Author: Gail Shurtleff

Gail Shurtleff is a California-licensed marriage and family therapist residing in the Netherlands, where she is registered as a clinical psychologist. She also authors "The Gift of Being Heard" blog, where she explores trauma and grief (including the experience of losing her husband, Jon, to suicide from bipolar disorder), the spiritual journey, disability, and life.

Dotted Trauma

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath

Before I move forward, here are numbers for the year of Jon’s death by suicide. According to the WHO, there were approximately 817,000 deaths by suicide in 2016. I am a survivor of a loved one’s suicide, and I’m an expatriate who resides in the EU. This post is about how grief shuts us down, and then slowly turns the lights on in our lives—again. This is a post about dots.

In the 1990’s it was a pretty dress with blue and white dots that I loved to wear. The white top with blue dots sparkled, and the skirt, with its reversal of blue and white dots, delighted me.

In the late 2000’s it was a brown and white dress with a small sash that made me smile. I wore that one until it needed to see other uses.

This past weekend I ordered a new dress with dots. It came about because a friend of mine has such a dotted dress, and she said that I needed to order one myself. I think my joy over seeing her in the dress caused her to tell me to order such a dress myself. I had not thought of acquiring a new dress of joy. The fact is, suicide can shut a person down. It is a different flavor of death and grief. My brain lay dormant for ten years of grief. Gail wasn’t functioning as Gail once did, and the joy of the dots got wiped out. Think of it as a functional shutdown that allows the person to look as if it is all going well. The machine works but not as well as it could. It is why I shut down fully for several years and didn’t work as a therapist. You don’t work with people when your head isn’t all present. Sometimes it’s a day, and at other times it is longer.

My shutdown experience may be similar to others, or it may differ greatly.

First off, there are no rules in grief; there is only what you need to feel, and the rest can be set aside until you need to revisit the feelings. This kind of death and loss sends you to places that no one should have to go to, and yet, in order to get through it, you must go there. You must be willing to face a rawness in your life and come out on the other side of the tunnel that carries you underground. You will cross Styx and come out on a new shore, and just when you think you are safe from it all, you will wake up to a new realization: trauma. You didn’t see this coming because, unlike your typical death and grief, there aren’t liminal spaces in this type of death. Unlike the death bubble that hosts the liminal space, you can’t hop back on the conveyor belt of life and treat life as if there haven’t been radical changes. This time, someone in your life decided that they were going to exit, and they succeeded. In 2016 I became one of the people that entered into this place due to the loss of a loved one. And so, like with other forms of traumatic and unexpected death, those of us who encounter this hard place must settle in for a long and not-so-cozy journey. This is about navigating the river of life and being willing to explore new environs. The good thing about this is that each time you explore the new places in your soul, you get new skills and a sleeker boat that you can navigate with. It is true that no matter where the water is, there will be rapids, and learning to run them is rewarding. Yes, it is painful, and grief is not for wimps. But it is worth it!

It has been said that death rearranges the address book. In suicide, death alienates the address book. It is not just about people not knowing what to say: it is that the unthinkable happened, and now a hard reality besets the survivor(s). For me, I was well aware that my husband could end it all. What I was not aware of was how different this type of death experience is. The shocker was that I didn’t see it coming until after it had happened, and before I found the note on the dining table. By the time I found the note, I had a feeling he was going to do it—he ended it all before I could find him to stop him. He made sure of that.  

The next hours and days were a blur, and it has taken some two years of therapy to reconstruct this trauma. It hasn’t been easy or pretty. It took me admitting that I was dealing with PTSD, and being able to let go and trust the competent therapist I found to do what he does so well. It has been worth the painful periods I’ve had to face.

And so, I shut down to pretty dresses and dots. The dots faded away in my mind, and I forgot about the happiness that wearing dots brings to my heart. A wall of the mind took its place as if the real Gail wasn’t ever there, and this person who was there wasn’t the fully complete Gail. For ten years she has slept. Now, I am awake, and I’ve arisen from a slumber that I didn’t know how to deal with. I have dealt with a death by suicide and will continue to be aware of how his death has affected me.  

All things said, this type of grief journey is a cycle. Sometimes the thing needs to be said in ten million different ways, until the one time we really hear it, surprise! It is like we experience it as a fresh and new discovery. Whatever past grief collective there is, they are laughing at us for the millionth time as we “discover” again what hasn’t stuck. Maybe, they all say, she’ll get it this time. Grief is like spiral dynamics. We discover and loop through it on a new level.

Grief can shut the mind down. It can shut the soul down. What some experience doesn’t have words, and it is as if there is an unspoken code that says that yes, I’ve travelled the path, and yes, we’re in a strange group of people. Only we know this because you can’t always put words to the experience. Sometimes the words do make it out, and when they do, you say them.

Coming out of where I’ve been will be my story alone. I claim the trauma, and I claim the healing. Yes, I was one of 817,000. We haven’t all been down the same grief path.  

From Survival Clothes to Comfy Coats

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

In the US it’s a zipper; the UK calls it a zip; and here in the Netherlands it is called a ritz. Well, the thing broke on my warm coat that I have worn for over ten years. I was told that I could replace the zipper, zip, or ritz, and the warm, dark-blue coat could continue on for many years. I got to thinking that maybe it was time for a new color. The hunt began, and I found something pretty that will last at least ten years. This time I’ll be in lavender.

The old winter jacket had a double zipper. I loved it, and it also could snap in! I must have put the zipper into the coat incorrectly because it got stuck in a royal way. I’ll have the new lavender version in two weeks. It has to come from the US.

This has made me think about things.

I’m one of those people who loves her clothes, and I’ll wear them forever. The last round of purchases I’ve come to think of as survival clothes. I purchased the stuff after Jon’s death. Now, as 2026 rolls into full bloom, I’m finding that I need to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. It’s kind of like the fluffy towels; I just took a wee bit longer to arrive at this point. This is going to cost me somewhat more than the towels. I’m still liking my towels, so, it is all good.

This time I’m not caring for Jon. This time I’m not in survival mode, and this time I can take my time thinking it through. I realize that I’ll need to write a new “Please Do” post. There are things on the “do” list that I didn’t know then, and that I can now talk about because, as time passes, new things that we might not view as essential come to the forefront.

