I Met a Young Man at a Party

I met a young man at a party for young people. This early 20-something young man had bright eyes that shone through shiny, tousled brown hair, an open smile, and a palpable energy of exuberance and youthful certainty of his proclamations. He radiated a sense of confidence in what he knows to be true, about himself and others.

He proclaimed, with satisfaction, that he got his first job at 15, and has been financially responsible since then. He left home at 17 and has been proudly on his own ever since.

Another woman, a mother of four whose youngest was exactly in this age range, asked why he left. He said he had to. His father was abusive. His mother was checked out. Heck, he realizes that since she was 16 when she had him, she really couldn’t have been asked to do anything else. The other mother then relayed her story of escaping home as early as possible – something about an alcoholic father and an unavailable mother who had a nervous breakdown.

My heart sank. It was all I could do to continue to eat the mayonnaise-y pasta salad. I laser-beamed my eyes to my plate. I could not look at them. I get so angry at these stories, how they permeate the lives of so many people I know, not just strangers at a party. How the story sets the tone for so much of the rest of a person’s life. The need to flee, to escape, to find somewhere – anywhere - else to be, in the hope of being free. Yet how so few people ever find freedom when this is how their journey begins.

In my work, I help people build inner freedom, even if they began their life journey years back with an escape. I help them find new ways to leave and enter situations, and, of course, ways to stay when it is finally good enough to stay. The work is long and hard, and often I become yet another person who feels confining to them; how we then struggle for the person to stay with me, just long enough so that when they leave, they're ready to participate in the fullness and richness of life. They are no longer fleeing or escaping in to. They go, with a tiny part of me inside them, which they find to be a comfort (mostly, at least!) and not a nuisance.

I'm trying to do the same darned thing as a parent. As much as I know I am raising my son to let him go, I want him to go from the feeling of setting off, of taking flight with full knowledge that there is air beneath him, that he has wings and his own power to soar. I’m happy to be any part of his leaving – the air, the co-constructor of wings, the ground below in case he falls. I want him to feel the warmth and protection of the doors as they're still closed - he really is too young to leave just yet - yet for him to know that at his time, I'll hold these doors open for him. We'll all be ready - or as ready as we can be - for his journey away from home, but his will begin as a send off. I want him to have the freedom that already exists, inside him, in our relationship, in our home, and that all he has to do is continue to find places to invite that freedom to stay.

When he is at a party for young adults some day, I hope the story he tells of himself is conveyed with his own youthful certainty – that his truths are proclaimed with a similar exuberance and conviction – but that to him, home was a welcome place from which his journey started; that his initial home lives forever inside him to return to. And that he has since created his own home, infused with love, replenishment and tending from the loving family he has created.