Dancing for the Fat Lady: Dancing for Life, Peace, and Sanity: the Ojibwa Sundance and Other Ceremonies

By Ray Drake

This is the story of my journey from a university psychology department to public mental health and private practice, and on to being a psychologist in Indian land. It includes, of course, the many interesting people, novel experiences, and challenging ideas I encountered along the way.

It is a story of expanding spiritual awareness and growth as a human being and the part played in that by the Chippewa/Ojibwa Indians, whose own practice of faith clearly embodies Jesus teachings on how to live with reverence, gratitude, humility, and grace. The discovery of their faith was an immense surprise and an unexpected joy.

Eventually I was called in dreams to Sundance in Canada, a calling that also included dancing in other ceremonies which, like the Sundance, required four days of fasting and prayer. I attempt to convey to the reader some of the learning and growth that are inevitable when one dances in a sacred arbor filled with kind souls and the Creators unconditional loveand yet I know full well that words merely hint at what can be learned only through experience.

When I answered the call to Sundance, who could have known that as a dancer, helper, and eventual leader I would spend the next eighteen years of my life in those sacred arbors? I was fifty-two when I first danced and a couple of weeks shy of seventy when last I dragged the buffalo skulls.

My dear wife pursued her own calling to teach children, and wound up teaching many years in a nearby Indian school. She made this journey ours by her loving constancy, faith, courage, and support. She was the first and best of the joy-filled surprises the Creator had for me when He moved me out of the university world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452583525

Ray Drake

Ray Drake is a retired psychologist who practiced in “Indian Land” for many years. He also participated in Ojibwa Sundances during that time, and he has written about his experiences. He and his wife live in a small town. They love their Packers, going out for lunch, and delivering Meals on Wheels.

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Copyright © 2013 Ray Drake.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-8351-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8353-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8352-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013918186

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/4/2013

IN MEMORY OF

Albert and Rose Lands

Canadian Ojibwa, Ontario, Canada

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Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1   Must One Die in Order to Live?

Chapter 2   Is Higher Education Really All That High?

Chapter 3   Working With the Earth: Farming Small

Chapter 4   Leaving The U. - Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Chapter 5   Now What’ll I Do?

Chapter 6   Choices: Meet the Indian Woman, Meet the Tribe

Chapter 7   The Dazzling Beauty and Light

Chapter 8   The Appalling Darkness

Chapter 9   Traumata

Chapter 10   Life Changes: Experiencing the Indians

Chapter 11   Au Canada!

Chapter 12   Sundancing: Without The Taste Of Water

Chapter 13   Dancing for Peace on Very Sharp Stones

Chapter 14   Dancing in The Sacred Hoop: A Vision of Peace

Chapter 15   Dancing Under the Grace Bush (and Other Tales)

Chapter 16   Dancing With Peace-Makers, Ghosts, and Clowns

Afterword

Appendix:   Christian Conversion: From the Darkness to the Light

List of References

Introduction

AT ITS SIMPLEST AND MOST concrete level, Dancing for the Fat Lady is the story of my own journey of discovery, a journey that, despite its ambling pace and circuitous route, led inexorably to North America’s Indian country. Because I was then a practicing psychologist, my early contacts with the Chippewa Indian people were as a professional clinician/consultant. Stated that way, it sounds simple and straightforward. However, there was something else, something more, to those early encounters.

Beyond the official and familiar role designations of doctor and patient, I was very surprised by just how profoundly touching were those first sessions with Chippewa people. I was, of course, moved emotionally. That was to be expected in any empathic encounter with hurting and troubled human beings. Yet, it was more than that, because I was being stirred spiritually as well. Consequently, I came away from those early encounters with the unshakable impression that God – yes, the Living God, the Creator of all things – had revealed Himself to these people, and that they had listened to and were following His good guidance. It showed in their behavior.

I was deeply moved by both their emotional pain and their obvious spirituality, and I wanted to learn more. While in this process of wonderment, and as time and schedule permitted, I took off a few times for motorcycle trips to Canada. On one trip in particular, I had several completely unplanned meetings with some of the Ojibwa (Chippewa) people up there. These chance encounters, especially with one old medicine man, ultimately led to an 18 year career of ceremonial dancing in Canada, and later, in the U.S. That included, of course, dancing in the annual four-day Sundance, the highest and most sacred of the ceremonial dances. Who could ever have seen that coming? I certainly didn’t. Yet, I did it –all of it. And, as you will see, I was Dancing for the Fat Lady.

