Motherless Bear: The Danger of Getting Stuck in Your Own Story

Cinnamon:
My sobriety date is January 11th, 2011. I had checked out little MP3s of books from the library. I got this one and I listened to it like 24 hours a day. I feel very confident in saying this particular story was a pretty significant part of getting sober—like it's a, you get taught something when you weren't even paying attention.

So I'm gonna tell you about the book, then I'm gonna read you the story.

My battle, and I think a battle that a lot of people with addictions face, is—whatever the thing was that they were trying to avoid feeling feelings about, that they were now numbing—was smaller than the problems that they had created with their effort to numb it.

We get stuck focusing on the things that we've been through, and we don't even realize that because we got stuck, we've ended up in a worse situation.

INTRO

Erin:
You're listening to After the Tones Drop, the mental health podcast for first responders.

Cinnamon:
We're your hosts. I'm Cinnamon, a first responder trauma therapist.

Erin:
And I'm Erin. A first responder integration coach.

Cinnamon:
Our show brings you stories from real first responders, the tools they've learned, and the lives they now get to live.

Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey, hey. Welcome back to after the tones drop. This is Cinnamon I am recording. this on the down low. Erin is not gonna know this is here until she goes looking, I have told her since we started this podcast that I wanted to share this story and I've not done it yet. so now seems like a great time since she is tied up and I've got a little free time on my hands.

So let me give you a little bit of background. many of you know that Erin and I are both sober and in fact we met in, the recovery rooms of aa. Actually, that's not completely true. We met at a 4th of July party at our sponsor's house. And,We've been through in the last nearly 15 years, a whole bunch of stuff, let's say.

But the one thing that we did not do together, was get sober. [00:01:00] so I. This was something that was so important to me that, you know, I've told her over the years and, now I'd like to tell you, my sobriety date is January 11th, 2011. Super easy to remember. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. that December of 2010, I had checked out a book from the library.

It wasn't technically a book for whatever reason, in Columbus, Ohio, in the Grandview Heights. library, you could check out these like, almost like little MP threes of books. And so I got this one and I listened to it like 24 hours a day. And I feel very confident in saying this particular story, was a catalyst and a pretty significant part of me getting sober.

So, I'm gonna tell you about the book and then I'm gonna read you the story [00:02:00] and, we'll see if you enjoy it as much as I do or if you can see why it might, have been a catalyst for me, straightening out my life 15 years ago. So the book is called Squirrel and it is by. David Sedaris, who is a well-known humorist from the East coast who now lives abroad, every year he comes to Cincinnati and reads, and every year I buy two tickets and I go and I invite a friend with me.

And I don't think I've invited the same person twice because. I just love sharing his humor and his wisdom. I feel like it's a, you get taught something when you weren't even paying attention and you don't know it until afterwards. you might know him from one of his first books called Me Talk Pretty one Day.

He has a gazillion books and maybe that should be something that I should talk about here, [00:03:00] but I don't know the actual count. I do know I have a lot of them, so I'm going to share with you. One of my favorite stories ever, but definitely of David Sedaris. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, and while, I don't expect it to change your life quite like it changed mine.

I hope you the value in it. Plus this is like my secret, heart's desire is that somebody will hire me to read their audio book, because I love books and I love reading them, and this is fun for me. all right. This story is called The Motherless Bear in the three hours before her death.

The Bear's mother unearthed some acorns buried months earlier by a squirrel. They were damp and worm eaten as unappetizing as turds and [00:04:00] sighing at her rotten L. She kicked them back into their hole. At around 10, she stopped to pull a burr from her left Haunch, and then her daughter would report. Then she just.

Died. The first few times she said these words, the bear couldn't believe them. Her mother was gone. How could it be? After a day though, the shock had worn off and she tried to recapture it with an artfully placed I. Pause and an array of amateur theatrical gestures. The far away look was effective, and eventually she came to master it, and then she would say her eyes fixed on the distant horizon, and then she just died.

