After all the see-sawing of emotions I had been totally unaware of, the final surprise was what came next — the silence. In that immensity and intensity of whatever this was about, it silenced me, and I had no words.
So I painted. And painted. And painted. And gradually, a few words seeped out.
Painting by author
I guess I expected that, like after Dad’s death, I would feel relief…or maybe more correctly, peace and serenity, given how it all ended.
While his aftermath was the relief of a threat finally extinguished, hers was the completion of caregiving done honorably. Though we parted with many unresolved things, I felt such peace at her transformation at the end…a kind of redemption from the rest of her life.
So I expected something more like: “It is done.” With both parents gone, and it being the end of that whole era, I should be able to “get over it,” “move on,” and “leave the past behind.” All those things people say, as if just the fact it is finally done means it is “over.” But nothing was further from the truth.
Instead, there was an intense explosion of a whole mess of emotions, ranging from love and grief, compassion and confusion, to anger, disappointment, abandonment, and back again to grief.
(more…)
In my first “baseline reading,” I spoke of emotional flashbacks. But, another fairly frequent “trauma companion” is nightmares. I’ll share more about them later, but as part of this “baseline,” I will give some background here.
While decades of therapy have healed much, nightmares still show up fairly often. Having dealt with them for years, I am *almost* used to them — at least most of the time. And generally, I shed their emotional upsets pretty quickly. In fact, in some of my recent ones, I even show up more as a fighter now than as that victim from the past. So, I guess that is progress.
But sometimes a nightmare will come along that can still blindside me with an emotional knock-out punch. That’s an indication that there is something I still need to work on because nightmares reveal where the heart is still bleeding.
Yesterday I set up travel plans for us to go to visit our son in Savannah to celebrate my 70th birthday. Now it should be a short story — decide to go, settle the dates, make travel and hotel reservations, and then go and have a wonderful time. Yes. Maybe for many, that is the way it works. But…
For years I have struggled to “ask,” whether it be for help, for something I want, for some I need. It’s taken years but I am getting better at it. Yet even when I can now ask, I still struggle to feel I “deserve.”
So it was no small thing for me to say that I wanted this trip for my birthday. In fact, it was a major victory. I wasn’t interested in presents or big parties, just being with my immediate family — my treasure in life. But about that whole “I deserve” thing….
(more…)This blog shares excerpts of my draft memoir — working title: “I Thrive.” While not graphic, it will discuss aspects of the sexual, physical, and emotional abuse I endured and my journey back to healing…and thriving.
Memoir expert and author Marion Roach Smith described the genre of memoir this way:
“Memoir is not about you. It’s about something and you are its illustration.”
Another author, Trish Lockard, added that this genre is not just a recounting of things that happened to you because, after all — “Stuff happens to everybody.” Instead, memoir captures one’s reflections about an event when enough time has passed for a change, a transformation, to take place. Those insights gained over time through effort are the gift to the reader—the takeaway.
To only write a list of everything done to you in life without the reflections is like dumping a pile of ingredients on the counter and calling it a cake. It is only a cake when that pile of ingredients has gone through the crucible of a hot oven and been transformed into the real takeaway — dessert. Only then does it have “purpose and meaning.”
I loved how one author, whose name I cannot find, summed it up:
“Don’t just confess. Digest.”
Digestion is change and makes something useful…nutritious. It gives back. And digestion is the unfinished business of my life.
After seven decades of silence, it is time for me to look back, digest the raw material of my life, and obtain the nutrition— the insights that give it meaning. It is not: “Look at what was done to me” so much as the answers to the questions: “Because of what was done, what am I doing with it? What does it mean?” So, my life will be the illustration of that “something” that might have meaning and nutrition for all.
“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid one hundred days of sorrow.”
Chinese Proverb
“Kindness”
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Soul Mosaic 