The River of Forgetting - Interview with author Jane Rowan

 

Adam: I'm extremely fortunate today to be interviewing Jane Rowan about her new memoir The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse . Jane is a former science professor turned writer.

 

1. Hi Jane, thank you for joining me today. Please tell me about your background and what prompted you to write your memoir?

Hi Adam. Well, I was going along in my perfectly ordinary, successful life as a science professor at a private college, and one day I woke up to a specific memory from my early childhood. This memory led me on a chase that one reader of my memoir called “a detective story of the soul.” I had to get the clues by chasing down my memories and feelings. It was a difficult few years.

I decided to write about the healing process because I felt so grateful. After intense confusion and pain came a lot of tenderness and opening. I was (and am) grateful to my therapist, to the process of therapy, and to my life for affording such opportunities. In addition, I love writing and find that the writing process makes things clearer to me. Finally, I hoped that I could write something that would help other people who are struggling with abuse, especially with recovered, fragmentary memories.

2. In your book, you describe the process of gradually remembering the sexual abuse by your father, "Jack." What were those memories like? Was it a crystal-clear recollection or more like fuzzy memories where you knew something happened but you weren't sure what?

The first memory was crystal-clear. I was only three years old and I was perched on the toilet in my family’s house by the shore. I remembered the stinging pain when I peed. I also remembered that my parents said it was because I slipped on the bathtub, but I knew that was absolutely not true. I didn’t remember anything else about that house. I also did not remember how I got hurt—that was just a huge foggy area.

From there on, many of the memories came as blurry remembering of voices in the night, as hints of emotions, and vivid body-sensations without context. The body-memories were the worst. But I also began to piece together a picture from more ordinary memories—the strange remarks my father made about sexuality and how men “can’t help themselves,” the time he wanted to sleep in the motel bed with me when I was a teenager. These clues helped me see that he had the potential to do inappropriate things without taking responsibility.

For the first couple of years, I kept hoping that I’d get a clear “Kodak memory,” in which I’d see the person, the place, the time, and exactly what happened. That never happened. It took me a long time accept that my fragmented memories and my feelings were all that I needed. I wasn’t making a case in a court of law, I was working on healing and integrating myself.

3. In The River of Forgetting, you also talk about how your mom, "Myra", basically told you to forget about what your dad did to you as a child. How did that make you feel then and now? And how did you move on from it?

It made me feel crazy. What was I supposed to do with this huge betrayal? My feelings were not seen or heard and my reality was denied.  

My mother’s pushing me away was intensely isolating. It meant that I was all alone, unprotected, and vulnerable. As a child, I coped with it by forgetting, just as she told me to, and becoming a good, obedient child who got the best of what the family offered in many ways. I developed a very competent façade.

If only one adult had said, “That is wrong. You were hurt and I will protect you. Here, come cry on my shoulder. I will make sure it does not happen again.” If I had had one ally, my world would have been different.

How I moved on was, in a way, by going back and reliving it, but now there was a caring adult, my therapist, to hear me and to say the things no one had said in the past. I learned to love that child who had been violated, to listen for her voice, and to admire her strengths. As I learned to care for that inner child and for myself, the lighter, more creative parts of me came out to play, as well.

I also came to understand how very frightened my mother had been. I remember one role play where my therapist asked me to play my mother’s part and speak to the child. As Myra, I said, “That’s all I can do. I’m helpless. You have to forget it.” I felt her despair inside my body at that moment. I am grateful that my life is so much bigger and I have more power than she did.

4. In parts of the book, you talk about acting out what happened to you in a movement workshop. It seems like that wouldn't help you heal, but you suggest it did. Can you talk about how the movement workshop helped you?

I would say it a bit differently. I didn’t so much feel I was acting out “what happened to me,” but acting out my reactions. My body expressed pain with hunched shoulders and thighs locked together. Other times I huddled on the floor and writhed with discomfort. I covered my face with my hands.

You’re right, it seems strange that this could help. What was transformative was the acceptance. Other people could witness my movements within the structure of the Authentic Movement workshops and they didn’t turn away as my mother had. Sometimes they knew what the movements represented, sometimes they didn’t, but simply saw it as my individual dance. They didn’t judge me. I could show my reality and still be part of the family—that was the act that had been impossible when I was young.

5. You talk about how your mother Myra was very tight-lipped about her childhood. Do you think your parents (both Jack and Myra) were abused and that's why they treated you the way they did?

I know they were both very wounded people, but I’ll never know the nature of what happened to them as children. They were also acting within a sexist framework that put a lot of burden on women but gave them very little power. At that time (the 1940s), men could beat their wives as well as abuse their children, and it was considered normal. Abuse still happens now, all too commonly, but the tide has shifted and there is more understanding and action on behalf of children.

