Angry birds and nice things

I truly am fortunate to have drama therapy as an anchor.  It is the one thing I do as a therapist that truly feels effortless.  It keeps me grounded and at the same time it lifts me to incredible heights! I get so excited when I see it in action as a very organic act of emergence.  I had one such experience just yesterday.

I was running a group and one of my patients has recently experienced the loss of his mother.  As a result, he has regressed to infancy quite a bit as he slowly passes through the stages of grief.   Until recently his energy was pretty low - sad affect, poor appetite, etc.  But yesterday we were in the middle of an improv when suddenly he began to howl and whince in this very primal act of seeking.  Suddenly he identified me as a mother figure and instead of seeking me out for comfort he began to growl and claw at me - essentially pushing me out of the nest.  My frist thought was "AHA!  He is finally moving to the anger stage of grief.  Woohoo!  And then I considered the very real possibility that he may have never had words for the feelings that were bubbling up for him.  But he was able to take on the role of the angry bird - no pun intended - and transfer that feeling onto me.  And I held it for him as I considered my own angry, lonely bird that sometimes still seeks her mother in the faces and places of my life.  After successfully forcing me out of the nest he smiled at his own sheer will  and might.  Afterwards, during the same improv, I was invited on a date on top of a bridge by another patient who said the date would consist of us saying really nice things about each other.  So we did.