Draft 3

Born to Stress

“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
                                                                          Frederic Douglas

This past spring some big news in the field of neuroscience got a quiet reception.  The non-affiliated American Academy of Pediatrics announced in a ground breaking report and policy statement what has become increasingly known in scientific circles but little discussed in public: “brain and emotional development is profoundly disrupted by childhood adversity and trauma.”  As a leader in advocating best practices in the field of children’s heath, from the examining room to the classroom, the AAP policy statement is a big deal.

Dr. Jack Shonkoff, founder in 2006 of Harvard's campus-wide Center on the Developing Child and a co-author of the AAP report and policy statement, calls this physiological phenomenon “toxic stress.” Shonkoff himself coined the moniker to help telegraph the complex range of emotional and neurological fallout that results from early exposure to chronic trauma and extreme hardship, even prenatally.  Armed with his moniker, Shonkoff speaks widely on the social and economic consequences if “toxic stress” remains unchecked.  When wrapped in scientific jargon, the terms trauma and adversity and hardship could sound like another yawn, but when people hear “toxic stress,” they pay attention.

In a forum convened this past February by Harvard’s School of Public Health, in a small campus auditorium on a stage barely large enough to contain the panelists, Shonkoff presided with Robert Block, President of AAP, and Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy, positioned stage right on a screen telecast from his office in Washington, D.C.  The moderator opened the forum with the question “What is toxic stress?”  Shonkoff, who likes to say, “It’s all about the science,” assumed his impish grin like a cat who’s about to fess up a mouse.  His short gray hair barely tamed, he was in his element.

“We’re at a tipping point in the biological revolution,” he says, “We are beginning to understand - in a way we never did before - how early experience literally gets into the body and effects the development of the brain, effects the development of the cardiovascular system, the immune system, metabolic systems, and provides new insights to ask the question: What is it about hardship that leads to more illness, that leads to more problems in learning, more problems in decreased economic productivity, and a shorter life span?”

In labs and in the field, toxic stress has proven able to disrupt normal brain development and trigger genetically predisposed diseases.  Debilitating results include problems with regulating emotions, inability to focus, and difficulty with relationships.  Lifelong mental and physical disorders, including PTSD-like symptoms, can manifest in adolescence or adulthood. With deficits in reading social cues and sustaining attention, trouble staying and succeeding in school is common, as are run-ins with the law.

AAP’s warning against the hazards of toxic stress on children reflects not a radical finding in the field of neuroscience, but an evolutionary step in a long body of work. Decades in the making, it is the story of science moving from research into reality; from the theoretical to fact.

It is also the story of my son, Nick, now 14, who started his early life in a Russian orphan ward before we scooped him up into our arms.

****

Letter of Relinquishment

I relinquish my male child out of wedlock...I renounce my parental rights regarding the child forever. I will not have any gradge against his prospective adoptive parents...My mother does not want the child. 

Entry No. 245 on 02.24.1998

The data on the child’s father has never been confirmed by any official documents and has been indicated according to a verbal statement of the mother c/o I.M. Klimova, a staff member of the Maternity Hospital. 

Director of the Registry Department, L.S. Doroshenko


Date: 07.13.98

During the child’s stay in the hospital since 02.24.98 till 07.08.98 neither his parents nor his relatives have ever visited the child or taken any interest in him.  The child was proposed as a candidate for adoption to RF citizens but failed to be adopted by any Russian family.

Head of the Medical Institution, L.D. Lavrenchuk

I, Rybchinskaya Galina, certify that I am familiar with the Russian and English languages, and that I have translated [these] documents faithfully and accurately.

****

Our flight from Moscow back to the United States during the summer of 1998 was long; nine hours across the Arctic Circle at a pressurized altitude of 35,000 feet. Like most direct flights between New York and Moscow during the years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the passengers on the plane were voluble and restless, the background noise a constant din of Russian and English mashed together.  The seats crowded with assorted American tourists; some hard drinking Russians and their families; rows of Russian and American businessmen; and some, like my husband, daughter, and me, were families returning to the United States with an adopted child. 

Just one week before we had flown an hour south from our home in Moscow to Saratov, a congested port city along a wide expanse of the Volga River. It was the middle of July and Saratov was bleached a hot white from sun reflecting off its broad water way.  We had been waiting three months to make this trip.  Our son, Nick, now five-months old, was being readied for his adoption. Inside the hospital where he had lived since birth, a modest one-floor brick rectangle - lights off, windows open to keep the long corridors and small rooms cool - officious hands were swaddling him, mummy style, in a brightly patterned yellow cotton cloth.

As if we had just returned from a short errand, Nick was placed in our arms. He had no belongings. Gone were the toys we had tucked into his crib six weeks before: The black and white cow that mooed; the plush blue, green, and red snake that shook and rattled. The mirror he could turn to and see his reflection. Gone too were the plump folds in his skin.  His soft pink muscles now reduced to thin gray skin. Izvinite, “I’m sorry,” an attendant said shrugging her shoulders. There was mumbling, eyes casting about. I knew enough Russian to understand Nick had been ill. No one had called.

We left through heavy wooden doors; in our wake empty shadowed halls.  Outside in the bright summer light our car was waiting with a change of clothes and a ready bottle.

