Thursday's Thought

 

Grappling with Grief

...what you actually lost was your innocence. Letting yourself grieve that loss is the only way to get to the other side of the trauma... Grief happens in spasms. It's like giving birth: You're giving birth to a new self. At the height of labor, you'll have 90 seconds of agony followed by 30 seconds of relief. Interestingly they call that period transition. That's what you're going through...
~Martha Beck, from May 2019 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

When I first read mention of betrayal as trauma, I was surprised, even as it rang true for me. Trauma felt so dramatic. What I was experiencing, I thought, was a story as old as time. A philanderer for a husband. Weren't women supposed to either kick him out, if they were renegades, or suck it up, if they were doormats? I had put myself in that latter category. Though not so much pathetic as exhausted. Too exhausted to make a choice. And, I was beginning to allow myself to believe, too traumatized. 
Seeing betrayal through the lens of trauma helped me make sense of so much of what I was experiencing. It explained why I had to fight the desire, biking along city streets, to turn my wheel into traffic. It explained the heart-pounding terror when my husband was even five minutes later than I expected him home. It explained the hands shaking, the vision blurring, all these extreme physical symptoms of...what exactly? Why was this pain so visceral? Trauma. That's why. Trauma
Reframing my betrayal as trauma also gave me something else. Permission to be gentle with myself. An understanding that I hadn't asked for any of this, that I didn't deserve this pain. I was experiencing trauma, I would remind myself, when I couldn't muster the strength to go the grocery store. I was grappling with trauma, I told myself, when I finally caved to my therapist's urging to try anti-anxiety medication. 
And within that understanding, I could begin to grieve, which, as Martha Beck points out, is the only way to the other side of trauma.
I wish I could tell you there is a shortcut. But the only shortcut I know is to walk through the fire. Trying to go around it just prolongs the pain or pushes it underground. The only way out is through. 
Martha Beck is right. You are giving birth. To a new you. To a new reality. And birth is a painful beautiful process. Brutiful, as Glennon Doyle calls  it. The brutal transforms the beautiful, she says, and the beautiful transforms the brutal. 
A whole lot of us feel stuck in the brutal right now. The beautiful shimmers like a mirage. We don't trust it to be real, whether in the past or the future.
But on the other side of grief, beyond the trauma, the beautiful exists. Not exclusively, of course. The rest of your life will never be all good, or all bad, all beautiful, or all brutal. It will, like any life, be a mix. But beauty will be a part of it. Not in spite of what you've gone through but because of it.

Becoming Beautiful Through Suffering

And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. ‘I can care for myself, please,’ and she set about getting some food. They watched her closely. 
In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, and an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering.
~William Goldman, The Princess Bride

I've been listening to the Love Rice podcasts. Scabs, who hosts Love Rice, is a longtime BWC sister-warrior. The episode was about turning grief to beauty and at the end, Scabs recites the above passage from The Princess Bride.
I felt that ripple of recognition. Of knowing these words to be true. 
Because suffering changes us. And paradoxically it changes us into a deeper beauty. At those times when we feel most alone, there are millions suffering too. And when we reach out to those who are suffering, to say "me too", to say "I feel it too", to say "you are not alone", then we create a beauty that transcends. 
I remember looking in the mirror when I was in my deepest pain and my eyes held an ocean of sadness. There was no armour. There was only me. 
I hated my husband for turning me into this person with such raw pain in my eyes. Where was the light? Where was the laughter? The joy?
I want you to look in the mirror too. To look straight into your eyes. It might feel really difficult but do it anyway  You will see your sadness. You will see your stripped-of-armour vulnerability. Don't turn away. Keep looking into those eyes and you will see something else. You will see beauty. You will see the heart of someone who has felt suffering and is in the process of turning it into something else. A thing of strength. A thing of power and compassion. A thing of beauty.
Be patient with yourself and others. Be compassionate with yourself and others. Let the alchemy within your heart do its transformational work.
The laughter has returned to my eyes. The joy. But there is something else too. There is someone who has known suffering. There is a heart that recognizes your suffering, that feels it too. A heart that understands that our suffering is connected. 
And it has made me beautiful.

Grief is Not About Giving Up But Giving In

"The other thing I know now is that we survive grief merely and surely by outlasting it – the ongoing fact of the narrative eclipses the heartbreak within..."Gail Caldwell, New Life, No Instructions

Tim Lawrence's recent post has gone viral. Lawrence wrote about how everything doesn't happen for a reason, something most of us know all too well. 
We know that sometimes life sucker punches us. But we also know that, even though we think our husband's affair was the worst thing that could happen to us, we can learn from pain. Even if the something we learn is the human spirit's ability to survive things we didn't think were survivable. And that our ability to refrain from justifiable homicide is awe inspiring.
Tim Lawrence makes the point that, when we're brought to our knees by heartbreak of any kind, the only sane response is grief. It's a point I frequently make too, such as here. And here. 
It's not a popular opinion to hold. We don't like grief. Grief feels passive and there's little our culture hates more than passivity. We like a can-do attitude. We like stories of triumph over adversity. We want heroes. And we want those heroes to be fierce and formidable.
Grief? That's for old women who wear black. For those who've given up.
Right?
Wrong.
Grief is a recognition of our pain, an acknowledgement of our loss. In a culture that offers myriad ways to insulate ourselves from this pain – from drugs to sex to food to cat videos on YouTube – just sitting with it is heroic. And sitting with another in her pain, without trying to fix or reduce it or somehow control it – is downright revolutionary.
We can't fast-track grief. There's no going over it or under it or around it. Those who try will find grief emerges in strange places, baffling us with tears when we think we're happy. Or numbing us from feeling anything at all. 
Grief is a shape-shifter and only when we give in to it do we begin to recognize the many forms it takes. Sometimes tears, sometimes laughter, sometimes a belief that nothing matters, other times a conviction that everything does. And always a deep crack in our hearts.
But to give in to it is also where healing takes root. Tiny seeds of compassion and wisdom are sown in the fertile soil of our pain and nourished with our tears. The day will come – I promise – when the dark cloud of grief becomes the sunlight toward which our healing bends. If we have shown ourselves compassion for our grief, we become better able to extend that compassion to others. If we have been gentle with ourselves in our grief, we become better able to be gentle with others. If we have been merciful with ourselves, we are better able to show mercy to others. Grief has softened us even as it as strengthened.
We haven't outwitted grief, or outsmarted it. But we have endured it. And our life goes on.
What this means for you is that this is going to be a long road. But here you will find those who understand your grief and feel no need to transform it. It's enough to be with you in your grief, and for you to join us in ours.