6. On p. 43, you say "Is this what it means to be recovering from abuse? That you can't hold a job, you're outside the mainstream? I feared that this might be my path, that I would really fall apart, and that I would be seen as disabled and marginalized. I had no other models, so I didn't know what recovery might look like..." How did you keep yourself from "falling apart?"

I did fall apart inside. I spent hours crying and drawing dark scribbles, writing incoherent phrases over and over in my journals. I set aside a time each morning before work to listen for the inner child’s voice and let her cry. In therapy, too, I fell apart, and was blessed to be held and cherished in my most broken moments.

Paradoxically, I think my yielding to the worst breakdowns in private allowed me to keep functioning in public. There was a place for my pain to reside and be held, so I did not have to act out or go crazy externally.

7. One of the most interesting parts of the book occurred on p. 84, where you talk about how you wanted your therapist, Sarah "to be perfect--perfectly available, perfectly understanding--so I could trust her. She kept reminding me that I had to tell her what I needed. A part of me wanted her to know it all intuitively, so I could be an infant and not have to ask. Asking involves risk." How did having to ask Sarah to meet your needs as someone who needed to be healed make you feel? Did it get better as the therapy went on?

I think what Sarah was doing there was important and necessary. The goal, after all, was to have me stand on my own feet and nurture myself, to form an Inner Adult to care for those inner children. In order to do that I needed to learn to understand my own needs.

It was also vital that I learn to trust her enough to request her help. If she had satisfied my needs without my asking, I would have remained unformed in that area.

Yes, it got easier. I began to take a childish pleasure in asking and receiving Sarah’s touch and reassurance. And then the pattern became less childish and more mature, more a matter of asserting myself by requesting her help. She modeled the interaction, and I see that I am now able in many areas of my life to ask for more of what I need.

8. Near the end of the book, you had to say goodbye to Myra, without Myra really having truly met your needs as a daughter. What was that like? And how did you resolve your feelings about it?

At the end of her life (she was 87) I had to take care of my mother a good deal, and it was tremendously hard to do that caring while I was in the midst of learning to understand the ways she failed me. Privately I ranted and wrote and scribbled my need and rage. With her, I did my best to provide and to communicate. I listened to her talk about her life, at last, to the extent she was able.

When she died, our relationship felt very unfinished, but she died anyway. Perhaps it’s always like that. There are many things I wish I could have said, but I worked with what was available, who she was, and where I was at the time.

9. At the end of the book, you cut your therapy sessions from twice a week down to once a week, a sign of your healing I think. Do you feel like you will ever feel whole and complete after your experience of sexual abuse? And where you are in the process of healing now?

I feel whole and complete. This includes seeing how daily events in my life evoke old patterns and trigger old emotions. For example, I am sensitive to feeling someone does not believe me, because of my mother’s response (or lack of response) to my telling her about the abuse. But I can sense those feelings coming up and reassure myself that I’m not that child any longer, and my life is enriched by that knowing. I believe that all of us are carrying wounds from various times in our lives, and I am sure that acknowledging mine makes me a stronger, wiser person.

I’ll never “recover” in the sense of being a person who had a safe childhood. I’m a different person from that—and, I think, a more empathic and even creative person because of the early trauma and the process of healing.

The book captures a particular part of my healing journey. In the process of writing it I came to understand and articulate the events and feelings more clearly. I progressed in understanding, wholeness, and love, past the story I wrote.

10. Do you have any advice for sexual abuse survivors (or abuse survivors in general)?

Do the work. It is hard, it takes longer than one thinks it will, but it is completely worthwhile for living a good life. Don’t try to rush the process or make it be over.

Find a therapist whom you trust and who challenges you in ways that feel right. I think that healing needs to happen in connection with others. One can do a lot alone, but trust can only be built with others.

You will find happiness, you will find trust and connection. Don’t give up.

11. On page 174, you talk about therapy as a sacred process, and later in the book you refer to The Light. What do you mean by sacred, and The Light, and why do you think they come through in therapy?

It’s hard to put into words. Many spiritual paths acknowledge the importance of going into the dark places of the soul. I feel that Sarah’s love pierced my heart and allowed my own spirit to come forth. When I was at my most vulnerable, it felt like some kind of divine or universal love was channeled through her and into me, lighting me up. Also, the loving and soul-full parts of me that had to run away from my abusive family were finally encouraged to come back and re-enter my life, to bring me great joy. I experienced these openings as spiritual, much larger than the personal.

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Powerful stuff isn't it? I've read The River of Forgetting myself and can honestly say not only is it a great book that offers lessons in healing for abuse survivors, but it is also a great read as well.

ZenTactics extends a sincere thank you to Jane Rowan for writing this book and sharing her time and expertise with us. You can show your support for this author's work by buying a copy from Amazon using the link below. If you wish to read more about Jane and her work, please visit http://riverofforgetting.com/.

~Adam Appleson

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