This image shows the front of a brick building with the words “Caro Center” displayed prominently on the façade.
A colleague and I are currently driving around the “Thumb” region of Michigan, doing an outreach tour for the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. During our time, we stopped by the Caro Center in Caro, Michigan. Right now, this place isn’t being used at all, though most recently it was a psychiatric hospital. There are plans now to rebuild it for that type of care once more, but in a caring, up-to-date way.
But this is not how this place originated. In 1914, this location opened as the Farm Colony for Epileptics and later was renamed the Caro State Home for Epileptics. Here, people, including children, lived apart from their families, and in the early days, without any of the forms of treatment we now know. But much worse, in an era when the eugenics movement was underway in the United States, people with epilepsy were forcibly sterilized here under Michigan’s laws, and those laws existed from 1914 through the 1960s.
As we made our stop, we honored these members of our community, pondered their lives, and found ourselves grateful to live in a time when much as changed.
But with this history in our country, taking place not only in Michigan but many places, marginalization and isolation still remains for many people who are living with epilepsy. We work still to make those changes.
Image Description: Trees in a forest with shared roots visible on the surface of the ground. Red, fallen leaves from autumn are interspersed among the roots. Photo, Renee Roederer.
Show your roots — Make known the ones who named you (the truest you) Make known the ones who shaped you (the still becoming you) Live roots made visible.
The love, The care, The nurture, The belonging.
The wholeness, of every community, of every neighbor, of every parent, of every friend, of every guide,
The comic is made up of five panels, featuring simple, playful drawings of trees and forest creatures, with text integrated into the panels. The art style is bright and cheerful, with cartoonish, friendly expressions on the characters.
Panel 1: A group of green pine trees are standing together, smiling with closed eyes. The background is simple with some grass, and the sky is a soft light blue. The text reads, “There are moments that divide your life into ‘before.'”
Panel 2: The same scene now looks drastically different. One of the pine trees is now a small, sad-looking stump with a tiny sprout growing beside it. The surrounding ground is barren with a few logs and pieces of chopped wood. The text says, “and ‘after.'”
Panel 3: A new green tree, with broad leaves and a smiling face, stands tall on the right side of the panel. It appears to have grown from the sprout in the previous panel. The background is sparse with minimal grass and no other trees around. The text states, “No matter how much time passes, things will never be the same.”
Panel 4: On the left side of the panel, a single tear falls from the face of a tree as it gazes at a thought bubble filled with a memory of the “before” scene from Panel 1, showing the group of pine trees. The tree looks sad and contemplative. The sky is slightly grayer. The text reads, “It’s ok to miss the safety of ‘before,’ and to question why something so awful happened…”
Panel 5: In this final, brighter scene, a large, leafy tree with a content smile dominates the frame. It has grown into a fully developed tree with vibrant green foliage. An owl is perched on one of its branches, and a squirrel is smiling, holding an acorn nearby on the ground. A bird is flying in the background. The tree looks peaceful and happy. The text concludes, “but leave room in your heart for the biggest question: What will you do with your ‘after?'”
In the bottom-right corner, there is a small signature: “@introvertdoodles.”
The overall message of the comic revolves around the emotional journey of change and healing after a significant loss or life event, with the theme of growth and transformation.
In times of high stress and collective trauma (we’ve lived a lot of that in the last… at least 8 years) sometimes older narratives of stress and trauma get pulled to the surface too. We might be aware that these are getting triggered. Or we might be less aware.
It’s helpful to bring these to awareness. As therapist Margaret Foley says, “If we have unprocessed material deep inside, we have two choices. We talk it out, or we act it out. We reenact what we have not resolved.”
These unresolved reenactments can become large narratives in our present-moment lives, but they are out of place and out of time. Or they might weave within our present-moment situations. Have you ever felt that your reaction to a present challenge is a bit oversized and disproportionate to the moment? Older stories and older emotions might be getting triggered too.
Within all of this, sometimes we look for people — close loved ones (frequent) or people of less personal significance (less risky) to play roles in our reenactments. We cast them as characters in the drama, and they serve as placeholders to hold these stories. They become containers to store our old emotions. But this can really harm relationships too.
Common containers include:
The role of the rescuer.We cast people as characters to save us. We want to be seen in our vulnerability (valid) but become dependent upon others for our feelings of safety. We externalize that need because we struggle to feel safe internally.
The role of the villain. We cast people in the character of scapegoat, attempting to funnel our pain into them and send them off. This is really an attempt to rid ourselves of our own anger and pain.
The role of the stand-in. We cast people into the character of a significant person in our lives. We begin to engage this person with the emotions we actually have for our mother, or father, or sister, or brother, or estranged friend, or person we miss, or person who wounded us.
I speak about all of this as a care-worker. I see this happening so frequently in this era of time. This comes from a natural place of wanting to heal pain, and it makes sense for this to happen after years of collective trauma. Of course, this would unearth old narratives. I also speak about this as person who lives in this era of time, witnessing and feeling my way through all of these things too. The challenge is, people aren’t asking to find themselves in the cast list of our internal storylines — unless, they themselves, are reenacting their own traumas by stepping into these roles too (that happens also!)
We can add care to others, but we aren’t rescuers.
We can make mistakes, but we aren’t villains.
We can care about the emotions people have for significant individuals in their lives, but we can’t become the stand-ins for those particular people.
This might bring some initial relief, but it also doesn’t work. We have to actually process the unprocessed material and storylines.
That’s the harder, but more life-giving work. Sending care to all of that.
My Mom called yesterday, and when I picked up the phone,
right after
“Hi, Mom,” “Hi, Renee,”
She added,
“I want to tell you a joke.”
Already, I laughed. I wasn’t expecting that. We had just talked two days ago when she asked me excellent questions about my recent travels, and we texted yesterday about a kayaking trip I took down my local river.
“What do you call an elephant that doesn’t matter?”
“Ooh, I know this… I used to have it on a t-shirt… Irrelephant!”
“Oh, shoot,” she said, because she wanted to introduce this to me. I reassured her that this was completely delightful. She thought I was talking about the joke. But I knew I was talking about the call.
Smuggling Grace 