As I’ve worked through the trauma of Jon’s death and developed a crush on the iceberg, I’ve learned a new form of self-care. I don’t know if it is the grief or the trauma that we can encounter that causes us to not care for ourselves in healthy ways. I think it may be both, and I also believe that it depends on the person. Whatever it is, look out for yourself!

What Version of Death Are You Living With?

There are all kinds of ways to die. As loved ones and family and friends, the versions are many.

My grandmother died in her bed as she drifted off for an afternoon nap. My father slipped away quietly in a hospital bed. His body shut down fighting stomach cancer. He woke up for a minute and my mother told him that it was the thirteenth, and he got on with the business of dying. My mother died quietly in a hospital room, after a heart attack. For the most part, all three of the deaths were peaceful instead of traumatic. The deaths filled with trauma took longer to process, and different types of emotions surfaced, depending on the person and how they died.

I’ve said it here and will continue to say it: THERE IS NOT AN INCORRECT WAY TO GRIEVE, as long as you grieve when you are able to grieve. A decade out of losing Jon, I’ve discovered so much. There is now only moving forward. What a journey! This post is a delightful thing to write because I’ve done some deep soul work. The fact is that when I started out on this path, I was on a road that I had never walked before. Yes, I’d done family and friends’ deaths, but this one has been completely different. My sister died violently as the cancer ate away at her body. My brother slipped away, with Covid being one of the things that caused his death. All things considered, my mother died a peaceful death after her heart attack. Somehow, it was my mother’s death that hit me the hardest. It hadn’t been six months since Jon’s leaving, and I didn’t fly to her funeral. I let my family talk me out of the flight. I should have flown over for it.

I believe that being at a service for those you love helps the process along. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

This new fluffy coat is going to rock my world. So is all the healing from trauma, and what it brings. It is a new season and time in my life. I’ve done well finding my way on this journey. I should be proud of all of this. I’m happy with where I’m headed and give credit where credit is due. Nah, it’s the fluffy lavender jacket.

Exiting the Box (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys

This post was originally published on March 18, 2024.

I was raised in a high-demand religion that placed me in a box. When you’re young, you only sense that something is off, and it was my nature to knock down barriers. Boxes are barriers, and so it began at a young age, the push–pull of trying to walk the line, yet break free of the box. The breaking out was needful, and the process almost broke me.

Breaking free is a process that takes time, knowledge, exploration, and courage. How many of us realize that we each live in a box? Our boxes are made up of different restrictions, in or out of high-demand religions and other groups. It takes strength to knock walls down. It takes strength to call it out when others remain silent. I discovered that it was lonely being the only one in the room who understood that I was trapped. It was lonely not being able to put the pieces together at a young age. It took so much time to fully connect the dots.

I’ve been knocking walls down since my adolescence. I must admit that I wouldn’t know how to live a life without breaking personal barriers, and if it helps others I’ll bring them along. I’ve spoken about this in the sledgehammer piece I wrote. I think over what I’ve done, and I want to share more. How did I find the courage to move to a new place in life?

When I look back at all of this, I’m caught up in the WOW of it all, and I think back to how I navigated the choppy parts of the river. Who was in my boat? People who were living outside of the box I’d been in. At first I didn’t understand this. The further I moved away from what had been, the more I understood out-of-the-box thinking in real time. Being in the box won’t free you to do the thinking you must do outside of the box. First you must get out!

The people outside the box enabled me to leave the bench I was sitting on and move forward. I’ll admit that this process has been both velvet in its feel and scary as I’ve crossed into the underworld and new territory.

Leaving the box causes others in the box to not understand why you would choose to leave the secure space. In my boxed situation, I was told not to “leave the boat,” and I was asked where I would go if I left the boat. I jumped into the water and into the waiting dinghy that was there for me. As I rowed into new, warmer waters, I discovered that there was new growth and so many new places to explore! What an expansive universe I lived in!

I found myself discovering so many new things! The current was swift, and as I stretched myself to learn and to ask new questions, I grew in ways that I never thought I could. Over fifty years spent in a box, and while I mourned, I also moved on. I must also admit that Jon’s suicide was a catalyst for personal growth. How could it not be a process of moving me forward? I wasn’t willing to roll over and play dead.

I discovered that it was time to put the sledgehammer away, and to discover more peaceful means of breaking down walls and moving forward. I was truly sad about stowing the sledge, as it had been a lifelong companion. I was comfortable with it, and I understood the sledge’s use, and there were better ways of creating change.

My soul work moved me forward. I now find myself in a place of peace and contentment, and it’s weird because I never imagined myself in this place. In the box, this was not possible. Outside of the box, it is doable. I think the difference is that I’ve discovered more of who* I am, what the world is all about, and that I’m finding lots of wonderful new ways of looking at everything I encounter.

While my exit from the box was velvet in its nature, it did cause me great pain. There are people who have turned their backs on me, and they’ve walked away. There are others who won’t talk about the hard things. You know—the things that really need to be said. In the box, people can’t go to these places. How I long for people I have known to go to the harder places! The price we pay for breaking ourselves out of the box is the loss of people we thought were friends. So, we must grieve again.

I’ve found that the the grief process here is no different from other grief, and that the “please do” that must be a part of our process in the exit is a major must. This is a lonely process, and it is often one that is done alone because our new village might not understand what we need in our lives.

The box I was in taught me some good things. It taught me to give to others, and to do it when it might not always be convenient. It taught me to listen to myself, and that enabled me to “jump ship” and get out of there. Who I was, and who I am, was not to be found in the tiny box.

I move on, forward, into the unknown, which is exciting, wonderful, and scary. It never ends, this discovery business. I wonder what I’ll learn around the next bend?

Goodbye, Again

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

I don’t say goodbye well. It isn’t that I can’t; it’s that I will always remember. I’ll remember the place and the clothes I was wearing. I’ll remember the time of day. Now, it seems that 2026 is a year to let go of the old and welcome the new. It is a bittersweet time of my life.

And so it is with grief. We move forward into new discoveries. What I once struggled to part with is now back in a decade of dust just like the dust that a car makes on an unpaved road.

