At the last night of my stay with Bill and Zoe, he invited me to join his group. It is a group of 7 or 8, both men and women together. They met at a seminar half year ago, and meeting regularly since then. They were talking about deep level of intimacy without getting into sexuality. Bill had a strong belief that intimacy and loss are both sides of the same coin, which I completely agree. So he and the group invited me to the group to tell my story of loss and intimacy.
I shared my story with lots of tear and they supported me a lot.
I talked about how Yuko found her heart disease and had her bypass operation in her 20s, got completely well and had three kids as the most precious gift to me and herself. I realized only after my loss and my endless grief work, I became to really realize what an intimacy was. I have done a lot of work with men together, and found actually most men have issues with their childhood families, more specifically with their fathers. By comparing their stories, I realized how lucky I was having very stable intimacy/attachment to my father. So I can clearly handle my intimacy and attachment to my three children. Being a single father, I have an advantage of attracting all the attachment needs of my children. I can easily realize how much I am attach to my children, and how I can practice it in our daily life relationship. They are in their their teens, difficult time, especially my daughter Yuma challenges me a lot. But the challenge and difficulty children create mean nothing compared to my loss of Yuko. I can feel the deep intimacy with my children which makes a lot easier in our relationships.
I went on my story that we were almost giving up having children at all, but Yuko recovered very well, so we had three children in a law. She was so well enough to deal with mother's role and her professional role in the society. She became an interpreter just a few years before she die, an achievement she really wanted to be to use her positive skill in English which she got in her childhood in San Francisco.
And I went on to tell them all the stories how she suddenly died at our family ski holiday, and how I process my grief work over the last three years and four months. People in the group listened to me very carefully, fully empathize me, and I felt so nice to be able to open my deep emotion out.
Then they went around and told a bit about their own stories of intimacy and loss. I fully believed Bill was right that only after we know about our loss in our losses that we can really come to terms with true intimacy inside of ourselves.
I was a very lucky guy to be able to share the deepest pain so frankly to people. Knowing and expressing our own deep emotion/pain are such difficult task to achieve. We are busy building up our own identity and boundary all though our lives. We hide our negative side, strengthen the positive side, and become "a good man." We have a fear that we would be crumpling down and fall apart, not be able to live any more if we started to feel and show our emotion to be open.
All we need is a right place and people. We need a safe enough space to explore. It needs to be confidential, have clear boundary any information would not leak outside. It has to be a safe container.
We also need a right person who would empathy well enough. The person would fully understand you not so much rationally but emotionally. It may come from his/her own experience. She/he would never deny or criticize you.
I was lucky to have those two. I am quite extroverted and have lots of friends to share. I have my own parents living together, and my three children. I have my own therapist and supervisor. I have use even my students and clients to support me.
I was even more lucky because I have knowledge and skills. I am a psychiatrist who knows how to practice grief work from theory, and I have done a lot to my patients. But that was not enough if I did not have my own men's work. Series of experiences of my own inner work in various places make it a whole lot easier. Men's work sits very important part of my life.
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