Clearly one does not do all that ceremonial dancing, fasting, praying, and listening without learning at least a little something worthwhile in the process. This book gives voice to that education. Because these ceremonies teach about Life (that is, what matters most, and conversely, what does not), the ceremonies require more than a written report describing their details. Thus, despite its most interesting cross-cultural aspects, this is not a sociological or anthropological report. And, while it is inevitably permeated with psychological information and observations, neither is it simply a psychological report.

It is a spiritual book. It delves into the spiritual mysteries that are symbolically and experientially present in those beautiful ceremonies. However, at the same time, the book recognizes that such mysteries are far too profound to yield their fullness of grace, truth, and power to just anyone who happens along, and that includes me.

This book, then, is not for mere intellectual titillation, nor is it light entertainment, or inconsequential elevator music for the mind. To the contrary, it is meant to challenge, awaken, enlighten, and provoke. It aims to open blind eyes and unbelieving hearts and minds to plain, simple, and unchanging truths about life. It is a call to spiritually dead and materially-sated souls to wake up and live, and to work and fight for life rather than death and deadness.

When the implications of that idea about life and death become clear, chances are pretty good that a self-satisfied non-believer will want no part of it. Suffice it to say that in reading this book, your assumptions about just how well your life is going will be challenged, your feelings might be hurt, and you could easily be tempted to stomp off with a clenched fist raised to heaven. Nevertheless, I wish you well.

I recall one time being told by a man that he had been searching all of his life for what he discovered in a simple sweat lodge ceremony. Clearly, he was a seeker and, as promised, he found the One he was looking for.¹ I hope that others like that man will be encouraged in their quest as they contemplate this book’s teachings.

I hope, too, that this book will offer solace, validation, and encouragement to those readers who, in one way or another, continue to keep the faith. Just hang in there a little longer - ‘cuz it ain’t over yet.

Who are these people who keep the faith? They come in all shapes and sizes and in ways you might never expect. Many are traditional believers, people who find solace, comfort, and purpose by their involvement in gatherings of like-minded people, e.g. church/religious congregations. Yet others are marginalized believers who may tend to see the modern church (or other religious institutions) as just another aspect of the materialistic madness that grips our society and our souls. Still others do not see themselves as believers at all. These may profess to be turned off by hypocrisy and/or the often malevolent past and recent history of the Christian church. They are, of course, believers even as they deny it. In my experience, there are believers and servants from many faith communities as well as from no particular faith community at all.

And… then there are all those Indians. They are still here, and no matter how shattered, scattered, and battered they are by contact with Europeans, for the most part, the Indian people continue to keep the faith. They still know up from down, even when they are utterly demoralized and profoundly discouraged in holding that knowledge. This is not to deny that, in order to survive, many have surrendered, and joined themselves to the their colonizing conquerors.

Yet, in whatever state of assimilation or the lack thereof, the Indians are, wonder of wonders, still here. Moreover, they continue to assert and affirm that living with happy hearts has nothing to do with materialistic values and accomplishments. Instead, they assert that successful living has everything to do with teachings that originate in the unseen world.

I hope to encourage the believers, and especially the Indians, to keep on keepin’ on. These times call for courage, faithful endurance, and patience. And it ain’t easy.

By now you have rightfully concluded that this is indeed a spiritual, or possibly a Christian, book. Somewhere further into it, I expect that you will be struck by how deeply this Christian man has been immersed in Ojibwa/Native American spiritual ways. For purposes of this introduction, I will simply state that the cross-validation of these two apparently dissimilar spiritual paths is a large part of what this book is about.

And, having just used the word immersed, I need to alert you that in this book you will also encounter two distinct viewpoints of what constitutes learning and knowing. Watch for them. I expect the divergence of viewpoints to challenge your assumptions about what a worthwhile education actually is and how one goes about obtaining such an education.