Last night I said a difficult goodbye to a leadership position that I’ve held for eight years. I’m saying goodbye because I’m moving forward. I’m headed into an unknown, and hopefully good, place where I’ll serve others in new ways. Goodbye was hard, and after I said the words and left the meeting, I sat on my wonderful bed, and I let the tears come. It seems as if clearing the battlement, and realizing that I don’t need to engage the iceberg as I once did, enabled the tears I once might have not shed to come freely.  

It seems to me that, like the seasons, I’ve moved in time and understanding. I now have the option of questioning what I’m ready for as I move along my new path of life.

As I think back on the winter of grief, tears form, and I recall the pain of wondering if the tears and the heartache would ever end. I listened to the voices of others who said that, yes, the tears would change, and the quality of the tears would be different. Then I became one of those voices. The day came when I noticed that the tears had faded into the past. “Goodbye, I love you” could be said in a different way. That was the season of autumn, with its rich colors and flavors. It was a time of acceptance and quiet movement. Autumn speaks to my heart in many ways, and this season of grief has spoken well, and I suppose that I’ll visit this season in new ways and different times of my life.

I’m entering into a new spring! I’ve been here before. This time around it isn’t the budding of new hope: it’s the beauty and surprise of the unknown that will welcome in a place of exploration and gently move me into a summer of exploration and new life. I’ll gladly engage with this new journey! Summers are all about the work of the journey. Once again, I’ve crossed Styx. I stand on this expectant shore ready to welcome the spring and summer that will unfold for me.

I realize that the seasons of grief are not organized with one following the other. These seasons take us to where we need them to carry us, and the work that we do on our grief journey determines the season we arrive in. There are multiple seasons! 

I light my scented candle that brings the scent of water into the room. I realize I’m being called to a place along the shoreline where the river pilot waits for me. He ushers me on board the sleekest of sleek boats. Run the water with this! Whoa! I know my friend the pilot and I will navigate new waters with a new confidence. I’m sure I’ll put to shore in different seasons and head inland to explore. The pilot asks me if I remember that first running of the water. I do, and I was so scared. That old boat is somewhere off in a past that has faded into so many new discoveries. I believe the best one is that ten years ago I didn’t know I could do what I’ve done.

As I cast off into the water, I’m finding out how to welcome the new. A few years ago, I said a goodbye at Bracelet Bay in Wales. I spread ashes and cried, and a friend said a prayer. Jon’s ashes spoke to me of the place where I needed to spread them. The fine dust of life went into the water that September day. Wales has been a part of this grief process, and soon I’ll be within view of it in March as I take on a new task in my life.

I haven’t been too anxious to move things along at a rapid pace. I’ve needed to learn what the river holds, and I’ve needed to allow the gentle process of healing to glide me along the path that it holds for me.

Grief is about tears, mourning our losses, and accepting new futures. Grief is about learning to say goodbye in a thankful manner for what the journey has taught us. Grief is leaning to welcome what is new graciously.

Becoming a Peaceful Soul

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys

Dear Reader,

Last week, while sitting here in my office space working, I heard a noise from above. This noise is distinct: a dull sound resonating in the air that gets louder and stronger. It is the sound of planes flying overhead. One group, and then another followed. It’s a scary noise. Where are they headed? Most likely into harm’s way. May those pilots be kept safe. I don’t know how most of the pilots are kept safe. Sooner or later, that could easily end.

A congregant who lives in Ukraine and attends church online told us she was safe. She sounds calm, but you can’t really be fully calm in that situation. I can’t imagine her daily life as she pursues medical studies. Planes fly there too. The darkness and cold she must live with are of concern to all of us who know her. All we can do is hold out hope that she’ll survive it all. Outside my office I hear a plane passing over. Is it a peaceful flight? I hope so.

I turn on the news to see things in the US. It isn’t safe or good at all.

How do I help others to cope with the terror they are facing when they are a person of color? I check in with my clients weekly.

The real horror is that I understand that history is repeating itself. This time in a country that has never fully understood what they have had by way of safety and peace. It is now fading. All I can say is brown shirts. I think it, and I shudder. All I can think about is that piece I read about the person who was left alone when they came for him, and not one person was left to stand for him. No, not one. Are we willing to show up for those who need us?

I hold out hope that the protesters will be heard, and that they will be successful. At the same time, I pray for their safety. Protesting is dangerous work. Peaceful protesting is a skill that many are learning rapidly. I know those who are showing up, and I know that they show courage in showing up.

When things went wrong in Paris a few years ago, someone in the neighborhood lit up a peace sign. I thought that it was a nice gesture of solidarity. Would it do much? No, just that gesture of support. Now I look back on that, and I think that it was a bright beacon of support for Paris. Maybe someone saw it and took time to think about what happened in the city of lights.

What will our international gesture of understanding be for those who are having their peace stolen from them? What will the legacy of those who have been killed be? I don’t know, and so I’ll put this up, tag it, and continue to raise my voice in the only way I can. I’ll do what I can as a therapist and spiritual director. I’ll continue to ask myself and others: “Is it well with your soul?” and to nurture that safety from within. Maybe that is my role in this. I know I must sing—if only in my own home. We must overcome. I think of the verse that is in “We Shall Overcome” and understand that only truth will make us free. Joan Baez and others have rung out in quiet protest. The words sung are truth.

As I look back over my own personal work during the past three years, I think about how I was led and was able to find the right people to become a part of my life: friends and others who were willing to risk involvement as I discharged trauma. While what I did was gutsy, what the world has to do now is even more gutsy. Do we as world citizens have the courage to make peace with ourselves inside our own souls and move it out to our families, the neighborhoods, and then beyond? 

During the past few months, I’ve become a more peaceful soul, and I believe it has to do with the healing that I’ve done. It is deep soul work. I could not have foreseen this in my life. I’ll take it, and so much more.

I’ll leave this thought with you:

Breathe out the tension of hate and violence.

Breathe in the fullness that you are enough.

Breathe out what you cannot control.

Breathe in the courage to claim what you can do yourself.

Remember that it is in community that our strength is strongest.

If you need to find a professional, don’t hesitate to do so. This type of stress can be managed.