****

We had been in Moscow for three years, but were returning to Washington, D.C. for Nick’s first pediatric check-up.  Washington was where my husband and I met and married; where we still had an apartment; and where we maintained our doctor relationships. When confirming I was pregnant with Dora, my doctor announced I was “of advanced maternal age.”  I would be 43 when I gave birth to Dora and 46 when we adopted Nick. That descriptor was followed by an avalanche of “risk potentials” and Moscow, although my new home, became forbidden territory.  Returning to our apartment, my husband shuttling back and forth from Moscow, Dora would be born in D.C., and her pediatrician would also be Nick’s.

With Dora sleeping, and Nick by our side, my husband and I leaned into one another, hands entwined.  After nine months of grinding leg work, phone calls, questionnaires, references, and notarizing documents, Nick was at last ours. But something about him had changed.

I had visited many Detsky Domes (state-run baby homes) as a volunteer and knew well the gray skin, the flat eyes, and the listless look of institutional care. Our first glimpse of Nick was in a video shot when he was two months old. He’s bouncing in the arms of a uniformed attendant. You can tell she’s trying to make him to smile by her high-pitched voice and the wide grin she flashes at the camera.  Nick is round, almost no neck between face and chest. His eyes a deep blue, the gray overtones would come later, and a sparse fringe of red at the base of his head, which now is light brown and thick all over. It took no more than those few minutes for me to fall in love with him. 

Now beside us - thin, almost fragile - Nick stares wide-eyed. He doesn’t smile and he never cries.  In a photo taken then, Dora is cuddling Nick. She awash in a big-sister grin; Nick’s hands clenched in a ball against his chest. Perhaps it is his only defense?

The infections discovered in both his ear at his first check-up in D.C., will prove so chronic and painful, they will plague him until he is four when he has his tonsils and adenoids removed.

****

Ed Tronick, current director of the Child Development Unit at Harvard’s Children’s Hospital, Boston, is a man with something of an “aw shucks” smile and an outsized proclivity to research and publish on his favorite topic: the neurobehavioral and social emotional development of infants and young children.  Credited with more than 200 scientific articles and four books, as well as national radio and television appearances, Tronick may not be a household name, but within the circles that matter to him, he is revered.

What put Tronick on the neuroscience map is a two-minute video he produced in 2007.  Building on work he began almost 30 years earlier when mentoring with pediatrician and Touchpoints author, Dr. TB Brazelton, Tronick conducted a simple experiment captured on video. In the short clip, a baby happily engages with her mother, mimics her smiles, points at objects, and coos back in response to her mother’s animated expressions and reassuring voice. This mother then turns away from her baby. When the mother turns around, her face is expressionless; her smile gone.  The baby, sensing something wrong, becomes distressed and desperate for her mother’s playful attention to resume.  In quick succession, the baby cycles through her best ploys for re-engaging her mother. When nothing works, the baby’s face and body collapse into physical anguish.

“Babies this young,” says Tronick in a YouTube interview, “are extremely responsive to the emotional and social interaction they get form the world around them.”  When the baby is denied her mother’s usual warmth and responsiveness, she resorts to negative emotions; shrieks, arches her back, and cries. The baby, says Tronick, is feeling acute stress.

****

You can tell Andy Garner gets jazzed when talking about complex neuroscience. His enthusiasm is contagious and he likes to talk fast, which is a good thing, because his mind is so active. He completed his Ph.D in molecular biology at Case Western University in Cleveland Ohio, and now, 45, is still there.  He also became a pediatrician so he could spend more time playing with kids. But if you ask Garner what really interests him, which I did in a phone conversation, he says, “epigenetics,” a relatively new field of neuroscience that explores phenomena that affect gene function without causing mutations in the DNA itself. 

Chronic poverty, abuse, even maternal stress have been tagged as catalysts to what neuroscientists call changes in “gene expression,” or how a gene behaves. When environmental adversities are persistent, these gene changes can endure through multiple cycles of cell division, or a person's life time.

Garner co-authored with Shonkoff the toxic stress report released by AAP this past spring. He also serves on AAP’s new Early Brain and Child Development Leadership working group.  For most people, says Garner, epigenetics is a big “what?”  But the beauty of Shonkoff’s moniker “toxic stress,” he says, is that it telegraphs what epigenetics is showing us to be true: “adversity can literally be poisonous.”

Garner, like Shonkoff, revels in the veracity of scientific proof.  “Understanding [brain] mechanisms takes us out of the realm of psychology and morality and into the world of science and biology.  A child’s [behavioral] development manifests what’s going on inside their brain.  But if you really want to understand a child, you need to understand their brain development.”

Ground zero for understanding the evolutionary thinking behind epigenetics and the impact of childhood adversity in later life is San Diego, California. Between 1995 and 1997, the managed care giant Kaiser Permanente, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control, gave routine physical exams to more than 17,000 adults.  This data collection became the backbone of what is now known as the ACE study (Adverse Childhood Experiences), designed to answer one simple question “What early life influences precede the development of risk to disease and disability?”

The answer we now know is many. The most detrimental, The ACE study found, were psychological, sexual and physical abuses; substance abuse in the household, violence against the mother, and criminal behavior that took place in the home.  The greater the number of these ACEs, the greater the risk to developing chronic diseases and emotional instability. The greater the severity and frequency of the trauma, the more likely it will disrupt the brain’s normal neural circuitry.

The findings from this ambitious longitudinal study remain the most compelling to date on the association between what happens in the first couple of years of life and how it plays out after.

