be one way to move forward, as I had no money to finish college, much less earn an advanced degree.
Butch had become the favorite of many patients, saying, “I could lead a revolution, but I want to get out of here first.” By the end of his month-long stay in the hospital, he stated that he had done as much “healing” for others as he could, but his insurance was running out. He was ready for a new life, and he knew how to pretend to be the way the psychiatrists wanted him to be. Butch had learned not to tell people he was Jesus.
As Butch’s “little mother,” I was programmed to focus on his next step. What terrifying thing might he do? I knew something: Do not tell him what to do. I was beginning to develop a mental compass about dealing with Butch, not about being a self. … yet.
Butch had a rented apartment with our brother Drew, so there would be a roof over his head. But how would he get a job? I was still such a worried sister/mother.
My brain was muddled when Butch decided that he would go back to drinking beer and smoking cigarettes again as they helped calm him more than the drugs that they gave him at the hospital. I was thinking, is he trying to get me to be his mother again? I am just not going to do it, even though it is hard to say “NO” to Butch.
Butch came up with a money-making idea. His friend who worked for the telephone company could get him the wooden spools used for telephone cables, and he could then use the material to make tables. So now, Butch began building resin tables in the backyard of my house and had completely taken over my yard. Was this some kind of special grief, I wondered? Every day, I was reminded that the family was rebuilding itself from the backyard up. (INSERT PHOTO)
I focused on my hope of getting a job in a psychiatric hospital. It may have been wishful thinking, but at least it was a goal that made sense. However, I also knew that any job at a psychiatric hospital required experience. Luckily for me, it just so happened that a friend of mine, Ann Karnitschnig, M.D., had founded a drug-free clinic in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I volunteered there from 1974-1976.
After a year of learning from people, who were strung out on drugs or threatening suicide, I was ready to apply to the various local Psychiatric Institutions. Ann was also working as a medical advisor in the alcoholism unit at Tidewater Psychiatric Hospital (TPI). Gratefully, she put in a good word for me, and I got a job as an alcoholism counselor. This was a major change for me, having never worked as a paid employee.
In one way, I had given up the hope or thoughts of finding a new husband/father and focused more on the fact that I needed knowledge about the family. I was aware that I was not able to solve problems alone. But I had the desire to search for knowledge.
I had been working at the hospital for about six months when I heard that a famous psychiatrist was coming to give a talk about families and alcoholism. One of the social workers there, Marcie Solomon, who was working in the adolescent unit, had requested that Murray Bowen, M.D., come to talk about alcoholism and family problems.
In preparation for Bowen’s visit to TPI, the hospital made two of Bowen’s most famous papers available. I read his paper on alcoholism and then The Anonymous Paper during the night shift. Both papers were mind-boggling. Bowen was writing about things that no one else had seen or even considered. He was researching and observing his own family! In addition, Bowen spoke of alcoholism not simply as an addiction but as a more complex set of responses to relationship issues.
After reading his two papers, I had enough evidence. I knew Dr. Bowen was a genius.
When Bowen visited the hospital to give his talk, I noticed no one was conversing with him. I wanted to speak with him, so I encouraged my friend, Lina Watson, to go with me to talk with him.
Bowen was drinking coffee and eating a powdered donut. I was asking questions about his paper when suddenly Lina put her hand up and wiped some stray powder off his face. I was so shocked, but I was unable to stop her. I said kind of sternly, “Lina! Maybe you should ask him first?”
Everyone laughed but me.
That may have made Bowen decide to do a little research and find out more about me. He asked me to take him up to the stage. Halfway down, he stopped, turned, and said, “What should I say to the audience? You know the people here and have read my chapter on alcoholism.”
I told him, “Most of these people are not going to get what you are saying and probably prefer AA to your ideas, so you might as well just say what you want to say.”
Bowen gave me a big smile, turned, and walked up on the stage. Hmm, I thought, I must have passed some strange test for him to smile like that. I sat down and listened carefully.
First, he did not talk that much about alcohol as a problem. Alcohol, and addictions in general, amplify and cover up the difficult challenges that a family is facing. They could not see the system. Therefore, they weren’t dealing with the problems but blaming the drinking person and trying to control them. These reactions were creating more problems.
Bowen went on to say, “If you want to cure alcoholism, then you need to learn to de-twitch mice. Mice do not make up stories to tell you “why” they did this or that and became alcoholic. They just get twitchy then they go for the alcohol. What happens if you focus on the “twitch” and try to do something about that? The twitch can be a stress response that appears in mice and men. I heard this as Bowen saying to pay attention to managing your anxiety. The twitch is a reaction to the environment that you may not know a lot about.
If that was not enough of a head shift, he follows up with another challenge, “Are you at this meeting to gain more CEUs, or do you want to learn how to de-twitch mice? There is another conference down the hall, and you might prefer to be comfortable and take the AA road.”
The way I heard it that afternoon was that the only way out of the bind of focusing on what is wrong with others is to encourage lifelong learning and not get “snookered” by thinking you know it all.
Bowen went on to say having a terminal degree might also make you a little more vulnerable to this kind of thinking. As humans, we are “snookered all the time,” it is important to recognize where we are programmed to, under stress, believing, “I am right, and you are wrong.” Knowing what others should do is a BIG problem.
Reflecting on his talk, I saw how, over the generations, people were pressuring others to conform. I was aware of the automatic ways in which both myself and my brothers were conforming and then rebelling. We were all reacting automatically more than thinking. I was just taken by his honesty and the challenges he posed to the current way the mental health community thought/thinks and was/is organized. I couldn’t wait to learn more.