In peace and hope,

Gail

Is it Well with Your Soul?

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys

My younger brother called over the weekend. We always reminisce about what was once normal. So, today I’m in a reflective place.

I grew up in a very formal German family. That was the culture of my father’s family. I called my grandparents Grandma and Grandpa, and my aunts and uncles were “Aunt or Uncle so-and-so.” It was a matter of respect for our elders. We deferred to their seniority and never used their first name. That was a no-no! So, my brother and I wondered what has happened!

I’m wondering why the boundaries are slipping away in families, and why there is a lack of respect?

This got me thinking about how, despite the fact that more people know about boundary issues, the boundaries in family life have become more disturbed or relaxed. I’m taken back to the fact that many people no longer understand how to form healthy relationships.

We now have options. We can distance ourselves from family members, and we can claim that we’re too busy to connect. We can block those we can’t bother to connect with or completely remove them out of our lives. We no longer need to work out issues.

Now, pulling away from family isn’t new: the way, and the reasons we do it, may be far more creative now. In my family history, my own great-uncle on my father’s side pulled away. I never got to know him. We lost out.

The question becomes one of making the right call, and when ties should be severed.

Now I mention my mother. My mother’s upbringing honored her English and Welsh heritage. She wanted peace in the home.

I grew up in a family where my brother and my brother-in-law butted heads, and their arguments became very unpleasant for the rest of us. One was ultra-conservative and didn’t read both sides of the issue. The other got angry too fast. To be honest, our move to Europe solved the issue for us as a couple. Other family members withdrew from family activities.  

In sorting all of this out, I’m realizing that my upbringing failed to teach me how to deal with volatile family situations. My mother was a peacemaker. She wasn’t dysfunctional about it. She and my father were more on the neutral end of things. The problem is that when I look back, I’m not sure that our home was as peaceful as it looked from the outside. I’ve learned a few things about peace in the past few years. I attribute this learning to my own grief process, and the outcome of doing deep soul work.

The most important thing I’ve learned is that peace starts within each of us. Once we have made peace inside, we can slowly move into our homes, neighborhoods, and the wider community to build structures of peace. From that point it can radiate out further like a ripple on the water.

What does it take to first go inside, and then move outside of ourselves? I believe that if we can’t be completely honest with ourselves, we can’t be honest in other areas of our lives. We must first commit to the inner war of the soul. Some people call this shadow work. For others it is holy work. Whatever your own term for this is, it is brutal work that must be met with brutal honesty. It takes more than asking for peace, wanting peace, or hoping for peace. Peace within asks us to confront ourselves on multiple levels. How are we doing on respecting others, understanding racism, and understanding what it means to be a world citizen? How do we see poverty or domestic violence? How do we view the world we live in? A friend of mine has asked me: “Is it well with your soul?” As I reflect on this question, I believe the answer has to be that my soul is a journey in progress.

There are areas where I catch myself in thought and make notes to work on it. It starts inside.

I’m learning that peace is a complex issue. I’m understanding that my mother might have made more peace inside, but she wasn’t able to fully create this peace outside of herself. And so, undesired conversations happened in our home. The results from these conversations were understood to be destructive, and my mother could not quell the word wars at family gatherings because shutting down feelings and emotions is a form of disrespect to others. Could she have laid down the law? Yes. Would that have served peaceful purposes? Maybe. But not for my brother and brother-in-law. I don’t remember the conversations anymore. I do remember the tense, ugly feelings and emotions that played out in the room. Maybe that’s what makes world peace so hard.

The Fifth Season of Grief

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

Friday the thirteenth, 2017, I get a phone call from my sister, who tells me my mother is gone. Gone. Dead. Died, and went to heaven. Soon to be pushing up daisies. I’m numb. It’s been less than six months since Jon did the deed. I flash back to that Monday, and our phone conversation. It was the only time I had told my two siblings that something was really wrong, and to go and get my mother (who from this point on will be called Momz—Mom-zee) to the doc. True to form they ignored me. They blew it off. She lived in pain all that week.

I just knew. I always know. It is part of my Enneagram Eight makeup.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the color green. Green was my mother’s favorite color. After doing lots of reading, I’m starting to believe I’m getting a clear message from her: I’m here. Nine years out and I’m finally thinking of her. Mourning the dead happens when we can take in the information and sit with it. She’d be in her nineties now. Had she not had the heart attack on that Monday when I’d called for our normal chat, would she have lived longer?

I didn’t go to the service. Everyone said don’t come. I was still too shocked from Jon’s suicide to think it through. The heavens opened somehow, and my momz was placed into a blue casket. Had I been present, I’d have insisted on that color. Blue, lovely blue with colorful flowers. That thought took me back to my father’s death. My mother says we’ll do yellow and white flowers because those are the colors he could see with his colour blindness. I pipe up: “No! If he can really look down from heaven, he can now see all the colors.” And so, the momz did it right! And I got my two cents in over the color because, somehow, someone spoke for me.

I sit here with the blue sky, and the sun actually shining as I write this, and I think of my clients and the different types of grief they need to work through. I tell them that there isn’t a correct way to grieve. I tell them that the day my younger sister Joyce died, some of us went for pizza. The place where she died, Paradise, California—the actual spot—burned down. (See The Lost Bus on Apple TV.) That grief just hurt because I thought I’d get back there again and see that 76 gas station. I’d go up there and drive by, knowing that here was where she dropped dead in a phone booth. (It was the ’70s)

Grief is like a carefully built chain reaction of falling dominos. It creates designs that we may not expect. When we’re inside the process, we can’t see the creation or realize that, in sadness, something beautiful might spring up. We don’t see it because grief is not for wimps. The work of sifting through relationships might involve a purge involving an iceberg and a trip to your own battlement. This I learned somewhere in year three but couldn’t do it until much later in the process. If we explore our relationships effectively, they must be cleaned with powerful disinfectant. An honest look brings out the dirt of the process, and you shouldn’t go forward with a new relationship until you’ve worked through the past relationship. BUT, you say in protest there is nothing to look at, and I’m lonely and want someone new.