You will probably note in reading my story that there are some things in my expressions of faith that are, to say the least, unorthodox, and others that may strike you as heretical and/or paganistic. Despite my careful attention to both explicit teachings and general principles of the Scriptures, I realize I risk losing some readers at that point and/or when they encounter my sometimes salty or colorful choice of words.

I also expect some readers may be unnerved by my reliance on dreams for guidance and important insights. However, this book would never have been written at all were it not for explicit dream instructions to write it. In fact, without dreams, I never would have danced in ceremonies at all, and thus would have had nothing to write about the subject.

Shifting to a completely different matter, I remember one time when I needed directions from one Indian village to another. Upon asking an Indian man for assistance, I was told, "Just take that road (indicating a general direction by pointing with his lower lip), and keep on driving ‘til you see that tree. Then take that other road, the one by that house. You can’t miss it."

I had no idea of how many miles away it was, how much time it would take, the names of the roads involved, or what lettered signs to watch for. Yet, as strange as it might seem, I actually did find that road, that tree, and that house, and I did get to the other village without getting lost along the way.

That interaction is a brief illustration of two cultural groups who differ on which brain hemispheric, right or left, is dominant and most natural in their thought processes. Try to imagine a formal introduction of the two primary ways of thinking. It might go something like this : "Hello left hemisphere (linear, sequential, alphanumeric), allow me to introduce you to the right hemisphere (pictographic, holistic, visual), and please just try to understand and get along with each other!"

Cross-culture communication, even when only English is being spoken, can be a very tricky business. Been there and done that, and I can assure you that I am not a master of that particular communication skill. Nevertheless, I tried.

I love to hear a Native elder speak and teach. I could listen to that forever. In fact, I like that speaking style so much that, thinking that I somehow needed to, I even attempted to emulate it for a time. ² It fell flat. I fell flat. Of course I did. I do not have hundreds of years of Indian speaking and native nuancing in my cultural bones. Besides, my language, unlike a Native tongue, is not inherently nature-bound and spiritual. That fact alone deeply influences how words are selected and used by an Indian who is speaking English.

Having said all that, be assured that what you are about to read is a book by an English speaking white man in the wording and style that is natural to him. It cannot be otherwise.

There are other cross-cultural issues that affect how this book is written. You will notice that I rarely identify an Indian person by his or her full English name or, for that matter, by any name. The only exception to that is when that individual is deceased, and even then, more often than not, I avoid using their name. Incidentally, my own Indian name is, baba majii mowin inni, which means strong messenger.

I chose to do it this way for several reasons. One reason is that I want this book to stand or fall on its own merits and as my own words and work. Thus, I do not seek a stamp of approval from any tribal groups or Native individual(s). If what I have to say is worth-while, so be it, but Joe Mountain Bear’s ³ endorsement will not make it so.

I also sought to avoid political interference that, even in Indian land, ignorantly seeks to possess, control, and direct the work of God, particularly the sacred ceremonies. The people badly need the ceremonies, but the last thing they need is the desacralized and sanitized versions of them that remain after political hands have manipulated and mutilated them for political purposes. Furthermore, I surely would not want to get Joe Mountain Bear in trouble back home on his reservation just because of his association with me. They just might cut off his commods,⁴ or, worse, his gonods (Heh, heh.) Who needs that nonsense?⁵

While still on the topic of cross-cultural issues, I do need to apologize for any misspelled or misused Chippewa/Ojibwa words and phrases. I made extensive use of an Ojibwa/English dictionary, but I was not always able to locate the word or words I was looking for. Furthermore, I understand that, despite a clearly distinct and unified Chippewa/Ojibwa culture, there are regional variations in the language. There is, I am told, a distinctly Canadian version of Ojibwa, one that goes well beyond the tendency to end every statement with eh?.

On a different note, my wife says there are too many footnotes in this book. She is probably right. I use footnotes rather than endnotes because I want the reader to have more information and/or further commentary right there on the page that he is reading. Obviously I use references that I have found worthwhile and want to pass along to you. One source to which I refer repeatedly is The Holy Bible. While I did occasionally consult other translations, I think that almost all my citations are taken from The New International Version of either The Quest Study Bible ⁶ or the Giant Print Compact Bible. ⁷ Initially I used only the Study Bible, but following a stroke, I found it much easier to read the Giant Print version. (Oh no! Two more footnotes!)

