“Only connect.”
E. M. FORSTER
FIVE YEARS AGO, I received this letter from Victoria Hawks in Douglas County, Oregon:
My daughter, age 20, high school dropout, single parent of an 18-month-old, [was] dealing with a dead-end relationship with her child’s father; a low self-image; and an inability to see a positive future for herself and her child; … she came from a “broken home”; had none of the material advantages of many of her peers; early on a stepfather who both physically and mentally hurt her mother, her brother, and herself; then she saw another divorce; got into drug, alcohol, and sexual abuse of herself; and beginning at age 15, left home many times (finally and forever at 17). All the strikes were against her, it seemed, save one: I love her and wanted her life to be better than mine had been.
[Now she is] a very different person. She smiles more; she speaks up and lets people know she has valid opinions; she has specific plans for future education and career ideas; and she is more self-assured and positive than I ever imagined she could become. As a side effect, she has decided to take on the reeducation of her 23-year-old brother, who is a very negative thinker (obviously obtained through the same life experiences and dilemmas). Although he is a junior at the University of Oregon, he too is unable to project a positive self with a bright future. … She may have a setback day now and then, but assuredly most of her days are forward. Her whole family, including a new stepfather who cares deeply for her as well, is pleased that she will never again be the self-sorry, self-deprecating, lost soul she once was. … My Laura with the beautiful face, who felt cast-off and left out of the greater world, [now has] the tools to become a shining star for all to see, but more importantly, to finally see for herself.
What made the difference for Laura? Three months of going to something called the Confidence Clinic, a group of single mothers and other women who were divorced, widowed, deserted, and often on welfare. They understood her feelings and gave her a trustworthy place where she could share them in a group that was committed to mutual help. She found what I call a psychic family.
When I first heard about the Confidence Clinic, a successful program in a rural and isolated part of southwestern Oregon, it had already closed for lack of money. Ironically, the features that made it successful were the same ones that made getting public funds difficult: it was staffed by women who had conquered similar problems (and therefore were not seen as properly professional), its headquarters were noninstitutional and homelike, and it respected the privacy of the women it served, even when public agencies requested information. That’s why the clinic was applying for a grant from the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national multi-issue women’s foundation, and one that focuses on grass-roots self-help projects. As its staff had explained when they asked for help in reopening, the “heart” of their program was a series of support groups of a dozen to twenty-five women who met regularly for at least three months. Its “legs” were twelve-week, five-day-a-week courses in job skills, legal rights, survival as a single parent, assertiveness training, money management, and preparation for the outside world that included a clothes bank so women could dress suitably for job interviews.
The clinic’s record spoke for itself. Of those many women who arrived without a high school diploma, 98 percent had earned one in twelve short weeks. Within a year after leaving, most clinic graduates were employed, in training for a specific job, or in college—a stunning leap for women who had been isolated, despairing, and dependent, and certainly a much better success rate than for conventional programs aimed at getting women and their children out of poverty.
Clearly, the Confidence Clinic deserved—and got—a Ms. grant, but before it had reopened, its past work was identified by the American Institute for Research as one of a hundred successful programs in the United States. Finally local government, United Way, and small foundations began to support its work. Since 1971, when a handful of women first decided that what they most lacked was confidence—and so opened a Confidence Clinic—more than 1,500 women have passed through its support groups, the “heart” that makes this program unique and now it has become a model for other programs.16 Like a real family, women stay in touch with other members of their small groups or drop in to the homelike atmosphere of the clinic to share the news of their lives. Now, the clinic is struggling to find money to help women before they’re on public assistance; women who “fall through the cracks” by being ineligible for government-funded programs.
Five years is a long time in the life of a young single mother with many miles to travel, but when I called to see how Laura was doing, I discovered that she was a junior at the University of Oregon—a feat accomplished with scholarships and welfare money—and that her own little girl was in the first grade. Her goal is to help women like herself who end up on drugs or in prison because that’s all they think they deserve.
“She told me yesterday,” said her mother, “that I should go to the Confidence Clinic. I told her it’s too late for me.”
Having rescued herself, Laura is now the rescuer.