Here is why you clean out the old relationship: unfinished business. We all have it. The thing about looking at relationships after death that stops many from doing it is the old saying of not speaking ill of the dead. The problem with this is that in order to move forward in a healthy manner, the entire relationship needs to be sorted out.

I remember all those years ago, sitting here at my desk, looking out the window, and noticing the house across the way. The thought of holding my marriage up to the magnifying glass was a hard one, and yet, I knew that there were things I needed to address. Was I willing to do it? I had to look. And so it is with my older sister, my older brother, and my parents. We must mourn the good and the bad, because if we fail to look at it all, we cheat ourselves out of part of the process—just like the blue sky going overcast, and the sun disappearing behind the cloud cover. We must look and face our reality.

I now look at it all because, like the seasons of grief, I must encounter a new season that I’ve never thought of as a season: resolution. It is the calm after the storm. It is the time of life where we can open up our souls to the new journey of peaceful minds and hearts. The work of relationship cleansing has taken several years. Now the fallen dominos are displayed in a colorful new manner. My happy iceberg smiles at me, the castle battlement stands emptied, and I turn to face a sky that looked much like the day Jon took his own life. And I think to myself: I can deal with this sky.

Singing With One Voice

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Lately I’ve turned on the news to see more evil than good in the world. It sucks us all into a place of despair.

Grief and pain are not easy to witness, and to be honest, they cause us to question the why of it all. And so, this last week’s therapy sessions were filled with checking in with clients about how they were being affected by the needless violence occurring in the USA. How can we not cry? How can we not feel the sorrow deep in our souls?

A minister friend of mine announced on Facebook that she would hold a service so that people could gather in community on Saturday. If I were in the US, I would attend so that I could offer support to those in need. I’m here, and a good seven hours ahead, so I’ll be sleeping. I think I’ll pass on words of support anyway.

I can’t turn away from this sadness.

What do you do when the sadness becomes so intense, and the violence becomes something that we can’t ignore?

I used to swing a sledgehammer when I was younger: I put it down in exchange for a better way of resolving issues. That way is peaceful thought.

The older I get, the less I want to be reactive, and the more I’ve healed from the action on the battlement, the more my world view changes. It isn’t that I don’t want to see change: it is that I realize that I’ve screamed at enough people to know that screaming won’t fix it, and some people can’t stand conflict.

Conflict is a reality of life. Conflict pushes us into harsh realizations that change must happen in order for us to move forward. Conflict asks us to become honest with ourselves, and others. Honesty moves us forward to new understandings. Once we know a better way, we are required to follow where it leads us. To not follow it is as if we fail ourselves.

When I put the sledgie down, I didn’t turn away from the part of me that wanted to see change. I discovered that I could do things in a gentler manner. It hasn’t been easy, and I’ve messed things up more than once. Peace isn’t easy. Peace is one of the hardest things we work for, and as mentioned above: peace is not the absence of conflict. If we do it right, the hard conversations bring change and growth for everyone.

Here I sit, getting this out so that it will get posted. What’s to be done with disagreement? Ultimately, we all need to end the rhetoric, put down our words of criticism, and find the words of strength and agreement in each other.

We’ve all suffered the damage caused by the unrest in this world. We’ve all suffered the pain of loss in some form. Isn’t it time we each put down our sledgehammers, open out ears, and listen more than we speak?

I’m not wanting to recite the violence in the world that is happening right now.

I’m wanting to recognize that peace begins in our own homes and neighbourhoods. It spreads from there. Put down your sledgehammer and stop the violence with words and acts of understanding. The politicians and warriors might not get this, but you and I can! Let there be peace on this earth, and let it begin with an act of listening. This song says it well.

Let’s sing with one voice.

If it’s January, it Must Be Resolution Time (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

This post was originally published on January 2, 2023.

It is January first, and I’m getting a jump on my Monday. I’m doing it because my January third is going to be slightly cluttered with an eye appointment. Here it goes!

I was logged into Facebook to check on pages I manage and spotted people I know posting their New Year’s resolutions. It got me thinking about change, and why this stuff seldom works the way people envision resolutions working.

The first thing is, why wait for the new year? If it really needs to be done, do it now—don’t put the thing off. 

My next observation—or question—would be, Why do diets begin on Mondays? Shouldn’t they start in the mind, on the next shopping trip, or in an online order?  

My third musing would be that people make resolutions but seldom lay the groundwork to establish successful life change. How do we each lay that groundwork? What does it take to do the work that will establish change in our lives?

It begins in stages: the first stage is to come to an understanding of what the real issue is. I’ll use a diet for the example, though most any example could work. I’ll use my own diet journey.

Often a person wakes up to their personal reality, sees themselves in the mirror, and shudders at the sight that is reflected back to them. The realization of the pounds that are now present isn’t a happy one. You might have a range of clothing sizes, and some of those sizes might never be worn again. You hold on to all of the sizes in hope that “someday” you will fit into those jeans you wore fifteen years ago. I didn’t have that issue because moving to Europe is all about weight, and getting it on the boat. I had to give clothes I was wearing, and not wearing, to someone who could use them right then. I’m glad that the choice was made for me.

In 2006 I realized that I felt awful, and I didn’t like my reflection in the mirror. I felt ugly, frumpy, and unattractive. We purchased a treadmill so that I could walk inside, and I hoped that walking would help me take the weight off. Four years later my “goal” had not been achieved, and I was miserable. In 2011, after years of back pain that began in adolescence, I made the decision to have a breast reduction. That was a good choice on my part. Talking to my husband about the decision I was making was a process. He had the concern of things not turning out right. They did. The reduction enabled me to walk easily, and to feel better while doing chores. The “bench,” as I thought of it, was gone. Wow, was that a game changer! I also began to win at taking the weight off. Having a couple of kilos gone in one day gave me hope! Maybe I could do this thing.

All the tears I cried, the times when Jon had to hear me grapple with the issue that it was taking so long to drop the weight, now seem like an eternity of days gone by. That was one kind of looking and digging to get to the root cause of my food issues.

There is something to be said for feeling good, and feeling like you are winning at something you want. After a decade, I was wearing smaller sizes; I was winning the battle, or so I thought. I was doing the outer work. What about the inner work? 

