By JUDY ROSEMARIN

Taken by surprise at the recent “Creating a New Future by Changing Our Past“ retreat, I realized that I wasn’t there to cultivate the usual suspects: compassion, patience, forgiveness, courage, generosity, etc.

No. I was there to nurture gentleness. 

My realization was prompted by my emotional response to the gentleness in Angie’s voice. The soothing sound seemed to come from her but I know it’s never out there. It is only and always in me! However, me? The gentle one? Impossible!  

But I went with the feeling, the surprise.  

In the retreat, we were to identify our younger selves where contact, deep listening, recognition, healing, reconstruction, needed to be happen. I “met” my 12-year-old self at the camp’s horse stables. For all five summers, it was the only place where she didn’t feel scared or lonely.

I offered a soft, “Hello” and apologized for not giving her any warning, for leaving her for waaaaay too long. I told her that now, I was here for her. Just for her. And I promised that I would listen to anything and everything she ever wanted to say. 

“I have nothing to say,“ she snapped.

I understood. I know that feeling. I accepted that. I assured her that I would sit on a bench nearby and wait.

After 20 minutes, with predictable starts and stops, staccato sentences, timid testing, our conversation began to slip into a smoother rhythm. I listened to her sadness, fear and loneliness, as she gently curried her horse. 

“I am sorry for all you have felt.” (Silence) “I see you.” (Silence) “You are very gentle,” I said.

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“You are strange.  But you seem nice.”

“You seem nice, too. You are also gentle.”

“Ha.”

Oh? Something funny?

“No one ever called me gentle.” She sheepishly smiled at me, then asked the horse, “Do you think I am gentle?” 

And so the process began. For the first time as an 80-year-old, I touched my banished natural gentleness. 

I continued listening to the deep silences and was unprepared for what she next said. 

“I hated sewing name tags on my socks before camp…. But… (great silences, then hesitation on her part) “I just realized…I really liked sitting next to Mommy on the green corduroy couch. We sewed together.”

The old narrative suddenly broken open resulted in following epic learnings: 

The old story is never the whole story. It’s wider, deeper and richer than imagined. Just listen.

Once the narrative is altered, the internal feelings change. I touched and then continually feel gentleness now, intentionally visiting it every day.

When I am in a certain mode of over reactivity, I need to recall that it’s not the adult who is reacting, but a younger self who has not yet been fully honored.

I’ve put little “G” (Gentleness) reminder Post-Its around the house and contemplate them daily. 

I continue to integrate those blocked, battered, broken parts of myself into the adult I am now with gentleness.

I am an emerging gentlewoman. 

With deepest gratitude and gentle bowing,

©2023 Judy Rosemarin

Judy Rosemarin, MS, MSW, has been a member of FCM for eight years and has had an active Zen practice for 12 years.