Carolyn Gage
  • Home
    • Butch Visibility Project
    • Bio and Vitae
    • Endorsements
    • Production History
    • Catalog of Books and Plays
    • Online Essays >
      • Lesbian Culture and History Essays
      • Theatre Essays
      • Feminist Essays
      • Tributes/Obituaries
      • Reviews
    • Interviews >
      • Audio/Video Interviews
      • Print Interviews
  • Books and CD's
    • Gage Play Anthologies
    • Feminist Thought And Spirituality
    • Lesbian Theatre
    • CD's and DVD's
    • Anthologies with Other Authors
    • Journal Anthologies
  • Plays
    • One-Woman Shows >
      • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc
      • La Seconde Venue de Jeanne d'Arc
      • Joana Dark - a re-volta
      • Giovanna d'Arco - la rivolta
      • ВТОРОТО ПРИШЕСТВИЕ НА ЖАНА Д’АРК (Bulgarian tranlsation of The Second Coming of Joan
      • 贞德再临_中文 (Mandarin translation of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc)
      • The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman
      • Crossing the Rapelands
    • Musicals >
      • The Amazon All-Stars
      • Babe! An Olympian Musical
      • How to Write a Country-Western Song
      • Leading Ladies
      • Women on the Land
    • Full-Length Plays >
      • The Abolition Plays
      • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
      • AXED!
      • Black Star
      • Coming About
      • Esther and Vashti
      • The Goddess Tour
      • In McClintock's Corn
      • Sappho in Love
      • The Spindle
      • Stigmata
      • Thanatron
      • Ugly Ducklings
    • One-Acts >
      • Ain't Got No - I Got Life
      • The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-Diggers
      • Artemisia and Hildegard
      • Battered on Broadway
      • Bite My Thumb
      • The Boundary Trial of John Proctor
      • Cookin' with Typhoid Mary
      • The Countess and the Lesbians
      • The Drum Lesson
      • Easter Sunday
      • Entr'acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped
      • The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide
      • Female Nude Seated
      • The Gage and Mr. Comstock
      • The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived
      • Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist
      • Head in the Game
      • Hermeneutic Circlejerk
      • Heterosexuals Anonymous
      • Jane Addams and the Devil Baby
      • A Labor Play
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Lighting Martha
      • Little Sister
      • Louisa May Incest
      • Mason-Dixon
      • The Obligatory Scene
      • The P.E. Teacher
      • The Parmachene Belle
      • The Pele Chant
      • Planchette
      • The Poorly-Written Play Festival
      • Radicals
      • The Rules of the Playground
      • St. Frances and the Fallen Angels
      • Souvenirs from Eden
      • Starpattern
      • 'Til the Fat Lady Sings
      • Valerie Solanas At Matteawan
    • Short Short Plays >
      • 52 Pickup
      • At Sea
      • Black Eye
      • El Bobo
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter
      • The Clarity of Pizza
      • The Great Fire
      • Hrotsvitha's Vision
      • The Intimacy Coordinator
      • The Ladies' Room
      • Miss Le Gallienne Announces the New Season
      • On the Other Hand
      • Patricide
      • The Pickle Play
    • Dramatic Adaptations >
      • Amy Lowell: In Her Own Words
      • Brett Remembers
      • Deep Haven
      • El Bobo (one-act play)
      • El Bobo (short screenplay)
      • Emily & Sue >
        • Touring Production of Emily & Sue >
          • The Creative Team
          • Director's Vision
          • Adaptor's notes
          • Open Me Carefully
      • I Have Come to Show You Death
      • Speak Fully The One Awful Word
      • We Too Are Drifting (Screenplay)
    • Special Index: Plays That Deal with Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls
    • Special Index: Women's History Plays
    • Special Index: Romantic Plays with Happy Endings
  • Touring Work
    • Performances >
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Crossing the Rapelands
      • The Parmachene Belle (performance)
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter (performance)
      • Gage on Stage
    • Lectures >
      • Lizzie Borden and Lesbian Theatre
      • The Secret Life of Lesbians
      • Paradigms and Paradigm-Shifting
      • When Sex Is Not the Metaphor For Intimacy
      • Meeting the Ghost of Hamlet's Father
      • A Theatrical Journey Through Maine's Lesbian History
      • Tara and Other Lies
      • Teena Brandon's Inconvenient Truth
    • Workshops >
      • The Art of the Dramatic Monologue
      • Acting Lesbian
      • Interrupting Racism: A Workshop
      • Playwriting Techniques for Poets and Fiction Writers
      • Ugly Ducklings Workshop
    • Residencies
    • The Lesbian Tent Revival >
      • Testimonials
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Radio Hour Podcasts
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Sermon on Dying Well
      • Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival
      • Supplemental Sermons
      • Hotter Than Hell
      • The Synapse Pendant
    • Cauldron & Labrys >
      • A Brief History
      • Upcoming Productions
  • Calendar
    • Gage Performances and Appearances
    • Productions of Gage's Work
  • Contact/Storefront
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog

The Princess of Pain... A Personal Journey

1/14/2019

5 Comments

 
Picture
I wrote The Princess of Pain as an act of solidarity for a friend of mine who had a condition which, back then, was called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. It’s now referred to as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). This is a chronic illness characterized by severe burning pain, usually in the extremities, and extreme sensitivity to touch. Nobody really understands CRPS, and there is no cure. My friend told me that so many members of her support group had committed suicide, she had to stop attending. She told me how some victims of CRPS went so far as to have their limbs amputated in an effort to stop the burning, but even with the limb gone, the pain would persist. She was no longer able to tolerate painkillers like Ibuprofen, because chronic use of them had damaged her liver. Confined to a wheelchair because the pain had impaired her mobility, my friend was living a constricted life of extreme suffering, with no prospect of relief.

Picture
Struggling with my own chronic illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis (aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or ME/CFS.), I wanted to be a supportive companion. My burdens seemed light in comparison with hers.
 
But here’s the thing:  Processing trauma is just that—a process. Even though I knew better, I still found myself compulsively suggesting things that might “fix” my friend: changes in diet, nutritional supplements, different forms of meditation, counseling focused on unearthing hidden memories, a spiritual reframing of the experience…  as if my friend, in her agony, was not sufficiently motivated to have explored everything on the planet that held out even the remotest hope of relief. As if I, with my recent and superficial understanding of her condition, was somehow more of an expert than she! But still, every time I saw her, I would be overwhelmed by a desire to offer unsolicited advice.

Picture
What was going on? I hated it when people did that to me, and, believe me, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome you hear it all. Everybody is an expert. They are especially big on the psychiatric theories about the disease. Crazy and lazy. Control freak. Narcissist. Malingerer. Diseases that are poorly understood provide ripe fodder for the ableists of the world.

Picture
So I knew that what I was doing was oppressive to my friend. What I was really communicating with all these brilliant suggestions, was that I could not accept her truth. I really could not accept her. I was letting her know that I thought she wasn’t trying hard enough, that she was giving up too soon, that she was trusting unreliable authorities. I was telling her that she needed to… to what? What was it I thought she needed to do? In fact, she had done and was doing exactly what she needed to do. She was accepting every minute of every day a grossly unfair, undeserved, unrelentingly cruel and vicious life sentence of literal, physical torture.
 
I was the one in need of fixing. I wrote The Princess of Pain as an apology and as an amends to her, to acknowledge her strength and courage and to acknowledge the work I still needed to do.

Picture
The Princess of Pain is about the fundamental conundrum of trauma: “It has to be accepted; it cannot be accepted.”
 
The answer for “How do I do this?” is not a simple one. Everyone’s journey with trauma is different. Maybe we cover much of the same ground, but we all cover it differently, in our own way and in our own time, and we cover parts of it over and over again. “How do we come to terms with trauma?” Daily and never.

Picture
The Princess of Pain has her confrontations with the Powers That Be in her cosmos. They may distract her, or soothe her, or misunderstand her, or frustrate her, or torment her, but they never provide her with the answers she wants. That’s the truth about trauma. 
 
The Princess of Pain is my fairy tale to end all fairy tales. Life is filled with injustice and meaningless suffering. They are not manifestations of some mysterious will of God, where all things work together for good and we are just too limited to see the Big Picture. They are not the result of some manifestation of karma from an unremembered criminal past life. They are not the result of some prenatal contract that our soul has made in order to learn the great lessons and glean the beneficent gifts of experiencing overwhelming pain and horror.

I don’t know that I have ever made my peace with the trauma in my life, but I consider it a huge victory to have abandoned many of the seductive ideologies that used to give me a fake sense of control over random events in my life at the expense of authentic empathy. I have acquired a deeper appreciation for the courage it takes to resist the strategies of denial and the callousness of cynicism, to take on a quest to accept the unacceptable.

            ___________________________________________________

Much gratitude to Sudie Rakusin, for her exquisite illustrations, and to Mary Meriam and Headmistress Press for publishing The Princess of Pain.

Click here to order.