My health insurance covered a dietitian, and she was helpful. It took a conversation about doctors being vigilant about the Body Mass Index (BMI) to turn the entire weight loss process around for me. Wowzah, had I fallen into a nasty trap!

I thought I’d done all the inner work as I began to understand that in my genetic heritage of deities, a love of sweets from two grandfathers and my mother had caused me to deal with sugar like alcoholics deal with a drink: one is never enough. This sent me spiraling into a new level of self-discovery. It was unbearably painful. I engaged in a dance, and while the weight was coming off, my eating and I were doing a wild rumba. All the years that I’d focused on BMI had held me back from focusing on feeling good. I had to contemplate how I might have bought into the diet myth, and the body image of fitting back into a size 6–8. Intellectually, I understood that there were things I needed to do. In 2021 I crossed into a new zone: the I’m-happy-with-who-I-am-and-what-I-see-in-the-mirror zone. It was a massively delightful discovery. It also lifted a huge burden of non-reality off of me. Now it was about management.

I recall the day clearly. I was sitting on a stool, getting dressed and taking a look at myself. No, my stomach wasn’t model flat. I would never have that EVER again. My arms were OK, not perfect but good enough, and my calves, they were still wonderful. Throughout my life my calves were the one body part that always looked great. I took time to reflect on this wonderful factoid. My thighs really were OK, and my face had thinned out. I realized in that moment I would never see a size 6 or 8 again. 

Then I began to think about how I really felt inside. I felt good, and as I realized this fact, I began to look deeper. Why was I stuck in the weight loss mode? I came to understand that I didn’t need to go there. A size 10–12 was perfectly fine. At my age it also felt like I could maintain that size.

Healthy isn’t about the perfect body. Ultimately it is about feeling good at where we are. It becomes a process of cutting ourselves some slack, offering ourselves the same grace and generosity we tell others to treat themselves with. In all the inner work I spent time doing over the years, I realized that I, too, had cut myself some slack and offered up a huge healthy serving of grace and generosity to myself. In 2022 I sat on the stool, looked at myself, and smiled. Yeah, I’m good with her!  

Resolutions are fulfilled when we lay a foundation of inner work, dig deep, and discover the generous helping of self-love we are serving ourselves. We make peace with the demon within. We grant ourselves the insight that the real work takes time and is about honoring ourselves over what we think we want. The question we must ask at the beginning of any goal or resolution journey is, What do I really need, and why?

It took me from 2006, a lot of treadmill and conversation time working with a professional, and a real hard look in the mirror to come to understand that what I wanted (getting back to a 6–8 size) was not what I needed. What I needed to do was to like—and love—the reflection of the 10–12 sized woman who sat on the stool. It doesn’t matter the size or the kilos/pounds that I carried. I started this journey thinking size and BMI. What matters most is that I got healthy. What matters most is that I’m enjoying where I am and can manage life where I’m at without my body doing the yo-yo cycle.

2023 is starting off with some real peace of mind. I’m good with this.

The Gift of the Season (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys

This post was originally published on December 19, 2023.

2023, and I’m thinking about the lyrics to “Proud Mary,” and how times have changed. What I’m thinking about is the holidays, of giving, receiving, and how those who have little often give of what they have, and that the giving comes from the heart. It is a different way of giving than that of those of us who have shelter, food, and safety.

I have a cousin who lived in an abusive home. Her daughter left as a teen and lived on the streets. For her, it was a choice to leave and not have a father sexually assaulting her. I heard about this during my grad-school years and wondered why she would risk living on the streets rather than trying to become an emancipated minor. People on the streets were forming “families” of sorts and attempting to help each other survive. It seemed harsh to me. It still seems harsh as I think of it now. The realities of an economy that doesn’t work for everyone, the state of the world, and the attitudes of many people are all subjects for another post.

This week, as the Christian day of Christmas comes closer, I am focused in thought about what many Christians believe, and what many world religions do. They give. I must admit that I do have a healthy dose of holy envy at times. My client base is diverse, and I’m in a position to learn from so many good people who find their way to me. 

This is about each of us doing it well, and going into our hearts and souls. It is about finding the inner spark that drives us to find out how, and why, we’re motivated to share and to give to others. 

Lately, I’ve become aware of how many people fail to give because they believe that the only giving that matters is related to monetary giving. True giving comes from what we have within ourselves.

The catch for some people is that they feel empty inside. If I am nothing to myself, how can I give something to others? Some who have little give abundantly in love, nurturing of others, and sharing of their meager meals. When all you have is a cardboard roof over your head, and you live in a third-world nation, you may find motivation in different ways. Personally, I think consumerism is killing the human soul of those who live in Western nations.

At this time of year, in the cold of day and the longer nights, what is needed is the spirit of hope. How do we give hope when these days hope seems to be at a minimum?

I’m not a “Pollyanna” in any way. What I’m seeing in others, and within myself, is a realism that is needed to focus on the things that can enable the soul to free itself, and to learn to have more love: love for ourselves, love for each other, and love for our burdened planet. 

My work with the Enneagram has taught me so much about becoming a better self. This past year has taken me to some deep soul work, and in doing the work, I’ve experienced highs and lows. The insight therapy that I do with my clients and the spiritual direction that my directees choose to engage in move the soul to places of compassion for the self, and into areas where giving to others becomes more of a natural choice. When we fill our souls with healthier ways of thinking, living it brings peace and an inner joy to ourselves.

I know what some of you are thinking. Before you shut this down or go off on a rant about how this author is clueless and is spouting crap, please, hear me out! 

I’ve been there, I’ve done the angry-at-the-author thing, and I’ve learned that there are realistic avenues to making peace with the self.

I’m not promoting religion or even God. What I’m promoting here is deep inner work that moves each of us to challenge, and to question, who we each are, and why we feel the way we do about ourselves deep down where the soup is made. This is when we go into the places that force us to rethink, restructure, and renew. These are the thin or liminal places. These are the places where people with depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, and so many other mental issues dwell. These are the deep places of dark questions. If we find a good therapist, spiritual director, or other support, we can work through all of it and come out on a new shore. It is as I described in Styx. Pollyanna types don’t venture into these dark places. Maybe that is why I’m turned off by the book and film. I wanted to slap her silly. Excessive positivity is damaging to the psyche.