Psychic families exist for almost every situation and experience, from small groups of women who make a space for themselves outside patriarchy to men and women who support each other’s abstinence from alcohol or drugs; from people trying to maintain their self-respect while homeless or living on welfare to those working to conquer agoraphobia, fear of flying, or eating disorders. We may describe these groups in New Age—style terminology—self-help, support, consciousness-raising, twelve-step, networks, and so on—but comparable affinity groups existed in the past in the form of quilting bees, book clubs, immigrant and other ethnic associations, underground cells, settlement houses, or just the guys at the barbershop or women like those celebrated in Steel Magnolias. They are built into older cultures, whether among Pakistani village women whose communal clothes-washing becomes a support group (which have been known to collectively thrash a man who has been abusing his wife), or among adolescent boys in many African tribes who gather in special houses during their passage into adult responsibility. New or old, these affinity groups are a recognition that the biological family isn’t the only important unit in society; that we have needs and longings that our families cannot meet. Indeed, in some cultures, the community is more important than the family.17
In general, the effectiveness of a psychic family depends on four principles: that someone who has experienced something is more expert in it than the experts; that shared experience and desire for change can bind us to each other; that mutual confidentiality and commitment are to be honored; that everyone participates but no one dominates. Size has a lot to do with how feasible it is to put these principles into practice: the healers and wise women of pagan times knew what they were doing when they made covens of thirteen witches—small enough so everyone could talk, large enough for diversity, and an uneven number so decisions were not deadlocked.
There is also a potential for exploitation in these groups, just as in real families. In Alcoholics Anonymous–type groups that are mostly male, “thirteen-stepping” became a shorthand way of saying that women members were being pressured sexually. On the other hand, many such groups, especially for eating disorders, now have so many women members that they have rewritten the twelve steps—originally designed to break down the ego so the addict can admit addiction—to better suit the needs of women with too little ego. Again, trust your feelings.*
Like the Confidence Clinic, some groups combine internal support with external action, but it’s the inner half that is the key for self-esteem: a group that is entirely activist and externally directed may be very productive, but it doesn’t offer the bonding and growth that is possible in a psychic family. Since growth depends on growing pains, however, there shouldn’t be too much comfort. As Bernice Johnson Reagon of the singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock says: “If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.”
When evaluating your existing group or one you’re thinking of joining, you might ask:
If you can’t answer yes to most of these most of the time, you may need to find—or create—a different psychic family. Here are a few more descriptions to give you faith that there is or could be a group that speaks directly to you:
• When executives retire, it’s easy for them to lose self-esteem along with the community leadership positions, speaking invitations, charity drives, private cars and planes, or other privileges that may disappear when the position does. Some corporations are beginning to encourage the forming of executive support groups before retirement, including as mentors those who already have made this not-so-easy transition.
• Parents of gay men and lesbians face homophobia in society, perhaps even in themselves; yet they probably have fewer opportunities for support and learning what gayness really means than do their daughters and sons. In addition, they may have special problems: the mother who believes a son or daughter’s sexuality must be her “fault,” or the father whose own sense of “masculinity” is threatened by having a gay son. In most major cities in the U.S. and many other countries, there are now networks, special groups within religious and ethnic organizations, even branches of national or international gay organizations, that bring parents together so shared support and wisdom can replace isolation, bias, and guilt, and so parents are better able to connect with their children—and vice versa.
• People who love to dance don’t always have partners or friends who feel the same, and dancing has been a way of lifting the human spirit since the beginning of time. Swing dance societies, tango clubs, waltz groups, lunchtime discos, square dances, Latin nights, ethnic dance groups—all are places to find kindred spirits who come together for no purpose other than the sense of well-being they find in moving to their own kind of music.
• One in three people in the United States will have cancer at some time in their lives. Nonetheless, each person who hears this medical verdict hears it alone. Survivor and “wellness” groups break this isolation, share treatment knowledge, support each other through changes in appearance and identity, challenge poor medical practice, explore causes of incidence and recurrence, and share feelings that one who hasn’t absorbed the word cancer into his or her life might not understand. Since research shows that the state of our minds and emotions affects the immune system’s ability to battle this or any other disease, these groups may be literally life-giving.
• Daughters born into families of inherited wealth and power—families that often have a stronger bias in favor of sons, or even sons-in-law, than families with less power at stake—are seeking each other’s help in breaking trusts, taking a rightful place on family boards, learning to run family businesses, dealing with lawyers and advisers, and generally trying to control their own lives. In this rarefied world, isolation can be great, and understanding from people who haven’t experienced powerful patriarchies at an intimate level can be scarce or turn to resentment. Small confidential support groups of women trying to control their own financial resources—and to use them to help other women in the process—now exist in several major U.S. cities and are often findable through local women’s foundations.
• When researchers in California set out to find the reason for Asian-American students’ disproportionately high achievement in math and science, they discovered only one likely answer: study groups. Unlike their peers who studied on their own, the Asian-American students shared their strengths by studying together, so that the strength of each was taught to all. Like similar groups in law schools, there is a commitment to each member’s success.
Given the diversity of groups already in existence, one that’s right for you is likely to be among them. And if not, you’ll be helping your psychic siblings if you bring them together. From the consciousness-raising groups that became the cell of the feminist revolution to sexual abuse survivors who learn they are not alone, there is no greater magic than shared experience.