Ashes in the Milk

By Valerie Johns

Drawing from her own personal experiences and professional expertise, Valerie Johns' "Ashes in the Milk" bridges the gap between self-help, vulnerable narrative, and prose. Broken down into powerful, entrancing stanzas, readers are invited to find hope and solace in Valerie's writing, in search of their holistic healing and peace.

"Ashes in the Milk" will remind readers that their greatest path to healing lies within themselves... and that it is a lifelong process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350937701

Valerie Johns

Valerie Johns, MA, MFT is a poet, author, and therapist with a passion for helping others heal from their most deep-seated wounds. Professionally, Valerie is a lifelong writer, beginning in second grade when Mrs. Best put her first poem to music and the whole class sang it. As one of Jack Grape's first students in writing poetry by The Method, she went on to work as the Poet in Residence at Pacific Palisades Elementary School where she published the children's work, held poetry readings, and taught them how to write from their authentic voices. She has written blogs for sites like Elephant Journal and has published two children's books, "Why a Fly?" and "What I Heard and What You Said." As a clinician, Valerie earned a master's degree in clinical psychology and is trained in hypnosis and many mind-body therapies. She was also an adjunct professor at Antioch University, Los Angeles for 12 years, and has had a thriving private practice for over 30 years. Whenever she tells her story of recovery, she closes with the stories of finding her first horse, raising him as he raised her, and finding Buddhist-informed psychotherapy early in her career. Throughout each of her professional pursuits — writing, and therapy— Valerie has sought to use her love of prose and writing to help heal herself and others no matter their story. Through her newest work "Ashes in the Milk", she hopes to reach those who have long suffered in silence and have needed a bright light guiding them forward towards remembering their own stories and finding their deep healing.

Book preview

Title

For anyone who was ever a baby

Ashes in the Milk

©2024, Valerie Johns

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 979-8-35093-769-5

ISBN eBook: 979-8-35093-770-1

PRAISE for the Author, for her work

"I was there at the famous Improvisation comedy club in Hollywood in the early 80s. I was there to witness my good friend courageously take the stage and try her hand at stand up. Having satisfied her curiosity, it would be her one and only time.

Suddenly, 40 years later, I am here… holding in my hands Valerie’s very moving and insightful memoir. It’s a personal story of the trauma and tribulations she faced throughout her life. It is her journey of healing, lessons and ultimate resolve. I found myself rooting for my friend on every page.

Quite honestly, Valerie’s determination, fortitude and courage doesn’t surprise me one bit because, lest we forget, I was there that night."

— KEVIN NEALON, comic

A poem that reads like a novel, Ashes in the Milk captures the wild roller coaster ride of a life that led one woman to become a respected Los Angeles psychotherapist. It is a journey through the rebellious free love days of the Seventies and Eighties, incorporating memories from infancy and the vivid dreams of her later years to make sense of a life that was nearly cut short at multiple junctures.

— JIM CIRIGLIANO, documentary producer/writer

In this poignant and poetic memoir, Valerie Johns unravels the tapestry of her life, weaving words that illuminate the corners of her pain and trauma, offering readers a raw and profound journey toward healing. Ashes in the Milk is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit and our capacity to gain enlightenment from the scars of our past.

— CHRISTINA MCDOWELL, author of

After Perfect: A Daughter’s Memoir, and The Cave Dwellers

Valerie possesses a rare talent for storytelling that transcends the boundaries of mere words, drawing readers into the depths of her personal journey. She has a remarkable ability to infuse her writing with raw emotion, authenticity and deep introspection. She fearlessly explores themes of identity, adaptation, and the universal struggles of finding one’s path in an ever-changing world. She’s gifted beyond belief and I’m incredibly grateful to have worked with her in the development of this remarkable book.

— ANN RANDOLPH, Unmute Yourself, Your Story Matters

"We’ve all had ashes in our milk at one time or other.

The trick is, to drink it all down and write about it.

Valerie Johns finds the words,

she excavates the archeology of heartbreak,

the elixir of redemption, the after-taste of joy."