****

If the ACE study provided a look back in time to see which childhood adversities determined risk to poor outcomes later in life, political upheaval in Eastern Europe provided the evidence neuroscientists needed to see how adversity in infant-hood, even prenatally, played out moving forward in time. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 began a domino of collapse within the Soviet Union. The most horrific stories came from Romania, epitomized by the firing squad assassination of Romania’s last Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. To bolster Romania’s decreasing population, Ceausescu banned abortions and birth control. But his timing was off.  When Romania’s population rose as a result of his policies, the country simultaneously succumbed to rampant shortages of food and fuel. Destitute families, having no other option, handed their children over to state-care institutions.

Jane Perez, reporting on Romania for the New York Times in 1996, wrote: “... Romanian orphans, it is estimated, receive five to six minutes of attention a day....As a result of their troubled early lives, 1 in 10 of the children will finish life in a psychiatric institution, and all will suffer severe trauma.”

By 1998, over 18,000 orphans from Romania and the Soviet Union were adopted into the U.S. Science magazine reported these children represented “the largest group of deprived babies available for study so far.”  The influx of these orphans became Exhibit A in tracking the effects of adverse trauma in early life and its disruption to normal social and emotional development.

Stories about children adopted from Russian-care institutions were reminiscent of Romania. Impoverished families gave their children up to the state; the state took children away from families too ill or too alcoholic to parent.  In Moscow during the late 1990’s, the circulating estimate for the number of children in Russian care ranged wildly between 500,000 and a million.  Verifiable or not, the number felt true.  Many of the ex-pat families we knew were adopting. When my husband and I started to consider alternatives to normal conception, my husband said, “Plan B. We are living in the land of adoption.”

We also thought we could dodge the hazards of institutional care. My volunteer work brought me in proximity with the players in Moscow’s adoption scene. I scheduled interviews with those eager to assist, and using our web of volunteer and business connections, we found Nick.  Adopted at five months, he remains the youngest Russian adoptee I know.

****

The only picture I have of my husband with our two children is from our first summer with Nick. Three tanned faces, lying together side-by-side, on a white chenille bedspread, smiling at me behind the camera. My husband in a red polo, the mascot color of his boat.  We’re in Maine and on holiday from Moscow.  I can tell it’s the end of August because Nick’s double chin is starting to develop. That summer he ate until he threw up and then he ate some more. He slept from six at night until six the next morning. Napped before lunch and again after lunch until he woke up again hungry. Eight teeth sprouted in one week. When it came time to make room for his adult teeth, his baby teeth would come loose and out in similar spurts.

Another photo taken that summer shows Nick sitting on my lap. He now fills out his denim shorts and orange and white striped T-shirt.  In my hands, facing the camera, is his U.S. naturalization paper.  My head is bent, lips grazing the pale blonde down that barely covers his round head. When I breathe in, his scalp smells like something that's singed, as if the internal workings of his brain were smoldering.

Nick was admitted into the same progressive private school as Dora located near where we lived in Cambridge, Mass. Three months after Nick was adopted, we three, my children and I, made our last trip to Sheremetyevo, Moscow’s international airport.  My husband, 10 years my junior, had died of a heart attack. Within weeks our apartment in Moscow was emptied of the life we had built.  I had moved to Moscow a bride and was now returning to the U.S. a widow, a single mother of two.

Homeless and bereft, I set up temporary residence with my in-laws in Cambridge; the apartment in D.C. let go after I gave birth to Dora and returned to Moscow.

Deep in sorrow, I hated night for the sorrow that replaced my dreams.

I woke with no more ambition than to remain fetal under my blanket while Dora and Nick bounded out of bed as if blankets were a barrier between them and their world.  My feet as heavy as blocks of cement, straining against needs of my children. But they dragged me forward. I bought our home in Cambridge. The kids were enrolled in school. We acquired friends and household pets: the guinea pigs, the goldfish we numbered I, II, and III; the hamster, our cats Mittens and Mew Mew, Daisy our dog.  I made a garden and planted flowers.

External structures propped us up, like a house on stilts to avoid the damaging tide. Still, waters rise and surge overflowing even the best defense. To Dora and Nick I gave my love; they were loved by family and friends; attended the same school; and each had after school activities.  But being in the world didn’t go equally well for them.  At school, Dora was a much sought after playmate. Nick was avoided, even ostracized. He baffled his teachers and was crossed off birthday party lists.

In a mid-year report, his kindergarten teach wrote: “Nicky’s transition into Kindergarten has been somewhat mixed.  He can be an incredibly sweet, sincere, affectionate, enthusiastic, creative and fun-loving little guy. He is also extremely impulsive/unpredictable. He often reacts physically/inappropriately to conflicts. Even with no apparent reason, he will often destroy things or put his hands on other children. Other notable behaviors: soiling his pants; repeatedly untying his shoes and asking us to tie then for him; chewing on non-food items (wood chips, paper, erasers...) Recently, he cut off a piece of his shirt and put it in his mouth. Is this anxiety?”

At home, Dora would do art projects and Nick would destroy them. Dora could sit at the table for hours eating a meal. Nick lasted through three gulping bites. Nick would go into Dora’s room and plunder her treasures. On the neighborhood playground, as in school, Nick would bite when frustrated or couldn’t get his way.  Like Charles Schulz’s Pig-Pen encased in a dustball that clouded his every move, Nick was dogged with the label “does not play well with others.”  Dora played at the homes of her friends. 

Advice from doctors and therapists looped round in my head. I made charts; administered stickers; scheduled awards. Nick and I reenacted friendships gone wrong to review how to improve. He apologized with his eyes; said “I’m sorry. I love you.”  To neighbors he wrote notes of regret. Worn down, I agreed Nick should try medication.  But most of all, I wanted to know what I was doing wrong.

