Interim Pacific Resident Shares a Healing Story that Inspires Others to Reveal Their Personal Experiences

By Pauline Masson – Pacific has a temporary resident who has a moving story to tell.

The power of story telling changed Gail Barber’s life, but not the way you might think. She was persuaded to tell the story of childhood trauma as a way to heal. And it worked.

A horrendous beating by a relative when she was seven years old plagued her life with recurring nightmares and fainting spells. Through teen years, college and early adulthood, she never told anyone what she had experienced. When she married, she told her husband Jerrie, but no one else. Finally, at age 43, as the. nightmares worsened and the fainting became more frequent, she finally told the story of her broken childhood to a gentle therapist and the nightmares ended.

To continue the healing process, she told her story to groups of women. What came in the place of nightmares was the fascination of story telling, but not just her story. As she revealed the details of a broken childhood her story became a magnet drawing personal stories from others.

“I can tell you that if you are in a room of fifty people and tell your story, someone in that room will have a story they want to tell,” she said.

She has listened to hundreds of stories from women who struggled with memories never before revealed.

“The stories were frequently about violence, like mine, incest and even murder,” she said. “They were moved by the promise of healing to tell what had happened to them.”

Gail and her husband Jerrie have taken up temporary residence on North Payne Street in Pacific where Jerrie serves a “Between,” pastor at Pacific Church of Christ, 112 North Payne while the church searches for a permanent pastor to replace Rev. Kendall Fox, who resigned last year.

Jerrie is a traveling preacher with Between Preachers who serves churches while they find a new permanent pastor.

Before serving in five full time congregations, the couple of 58 years, began their nomad life traveling from congregation to congregation fifteen years ago. They have lived temporarily communities in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee. Pacific is their ninth temporary home.

When a preacher stays a long time, usually the church doesn’t like the next preacher.” Jerrie said. “I volunteer to be the next preacher they don’t like. During the six to eighteen months Gail and I work with them, they have time to grieve their losses and wisely select their next preacher.”

My husband Bob I met Gail and Jerrie last week at the Tri County Senior Center. When they sat down at our table, I casually asked where they were from and the story poured out.

Gail did not set out to turn story telling into an avocation. At first, she was was shy about revealing such personal things about herself. But what kept her retelling her story was that the healing process grew with each telling.

So when her listeners wanted to share their stories she got caught up in a magical world of talking and listening where just saying out loud who we are can help us see the beauty of life, free of old hurts and trauma.

Gail is a quiet lady who tells her story in a soft even voice. She laughs a lot as she recalls her journey from tragedy to peace of mind.

She shared another little tidbit of magic with us. She and Jerrie have become our neighbors. Pacific Church of Christ sets back from the street behind our house on Payne Street. Gail walks frequently in the large church parking lot where she became acquainted with our 18-month old Great Pyrenees pup Sugar.

Sugar is huge, even for a Pyrenees, well over 100 pounds. And she is loud.

She patrols the fence line of our yard and gives out a huge echoing bark when anyone appears in the church parking lot or the school district office lot next door. I haven’t come up with a command that can quiet her so sometimes after a marathon barking spree I bring her in so she won’t annoy the neighborhood.

Gail told me Sugar would follow her each time she walked along the parking lot fence line, raising cane with every step. Gail tried to talk to her but Sugar’s response was a louder bark. Then in her best school teacher inspiration, Gail leaned toward the huge white dog and said “Shhh Shhh.” And Sugar fell silent.

It seemed like magic to me.