— JACK GRAPES, author of

Method Writing, and The Naked Eye

Years in the making, Valerie’s book is a revelation. Taking us deep into a world of pre-verbal awareness we only suspected might exist, she bravely excavates her own early trauma to reveal its influence on the intensely sensitive, exquisitely insightful therapist she became. An intimate, imaginative tour de force you won’t soon forget.

— ELLEN GOOSENBERG KENT, documentary filmmaker

"This stunning poetic memoir, roars and whispers, as inner time and outer time are woven into intense, interlacing patterns. The result is a tapestry of spellbinding images that bring the reader into themselves. Valerie’s writing, at the same time archetypal and deeply personal, reaches into the many dimensions of our human experience and touches us, leaving a sign, kindling a light, planting a seed.

— ELIANA CRESTANI, dreamweaver, dancer

"From the recovered memory of a hungry infant, to the wild seeking of an indomitable spirit, Ashes in the Milk explores how deeply one can be nourished by moments of both radiance and despair. This poetic novel is a memoir and an invitation. Johns offers a window into the raw and poignant experiences that shaped her as an artist, therapist and elder. But more than that, like a master alchemist, she shows her readers how to apply the heat of the poetic imagination to fragments of memories, stories and images to transform them into sacred ashes that fertilize the soul.

— ELZANNE ROOS, imaginal therapist

"Valerie has excavated her early years with exquisite precision in this poetic memoir, weaving a narrative from the netherworld of memories and dreams. Her investigation has unfolded over years of living the examined, adult life as a sought-after therapist. The intimate story that emerges will be meaningful and inspiring to anyone who is working to heal scars or challenge core beliefs arising from the emotional losses, or even trauma, of childhood.

— REBECCA CAMPBELL, nonprofit CEO

PREFACE

What you are about to read is not a work of fiction though some of it is a work of imagination.

It is a memoir, a story spanning almost seventy years of living – of traveling on a journey of discovery, of loss, and ultimately, of surviving.

Much of this is about trauma: trauma that began when I was six weeks old and had no words or understanding of what was happening in my short life.

Trauma continued through a series of childhood injuries and life-threatening health crises as a young woman.

I buried much about the losses and instead of grieving them, turned them inward and against myself.

But this is not just a story of despair. Along the way there were good adventures – some sex, drugs, rock’n’roll – and marriages, successful and unsuccessful businesses, a long career as a psychotherapist… and most of all, there was a horse.

And then there was another horse.

I learned about love and loyalty from them. Only after loving them and letting them go was I able to make sense of the trauma I endured as a baby, as a child, as a nineteen-year-old girl.

I invite you to come along with me on my journey. There may be places where it is hard to hear, or hard to follow. There will be places where I have asked you to take a breath, stop for a beat, and take another breath. Sometimes you may wish to do this, even when I haven’t suggested it.

I hope this story will serve you as a guide on your own path through discovery and into wholeness.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: Ashes

Hunger Storm

Asking Mom

Graduate School

Swallowing Mother

12-Step Heretic

In My Shoes

Where do I go when I digress?

CHAPTER TWO: Pause For a Moment of Psychoeducation

Karen Horney (pronounced Horn-Eye).