5 Comments
Nyla link
1/15/2019 04:42:27 pm

Carolyn, you've hit the proverbial nail on the head. As someone who experiences chronic pain I understand the desperation that your friend described: sometimes you just dont.seem.to.have.the.will.to.go.on. Then, suddenly, there are good days (meaning that pain is at bearable level) and you decide to try to live a normal life. For as long as you are able.

I appreciate your honesty in sharing your inclination to want to "fix" things for her. That's what we women are programmed to do from such an early age: care take. I have a hell of a time just listening to others describe their problems. I want to offer them suggestions to help because I equate "helping" with "loving". Maybe that's a form of oppressing others, especially if one crosses the line from shared communication into a monologue led by oneself. However well intentioned.

Regarding trauma itself, damn. Complicated stuff. For so many of us it isn't just one traumatic event but a series of traumas, one after another.

I remember when my psych administered a trauma and resilience scale to me at the beginning of our time together, I didn't think too much about it as I checked box after box. Rape? Sure. Three times. Domestic violence? yes. Physical and psychological abuse? you betcha, from childhood through adulthood when I miraculously began to fight back and say, "no more". Physical trauma from an accident or injury? Does being kicked in the head by a horse followed by two brain surgeries count? Or, being thrown from a horse years later and fracturing my clavicle? Vicarious trauma? How about witnessing two fatal accidents or intervening in the dying process of a stranger to help their passage go more smoothly? Or working for fourteen years in a field where I observed neglect of care, death and dying, sexual assault and physical abuse day after day?

"No wonder you're exhausted and in pain," she said,"this is the highest score I've ever seen. Part of me just wants to advise you to celebrate still being alive." So I did.

I suppose I could bog down in my suffering, give up, drown in self pity and expect others to take care of me like I always needed to be taken care of. But McCarthy's are a clan of warriors and I ultimately manage to armor up, get out of bed and keep on keeping on.

But back to your discussion of chronic pain which began this: For myself, I understand now, after so much time, how that pain is the manifestation of so much of that trauma in my body and mind. I work on letting go of things, clearing them from my energy field, magicking them out of my life cycles.

Unfortunately, some of it is also the result of a childhood lived in poverty with poor nutrition now taking a toll. And apparently, some of it is just basic ole genetics. Shit.

Regardless, I do not want my pained self, my disabled self, my degenerating body, to be the primary way people see me, or worse, to be the primary way I see myself. That is not my identity. It is only a small (often LOUD) part of the fractured mirror essence totality of who I am.

I honor your journey as you continue to question, ponder, integrate, your own fractured mirror essence. And I thank you for sharing it with us.

Reply
Tina Gianoulis
1/21/2019 01:59:00 pm

thanks for this Carolyn--i think these issues are becoming more and more significant for everyone as we age--sometimes i think that the impulse to advise and offer solutions comes out of an innate sense of helplessness in the face of things we really can't fix--it seems to me that the challenge is to be able to really see and hear each other separate from our very primate impulse to manipulate our surroundings.

Reply
Kim link
1/21/2019 06:12:45 pm

Carolyn, Kim Duckett here, from Mich Fest etc sent you my book last time I communicated...

You've done it, once again...saved my life. Just this morning I was crying and crying with Tribas holding me about the Pain I live with all the time (DDD 7+ruptured discs etc which was first thought to be RSD) and the fact that my doctor is likely to begin "forced taper" from my pain medication and I will be unable to function, work, live...

and...your newsletter shows up in my email...and...I felt hope again, for at least a nanosecond and...I am so grateful for you and for the WU in this moment.

We are all truly in this together...thank you for reminding me I am not alone. My amazon sisters are here with me...

Blessed be!!! and much love and care to YOU...
Kim WomonWhoFollowsHerHeart

Reply
Susan
1/28/2019 08:39:43 pm

Thank you! “Maybe we cover much of the same ground, but we all cover it differently, in our own way and in our own time, and we cover parts of it over and over again.” I know both sides of this as well. How I love knowing you abhor someone saying, “You need _____!” as much as I do. Thank you.

Reply
Sharon
2/14/2019 08:34:43 am

Wow! What a thoughtful piece! And it surely puts everything (some simple joint pain) into perspective for me! Thank you for your hard work and efforts to bring more understanding into this world through your very powerful writing!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Carolyn Gage

    “… Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America…”--Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.

    SUBSCRIBE:
    To subscribe to the blog, scroll down and click on "RSS Feed". To subscribe to my newsletter, click here.

    Categories

    All
    Child Abuse
    Civil Rights
    Incest
    In Memoriam
    Interviews
    Lesbian Feminism
    Lesbian History
    Psychotropic Drugs
    Rape
    Reviews
    The Environment
    Women And Theatre
    Women's History

    Archives

    June 2022
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.