Olena & Me

“If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn, they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem” Leonard Cohen, from “The Sisters of Mercy”.

She appeared, wild as the wind. With an angelic face, hair braided into a thousand colorful plaits, a tattoo of the trident prominently featured on her throat, dressed in camouflage. A portrait of a woman who wants to disappear and be seen all at once.

Olena was among the first group of women to participate in our Healing Base Camp in Ukraine. She arrived with her husband and adolescent son along with fourteen other injured Ukrainian veterans and their families. She and her marriage were teetering on the edge.

From the first women’s group meeting, Olena challenged the structure of the camp. Unlike the other wives, she was a veteran. She felt uncomfortable in the women’s group and made sure to let everyone know her discomfort. She initially refused to participate in the psychoeducational modules and had to be coaxed to enter the room. During the group meetings she sat with a scowl, placed her chair far from the others, and looked away.

From the start I readily recognized myself in her. Most of my life I felt like I was different, like I did not belong. My parents had immigrated to the US when I was eleven. I did not speak English and I did not easily find my place in American culture. Actually, I was never sure I wanted to. In my struggle, I expressed my thoughts, feelings, and discontent loudly and directly, often in opposition, always ready for combat. As a teenager my defiant streak found expression in social activism and protest. Fearing I would not be accepted, I rejected.

Olena resisted. She asked to be with the men; she wanted to climb. She felt unable to identify with her own womanhood, and being among women, felt demeaning to her. In her mind women were weak and uninteresting and she was strong and brave.

On the second day, when Olena asked me if she could switch to the men’s team, I simply said no. She cried and screamed. On our daily group hikes she kept her distance from the rest, finding the most challenging paths, jumping off rocks, trudging through mud, making new trails in the woods like a lone willful explorer.

Olena asked every staff member if she could join the men’s team. Her mood vacillated between being sad and angry; her approach shifted between pleading and protesting, petulant silence and a barrage of words. She tested the limits at every opportunity.

Olena was like a young stallion in captivity, kicking and running. But no matter what she did or said, we all smiled and gave the same response. The team, like good parents, held her in a kind and steady embrace that conveyed “We’ve got you and it will be all right. We know what you need.”

Her resistance, just like mine, was an expression of her own inner conflicts: an internal war, a secret wish to be accepted and loved while fearing the potential loss that a true connection may bring. Olena wanted to belong but feared losing her fragile identity in the process. The unavoidable transition from military to civilian life threatened the only sense of self she had cultivated. She identified as a soldier. And now, discharged from military service, she struggled. Who was she? A fighter or mother, wife or warrior, wanting to belong yet afraid of suffocating in intimate relationships and imprisoned by social expectations.

 Olena and I never discussed any of it. I did not need to know her history or the challenges and disappointments I was certain she had endured. I just knew that we needed to be the steady, safe and predictable family she longed for; seeing and accepting her volatility and tantrums without judgment, all the while reassuringly holding her together as she seemed to be falling apart.

Like the staff, her cohort of women watched as she flailed about. They somehow understood that Olena needed to be angry, to reject, to oppose. The group remained patient and enveloping. Like wise old trees with long crooked branches the women surrounded her with calm. They quietly witnessed her pain and grief, her inner turmoil, her fear of being vulnerable. They sat with her, tolerating each storm until it passed.

Gradually, because we did not bend to her wishes, because every response was consistent and firm, Olena learned to trust. Leaning on clear rules and the stable structure the camp provided, she felt protected and safe, her inner chaos contained by the boundaries we set for her.

Olena soon began to understand we did not want to break her spirit. That spirit, her essence, was wild and beautiful. By mid-week, as she felt held by invisible arms that refused to let go, Olena stopped fighting. As we gathered for the last women’s meeting Olena sat among the attendees and wanted to be the first to speak. “Before the group begins, I want to ask all of you for forgiveness for my behavior and attitude. I am grateful for the group’s patience with me and I am grateful you did not give up on me.” 

In that moment I was struck with the realization that her spirit was neither broken nor tamed. Rather, it had gently found its place as the light that lived within her.

Like Olena, my journey with Mountain Seed Foundation has allowed me to shed my armor. Having spent most of my life feeling like an outsider, and most of my career in private practice, I now find myself as part of a community, part of a very wonderful chosen family. It happened for me the way it happened to her. My teammates, Dana, Nathan, Iryna, Bob, Marc, and others, quietly, steadily, with open hearts and arms, allowed me to be myself as I settled amongst them. Like Olena, I discovered that this time I no longer had to struggle. I found my way home.