Having completed this introduction, I now leave you to read and make what you will of my story. I sincerely hope it is worth your while and that you enjoy the journey.

Acknowledgements

FIRST AMONG THOSE I NEED to thank are the gracious Lake Superior Chippewa/Ojibwa people of the United States and Canada. I must also thank the many other Indian people of different tribes who, like the Chippewa/Ojibwa, invited me into their individual and tribal lives with great patience, respect, trust, and good humor. That was incredibly decent, kind, and generous of you. Without you all, this book would not be. I hope it will bless you and make your hearts happy and strong.

Across tribal identities and geographical locations, I found your traditional people and elders to be gracious and warmly inclusive. I was surprised and excited to find spiritual relatives and trusted teachers among you, my brothers and sisters. So, I thank you elders and medicine people. You invited me into sacred places and shared your wisdom and knowledge with me. I know that was not easy for you, especially when I didn’t catch on.

So, chi miigwech⁸ to all the redskin grandchildren of the one Great Spirit. Even though you occupy such a warm place in my heart and I owe you so much, in order to protect the innocent, you will remain anonymous. Just like on TV.

Next I need to thank my trusted editor, Mrs. Connie Powers Mohawk, for her invaluable work and for putting up with my objections and defensiveness as she insisted that this book become readable, intelligible, properly punctuated, and grammatically correct. She insisted, too, that my obstreperous story teller settle down. Yet she also allowed him to occasionally leap onto the page for some verbal horseplay. And, despite the humor gap we encountered, she trusted my predilection for a kind of humor (and some words) she regarded as questionable.

The final version of the book, then, represents a collaborative effort by two very different individuals who hold a common faith and were willing to trust God, the process, and one another for the outcome. Despite her best advice, you will still encounter occasional peculiarities in wording, punctuation, and grammar. They belong entirely to me.

Thank you, Connie. Because you fearlessly tackled and tamed it, while also carefully preserving its unique message and style, you have improved this book immensely.

I must now express my grateful indebtedness to all who prayed for my recovery from a stroke that left me physically debilitated and seeing only pure black over the entire right half of my visual world. Gratitude is due, as well, to those who brought their professional prowess to my healing so I could gradually recover my eyesight, resume writing, and even drive again. So, thank you prayer warriors for your healing intercession. And thank you to God’s instruments, Dr. Julie Kahl, Dr. Mark Sneed, Dr. Mostafa Farache, and PA Charise Sullivan. Thank you to the MRI technicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and the Life Flight helicopter crew. Thank you to my occupational therapist, Erinn Bratley, MA, who helped me to decipher the occasionally diaphanous letters of the alphabet once again. Thank you to Richard Elliker, rehabilitation specialist, for his invaluable assistance and for connecting me with the excellent state services for the visually impaired when I needed them.

And then how can I adequately thank my wife Lorraine? I can’t. We were on this journey together and jointly navigated the uncertainties and disappointments, as well as wonderful surprises, that I/we encountered as our life took unexpected turns into places we had never imagined going. Naturally, she shared in fulfilling all those unsought dreams I had and in the joy of discovering who the Indian people really are. Yet she also had her own dreams to follow, a sacred calling to complete, and a path that was uniquely hers to walk. In doing so, she brought her skill, patience, wisdom, and humor to teaching Chippewa Indian children at a reservation school far from her old school, former colleagues, family, and the world she was accustomed to.

I cannot fully express the admiration I feel when I reflect on her courage, determination, steadfastness, constancy, faithfulness, and happy perseverance, not to mention her awesome ability to teach children. Not many could do what she has done, and fewer still could do so with the humor, childlike delight, joy in simple pleasures, and generous forgiving spirit with which Lorraine has enriched my life as well as the lives of so many others. And then came the stroke, when, without missing a beat, she became my nurse, attendant, and chauffeur. I am in awe and forever in her debt.

Yes, I honor and hold you in the highest esteem,Lovelump. But, more importantly, I adore you. My heart aches with a sweet pain from the love I feel for you. And as we go deeper into our old age together, I cannot imagine living without you. I know that had you not been by my side, I would never have made it this far. I am privileged to have you for my true friend, companion, patient and forgiving teacher, and loving wife. And you wonder why I greet you each day with, Good morning beautiful ?