Soul work, and exploring our shadow side, is a gamble that pays off in large dividends. I suppose I will continue to go deeper as I do the self-work that contributes to moving forward.

When I think about creating peace within the self, and peace in the world which enables us to give to each other, I realize that it is a complex issue. I understand that what matters most is that we take the first step, uncap our heads, and do a deep inner dive to discover the good, the bad, and the ugly truth about ourselves so that we can present a better self to ourselves and to those around us.

The gift of the season is deep inner work.

Bored Through and Not Around the Mountain

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath

Years ago I wrote a post titled “Please Do.” I’ll have to title this one differently. I realized while writing another post that I have things to say in a short but new way. So, here they are.

Please take your time caring for yourself in the grief process. Don’t rush the process because it will mess with your mind.

Please understand that while this is hard, and I’ve said before that grief done well isn’t for wimps, it will go as needed.

Please understand that you will never get over this person: you will get through the process. Please hold on to that thought.

Please understand that while your contacts list may change, the people who need to be in your life will remain, and new people will show up for you in ways that are helpful.

Please, if at all possible, don’t make any major life decisions for one year. Death is traumatic. Give your brain time to sort itself out.

Please allow yourself time to miss your loved one, and take your time entering into new relationships. There’s a good reason for this. After their death, you have a freedom that you didn’t have while this person was alive. You now can fully and completely autopsy the relationship. A good look postmortem will give you insights into the relationship as nothing else will, and you may decide that there are things that you don’t want in your next relationship. You can’t decide this if you’re too busy finding someone else.

In the almost ten years since Jon’s death, I’ve seen more than one person I know rush into something, and then crash and divorce. Too late, a second relationship goes bust. This is also true of divorce.

Please honor your own needs. No matchmaking do-gooders allowed! The last thing you need is that kind of mess.

Please accept help in the beginning of the process. You’ll be glad you did as long as people also give you the space to test what you can, and can’t, handle. In the beginning it is easy to become overwhelmed. There can be a tendency for high levels of dysfunction to set in. The living space can go; your sleep is all messed up; your diet becomes a non-diet. Say yes to meals, and let people know what you can’t eat. Also, eat with others. Eating with others will keep you honest.

Please get professional help if you need to. Find a competent therapist who knows more than what one can read in a book when it comes to grief.

Please remember that there is no right or wrong way to do this process. The day after Jon ended his life, I would have told you that everything I thought I knew about grief was being tossed out. I got a new playbook. While there are some common threads, each process is individual.

Please understand that the crazy tears of the passing will fade in time; slowly, the quality of the tears will fade. As time moves forward, honor the tears that do come.

Understand that bringing someone new into your life will not wipe out the love that you held for your deceased partner.

While time can take the edge off the pain that a loss leaves us with, it is living honestly and facing the reality head-on that enables us to do the real work of grief. This blog is filled with posts about my process and what I’ve learned from going through it, and not around it. I think that the greatest life lesson I learned from going through the suicide and its aftermath is that as painful as it’s been, I’ve learned things I needed to know. I suppose that in many ways, and after ten years, I really do see gifts on my end. I get how strange this might sound. There are things I miss. Our conversations were incredible, and I’ll never have that with anyone else in just the same way. On the other hand, the violence of bipolar will not be missed. His death enabled me to discover who I am in new and powerful ways.

Given the fact that he is no longer suffering, and I’m a much different person than I was in 2016, I’ll keep things the way they are. I’ve bored through the mountain. Life is good on this side of things.

Meeting Ourselves in New Ways

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath

The holidays were once a magical time of the year. Maybe growing up changes it all. I think about the Gloria Estefan song “Christmas Through Your Eyes” and I wonder.

Downstairs, I have the container where the tree is stored, and another box that contains the treasures for the tree. I’ve got everything out and will slowly set the tree up and string the lights.

Ah, stringing the lights! My mother and I got over 3K on our family tree one year. That tree was lit up like a masterpiece. It took us all morning, and the effect was spectacular! We didn’t repeat the act, as it involved twist ties! What a wonderful memory. We took pruning shears to the tree to dismantle the lights. Like I said, never again. Looking back on it, we must have taken an insane capsule.

Last night, as I stood in my living room, I longed for all the pretty bows that I had on my first Christmas tree. I was an adult living single in Oakland. Oh, how I long for those bows.

As I stood there, I realized that things have changed. The past three years have taken me on a soul journey. While it began well over two decades ago, it didn’t pick up speed until after Jon’s death. His suicide, and all that followed, have altered my life in ways that I could not have expected.

With the wisdom of age, I realize that I wasn’t ready for this as a younger adult. Change happens when the conditions are right. We need to be ready to explore ourselves in new ways, and we need to greet the exploration with eagerness for the new path forward.

I’ve softened as I’ve explored who I am. Looking at your shadow has its upside! The only downside is that if you’re not ready, the shadow work won’t take. I suppose that is what opened me up to looking at the demons. We all have them, and mine resided on the battlement for decades! This time the admiral on that boat out at sea knew it was time. My iceberg has really melted.

This year, the gift of Christmas is a deep inner healing. This year, I realize that I had to be fully ready to do the deep soul searching that would lead to real peace.

And so, I wondered last night if I should put it all away and leave Advent out. I’m keeping it all out, including the 500 lights that will get put up on the tree. I’ll have to do it alone. That won’t be fun. What an end to 2025.

In 2026 I’ll mark the tenth year since Jon’s death. I’m ok with this. It feels right to move forward in life. There are some not-so-good-things to rush into after a death, and I’ve taken my time not rushing into anything. To be honest, I like certain things about living single once again.

This is a post about a grief journey as much as a soul journey. Just as navigation of the river of life has amazed me, and I’ve had my WOW moments, I’ve also had seasons of recognition. Grief has seasons: so does life. I think I’m doing autumn now in a better way. Once again, this season is gifting me with a great redo!

Life is about meeting ourselves in new ways. Each time we pass through the hard stuff of change.

Haven’t I begun a post like this before? Another loop in time. Here I go again!

