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I cried telling Carol about the geese, chasing them away. This was the little girl in me wondering why my being on this earth seemed to bother the people I love most. She told me it was OK, that geese on the ground or geese in the air, either one was OK; there was no right or wrong and that it was OK to be with the geese the way I wanted.

At the time, though, everyone was mad at me. All I did was walk toward the geese resting on the ground. I wanted to see how close I could get. I walked slowly down the hill, quietly, the setting sun behind me, and the hundreds of geese turning their black heads to watch me. All at once they stood up and took flight, filling the air with their dark wings beating against the copper sky. They wheeled around once and flew away over the tree tops.

“Why did you do that?” I heard. I turned around and walked back up the hill toward my family. “Why did you feel the need to mess it up?” They stayed angry. I was so ashamed that I had to talk to a therapist, Carol, many months later. Why was I such an annoying person?

I ran it through my brain again and again. What was I doing, scaring the geese away? I wasn’t trying to scare them away; I walked slowly and quietly. Why did I have to mess up a beautiful scene? I wasn’t trying to mess it up; I was appreciating the geese. My actions didn’t mesh with the response, and it upset me so much that I had to pay someone a hundred dollars to tell her about the geese.

Carol said that I was having difficulty letting myself be all there, letting myself be bothersome – her word was “messy” – with the people I care most about. She said not only was I trying too hard to please people, but that I was mirroring them, my parents, my husband, my kids. So not only was I not being myself, but I was also trying to be them.

Parents impose their own wants and needs on their children. So that rather than seeing what their children need or understanding what their children are saying, they can only impose their own needs on the situation. Later I carried the expectation of my parents’ needs into my marriage and my relationship with my kids.

Carol said not to talk about it, not to explain, but rather to just let it rip. She said if it upsets them, that’s their problem. She said I rely too much on thoughts, on thinking through the problem. This was not a thought problem, this was an emotional issue. She said I needed to develop the courage of my emotional convictions (no words).

If you want to stay neat and tidy in your relationship, Carol said, then you will always move away somewhere else, far away from your family. If you want to be in this relationship, she said, then you have to be ready to butt heads and let it be messy. If they want to be a part of it, then butt away, and if not, well, that’s their decision. Your decision is to engage.

She said Walk toward the geese, and let all hell break loose.