Writing with Gold Coins

Prompt: rewards for the reader – something bright

The first time I met Mary Goulding she was standing at the far end of the swimming pool at the Coyote house, wearing a bath towel and looking startled. Mary Edwards (then) and her partner, Dr. Bob Goulding, who was similarly attired, disappeared for a few minutes, and reappeared wearing casual clothing.

Little did I know that Mary would become one of my most beloved teachers, strongest supporters, role models, friends, and mentors.On that day during our 1968 summer in Carmel California for Jon’s TA training, I had no idea of what was to come.

That night, when I returned to pick up Jon, I had the eerie experience of driving on dark rural roads with my almost 2-year-old old son asleep on the back seat, listening to a report on a riot in my hometown, Chicago, outside the Democratic national convention. I kept thinking about the War of the Worlds broadcast. This couldn’t possibly be real.

A few weeks later I attended the fateful TA conference that completely changed the direction of my life, but it wasn’t until two years later that Mary invited me to remove my own bathing suit and experience skinny-dipping for the very first time at a different swimming pool. This time it was at the property that she and Bob had just purchased at Mount Madonna which was to become the scene of so much of my future growth.

My parents were caring for our almost 4-year-old son and-year-old daughter back in Denver while we attended the 1970 conference in Carmel together. This was the first conference that occurred a few months after Eric Berne’s death. I was attending as a clinical members wife and trainee. This was also the conference where I heard Jacqui Schiff’s invitation to visit her program in Virginia.

I had spent the past two years learning as much TA as I could by whatever means possible both in Chicago and in Denver. In Denver, we were actively nurturing a TA Study group since we moved there in August, 1969.

In January 1972, before our first TA Winter conference hosted by the Denver area TA community (DATAS), I attended a multi-day workshop with Bob and Mary and experienced their teaching and supervision of practice groups for the first time. She apparently picked me out of the group as someone with potential. I continued to encounter her at summer and winter conferences.

At that 1972 winter conference I tried and failed to pass my clinical TA exam and was offered a Limited Clinical membership due to my very real lack of clinical diagnostic information. I cured that problem and passed the clinical exam eight months later in August, 1972 while helping teach the 101 exam at the conference. Back in Denver I started officially training other professionals in TA.

In the summer of 1973 Mary invited one of our Institute staff to help at a program at Mount Madonna that was helping trainees prepare for their clinical exams. I didn’t know I was being evaluated and simply enjoyed a fabulous week of learning and teaching and meeting people who became lifelong friends. And I went skinny-dipping again, a privilege reserved for the staff, not the participants! One evening, sitting with a group in the Mt. Madonna living room, Mary ordered me to get my Masters degree and told me whom to contact at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco.

A few months later Mary invited me to join the prestigious training and standards committee of the organization. I believe I was the first person on that committee who was not already a Teaching Member of the organization.

From then on the visits to Mount Madonna were too numerous to track.

On a trip to California to join the Masters degree program set up by Mary’s introduction, I remember meeting with Mary before a flickering fire. I was getting ready to take my Teaching Member certification exam and she decided to review my files.. She read what she called a “nasty letter” from someone she interpreted as being unhappy about my being too powerful for a woman and competing with him. She tossed the letter into the fire and I watched it char to ashes.

A few months later she was on one of my teaching exam boards, helped me relax, and affirmed that “yes, she is a re-decision therapist.” Re-decision is Bob and Mary’s brand, and I had stumbled over the question because I had been deviating from that methodology. So I was thrilled to be affirmed that way. I passed my boards in August 1974 and became a full-fledged grown-up in the organization, a Teaching Member.

Other encounters were so frequent and impactful that only a few standout in my memory.

Mary and Bob started the first meeting of ISSIP, the International Society for The Study Innovative Psychotherapies, at Mount Madonna in 1982 or 1983. One of those ISSIP meetings was where I got detailed information about how to write a book proposal. I simply sat in the corner as Muriel James explained the process to Ruth McClendon and Les Kadis.

Mary, speaking at the summer conference when the organization voted to censor Jackie Schiff, accepting responsibility for not calling attention to problems much earlier.

Mary speaking to our trainees and others in our Institute in Littleton. Someone gave a long-winded statement about his position on something before asking “what should I do?” Mary immediately said, “masturbate” which was a perfect description of what he had been symbolically doing. Shocked silence for a moment and then giggles.

Jon couldn’t come to the summer ITAA conference or ISSIP meeting in 1983 because he was in the Burklyn business school. He didn’t get to go tubing, bumping down some California river with the group. Rachel was 14 and came with me. During the ISSIP meeting, she “got” Bob and Mary, people she’d known since she was three. She told me, “Mom, they really are very special, aren’t they?”  Yes!

Walking through the shallow water with Mary and other women on the beach at Mazatlan at another, pre-conference, ISSIP meeting.

Mary in her her San Francisco apartment after Bob’s death.

Using what I knew about publishing to help Mary find a way to publish her final book without going through a traditional publisher, in Oaxaca Mexico.

Mary’s final letter, written to everyone who loved her, when she knew she was dying.

So many gifts from this incredible woman.