Seven times she cried. But as the weeks passed, this became more difficult. And so she took to covering her face with her paws and doing like a jerky thing with her shoulders. They're there, her friends would say, [00:05:00] and she would imagine them returning to their families. I saw that poor motherless bear today.

And if she just doesn't break your heart, well, I don't know what will. Her neighbors brought food more than enough to get her through the winter, so she stayed awake that year and got very fat in the spring. The others awoke from their hibernation and Found her finishing the first of the choke cherries.

Eating, helps ease the pain. She explained the bright juice s dripping from merchant and when they turned away, she followed behind them. Did I mention to you that my mother died? We had just spent a beautiful morning together and the next thing I knew. That is no excuse for eating all of our choke cherries.

They said furious. A few bears listened without an eruption, but she could see it in their eyes that their pity had turned to something else. Boredom, [00:06:00] at best and at worst, a kind of embarrassment, but not for themselves, more so for her. The friend who had previously been the most sympathetic, who herself had cried upon first hearing the story, now offered a solution, throw yourself into a project, she said, that's what I did after my grandfather's heart attack and it worked wonders.

A project the bear said, you know, said her friend. Dig yourself a new den or something. But I like my den the way it is. Well then help dig one for somebody else. My ex-husband's aunt lost one of her paws in a trap and spent last winter in a ditch helper.

Why don't ya? I hurt my paw. Once the bear said broke a nail clean off, and when it finally grew back it looked like a Brazil nut. She was trying to work the subject back around to herself, hoping her friend might forget her [00:07:00] suggestion, but it didn't work. I'll tell the old gal, you'll be by later this afternoon.

She said it'll make her happy and help you to work off some of that weight you've gained. I. The friend ambled off and the bear glared at her disappearing backside.

She mimicked, then she a log and she ate some ants, low calorie ones with the stripes on the butts. After that, she lay in the sun and was sound asleep when her friend returned and shook her awake, saying, what's wrong with you? Huh? It's almost dark, and my ex-husband's aunt has been waiting all day, right?

Said the bear, and she headed up the hill, deciding after a few dozen yards that this was not going to happen. Forget following advice she had never asked for in the first place. Rather than digging a den for a stranger, someone old who was just gonna die [00:08:00] anyway, she'd leave home and settle on the other side of the mountain.

There she could meet some new bears, strangers who would listen to her story and allow her once again to feel tragic. I. The following morning, she set out taking care to avoid the old amputee who still sat waiting Beside her wretched ditch beyond a burned out grove of B trees.

There was a stream and following it, she came upon a cub who sat waist deep in the rushing water, swatting at fish with his untrained paws. I used to do the same thing when I was your age, called the Bear and the cub looked up and let out a cry of surprise. I must have sat in the water all morning until my mother came over and showed me how to catch fish properly.

She waited a beat and continued. Of course, that could never happen now, and you know why the cub said nothing. [00:09:00] It couldn't happen now because my mother is dead. The bear announced happened suddenly when I least expected it. One moment she was there and the next, she just wasn't. The bear of begin to whimper.

You wake up an orphan, your mom's body's slowly rotting beside you and what can you do? But soldier on all alone, no one to love or to protect you? I. As the cub began to wa, his mother charged out of the thicket, what are you? Sick? She shouted, get your kick scaring innocent children. Is that it? Go on now.

Get the hell outta here. The bear ran to the opposite shore and into the forest, tripping on logs as she turned to look behind her. But with her weight, she was soon outta breath, so she slowed to a trot. After the first a hundred yards, her pace gradually degenerating as the [00:10:00] morning turned to afternoon, and then early evening, just before her dusk, she smelled chimney smoke and ambled to the outskirts of a village peering through a gap in the hedge.

She saw a crowd of humans standing with their backs to her. They seemed to be regarding something that stood in a clearing, and when one of them shifted position, she saw that it was a bear, a male, though it took a moment to realize it as he was wearing a skirt and a tall cone shaped hat topped with a set and scarf.

