Therapy Works: Like Miss Marple the Detective
I have a dear client I saw today who was sitting in the waiting room writing diligently when I opened the door to invite her in to session. She was charming in raising one finger, without taking her eyes off the page, and indicating she wanted a few more focused moments staying with what she was doing. I enjoyed the assertiveness in her gesture, the comfort with our relationship, and the sense that whatever she was working on … she was meaningfully engaged.
As she entered my office and sat down Kathy indicated that what she had been working on was a book review. She tilted the cover of the book towards me to reveal a black background, a title with the word Evil in it, and a dramatic picture of a what looked like a flapper from the 1920’s with an expression of great worry/dread. Kathy said she “really liked” the book. She indicated she was not expecting to like it because it seemed so “dark”, but that, in her view, the author succeeded in “standing in the light” while “pointing to interesting things in the dark,” rather than standing in the dark and having the reader feel that life is dreadful and hopeless.
I found her statement remarkably apt for the kind of suspense/mystery fiction that is life-affirming. I mentioned to Kathy that her description of the book seemed to very nicely fit my own sense of how I enjoy mysteries like Miss Marple*. That Miss Marple lives in the light yet has piercing insight into the dark. Kathy exclaimed, “Oh, don’t you just LOVE Miss Marple?!” and we had a nice laugh together saying “yes!” and agreeing together that Kathy’s phrase was deliciously apt to describe the reasons we could enjoy Miss Marple.
*In case you the reader don’t know Miss Marple like Kathie and I do … from Wiki: Miss Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Jane Marple lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective.
[It strikes me just now and I’ll carry this with me into future sessions with Kathy, that Kathy herself has faced a lot of darkness in life that has felt enveloping when she was facing it as a child. Now, for her to affirm that it is a life-giving possibility to “stand in the light” and look at the darkness with piercing perception and understanding and an ability to point to the real offender and remain in the light oneself … well, that is a most potent and beautiful description of the growth in Kathy’s understanding of herself and her painful history.]
As we swung round in the session to other topics Kathy had a lighthearted moment where she confided in me, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial whisper, that she “had lust in her heart” the past week. She went on to describe a male acquaintance who came to her home and talked to her about a shared passion: gardening. She reported that he took out some pictures of a lush garden that he had cared for and the pictures showed the progression of the garden through the seasons. Kathy smiled broadly with obvious energy, “I’d love to go and pick those blueberries and make pies.” As you can tell, Kathy’s little joke with me was that she was lusting after the man’s garden.
Still, after this playfulness, Kathy became quickly serious and sad and began a strong period of tearfulness. She communicated that she was convinced that she would never share gardening with her husband and thus she would never have the kind of aliveness she felt when she thought of planting, tending, and harvesting those blueberries.
And here is where I feel one can never be positive of the arc of a session. It’s best to see it, somewhat as Mr. Hensley the theater owner in “Shakespeare in Love” was able to see, that “It all works out in the end.” We ask, demandingly, “How?” and he replies, “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.” In this case I found myself sitting with Kathy’s genuine sorrow and loneliness and thinking with joy about … now maybe you precede me in this association? … thinking about the daring and wonderful Miss Marple, Miss Marple a confirmed older single woman. And what is a passion of Miss Marple’s? Tending her English garden. Kathy and I were nearing the end of our session time and if I could go back and do it again I would risk Kathy feeling I was a poor listener to make such a curiously abrupt shift of topic, such a seeming non sequitur, and simply ask in the midst of her sadness about her relationship with her husband and the prospect of lonely gardening or forgoing gardening, I wish I would have asked something like, “Kathy, do you know if Miss Marple had a main hobby?” It would have been fun to have left the session with her becoming aware that Miss Marple was a gardener and gardened alone and then said, “That’s where we have to end today.” And perhaps, in the mystery of the sometimes power of therapy, Kathy would have left with a deep memory of the possibility that her own flow today in session was leading her to see that she can stand in the light of her own joy in gardening.
As it was, dear reader, I must confess I acted, as it seems to me is so seductive to therapists, with a style of trying to push the river, rather than letting it flow by itself. Still, it was my level best effort at the time and not, I trust, a disaster. I mentioned to Kathy that I heard her pain about gardening alone and I found myself thinking of our shared joy in the stories of Miss Marple and that Miss Marple was a famous spinster gardener and that from her garden she did indeed stand in the light and peer into the darkness that surprisingly was present in the seemingly peaceful English countryside. And I wondered aloud (too much of my voice in this it seems, eh?, and not enough of letting Kathy see if she wanted to connect her energies in a mystery of self-healing) if Kathy could see herself finding comfort and strength, if need be, in gardening alone. Kathy ended the session in a fashion similarly assertive and real to how she began it. She raised her index finger and replied, “Hmm. I’ll have to think about that.”