When I should have been asleep, my head swirled like a centrifuge, repeating over and over again: “tomorrow I will be a better mother.”

During the spring of 2003, I briefly kept a diary.

March 3 - 11:48pm

Good day. Bad night. N and I got into a terrible multi-stage escalating brawl. How can such anger and fury be generated between me and my 5-year old? Tried to take him up to his room after several hours of spit-fire. Wouldn’t budge. Hung onto the banister for dear life.  Tried to pry his fingers off.  Instead we tumbled backwards; he in my arms against my body. I could feel myself start to free-fall back. Terror...panic...Somehow I managed to keep myself upright. Released him. Shaking.

Stood in the dark several minutes with my face in my hands.  Didn’t know what else to do.

March 19 - 12:41am

Tired...so tired...N had a meltdown over a tongue depressor he found in the parking garage. Cried almost until we picked D up from school.  At home, the 2 started on each other. N karate chopping. D eventually started to cry.  Starts silly; ends badly.  Probably N’s new medication today? Funny how I initially resisted the medication and now I want anything that will make our situation better. Hard times seem worse. Is it by comparison?

March 30 - 1:12am

D & N cuddled up together in N’s bed.  D got into his bed. Very precious. First time, I think? I’ll leave them. I think it’s good for them to feel peaceful together. We’ve been on such a roller coaster all week.

****

When we adopted Nick, Russian oblast, or regional law, mandated adoptable newborns be placed on a four-month waiting list before an international adoption could move forward. But Russians had no interest in bringing a stranger’s child into their home.  Many unwanted babies languished months, often years. The healthier ones, like Nick, were identified for adoption. Institutionalized older children were subjected to testing to determine state allocations for their care.

Dr. Boris Gindis, a Russian national with both Russian and American degrees in psychology, is the founding director of the Center of Cognitive-Developmental Assessment and Remediation, specializing in children’s trauma disorders.  Since opening his offices in New York and Arizona 22 years ago, Gindis has assessed over 1800 Russian adoptees.

In a phone interview, he said the wait time now for Russian international adoptions is 24 months. When asked if the delay was tied to assessments, Gindis laughed. “No,” he said, his speech inflected with Russian overtones, “No one assesses these kids.  No one is concerned about them.”

I learned of Gindis from a Cambridge friend who took her Russian son to Gindis for an evaluation. Curious, I asked him why a mother would travel from Cambridge to see him in Armonk, New York.  “When families come to me, they’re desperate,” he said.  “They’ve tried everything else. People don’t get these kids, and I’m the only one speaking their native language.” My friend adopted her son from Russia when he was seven-years old.

In the lexicon of his profession, Gandis describes these children as suffering from developmental trauma disorder. (Toxic stress by another name.) Similar to PTSD, which is triggered by reminders of a specific traumatic event, DTD stems from repeated chronic traumatization, which adversely affects the entire maturation of the child.  Like Nick, they are often diagnosed with ADHD and language-based learning disabilities. Their behaviors a morass of frustration and anxiety. Instead of a seamless whole, DTD kids seem out of synch. Their cognitive, emotional, and sensory functions mis-firing; their neurological and biological systems in disarray.

To understand why repeated, chronic trauma manifests like DTD or toxic stress, you have to get inside the brain says Garner. He gives the example of two kids: one hears a dog bark and thinks it’s a puppy; the other hears the dog bark and thinks he will lose a limb. One imagines a puppy wagging its tail, ready to plant a sloppy wet kiss. The other thinks of a ferocious dog ready to attack. The difference, says Garner, is conditioned experience.  And, he says, the physiological response is measurable through the presence of cortisol, a steroid hormone produced in the adrenal gland that elevates blood sugar levels when stimulated by stress and trauma.

“If you have early adversity and cortisol is flowing, we know it has a huge impact on the formation to pathways and circuits in the brain. For example, if you look at the children with tremendous adversity, like the Romanian orphans, their amygdala are much larger. Why? Because the amydegla is the initiator of the flight or fight response.   Repeated stress activates this process and it loops back on itself over and over, creating very strong stress circuits and connections. Early adversity hardwires you to more chronic stress down the line.” 

By pinpointing cortisol as the stress marker and measuring its activity, science now has the data points to demonstrate the presence of physiological changes. When stress is chronic, the child’s system bathes in elevated levels of cortisol and the stress response never sufficiently learns how to turn itself off.

But a question kept nagging at me which I posed to Garner in one of our many e-mail exchanges.   How is it that an infant (like my son) experiences trauma, gets adopted, but still presents symptoms even when the catalyst to stress is removed?

The answer, says Garner, is found in neuroscience and epigenetics.

“Brain development is cumulative, and the pathways that get activated early in life become stronger and more efficient overtime. In the short run, this makes sense evolutionarily - if you are born into a ‘stress-filled, dog-eat-dog, fend for yourself’ environment, you need to have a very efficient, hair-trigger ‘fight or flight’ response. However, once those foundational circuits are established, it’s harder overtime to develop alternatives.” But, Garner says, history is not the same as destiny. It’s possible to develop alternate patterns, but it’s much more difficult to teach new behaviors than to get it right the first time.

****

With a smile and an outstretched hand, Stephanie Shelley welcomes me into her uncluttered third floor office, in Somerville, Mass.  It’s a sunny spot, far removed from the wide avenue of traffic below.  At 63, Shelley is athletically trim and animated; a physicality well suited to the demands of her therapy practice. For the past 20 years, Shelley has worked with over 400 children and families suffering from what she describes as complex trauma and attachment issues. Issues Shonkoff and Garner would say, result directly from toxic stress. She is also the only Dyadic Developmental Therapist in the greater Boston area.