My Response to Karen Horney

An Exercise, A Fleeting Moment A Threshold to Soothe and Hold the Wound

CHAPTER THREE: I Am Six

Reclaiming My Voices

Yellow Jump Rope

Clever Girl

Another Big Idea

Little Tsunami Cowgirl

25 Years Later…

Finding Poetry

CHAPTER FOUR: I Am Eight

Purple Squirrels

That’s Not How You Play Croquet

Be Very, Very Still

You Get Symptoms

Before I was Born

What Mom Found

Morsels of Joy

CHAPTER FIVE: I Am Nine

Trichotillomania

Halloween in the New House

CHAPTER SIX: Karoshi

Adrenaline

A Dislocation

We Left Our Lives Behind

CHAPTER SEVEN: Lost in Adolescence

Hurricane Helen

Strawberry Fields Forever

CHAPTER EIGHT: 1968

Rebel Fawn

It Was 1968

Helen Redux

CHAPTER NINE: Hey, Nineteen

Primal Screaming on the Edges of the Wasteland

A Pool of Blood

Back to the Beach

Dream Time

CHAPTER TEN: Twenty Nothing

Running Hard

Eleven Years and Counting

The First Wedding

Looking For My Family

Twenty-Five

Talking with Mom

The Second Shrink

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Down The Manhole

Kintsugi: Broken Pieces Gather in a Pile

Bottoming Out

Beyond Baroque

The Laughing Lady

Go On Past

Thanksgiving, Loneliness, White Russians and Trees Falling

Calling SOS

A Letter from Leigh

CHAPTER TWELVE: First Year Sober

Acronym: Son Of A Bitch, Everything’s Real

Retired the Slut

And Then the Nicotine Had to Go

On Not Receiving

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Thirty-Something

After Vodka

Unexpectedly Loved

Forgiveness

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Unremembered Memories

Painting

Parents Die, Part One, Daddy

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Alchemy: It’s Getting Warm in Here

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A Bottom Below the Bottom

Another Fall

Meeting Bodhisattva

Getting Big Enough

Bigger

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A Magic Lamp

I Uncork the Genie

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: More Adult Development

Parents Die, Part 2: Mommy

The Team

Something Stolen

CHAPTER NINETEEN: A Road Few Traveled

Meeting Jizo

Ground Under My Feet

CHAPTER TWENTY: Placelessness

There’s More

New Edges

Placelessness

A Paint Horse

Me, Concussed

Telling Stories… Into Lockdown

In The Pandemic

Impossible Choices

More Death

Following Dreams

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Dreamweaving Forward

A Soul’s Story

Red Dress Medicine

Snake Lessons

Saying Yes

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Postcard From the Depths

Untangling Nightmares

Tidal Wave

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Not So Fast, Hotshot

There’s More Work to Be Done

Another Apocalypse

Fire!

I Am Beaten and Retaliate

Snow White

She Stays On Trails

Epilogue

Invitation: A Pause for Normal

Let Us Be Leaves

Postscripts

Postscript

Transition

Preverbal Song

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Here’s the thing about trauma that most people don’t understand.

Trauma can’t tell time.

Trauma creates four responses:

fight, flight or freeze and… fawning

and this baby could only do one of those.

Something inside me froze in time when I was six weeks old.

Happy Valentine’s Day, 1954.

My mom got sick;

my dad made rookie mistakes.

The other thing about trauma:

it’s like a magnet to the iron filings of the world.

You unbecome.

You’re an unwitting target.

Worse, you can become the architect of your own calamities,

creating dramatic events that result in the re-creation

of what I labelled The Pain.

It was Pain without words,

but it was there,

it was familiar,

it needed to be softened, numbed or,

better, killed off.

Since early on,

I had a nagging sense that there was something

very wrong with me.

The ashes in the Milk you will read about, here,

mom’s illness,

my parents’ relief when they thought everything smoothed out,

and I seemed fine.

This was the template that was forged during that night

and in subsequent days.

Something would go wrong,

and we would shake it off

dazzled by our resiliency.

How do I know the story is True?

How do I know it’s not what some would call a False Memory?

In 1992, Hurricane Iniki,

a category 4 hurricane hit Kauai and me.

I came home with nightmares about being held hostage

by a serial bank robber who resembled James Bond.

Trying to heal, I went for hypnotherapy.

There, safe with wise old John Hedenberg,

I go far into a trance

seeking the terrifying moments of the hurricane’s wall

but am surprised when, instead of Iniki,

I find myself in a baby’s body

lying on a changing table

with my father screaming at me.

I see my little legs in the air,

I see the pink plastic of my changing table with blue flowers.

I see my father looming over me and he’s…

yelling at me?

I mean, yeah, my dad was a yeller.

Anyone who grew up with immigrant parents,

born into the Great Depression…

they