I once had a dream instructing me to write my last testament and will (in that order) for my children. Laugh all you want to gang, but this book is that testament. The will comes a little later.

You have endured and loved so much. I am blessed by you. Because I failed you in so many ways, I treasure your love and forgiveness in my heart. I am very proud of each of you, and I love you more than I can possibly tell you.

Please keep to the good path, the one with a heart, and do kindness whenever possible. It’s always the best. Go for the worthwhile stuff and leave the rest of the crap for others to squabble over. Know that God loves you no matter what. Learn all you can about that. Be thankful. Keep the faith.

Try to see through education, propaganda, and other lies and bullshit. Think for yourselves. Try to avoid becoming closed minded about your open-mindedness. Fifty thousand Frenchmen could be very wrong.

Remember: She is no fool who surrenders what she cannot keep and gains what she can never lose.

And, oh yeah. A stitch in time is worth two in the bush. – Dad

Preface

NEAR THE END OF THE book Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger⁹, a sister and brother, a couple of very bright young adults, reminisce about a time in their childhood when they regularly appeared together on a weekly radio show. The show, entitled It’s a Wise Child, was one in which children showed off their smarts by answering all sorts of questions posed to them by the show’s host. Franny and Zooey were the youngest of seven extremely bright siblings, five of whom had already completed their turns at being regulars on It’s a Wise Child.

Zooey is on the phone with his sister Franny, when he reminds her of a particularly significant memory from their shared experience. Says he, "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on ‘Wise Child.’…. Anyway, I started bitching … before the broadcast. Seymour’d [the oldest of the siblings] told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door…. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I went on the air…. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense."

When I was a young man in my twenties, this idea of doing something for the Fat Lady sort of spoke to me about holiness, sacredness, or sanctity. It reminded me of how Jesus warned His followers to avoid practicing their piety before others in order to be seen and commended by them¹⁰. He stated very plainly that anyone who engaged in religious practices in order to be seen and commended by others had already received his reward, i.e. he had gotten the attention and recognition he sought. He also spoke plainly about engaging in religious practices secretly and privately, for example, giving in such an unostentatious way that it might be said that the right hand did not even know what the left hand was doing. He spoke about going to a private place to pray, and taking care to make oneself look especially fat and happy when one was fasting.

What He promised was that God, your Father who sees in secret, would openly reward the one who cares more about what the Holy One sees and less about the applause. He never actually said in what manner God would reward those attempting to walk on that good path. He just said that God will know… and reward.

Somehow, to do something for the Fat Lady implied that one is to do the right thing, for its own sake, for her sake, and without any recognition by others of what was being done and why. But hopefully the Fat Lady might get something from it. That’s the best I can explain it. So what’s a Fat Lady got to do with a book about Sundancing¹¹ with the Ojibwa Indians?¹² Well, what can I say? I had a dream. And in that dream I was being urged and instructed to write about my experiences with Sundancing. It was not the only dream I had about this matter, but it was the first. I had often thought about writing a book to share the richness and depth of the excellent things I had found among the Chippewa, but I never intended to actually write such a book. Then came the dream, and I awoke from it with a Hmmm on my mind, and as I lay there in the darkness, the phrase do it for the Fat Lady kept going through my head. It puzzled me, and I couldn’t ignore it. Funny stuff can happen in dreams.

Having spoken about this particular dream, I want it to be clear that I would not presume to write a single line about such a sacred topic unless so instructed via dreams. To just sit down and write as some sort of expert on a sacred Native spiritual practice seems to me a cheap, exploitive, disrespectful and, very white thing to do. ¹³ To presume and pose like that reflects a very different mentality about sacredness than the Indian peoples hold. Sadly, such disrespectful intrusion happens far too often, and, just as often, after little or no actual experience which would render a writer reasonably well-informed, but certainly no expert on the topic.

As you will eventually see, I have Sundanced many times over the years. But that gives me no right, and certainly no desire, to claim to be some sort of expert on this most holy of Ojibwa ceremonies. I’ll leave the assessment of the value of my experience to the readers.