DDP, as it is known, was first introduced into the therapeutic canon in 1991 by Dan Hughes. Shortly after receiving his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Ohio University, Hughes moved to Maine to work with a group of domestically traumatized kids. It was his first job and his training proved useless against the needs of these kids. They were remote; showed signs of mental illness; and he couldn’t get through to them. So Hughes went back to his books and dug through research to learn what was known about treating kids with attachment and trauma issues.  From his initial failure, came insight. It became clear to Hughes these kids could not heal through traditional talk therapy. Success depended on them learning to feel their way through their emotions. They need to learn how to relate. Through trial and error, Hughes stitched together what he found worked, and developed a novel attachment-focused therapy.  From this early experience, DDP was born.

When Shelley met Hughes in Maine the summer of 1999, it was her “aha” moment. “Like I walked through a door looking through new lenses.”  Shelley says the healing process for a traumatized child starts by trying to draw the child out through relationship building.  With measured patience she works to earn her patients' trust,  to peel away their thick protective layers.  When speaking with me, Shelley sat on the edge of her chair, her eyes intent on mine. She was very kind. She was also very disarming.

Describing herself as an “active therapist,” Shelley will tap a child on the knee when their attention strays; sometimes she draws a feather up and down their arm or will rub lotion on their feet to get them to relax. For patients fearful of touch, she uses a “burrito wrap.” A child gets wrapped in a blanket - swaddled like a baby with only their head exposed, - and placed on their mother’s lap. With their body protected, the child can tolerate physical affection. Even be kissed.

But the kids Shelley works with are a lot tougher and much more defensive than me. She has adopted patients working through what they experienced in their previous lives; many are outwardly aggressive; some severely withdrawn. “But,” says Shelley, “there are levels of meaning behind all their behaviors. It’s a language in which a child speaks to you about their inner world and feelings.”

****

After kindergarten, Nick went to a public school for four years; an all-boys private school for one year; and a therapeutic day school for two years.  The schools changed but the issues remained the same: fighting, swearing, stealing.  This November I decided we had to make a change.

“This sucks.”

“Yeah. I know it does.”

“But why do I have to go?”

“Well, how’s it going at school?”

“Not so well.”

“With your friends?”

“Not so well.”

“At home?”

“Not so well.”

“Remember when I asked if I could help you and you said yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is how I think we need to start.”

****

Erica Theisen makes eye contact better than anyone I know. She also somehow manages to pull her curly red hair back into a tight elastic. At 39, she's married, has a solid frame, and has been a field therapist - literally working in the woods along with her black lab, Sierra - since moving to Asheville, North Carolina nine years ago.

I met Erica this past winter when I pulled Nick out of school.  She was Nick’s field therapist during his 10 weeks at a wilderness program located in the heavily forested Blue Ridge Mountains along the shared border between Georgia and North Carolina. Unlike traditional therapy, where client and patient have scheduled meetings in an office, the theatre for field therapy is the woods. For weeks on end kids live in the woods - eating, voiding, and sleeping under hand slung tarps - while “staff” conduct individual and group therapy sessions. It’s a radical paring away of the usual day-to-day.

The beauty or challenge of the program, depending on your perspective, is that there is no place to hide and no behavior goes unnoticed.

“I’ve always been drawn to relationships,” said Theisen in an email. “It’s about finding your way through emotions, figuring out what makes people tick. The field is a synthesis of what I’ve studied, but not what I imagined.” Out in the woods there’s more space, and time, for the kids to work through what they’ve worked so hard to conceal. It’s not unusual to hear loud sobbing during private sessions separate from the group.

Erica first met Nick after a particularly tough stretch at home, defined by his relentless stealing and loud in-your-face bullying. He was 13, angry, frustrated, and confused. For Nick, problem solving meant perpetrating behaviors that got everyone around him as angry as he himself felt.

Nick impressed Erica as a kid that was stubborn but also more sensitive than he was able to realize. She also sensed Nick had determination. “He clearly wanted something different. He wanted connections with others, but down to his posture, his choice of words, he was protective [of himself], almost bristly.”

Late January, on a day that threatened to rain, I followed Erica’s forest green SUV as she drove faster than I could keep up along the narrow S-curved roads that cut through the national forest where Nick was camping. I was spending Nick’s last night in the field with him under a canopy of thinly leafed trees and ground strewn with wet underbrush. The next day he would leave with me for his new school across the border in South Carolina.

Parking along the side of the dirt road, I was greeted by Sean, a round, bear-of-a-man; bearded and thick-limbed in his six layers of clothing. “It’s easier to peel off clothes to cool down than to put layers on to get warm.” He also politely asked me to take off my watch and earrings, asked for my car keys and iPhone. When I started to pull out an overnight bag with my toiletries and prescription medications, I was told “No meds allowed. It’s best for the boys.” That night, curled like a ball in my sleeping bag with several layers of clothing still on, Sean rounded by the tarp I shared with Nick and took my boots along with Nick's. “It’s better for the boys. Don’t like to take chances.”

I may have been Nick’s mom, but I was now also a member of the group: six boys and four girls, all unperturbed by the leaves in their hair, the mud on their boots, or the odor of their packs. Like a string of ants, all were busy with assigned chores: gathering wood, purifying water, building a fire, cutting vegetables, helping each other wash their feet.

