Second CORE - Day 1 - Thursday, June 9

Arrived at my second CORE today. Lots of people from out of town, so Melisa’s place is full to overflowing. I am flowing over into the house of one of the other students, who has generously opened her home to five of us. For my introvert self, this is a bit of a challenge - strange place, new people to meet. Happily, one of my herdmates from CORE #1 will be bunking down in the same place.

Another interesting opportunity has been thrown into the mix. My phone doesn’t work. Somehow, downloading an update to the email application has put it into a permanent reboot loop. Removing the battery and letting it sit for a while has not helped. How will I know when to get up? How will I even know what time it is? Will my phone ever regain its mind? This is causing a bit of anxiety.

The first evening of CORE, we do a check-in and then Melisa demonstrates how to do a genogram. I volunteered to be the client, and we had a great time drawing lots of circles and squares denoting the people in my life, past and present. A trend emerges. Most of my intimate relationships, save the current one, lasted less than four years. It was four years before my mother had her first child, and she has told me in the last few years that my birth was the happiest day of her life, because she craved a child so much. Four years later, my brother was born. My first memory is of being at my brother’s baptismal party, sitting at a table away from everyone else, by myself, eating lobster. I was four years old. Four, four, four, four. Amazing. There’s more work to do around this one, which hopefully will happen this weekend. There were some knowing looks passing between Coach Peggy and Melisa, and of course they weren’t telling.

After that we moved on to a Mandala demo, with a different student client, and then we paired up with another student, and I played client again, building a mandala with one of the senior students. It was a fun time, and I feel a little more integrated into the genogram and mandala as a way to open doors for a client’s session.