The male bear's mouth was muzzled with a leather strap and connected to a leash, which was alternately held and yanked by a man in a dirty cape. A boy who was also dressed in a cape, carried a drum on a rope around his neck, and as he began to play, the male stood on his hind legs and swayed back and forth to the music.

Faster caught a soldier at the front of the crowd [00:11:00] and the boy quickened his beat. The male bear struggled to keep up, and when he tripped over the hem of his skirt, the man pulled at a stick and beat him across the face until his nose bled. This made the people laugh and a few of them through coins, which the drummer collected before moving on to his next song.

When night fell and the audience went home to their suppers, the man removed the muzzle from the male snout. Then he put a collar around his neck and attached it by a chain to an iron stake driven deep into the ground. He and the boy retired to the tent, and when she was sure they had fallen asleep, the bear crept out from behind the hedge and approached the chain dancer.

I don't normally talk to strangers, she said, but I saw you here. And I figured, well, I guess there's a first time for everything. The male was lying in an awkward position. His skirt was gathered around his waist, and she that great [00:12:00] patches of his legs were without hair, and that the skin in these areas was covered with open sores.

I used to talk a lot to my mother. She told him she and I were all each other had, and then one morning out of nowhere, she just died. Gone. Before I could say goodbye or anything, Maybe it was the moonlight, maybe the excitement of meeting an entertainer. But for whatever reason, she actually managed a tear.

Her first in almost six months, it was slowly running down her cheek when the chain male raised his head and spoke. Can you understand me? He said the bear nodded though. In fact, it was quite difficult. That's good. He said, most animals can't make out a word I'm saying. And you know why she shook her head?

It's because I have no teeth. He said, not one of them. [00:13:00] The man in the tent took a rock and hammered them outta my head. But the muzzle, the bear said, that's just to make me look dangerous. Oh, the bear said I get it. No, he told her. I don't think you do. See, I have maggots living in my knees. I'm alive, but flies are raving families in my flesh.

Okay. The bear shivered at the thought of it. It's been eight years since I've eaten solid food. My digestive system of thought, my right foot is broken in three places, and you're coming to me ul, teary-eyed because your stepmother died. She wasn't a step. The bear said, oh, she was too. I can see it in your eyes.

Well, she was just like a real mother. The bear said, Yeah. And P is just like, honey, if you're hungry enough. [00:14:00] Maybe males in this part of the country say every ugly thing that enters their heads. The bear said, but where I'm from, and that was as far as she got before the man and the boy came up from behind and hit her over the head with a padded club.

When she came to, it was morning, and the male lay on the ground before her, his throat slit into a meaty smile. He was no good to us. Anyhow, the man said to his assistant, the knees go, and that's that. Now the bear travels from village to village. Her jaws are sunken. Her gums swollen with the abscesses left by broken teeth, and between the disfigurement and the muzzle, it's nearly impossible to catch what she's saying.

Always though, while tripping and stumbling to the music, she looks out into her audience and tells the story about her mother. Most people laugh and yell for her to lift her skirts, but [00:15:00] every so often She'll spot someone weeping and can swear they understand her Every word.

The end. So yeah, as you can imagine, for some people this can be a funny story that doesn't go any further. for me it did more than that, I think a lot of times. We get stuck focusing on what hasn't worked in our life or the things that we've been through, and we don't even realize how, because we got stuck, we've ended up in a worse situation, and that was.

My battle, and I think that's a battle that a lot of people with addictions face is whatever the that they were to avoid, feeling feelings about, [00:16:00] that they were now numbing. It was small. Or smaller than the problems that they had created with their effort to numb it. so if you need to hit repeat and listen to that again.

'cause it is a pretty powerful story if you allow yourself the opportunity to hear it. yeah. Thanks for listening and, uh, if need be, if anybody is looking for an audio book reader, I have, you know, a face for radio and a voice for the silent movies. but damn, I have a good time doing it. All right, See you next episode.

OUTRO

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