"The Making and Un-making of a Marine"

No Roads Lead to Nome

Third installment:

So what happened after we got to Nome?  Helise and I had a nice dinner with Greg and his wife Dora. Greg and I schemed what the next day workshop would look like. I was there in Nome to teach Native Alaskans how to do Directive Group Therapy, a form of therapy I developed at Four Winds Hospital over the past twenty years. I do a lot of work with substance abuse and suicidal patients at Four Winds. These are exactly the issues that many Native Alaskan villages are dealing with in epidemic proportion.

Monday went great I had about twenty people in the class about five were white the others were Natives. I learned that many folks lived in the villages where they worked, some villages as small as one hundred and fifty people. Many of the people in my workshop were related to each other. And most of them either had a history of addiction or had family members who were affected but addiction or suicide. By the end of our day of working there was a vast collection of pain in the room.

I must have picked up that pain unconsciously because when I got out of bed on Tuesday morning I bent down to pick a camera battery off the floor and went into a spasm of severe back pain. I could not sit, I could not stand. Greg arrived in a few minutes later to take me to the workshop and I told him what had happened and he dropped me off at the local chiropractor. Dr. Phil x-rayed and tried to gently crack my back, and then he did some kind of elector field work, none of it helped. I had to walk the three blocks back to the hotel room and I thought I might faint before getting there. Back in the room I told Helise to call Greg and cancel the workshop.  I could not do it.

The next morning I decided that I would take a fist full of Motrin and try and show up to do the workshop. Helise helped me put my underwear on, and Greg got a small step stool to help me get in his truck.  It took me fifteen minutes to go a few yards from the room to the truck. For the morning I sat in my chair, not moving at all, and lead the workshop. I asked for help  so I could use the bathroom and that's more or less how it went for the next three days.

Beside the back pain the workshop went great. What I discovered was that the Native people were more emotionally available then the white administrator and social workers. Those in the highest ranking jobs slowly disappeared from the workshop as we progress into the week.

To be continued....    see first and second Installments

Larry Winters