But the primary activity was sounding out a need for group attention and a bit of supportive therapy.  The quiet rustling of feet through leaves and twigs snapping underfoot would cease when a piercing “G4! Standing group!” was heard. It was a call to move into a wide huddle around the person with the rallying cry. All present, we listened.

“I’m feeling anxious.”

“I feel this way when I think about home. I feel this way when I think about my anger and what I did in the past. I feel this way when I want to go home but know I can't.”

“In the future I’ll try to change my thoughts by keeping myself busy.”
The emotion stated, the group goes quiet, each of us charged to silently make a wish for our own well being. One by one, each member of the group stretches out their arm and points their index finger into the center of the circle. When all fingers are pointed into the circle, the silence is broken.

“Am I heard?”

“Yes. You are heard.”

****

Dan

Like a light footed tracker, he finds his seat. From his backpack, out comes a thin silver computer, square pad of graph paper, and gold-nibbed pen. All positioned - nib on top of pad, pad next opened computer - the same every week,

Voice soft, modulated, words carefully chosen. His eyes searching yours. His lip curling up one side in a half smile as if to say “don’t take me at my word.”

He talks of working with his hands - construction and farming - nails trimmed, cuffs of his well pressed shirt neatly rolled back.

The deeply rutted cheeks, clean shaven. But it’s not the shock of brown hair that defines his face. Or the reading glasses that slide down his nose. What you notice are the eyebrows, protective, as if his eyes on their own would give away too much.

Three Miles High

It was dark when we arrived. All seven tents set; buckets of fresh warm water outside every open flap. It had taken us all day to reach our campsite, over 14,000 ft high in the Andes.  A grinding climb. Made worse by the decrease in oxygen we took in with each labored step.  Feet as worn as our tired dusty boots; legs heavy from every gravity-strained step we took. Since breakfast, we had plodded along - stopping, inhaling, exhaling - before continuing up the foot-high worn granite steps. Miles of paths made from heavy stones laid by the Incas through the dense jungle. Itinerant travelers, they moved whole families from the palaces, to religious sanctuaries, and to the fish rich Amazon below. None of it seemed possible. Our patience growing as thin as the air we breathed. But there was no turning back.  There was only forward, moving glacially up the interminable rock path.  Ignored were the "ughs" and "and I can't do this anymore" that my son groaned.

If the sun shone, we didn't notice. All around us the twisted limbs of trees, an erratic spot of color cutting through the dense wall of green.  A bright fuchsia orchid that had some how clung to blossoming life on a side of bark.  The sound of rushing water we never saw.  The thin air cold and damp. Dangling limbs streaked our clothes wet as we brushed by.

"Good morning," bellowed our guide Manuel. This was our third day and his ritualized greeting as unwelcome as a bucket of cold water. Puffy-eyed and stiff-limbed I shimmied like a taper of down to the front of our tent. The morning light already too bright for my swollen eyes. But there stood Manuel, dressed and shaved; tent folded, bag packed. The annoying epitome of a virile man happy with his place in the world.

But darkness had shrouded our campsite when we arrived. Now in the golden morning light, spread before us a semi-circle of pale blue floating above an undulating carpet of white.  A distant peak cutting through the white tufts.  Above the clouds, we were sky high.

The rest of our trek would be downhill. In 36 hours we would walk through the monolithic stone walls of the Sun Gate and enter Machu Picchu.

Group 4: Draft # 2

Michelle: Draft 2

The new information added to this draft starts to give the story a shape it lacked. While I feel like the "spine"is not yet there, it's obvious there's much heart in the telling. Perhaps there is a deeper quest of self discovery? My family all came through Ellis Island and settled in the New York area. I knew my grandparents, but the others remain curiosities.  Contrary to my family, Michelle's family were homesteaders, a completely different brand of immigrant experience. More open and rangy like the west itself.

The fire remains a compelling launch for the rest of the story.  The drama pulls us in, but it also shows us Florence in action and foreshadows the difficulties to come. Florence shows us she is strong and cool headed, the characteristics which fuel her ability to survive and overcome the hardships that will loom large in her future.

There was some really lovely detail which helped me connect with the characters in time and place. "The family huddled around [the fireplace]..." "...his breath clouded before him"...."a Rocky Mountain cyclone couldn't have wrenched her heels from where they stood."

Also effective was the mention of Florence's family objecting to her marriage to Mike. The class tension shown nicely by the wedding announcement placed at the end of the piece. As mentioned in class, Florence is not only a strong woman but also a character strong enough to carry the piece along. Her legacy lives on as a model of pride and fortitude for the generation that succeeds her.

In future rewrites action should be used when possible to help build-out the narrative. It would also help lessen your dependence on descriptive telling.  Right now the piece is a little word heavy and this slows down the narrative.


Greg: Strictly Strings - Second Draft

My overall comment for this piece: delightful. I loved all the choices Greg made. Like Hitchkock's film The Rope, the story reads like a seamless take - we never take our eyes off the two main characters; we never leave the room.  Use of the present tense reinforces immediacy and a real time feel.  The language, like music, has rhythm and beats, which is apropo for his two musician wannabes.

The needed back story is minimal and telegraphic. From a small amount of information we can glean much. The first paragraph a great example of succinct efficient language. It tells us where we are and what these two wannabes are about. It sets us up.  Is this a ruse or are these people for real? I wanted to read more.

Dialogue, word play, arc..it has it all. In Providence, provenance of project, some things fall apart, but in Greg's retelling, the beat goes on.