After the talk and being slightly intimidated, I waited until all the people who wanted to speak to him had left so I could have some time with him. I approached Bowen and asked him if he had any courses for “officially uneducated people.” I had only two years of college, and I wanted to know everything there was to know about families. What kind of courses did he recommend for someone like me? He took my name.
In a few days, I received a multi-page questionnaire for entrance into the Georgetown University Family Systems Post-Graduate Program. My first thought was: “That could not be right.”
I called the Director of Training, Mike Kerr, M.D. When he got on the phone, I said, “Dr. Kerr, there has been a mistake. I have not finished college and have no advanced degree; therefore, I cannot be in a post-graduate program.” Dr. Kerr said, “No, Dr. Bowen liked you, go ahead and apply.”
In making the required family diagram for the application, I saw the cluster of deaths. No wonder Butch went crazy. I began to see how things were happening that I could not perceive or deeply understand. My family history felt like a burden, and I imagined it made me a high-risk applicant. I thought for sure I would be ruled out. What a relief when I was accepted and what challenges remained.
First, I had to get my friends to help me convince my grandfather to pay for the tuition. I knew he would be against a program that did not offer a terminal degree. He had told me his brother; Horace had dropped out of Georgetown University to go into WW I and the family did not approve of his decision.
But I needed $300.00 and, of course, my grandfather’s support, so I enlisted my friend Lina. She could see that Bowen was very unusual and was determined that I should go to Georgetown University to study Family Psychotherapy. Our families had been close for several generations, and we had known one another since 8th grade. Lina’s husband had also worked for my grandfather at the Lambert Point Coal Piers, so that was another plus. She convinced my grandfather to pay for this education. Somehow, she also talked my grandfather into lending me his car.
I asked my friend Ann to look after my two children, Martin and Michelle. At that time in 1976, Martin was 13 and Michelle 12. Ann had four children of her own, and her youngest, Jennifer, was my daughter’s best friend. My grandfather admired Ann as a physician, so her approval counted too. Without knowing what I was doing theoretically, I used the positive aspects of triangles to influence my grandfather. Now I was cleared to go to Washington to learn.
I was feeling nervous about going to Georgetown University Family Center, knowing that I would be the only one without any degree. But then I focused on the fact that I was there to gain knowledge and that I could ask any question that I wanted to. Knowing just a bit about Bowen, I knew I would have to find the answers for myself.
There were about thirty-five people in the class, all with advanced degrees. Yet, I found myself at an advantage in this way because I had fewer preconceived notions about the field of psychiatry – I came in open and ready to learn from Dr. Bowen. There were no notions as to what would make things work out. I just knew I was there to learn to be myself and to ask questions for which there may be no answers.
For sure, I stuck out as “different” and being different reminded me of all the things I felt growing up and being on the outside, unable to tell my friends that my parents were alcoholics but obfuscating the truth to allow me to fit in. The feelings of being 10 years old came back to me, but now I knew there was the possibility that I could be more myself. It would just take courage and effort.
Bowen described this pressure to get along as togetherness, a universal survival instinct to belong. I had only a beginner ‘s grasp of the pressure to conform to the group/tribe. I knew I had to deal with this urge to go along in order to truly be myself in this new group. However, this organization was still a far cry from the closed and anxious training meetings held daily at the psychiatric hospital. By comparison, the Family Center was an open and curious place, at least so far.
My first supervisor was psychiatrist Bud Andres, M.D. After the yearly symposium, we had supervision for several days, in which we discussed what we learned and how we were managing ourselves in our own family. There were four of us in our small group and each one had to draw a three-generational family diagram. Since I was new, I got to go last.
Family diagram
Dr. Andres looked at the diagram and said, “Whom do you have to hold onto when your grandfather dies?” Good grief, I suddenly thought, was he going to die? Oh yeah, he was 86, and I was unprepared for him to leave me. I was as blind as a bat to the changes in the system and the impact on me. Thankfully he lived another year.
Turning to the board, I said, “Let’s see, who did I know in my family? I got along with my mother’s family more than my father’s. My mother was an only child as was her cousin, Dana. But Dana had five children. Three son’s, my age, followed by a daughter and the youngest son. Dana will always be the same age as my mother as they were both born in 1918. Dana lived in Cincinnati, I explained, as to the lack of contact. “That’s not too far to drive, and who knows what might happen if you get to know these people. Dr. Andres said. “How about your father’s family?”
I responded that they were closer by living in Williamsburg. I have some younger cousins and my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Betty, who is the mother of my cousin Liz. Jimmy never really liked my father and might’ve still been mad at my father for his drinking and not looking after his children. Then there were these sisters of my father’s mother whom I had never met. They lived in Elyria, Ohio. Dr. Andres said, “Did you know they are your great-aunts?” And on it went. There was a lot of cut-off, drifting away, and distance in my extended family. The family roots were drying up, and I had not considered that a problem.
After the last day of the three days of supervision, I went to get my car. I had parked the car in the back of the building on a mild-looking slope. During the class, it started to snow, and it was building up fast. Better go get that big heavy Chrysler Imperial before it gets stuck, I thought. And when I got in to drive home, that lovely car was just slipping and sliding down that little hill.
Being practical, I went up to the office to call a tow truck. Dr. Andres was there and said, “Let me see if I can help you push it out.” Before I could say anything, he went downstairs and told me to get one foot in the car and steer it and push with my other foot. I was holding onto the steering wheel while both of us were grunting, groaning, and with all our might pushing, and yes, out came the car.
I paused, looked at him and said, “You know, at the hospital where I work, you are not allowed to ride in the elevator with the psychiatrist. There is a lot of concern as to your breaking the transference. And here you are pushing my car out of the snow.” He laughed and said, “I’m your coach, and this is a different world.”