But before I take you with me into that holy Sundance arbor, I will attempt to give you some idea of who I am and how I got to some of the places I did in my short time on earth. I will be sharing my journey with you. In addition, I will discuss other experiences I have had with indigenous people – mostly the Chippewa. These are things that occurred both inside and outside ceremonial dance arbors, and in the course of my work and other associations with these folk. I hope you will enjoy the trip, and maybe learn a worthwhile thing or two along the way. Or at least have something to think about.

Naturally, I hope that somebody gains something good from this effort of mine. My most fervent hope is that Native people will be justifiably proud of and grateful for their excellent heritage granted to them, I believe, by the very Creator of all things, the Giver of all good gifts. I am certainly grateful for their sharing all this richness and beauty with me.

So, I had a dream and I woke up with thoughts of the Fat Lady going through my head. Eventually I got a copy of the book Franny and Zooey and read it again to find the references to the Fat Lady. What follows next is a continuation of the conversation cited above.

Zooey describes an exceedingly clear mental picture he held of the Fat Lady. Says he of the Fat Lady, I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning to night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and …. Franny replies. He told me, too….He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once. She continues, " I didn’t ever picture her on a porch, but with very – you know –very thick legs, very veiny. I had her in an awful wicker chair. She had cancer, too, though, and she had the radio going full-blast all day! Mine did, too!"¹⁴

In this day and age, the Fat Lady would probably be seated all day in front of her television set rather than near her radio, and with the air conditioner running continuously in the heat of summer. But she would still be obscure, alone, overlooked, and not particularly attractive to the natural eye. It is hard to picture her as popular or socially desirable. In our often very cruel world, she would no doubt be a reject – an object of scorn and slander. Her living, suffering, and dying could easily go unnoticed by anyone other than family members. Of course, she would be in a great deal of pain.

CHAPTER 1

Must One Die in Order to Live?

I TRIED TO FIND A clear starting point for this tale, a moment in time when my long journey to the Ojibwa Sundance arbor commenced. I could not find that definitive, unambiguous starting point.

Who knows enough to determine precisely where it all began? We look for something big, something that jumps out at us and states unequivocally, There it is. That’s the place. That’s the turning point where this journey began. Yet it could just as well be one of the many small and seemingly insignificant decisions we make every day.

It quickly became obvious that my search for a single decision point was a waste of time. Almost any event could have been the first step in my journey to that Ojibwa Sundance arbor in Canada. The path was not straight, short, smooth, or clearly marked, nor was it void of attractive off ramps. However, as you will see, it became straighter and more sharply focused the closer I came to the goal.

I finally gave up the search for that single, unmistakable beginning point. It probably never existed anyway. So, for the sake of this story, I have chosen the period of time from the late 1970s until the mid-1980s as a time of sufficient turmoil, crisis, and change of direction in my life, to qualify as the time period during which the journey began.

Much was going on during that period in my life, but the most momentous, and by far most devastating event, was when Chris, my wife of 18 years, abruptly left our home and later filed for divorce. From its beginning, I had viewed our marriage as some sort of tragedy waiting for the right time to happen. This was apparently that time. It was a time of chaos, and I was shocked, dismayed, and overwhelmed as I faced life with four adolescent children missing their mother, no wife, and no idea how to organize the aftermath of her leaving.

During our time of crisis, my wife, children, and I entered into some powerful family therapy. It failed to save our marriage, but it was life-changing for me, and also of considerable help to our children. It was such a painful, sad, and confusing time. I came out of it with the four kids, very little money, and an empty ache in my heart that refused to be healed. I also came away with a determination to never again live the sort of half alive life we all had taken for normal in the years immediately preceding the divorce. The children, too, had aching hearts, but we hung together pretty well, and we aimed at better times that surely must lay ahead, or so we hoped.

We divvied up the household chores and did our best to get along and keep our family going. My cooking left much to be desired, but it also provided funny tales about Dad’s fish soup and the pot roast I roasted on a cookie tin. The shepherd’s pie and the baked beans and hot dog dish turned out, though, and we learned to love Crockpot cookery.

None of this was easy. Nor was it cheery and happy. We had been hurt and felt it. But we had a crazy shared sense of humor that served us well when things got too tense. That helped. We laughed often, at ridiculous stuff, and we still do whenever we get together. Our