Journey

Venturing into the unknown can be a thrill or an unmitigated disaster. My first competitive sailing race you could say was a little of both.

My boyfriend (not yet husband) was a big sailor, as was his whole family and crew of childhood friends. He owned a 43 foot C&C yacht, which he liked to sail off the coast of Maine.  And we, his family and me, were sailing his boat, somehow named "Common Sense," from Marion, Mass. to Bermuda, an annual race for sailors.  It was the summer of 1993, an odd number year, which meant a racing year for cruisers, which was the sailing class of our boat.  We were contenders for a prize.

I had some sea legs. Sailed on a variety of boats and in different water ways. Once I hauled for three days and nights, battling oil tankers and over-sized cruise ships, as we brought a tub of a sailboat up from Norfolk, VA to its berth in New York City.  But the thought of being mid-ocean, with no sight of land and no Motel 6 for a quick overnight, made me queasy before we even got out to sea.

So, as any woman would do, I got myself outfitted for an uninterrupted life at sea. From a marine supply store I bought a slick yellow suit for foul weather gear, waterproof boots, and a broad brimmed sou'wester that fastened under my chin for safe keeping even if faced with charging wind and rain. For an extra dose of security, a seasickness patch, which I discretely placed behind my left ear.

Race day came. We loaded our gear on the boat and set our high-peaked sails along our 60 foot mast.  It's hard to imagine, but sailing races actually have a starting line, and so boats have to tack back and forth, cutting in and out of the wind, dodging the other boats also trying to maintain an optimal starting position.  Adding to the usual maneuvering and shouts of "hard a lee," the day was overcast, the air dense. The visibility range shallow with the low hanging clouds and heavy mist. The sea a constant swell of churning white-capped peaks.  One boat, losing its bearing in the fog, ran aground. A navy cutter careened into the bow of another ship.

Amidst the jostling of the start, the queasiness I anticipated far out at sea, swept over me like a rogue wave. With all ears trained to hear the gun crack that would announce the start of the race, I leaned over the windward side of the boat and heaved.

Readings for 4/19: Detail and Description

Before I go into any commentary, I have to confess to a mega dose of writer's envy after reading David Foster Wallace's "Shipping Out." I had read one strange short piece of his about a boy contortionist that ran in a New Yorker, but it had none of the irony or deft use of language and structure as this piece. I also confess to needing a dictionary I was circling so many words I'd never seen before.

My favorite line: "Trudy is fifty-six and looks - and I mean this in the nicest possible way - rather like Jackie Gleason in drag..." The description goes on, creating a woman who we intuitively know well and have seen before.

But I can't admire Wallace's prodigious detail without also complimenting his structure. Each section with a heading is a mini scene unto itself that helps to create a whole. And with each additional character and detail, Wallace pulls us into his descriptive weave of life aboard the 7NC. Like a Picasso painting, we see the whole from different vantage points.  Distorted, or should I say reflecting, Wallace's particlar brand of being.

A streaming 20,000 words, the piece is long, has no real drama except for his moments of macabre and despair, but I savored, and giggled and sighed over every word.

The Wreck of the Lady Mary is a solid piece of more traditional reporting and writing. Where Wallace hinges his telling on personality and culture, Amy Ellis Nutt takes us on a  dramatic journey. Because her reporting is so good, and because she has access to the lone survivor, Nutt can take us to the scene of the tragedy at sea, unspooling events as they occurred real time. Like with Wallace, the structure of this piece fuels us into the heart of the tragedy. We are with each of the crew members as they say depart from their families, not knowing it will be their last goodbye, and head out to sea on their last fishing expedition.

With dialogue such as "salvame por favor," we know these are immigrant men. A fisherman remarks, "there are no skid marks on the ocean," and we know how quickly the sea can destroy and swallow up any evidence. When Arias finds himself hanging for dear life onto the plank he salvaged and brought on board, the story's arc comes full circle.

It also leaves me wanting to read more.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: Part 1 by Rebecca West I found the most tedious. I was interested in the history she related but was distracted by her wordiness. She is a descriptive writer; she has a penchant for sharing small telling bits and a patient way of unspooling her words, but I just wanted her to get to the point sooner.

Not by coincidence, all three pieces start with a compelling intro that sets the stage and tone for the story to come.

Comments on G3 - Draft #2

ML: The Jim Dandy

Lots of great descriptions and well crafted scenes. You've also expanded the story - dynamic and characters - which gives you lots to work with as you move towards honing the center of your story. Right now you seem to be writing around the thread that should carry your point-of-view rather than using it to pull us along.

Loved how you introduced your father, your need for money, and your intent to get a car. "She's better off working and providing for herself..If you're not the man to give it to her; she'll find one that will." I'm with you. I worked all through high school (and college) earning the money I needed for clothes, etc. Don't ever remember getting money from my parents.

Also, the work culture inside Friendly's has lots of play to it. Much can be made of your manager Joe who thinks he's "Mr. Corporate" and the rest of you scheming to rip Friendly's off as avidly as Corporate tries to impose cost saving measures.  You've already set the stage with your cast of characters and your walk-on star, Betty.

Perhaps as Paige mentioned in class, your 3 uniforms can provide a natural structure to progression and time.

When proofreading, pay special attention to grammar and tenses.

A great scoop into teenage life. Keep it going!

