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I'd like to share a personal story with you.
One of my first 'official' jobs was working in the kitchen of a pub at weekends when I was 15 years old. I had been working since 13 years old, delivering papers and selling tablet and macaroon door to door to neighbours, but this was the first time I had worked in an actual adult workplace. I was incredibly excited. I went from one uniform of the school to another of the kitchen. This was when my teenage self began my apprenticeship of the adult world.
When I turned 18, I began working behind the bar. Again I was excited and also a little more reassured, with the barrier of the bar between me and the customers serving as both a physical barrier and a reassuring psychological one. When working from the kitchen and taking the food out to customers' tables in the bar, I had experienced much of what drunk men without grace do - leering, suggestive comments and the occasional physical harassment.
One night there was a group of firemen on their Christmas night out. The place was packed and the night was going great, lots of drinks, laughs and tips. We were run off our feet (turned out, this was also literal for me too that night!) but I was having a great time, the atmosphere was jumping.
Then, at chucking out time, one man wanted another round after the bar was closed. His friends were leaving the pub, calling him to follow them. I was out collecting glasses and he was getting a little edgy about not getting another drink. I kept saying 'No sorry, the bar's closed' but he was having none of it. He seemed to be intoxicated with something else as well as booze. Large pupils, sneering mouth, almost foaming, but this may have been how he was on alcohol.
He was huge. Over 6ft tall, broad, a very well built guy perhaps in his early 30s. In Scotland, there is a phrase 'Build like a brick shithouse.' This is apt here. For my subscribers in the US, you'll call this jacked. Muscles, height, broad shoulders. He obviously worked out regularly and for his job he would also need to be quick and nimble as well as strong. While I was a happy young woman with my head in the stars, heart in the Earth and excited about life, he was a man who had seen some of what life brings and was also physically prepared for any eventuality.
He wasn't taking no for an answer and, quicker than a blink, he grabbed me by the throat and pinned me against the wall. I dropped the glasses. Then he started pushing upward. I felt my body rise, with tip toes on the floor, almost lifting me off my feet. I had no idea what was going on or what to do.
The other barmaid on shift was in her mid 40s, saw this happening and began to try and calmly talk him down. He didn't release me and she quickly ran to get help. It was an old school social club and the committee who ran it were men in their late 60s, 70s & 80s sitting through the back with their whisky, chatting and preparing for the night’s takings.
To me, it felt like a lifetime before they came, drunk and shuffling as fast as they could. Negotiating, they managed to talk him away as there was no way of pulling him off. That was almost 35 years ago and I'll not forget it, but perhaps not for the reasons you may think.
I couldn't breathe but I wasn't panicked. I just couldn't quite compute it. It was almost superhuman. The aggression, the speed, the brute force, the rage.
While the old men managed to talk the man out of releasing me from his grip, the person who really saved me from serious harm that night wasn't the committee men, it was Margaret, the other barmaid.
While he’d tightly held and squeezed my throat, and my body almost off the floor, as soon as Margaret started speaking he stopped squeezing and lifting. He did not release me but I could breathe. It was only then I began to feel fear. My blood began to move again.
I have lived many different kinds of lives. Some exposed me to violence and aggression but others - sometimes the same ones - were full of joy, connection and meeting wonderful people on the path. Hospitality is a temporary industry in so far as people come and go. This means that there are often quick, intense connections with others you feel aligned with. You both understand the nature of the beast - the awful hours, the customers, the demands, the terrible pay, the hyperactivity after a shift - and you make the most of the time you have together. You party, you laugh, you dance because you don't know when either you or they will move on, or where to.
After this incident I spent many years (too many) working in different bars, and some of these were rough. One was known to the locals as 'The Animal Bar' - and I’ll tell you, boy did their clientelle give animals a bad name. In another I saw a man bite the ear off another man. Over the years I began to get a good handle on reading people and recognising situations that could become very dangerous if not handled right. Just like Margaret learned over her years.
In the highly unlikely event that dear Margaret would ever come across this, and in a sense it doesn't matter if she ever does, I want to say I love you and thank you Margaret. You were the best to be on shift with, they were great times for me, a young woman trying to navigate her way in the adult world. You were the best barmaid I have ever met, will ever meet, and this is not easy to be skilled in everything it takes. You are one of the most generous, kind and graceful people I've ever had the good fortune to meet. Sometimes I could see how jaded you were with everything thrown at you - cruelties and harassment of all kinds - but you never let it take your heart away. Every shift you'd turn up so glamorous, with hair, heels and standards high. We'd sing along to the bands playing or the cheesy guy on Sunday afternoons with his Hammond organ when the place would be packed.
I have not forgotten you.
At the end of that shift Margaret poured us both a drink, we clinked glasses, she cracked a big smile and we burst out laughing. You see, Margaret was her own kind of healer.
I see much of that night differently and have done for a long time now. The absolute ridiculousness of almost choking a happy go lucky teenage girl because he wanted another drink. The physical strength is not quite so astounding to me as the absolute weakness of that man. But I also giggle at the slapstick of how long it took a bunch of smashed, ruddy cheeked pensioners and their aching joints to get to me. As I am pinned to the wall, every second becoming a lifetime, all I see are drunk, aching old men in slow motion, staggering and trying to stay upright! I do believe that as the air and blood to my head were paused, I saw everything in a different kind of motion. I entered a different place.
Why am I sharing this with you? Well you see, those years in the kitchen and the bar were some of the first steps of my Maiden voyage, the initiation from child to adult, from girl to woman. I no longer saw the world in the same way. I had taken another step deeper into the world of adults, into womanhood.
So how do we be healthy, balanced, loving adults when life regularly pushes the innocence from us, inflicting wounds on our inner child? We create something that helps us heal and grow from the dead leaves of those experiences, when we no longer give those things that life throws at us without our knowledge or expectation, and sometimes without our consent, any more energy. I laugh about almost being choked to death now. I mean, what a sentence that is. This is a choice and it did not happen overnight.
You see, if someone is going to force something upon me without my consent or agreement, believe you me, I WILL MAKE IT MINE. It no longer belongs to them. It belongs to me now and I WILL OWN IT. I will do with it what I see fit and what is in my own best interests. I will do with it what I please.
This is how I approach healing for both myself and my clients. I help show you how to make it yours, how you can own it and redefine it, to use it for your healing and highest good, and to hell with the rest.
Sometimes when we are trying to deal with trauma, some approaches focus on the cause of it, revisiting it, trying to understand it and often this keeps us going round and round in circles. Sometimes it makes no sense and that's often hard to accept. For a young woman trying to navigate the world - and we always have the Maiden within us - this is not easy.
We must focus on the bright green new shoots poking through the rotting dead leaves, take our guidance from the Maiden herself, dear Brigid, She of Imbolc and the very presence all around us at this time of year. Nature herself embarks on her own maiden voyage of light, healing and growth.
So here I laugh, remembering that night and I feel only deep love and a joy at being able to honour the woman who saved my life. As it should be.
May dear February bring the opportunity to use the manure that life has flung at you to feed your new shoots!
Andrea
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