All This

Little did I know, back in 1954, as I sat, pencil poised, in Sister Michael Marie's first-grade class, that practicing my name, Virginia Mary Langton, over and over in the Palmer Method would become a gateway for my life's calling. 

No, I am not a calligrapher. I have no fine motor skills, and my handwriting is terrible. It's just that everyone called me Ginny before I started school. The second of four at the time (eventually, we would be six), I was the wiggle alongside my older sister's steady gait. Beth would relegate me to the wall side of the beds we made together, point menacingly at my bony wisp of a body, and sing-song taunt me with the refrain, "Skinny Ginny! Skinny Ginny!" Activating my easy penchant for joy was a sure way to get through chores. I wonder if the beds ever got made well, but we had a good time.

Indoors or out, fun was my middle name and top priority. I was the first to jump onto our backyard swing and touch my foot on the bottom of a second-floor porch. That would be me hollering at earthbound friends to join me at the top of a tree. And that was my limber back arched into backbends, me twirling across the lawn in cartwheels and making my monkey way across the top of the playground bars. Officially named Virginia Mary Langton, I knew myself only as Ginny, and the light, upbeat moniker suited me: the playful giggler. This energetic playmate was always eager to have a good time. 

That is, until first grade, when I had to face a sober reality. Not only were nicknames not allowed at St. Charles Parochial School in Waltham, Massachusetts, but there was a muffled air of disapproval for the playfulness they suggest. Because 52 desks bobbed in the ocean of our classroom, it’s no wonder that school policies opposed anything threatening what was, at best, a tenuous order. This pervasive tone of rigidity was a blow for me, the sprite, who now had to sit still. Even worse was that I had to answer to the stern-sounding, unfamiliar, multisyllabic name Virgina. No wonder I shed tears in the morning before going off to school.

Attention to my surname, Langton, is another story. When Monsignor McCarthy came into our classroom every quarter to distribute report cards, he added intrigue to who I was. "Langton," he would repeat as I walked up to take my card. "You know, Virginia, you are related to a famous man in history. Your distant uncle was the famous archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton." His kind smile suggested that I should be proud, and, bless him, he repeated the remark four times a year until I graduated from eighth grade. 

Despite having such an illustrious last name, the genealogical information I have on my lineage does not connect our branch of Langtons to one of the most influential figures in the history of the Magna Carta. No matter. I'd look forward to my priest's glowing approval with every report card. "Yes, father." I'd smilingly agree. Being a Langton distinguished me from the multitudes of Kelly, Sullivan, and O'doyles. 

Monsignor’s unbidden approval did not exempt me from the rigors of learning. The time had come to master penmanship, and unlike my friends Jean and Joan, I always lagged behind. Vir-gin-i-a Lang-ton. With each early attempt, writing out those six syllables seemed unfair. It was such a feat for my little girl's fingers, heart, and mind to travel the length of those unwieldy cursive lines. It was a comfort to find my familiar nickname embedded within, but still. I didn't know then how my given name pointed towards my future.

Eventually, that playful nature of mine took over, and writing my name became an amusement park ride. I was thrilled by the dramatic swirling drop of the capital letter V, the deep valley I entered before I began my trek across the up-down mountain range of letters i, r, and n. Tackling the underground complexity of the lowercase g was a trick I got to accomplish twice, showing up as it did in both my first and last names. I loved that my new friend Trickster G shifted deftly from soft to hard sounds in each instance. The ride across the lyrical lines of my last name's capital L and the friendly curves of lowercase a and o felt like fun kiddy rides. What had at first seemed like such strenuous writing began to compete with jumping rope, bouncing balls, and running around the playground with my friends. 

In retrospect, following the cursive lines of my name activated the power of my imagination, intuitive gifts, and an innate capacity to follow the subtleties of internal narratives. Penmanship practice became a tactile initiation into an animistic world of unconscious forces, feelings, expectations, and fantasies. And, as life marches on for all of us, don’t forces, feelings, and expectations tend to move more squarely onto center stage?

First-grade me knew that my dad wore a blue collar to work, and I loved my visits to the station where I could put on his hat and shimmy up and down the skinny fire pole. I had no idea, however, where that blue-collar placed our family in the larger world. I had yet to explore the contexts used by sociologists, ethnologists, and psychologists to explain the shame-based nature of cultures and how that translated into everyday behaviors. Behaviors that blind people to their essential worth and result in flash angry rages or silent tensions that crackle. I didn't know how people protect themselves from cultural, psychological, and emotional pain. But, like many, I skittered through my inner landscape riddled with anxiety.

For me, psychotherapy became the vehicle that got me through. Over the years, countless deep-down experiences with my therapist freed me to encounter all sorts of unconscious forces and feelings safely. Conversations that uncovered and then eased the ragged and prolonged propensity I had toward anxiety and depression. My early grapplings with writing my lengthy name revealed my patience to stay the course amid complex challenges and dwell in the richness of an inner world. A world that invited me to more of me through the psychotherapeutic process. Ultimately, my enthusiasm for therapy as a vehicle for growth and healing led me to my life's calling, and I became a psychotherapist myself.

As a kid, I had no idea that my patience with the up-down process of writing my unwieldy name would reflect my capacity to drop below the obvious into the rich complexity of the unconscious. I wouldn’t characterize my profession as fun. Still, it’s always a unique privilege and pleasure to accompany folks toward greater well-being - all this and more from learning to write my name.

V-i-r-g-i-n-i-a