Myra's World: 2

You've given us so much more than we had before. Mary is starting to become a real woman with real issues. But I still want/need more. I want to know what Mary looks like: is her her gray or dyed, permed or short; does she wear sensible shoes with her skirts and hose or does she wear sneakers with slacks; glasses, hearing aid, scarf, hat, gloves? What make is her car? Is her apartment tidy? Color theme? Curtains? She notices curtains in her old home when she drives by. Why is she doing this?

Any precious objects? Belongings she thinks are missing but wants?

Mary's downsizing from her house to a senior apt coupled with losing Paul is huge. I've done this with my own father.  Everything shifts and changes; daily routines filled with adjustments.

As we were talking in class about the spine of your story, I wondered if this was a story about loss or about Mary's resilience? Seems like she is experiencing both. Perhaps that is a tension you can weave into what you write.

AMY: Surgery Draft One

Amy, you've got us hooked. The drama and tension is implicit in every scene. As a reader I was as incredulous as you and your family as you started to realize your dad's surgery was not going to end well. A harrowing realization.  Who doesn't want to resist feeling that helpless?

I think it's great that you are able to take us from the waiting room into the operating room; from family drama to clinical drama. And everything shifts accordingly: voice, language, characters. In fact, I would push it even further. Take us even deeper into the clinical world of Dr. Shale and what is going on in the OR.  Dramatize the difference btwn the two environments.

The details you've inserted are just right. Spare but telling; they keep us focused on the action.

I too think a simple device, like time on the clock or day part shows on the TV, might work to punctuate the structure of the story and the passing of time. Not much time elapses but drama unfolds simultaneously in two rooms.

Best of luck with this piece.

Scene Exercise, 4/12


The horse's flanks began to quiver and its nostrils flared when we heard the rush of the river. Behind a screen of brush and story high trees a muddy rush of spring water split our trail in two.  The bristly hair of the horse's long tail switched back and forth as it slowly picked its way along the rocky path toward the river bank. Despite the shade from the surrounding canopy of green, the late afternoon heat had caused a light sheen to cover the horse's neck. We had been riding an hour and my mouth was dry.

The path cut a sudden right and there the river opened in front of us. Dark and gnarly, hugging the edges of its banks high up to the tree line.  None of us had ever entered flowing water on a horse before. The guide had warned us not to let the horses go down. But in the muggy heat, I too felt pulled towards the  water. I would swim if I could.

Without breaking its stride the horses silently stepped into the river's downstream current. One, two, three steps in and the water was thigh high on the horse,  up to the tips of its mane.  If I left my feet glued in the stirrups, the water would course up my jeans and soak me up to my knees. Slowly, I disentangled my feet and shimmied my knees up the flanks of the horse, hunched up as if on a  rocking horse.

On we went, the horses rolling with the current, more graceful than on land. With knees up, one hand on the horn and one holding the reigns, I wondered if this was the day I would go swimming with horses.



Readings for 4/12


Obviously a gruesome batch of stories revolving around life and death; life or death; who lives and who dies and why?

But in addition to the common theme, it was also interesting that three of them were written about events that the authors were not there to observe. The Long Fall, The Jumpers, and Alive were all second and third hand accounts written as first hand stories. Alive to me was the most effective. I didnt feel the author working as hard as I did in the other pieces. It was also an excerpt from a book, which could support that observation. Both Fall and Jumpers engage us with a character that threads us through the story.

In 193, Hollandsworth observes the trial and has access to the main character.  We're with him all the way. But despite how close we are to the character and the action, much remains unknown and unresolved. There are two sides to Wright's gruesome tale. Hollandsworth appropriately restrains from showing us his bias. (Don't think I could have done the same!!)

Group 2: Draft 2

Sylvia: Lucky Thirteen

This story was fun and easy to read and I couldn't help think what a great young adult book this would be.


While the piece has natural flow, great scenes, good description, and characters that we want to tag along with, I'm still not sure where you are going with this. The narrative arc is illusive. Of course, you may know, but as a reader I want to know the point of what I am reading.

In it's current iteration, this is a slice of life story. if you point me in a direction, I'll go there with you!

Stephen: Draft 2

I really like the way you have opened up the story, given it more breathing room and invited us into this world. While your narrative threads are clear - your interest in juditso, the dojo/master scenes, and the history of the sport -  the transitions could be smoother.  You have room for a better weave and a smoother telling.  Perhaps more background in certain places would help.  Also, less telling and more showing.

For example,when you enter the gym you write "the building is warm and smells like a gym." Great place to describe what's going on rather than assume I will figure it out.  Or when talking about Kano, you share great intimate detail, but wondered about the source for the exchange between Kano's father and himself.  Loved the use of Japanese, but wasn't always clear to me what the terms were referencing. I often had to stop and reread.

But what I really enjoyed most was when you popped up in the story. You are clearly on a quest and I want to know more about that.  Your intro with "The Karate Kid" is spot on, but again you want to tell us more than trust your showing. Dive in. I'll get you have an obsession  by the way you describe that scene.

John: Draft 2

You've clearly added more to your piece, but I miss not starting with "Brian William was reading the newspaper on September 11" scene.  It hooked me in and lets me know immediately this guy is quirky and an Afghan authority.

I also really liked the detail you shared: "likes to measure the quality of any book about the Mayflower by skipping to its chapter on the first Thanksgiving." Funny and telling!

While the story has expanded, I'm still missing a focus, a center to your piece. You're telling me more about Williams but not sure I know why I should care. You also tell me he's not "altruistic" about teaching at UMD and he doesn't feel "stuck." Why does this detail matter? What are you telling us about Williams?

I want to know more and I want to know why.