Kery Rowden, LCSW from the Center for Psychoanalytic Study - Houston The morning started with heavy rain. I lay in bed for a moment, picked up my phone. A notification popped up “flooding in the Hill Country. 27 missing from a girls’ camp on the Guadalupe.” I clicked on it, recognizing the name of the camp. I thought about the women I know who’d attended that camp, about my own children who went to camp on another river nearby. I was afraid. It was the 4th of July, a day of celebration, but the rain kept coming all day and into the next as the news got worse and worse. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, looking at my phone. Early on Saturday I read a headline about a 20 month old little boy who had died; I clicked, and recognized the name of the man who had lost his grandson. I knew him, a lawyer, and I knew his wife, not well, but I’d done business with both of them over the years. The story didn’t give many details, but said that seven members of the family had gathered at their river house to celebrate the holiday. My husband asked why just the little boy? And I thought, the circumstances must have been very bad to separate that little boy from his mother. I wept at the thought of it. The scale of what had occurred was hard to take in, is still hard. That beautiful place, that slow-moving green water I’d floated down in an inner tube so many times. That it had risen so quickly and so powerfully and in the middle of the night. My heart hurt. I went to work on Monday feeling heavy, sad. I wondered how my clients might respond. The first one started out by saying “my sister is really bugging me.” Babette Saebisch, DPG / German Psychoanalytic Society The day began with heavy rain. I had slept badly and woke up filled with a feeling of shame - when I searched inside of myself for the source of it, I remembered the dream I had last had this morning: My mother had taken me aside and said to me on the head: "You've always had an issue with masturbation, you've always been ashamed of it. Why is that?" Inquisitorial. I closed my eyes and turned my head to the side, burying my nose in the coolness of the pillow once more, wanting to hide from myself and the day, but the rain pattering loudly on the tall bamboo outside in the garden kept me awake. It was my first day off in weeks and I fervently wished it had started with a different feeling. Shame. Of all things. I found it hard to shake it off because there was something to my mother's words in the dream - it didn't help that in reality, of course, it wasn't a topic of conversation between us. And it also didn't help that, in my mid-50s, I generally didn't let this topic affect me in my everyday life. I reached for the empty red wine glass on the floor next to the bed and couldn't stop myself from sniffing it; disgusted, I put it back and pulled the covers over my head.
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