‘I was in an abusive marriage – can I call it that?’ she asks Rose.
Rose nods fervently. ‘Absolutely.’
Dianne nods. ‘I need to work on accepting that. So it was a bad marriage for a very long time. A lifetime of abuse. All behind closed doors. My husband had a heart attack over two years ago. He died in front of me,’ she says to the group. ‘I let him die, didn’t call an ambulance.’
There’s silence.
‘How does it feel to say that to other people?’ asks Rose.
‘What do you think?’
Dianne sounds almost amused. Like a chat-show host asking a question.
She looks around at the group.
‘Relieved?’ asks Keera anxiously.
‘Happy, I hope,’ says India. ‘Horrible, horrible man. I am so sorry, Dianne, I thought you weren’t empathetic and—’
‘It’s fine, India,’ Dianne interrupts and she sounds like a different person now. ‘You couldn’t know what I was feeling because I didn’t know myself. I was filled with huge rage and had nowhere to put it.’
‘Because nobody knew what you had been through,’ says Grazia sadly.
‘You weren’t able to feel anger because you couldn’t get angry in real life. You suppressed it, squashed it down,’says Rose. ‘Afterwards, your anger is telling the world that nobody should try to hurt you again.’
Dianne nods at this.
Grazia gets up and sits beside her. She doesn’t touch Dianne, just sits: being there.
There’s silence for a while and then Dianne takes them back over her life.
‘I feel stupid,’ Dianne says when she’s finished the story. ‘Why couldn’t I see it?’
‘The things up close to us are often very hard to focus on,’ Rose says. ‘And when that sort of abusive relationship is all you know, then it’s familiar. You know nothing else.’
Again, silence reigns.
‘I want to tell you all,’ says Keera, grinning.
She looks so vibrant, Rose thinks. Sitting there with her exquisite shaved head, her beautiful little face glowing.
‘I’m going to go back to San Francisco, see if I can get a job songwriting. I’ve got contacts, I think I can do it. The singing is too hard for me, too exposing. Some people are good at that world but I’m not ready for it again, might never be ready. There’s no point being thin, beautifully made-up and dressed up, all the outside stuff, when I’m ignoring the inside.’
She beams at them all.
‘I am anxious about facing my mother again because it’ll be a hard conversation – and she’ll go insane when
she sees that I’m not wearing my wig, but I’m ready for it. The retreat’s taught me that trying to please people all the time is a mistake. I have to unlearn people-pleasing.’
‘Which is hard,’ says Rose.
Keera nods. ‘At least I can identify when I’m doing it and ask myself why I’m doing it,’ she says. ‘I’ll know if I’m trying to make someone like me or if I’m trying to avoiddifficult conversations or whatever. That’s life-changing. Thank you, Rose.’
Everyone claps.
‘India?’ asks Rose.
‘Let’s talk about limerence,’ says India and Keera giggles. ‘I’ve never looked at why I do certain things – like why I thought I needed a man in my life, or why I thought I couldn’t possibly have a child without a partner – I gave away all my power.’
