The Whippoorwill
Author’s note: the client, Timmy, has agreed to share his story. This courageous act is meant to draw others into their own stories, as vulnerability responds to vulnerability and hope responds to hope. Some identifying information including name, gender, age, and locations may have been changed to give a measure of protection.
In early August, 2024, it’s cold up on the summit of the Grand Teton. But then, at just under 14,000 feet above sea level (13,775 to be exact) it never really gets warm. Just… less cold, here at the height of summer. The view is a rare one, shared by only the very few who are either addicted to the sport of alpine ascents, the fit bucket list climbers, or the lucky underprepared optimists who thought to themselves, I bet I could climb that mountain.
Timmy falls somewhere between those last two categories. Being here on the summit, looking over Jackson Lake and the miles of forest leading North and East up to Yellowstone and Westward to the rolling mountains and winding hint of the Snake River as it slides in Idaho, has been a dream he thought would never be possible.
That his climbing team would include his wife, a woman from his childhood that he recently reunited with, and her new husband would have been beyond comprehension only a few short months ago.
Bzzz bzzz. A text message slips into Timmy’s phone during the few short minutes spent taking in the view. That reception is possible in such isolated and holy places is a crime of its own, but this text was divine timing, it read: “Gents, happy one year since our epic endurance ruck together. Hope you all are well.”
It just so happened that the very morning of his summit of the Grand was one year to the day when Timmy and a handful of other men completed a 24-hour endurance ruck in Georgia. One year since he heard the whippoorwill’s call.
—
When Timmy first reached out to me to begin work together he explained that he had a sexual past that he had never worked through and that he was learning about the effect trauma can have on the present. We jumped on a call to meet virtually, since Timmy’s skill set enables him to work a variety of jobs, all of which seem to involve heavy machinery of some sort and almost always in remote areas.
I felt curious before our first meeting. The details in the enquiry email were vague enough to not be condemning if someone else received it, which left plenty of room for me to speculate.
Something I tell my clients came to my mind: be vulnerable and honest when sharing about yourself, or else others will make up a story about you… and it will likely be the wrong one. I proved my wrongness once again.
Timmy has an easy smile and bright eyes. Over our many months of working together, he would rotate through a limited number of flannel shirts worn over a graphic tee of some kind. In his mid-30’s, he was leaner than I expected considering his sedentary work. I would later ascribe this to his large family of origin and large family of his own with his wife. He looks like a cowboy, the kind who is likely to pay for a cup of coffee for you in the early hours at the local diner, and you wouldn’t know that he needed those four dollars for gas for the drive home.
Oh, and his sexual trauma that he needed someone to help him walk through? It was the story of the many girls that he abused in his youth.
Now, before you stop reading here I’ll add one more piece of data that wouldn’t come to light until weeks later: Timmy’s first memory was of the birth of his younger brother. Or rather, the body of his newborn brother locked on the other side of the porch door, while he wept and asked to see him. I hope I have paused your vilifying of him, for a moment.
—
When working with clients I eventually take us back into the family of origin in search of a few things: what was their first memory? What was the attachment and attunement like in their home? Were mom and dad both there? Siblings?
Was abuse present, drugs, divorce, violence… or was their’s a story of neglect and abandonment, either physically or emotionally?
In Timmy’s case, his story began with a tearing loss of the very thing he longed for most: a younger brother. As the youngest of several kids, Timmy remembers praying for the arrival of his brother during his mother’s pregnancy. What followed was a traumatic and complicated delivery that ended not with the brothers embracing, but with his brother dying.
The loss left a hole in Timmy, and over his childhood years he would experience a family culture that was more interested in putting in an honest day’s work than in noticing their youngest son and his need for connection.
Timmy was eager to press into the hard parts of his story, and over time he began to feel the fruit of the healing balm of tears, of words to his younger self, and of putting perspective to the void he felt within him. Eventually, he began to reach out to some of the women that he had perpetrated against.
This was handled very delicately and always involved third parties. On several occasions Timmy found himself in a room with the father or the mother, and sometimes the survivor. Sometimes he was asked to listen, to hear about his effect on their story, and offer his repentance. Sometimes his story was asked, and the boy who felt alone and filthy was seen and understood for a moment.
Sometimes forgiveness was offered. Sometimes it wasn’t.
—
A year ago Timmy signed up for an endurance ruck in Georgia. From what I have been led to believe, a ruck is when adult men pretend to do the boring parts of being in the military: lacing up combat boots, loading a pack with significant weight, and not-quite-walk-not-quite-jog their
way forward. This event was kept very small with simple rules: begin moving at sunrise and don’t stop moving for 24 hours.
So much of endurance events are about the battle of the mind, and this event was no different. Our bodies are wired for survival, which is why our brains light up when we eat food with lots of sugar, salt, or fat. Pushing really hard physically puts us at risk of going beyond our caloric reserves, which our body doesn’t like, so our minds begin to give us all sorts of emergency signs when we exert ourselves.
Learning to push through those signs takes time. It takes courage. And it’s eerily similar to the way our mind reacts to pushing into the hard parts of our trauma. Don’t go there, you will die. You can’t handle this. Better to stop, to do something else, to sit on the couch and numb with a bag of potato chips and a show.
Every time that voice pops into our heads we have a choice: agree with it and pull back, or push through into uncharted territory. As a therapist, I would hope that when we choose to push forward it is with kindness and resources, but even with those at our aid it can still feel like being asked to jump from an airplane without a parachute. After all, our bodies have an impossible time differentiating physical pain and emotional pain.
—
Back on the Grand, Timmy watched his wife work her way down the trail with his childhood friend as company for conversation. The night before had been a profound experience. Lying in the saddle of the mountain, watching the stars pass overhead, Timmy had felt a closeness with the Father heart of God. He felt called to that mountain, he knew love, deeply, for himself and for those in his world like never before. Still not quite to the summit, Timmy took a moment to imagine the two women passing the miles on the trail in each other’s company.
The friend was one of the survivors of Timmy’s actions twenty years ago.
She was one who had reached out to him, who had been willing to sit in a room and offer her story. She had heard his account and witnessed his tears of regret. She had offered her forgiveness. Not her acceptance of what had been done, to her or to him. But she had forgiven the boy who had harmed her.
A few months later she had asked to be introduced to one of his friends, and they ended up getting married.
We have no idea what stories we walk by on the trail.
—
After rucking through the Georgian wilderness for what seemed like hours that would not end, Timmy and his merry band of fellow endurance-aspiring friends were led up a long hill. The night was dark and no one had a watch, save the leader. The mind games were taking their toll.
That it is darkest before the dawn is of little consolation for someone living those hours. Each step forward required everything of Timmy, and upon reaching the top their guide turned them around and started marching them back down the hill. That’s it, I’m done. If he tries to make me walk a step further once we reach the bottom I am out of this. I can’t take it.
It took around two hours to reach the bottom of the hill, all the while Timmy battled with the voice. He told it to shut up. He told himself that he was going to continue to complete the mission that he had set out to. He clung to hope that he had more to himself than the voice believed.
They reached the bottom of the hill and continued walking. They crossed a creek, and continued walking. Then, out of the dark, the whippoorwill cried out.
The trifold trill, heralding the coming of dawn mere minutes away. Timmy had made it through the night.
—
One year later, on the summit of the Grand Teton, he read the text on his phone: Gents happy one year… Hope you are well. And Timmy was. He was in holy company, smiling as the whippoorwill sounded again.
