Amy Geller was my Love Coach and Things Blew Up

Amy Geller wrote to me today: I love you. 

On Instagram she posted a photo she had taken of me in her living room two years ago when, as her writing coach, I had traveled by train from Boston to New Jersey to sit with her for a weekend while she wrote an emotionally challenging part of her book. 

I love you, I wrote back. My life is different because of you, I wrote. You are amazing. 

Amy Geller was my love coach from November 10, 2020 to July 6, 2021. We finished in July because Amy is getting ready to start a PhD program and she already works her ass off. (My words.) Amy Geller says that she’s married because of my book, and she has a fondness for me that is generous and surprising. 

I didn’t ask her to be my love coach--she volunteered!! First of all, she isn’t a professional “love coach”—or at least she, a therapist, doesn’t advertise herself as one, but I’m going to advertise her as one here. 

Because I have found new doorways to love in my body, and maybe it’s a coincidence that this happened in the span of time I worked with Amy and yet has nothing to do with our work together, but that would be like saying, in my mind, the sky in not responsible for the snow that falls.  

If I hadn’t thrown myself over the cliff of writing this book may kill me, I never would have met Amy. 

Note to self:

Stepping into fear (terror) can be very rewarding. 

When I was sixteen, I met the one. He was like me, but a boy. He seemed like he liked me, but he always had someone else. I thought this was what the one did. Both chose you and unchose you and the same time.  

Then I finally wrote my book and found my voice and story and realized that the one would want to be there with me, and I would want him to be there with me, for more than stolen pieces of time. So then I had no one who was truly mine. This means I went from having someone I claimed was the one to being more honest about the situation which was that I had no romantic partner who was free enough of other entanglements to be mine.

The reality of the situation was that I was so addicted to my own body/mind PTSD distractions that I was not available to be anyone else’s one true love either. “What are you thinking about?” one boyfriend often asked as I looked out the window as we drove. I was thinking about what I always thought about: how to escape, how to be different, how to feel better, how to ease the ache that was in my head and stomach.

On my second session with Amy, I did a thing I often did on dates: I tried to rip Amy a new asshole. She was telling me something, and all of a sudden I got flooded with fury and could barely think or breathe. My body was like rock. I told her she was a narcissist. I told her she only wanted to work with me so I could listen to her talk. We were on Zoom together and I thought about shutting down my screen and walking away. This is what historically I would do with men, only normally I’d walk out of a room or slam down the phone. But something happened. Amy got really still and held my gaze, and I did not leave.

She stayed. She did not say she hated me. She did not fight back. She stayed. She got me to take a breath, and then another. I then had to face the terror in my body of having attacked someone I loved. 

She stayed. I stayed. We talked through what had happened, and I had a breakthrough. My fury and accusations were not about Amy. They were about my fears and about past experiences I’d had with narcissistic parents and romantic partners and friends who hadn’t been able to really show up for me because they had a tool belt that had some gaping holes. The miracle was that Amy and I had the face off and stayed. The miracle was that Amy was strong enough to weather the accusations and I, finally, trusted someone enough to let her see my fury and still stick around to experience the what happens after I show you a hurting part of my self?.

That episode cemented an already strong friendship. We were bonded, but it took a rupture to make me fall in love.

I adore Amy Geller for many reasons, and one is that I could behave in a way that later felt shameful, and she would help me drop the shame and pick up pride instead, getting me to a place of even greater strength and self-compassion and -love.  

I could call Amy Geller Amy, but I love saying Amy Geller. I just do. It makes me feel safe and happy, so sometimes I call her by just her first name, but mostly I use both.

 I write openly about so much of my life, and some things I like to keep to myself. What I want to tell you is that I am loving more fearlessly since working with Amy, since walking headlong through the door of I want to love wildly, wholeheartedly. 

It’s one thing to say I want to heal from adoption trauma. It’s more fun, I think, to say, I want to see how openly I can love. 

Amy Geller. Amy Geller. Amy Geller. 

When adopted people show up for each other, anything is possible. 

afternote:

I wrote to Amy Geller to make sure it was okay to post all of this, and she wrote back, I LOVE YOU! And fondness isn’t a strong enough word. Choose something more powerful. Like reverence.

See what I mean? How could you help but to bloom under her gaze?