The Fuck Loop

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Author’s note: I wanted to generate an image of a child being yelled at by an adult, and it seems that ChatGPT did not want to produce such an image, as it it abusive. Good for ChatGPT.

It was 2012, and I was sitting in the dining area of the Loo Erf. A woman in her twenties who was becoming a friend called me a bitch. I informed her that the term bitch was not something I viewed as anything but a slur. She didn’t get it, and I had to explain the old meaning to her. She still didn’t get it. Just as no man should be called a stud, no woman should be called a bitch. I want respect for all human beings.

What we say matters, and how we communicate matters even more. It will always matter because the expression of emotions and communicating what we really mean to others can either build a person up or rip into them and destroy their self-image.

I’ve been involved in conversations about the use of the words shit and fuck wherein the proponents of their use say that intelligent people swear. Maybe some people with high IQs swear; however, they aren’t the ones who have high IQs in other areas. It seems that society’s IQ is dropping rapidly.

One of my husband’s ex-girlfriend’s family used to say that hell and damn were emphasis words. I can go along with that; however, it is the use of fuck that I have the biggest issue with. I will admit that holy shit is comical, and shorthand for the moment in which one must catch their breath to process some amazing factoid or happening. But it is followed up with other words that are move descriptive.

Why do we use such words? Most people I see in therapy might start out using fuck as a shorthand to express what they can’t express in a healthy way. It takes some digging in the iceberg of the mind to get to the real words, and when we’re frustrated, we might not even be able to say that. Then what happens is “shit” or “fuck” get blurted out into the air. They hang there as if to say to the air, “There has to be more to this than I’m saying.” If we’re in an empty space, no one hears us. If there are people present, and it is directed at someone, damage is done. What if it is a child?

In a way, shit and fuck are the modern version of spanking a child for what we view as wrongdoing. We now understand that corporal punishment does not teach the person, adult or child, to change a behavior in a positive manner: it teaches someone to get better at not getting busted for the poor behavior, and it teaches fear. It creates feelings of worthlessness and low or no self-respect. The fallout from this is that people can develop low or no respect for others.

I remember the one time I got spanked. It was back in the 1960s, and I stuck my tongue out at my mother. I was heading out the door to school, and I was told that when I got home that day, I’d be getting a talking to. I don’t remember what my father said: I do remember that he laid his hands on me. It was only once, and I felt awful. It dug into my seven-year-old tender soul. It changed things. It was poor parenting. I got the lecture that evening, and I don’t remember what was said. What I remember is the spanking with his hand. Did it teach me anything? No. I suppressed my feelings because they weren’t going to be heard. When you aren’t able to get the words out as a child, what can you do? Slowly, you learn to hold it inside, and then you grow up, and yelling at the world is what you’ve learned.

Looking back on that incident as an adult, I was not even able to form the words “I’m angry at you mom!” If a parent can hear those words from a child, they can then move to help the child express and resolve the issue in a space of safety.

Without the words and the ability to work in a higher arena, you have a child who sets you off. And let’s say the child is two or three, and all of a sudden you are calling them a little fuck or a little shit. You are yelling at them. First off, no one likes being yelled at. We should never be hit by anyone. And here you are standing in your kitchen, or the grocery store, calling an innocent child a little fuck or shit. We condemn spanking, and if we saw it in public, we might want to report abuse to the proper agency. Why not with the words we use? They can be just as stifling to emotional growth.

What gives us the right to cross such a fragile boundary? There is not a good answer for this. We don’t have that right.

The right we do have is to haul ourselves into therapy and work through the damage that was done by those who created the mess in the first place. We have the right and the ability to do some deep soul work, and we have the ability to learn to find the real words. We can discharge trauma and come to understand that there are better ways to express what we feel. It is about digging into the iceberg below the anger to put real words to what is going on into use.

We also have the ability to apologize for words that damage.

What all of this feels like once we get a handle on ourselves is a calmer self. You might find yourself with a new kind of “keep calm” thought. Calm, and think about what is being felt, and why. Counting might stop the short-term knee-jerk response. Using our words on ourselves teaches us that we can solve problems by ourselves in effective ways! We then build up the positive stuff that reinforces that good feeling in our brains about our ability to do the harder things of living. Simply stated, the above stated happening becomes a learned skill, and all of this because we got words that work, and took ourselves out of the fuck loop.

Revisiting Our Hardwiring (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

This post was originally published on April 30, 2024.

Author’s note: I’m involved in a book project that is requiring me to submit one chapter on the idea of perfection. This is huge, and I’m going to write about some of what I’m musing about today.

Today’s meditation was one of exploration. I began by asking about why humans are hesitant to include those who are disabled. My path of thought led me to question many things.

Animals may kill a defective offspring. Maybe they smell it, see it, or somehow sense it, and then they kill. As humans, we judge our species based on different criteria. We struggle to accept humans who are diverse.

We run from diversity as if it were a disease that it isn’t. We struggle; as humans we are born hardwired to fear diversity. What we fear we push away or shun. Like animals, we react rather than question.

A doctor friend once told me that back when he was in medical training, they didn’t teach doctors how to properly react with the parents when a disabled person was born. They handed the newborn to the parents and sent them home, only to have the concerned parents show up at the pediatrician’s office with the disabled baby, where they’d experience the same attitude. Things have gotten better, but we still push away what we as humans can’t cope with.

It is a process that makes sense but doesn’t make sense at all. There is Enneagram theory that supports the concept that we all begin as type six, and then slowly move out and around the circle to other types. Type six souls have a fear component in their makeup, whereas type eights lack this fear. Eights have fears: we just deal with it differently. Humans are wired to fear diversity. Can we change as humans to evolve into people who can learn to not fear other humans?

There are more type sixes than any other type on the Enneagram. While I might want a type six in a crisis where we run out of crazy survival stuff, I don’t want a six who hasn’t done their work on themselves in other situations. I digress.

We tolerate diversity, and in that tolerant space we still want sameness. We thrive in sameness, and when there is failure to thrive, we label it abnormal, stick it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), and many times tell the mother that she’s doing it wrong, or that the baby isn’t “right,” and try to move on. Meanwhile a little human needs help.

Jon and I had a kitten who couldn’t get the milk she needed from her mother. Jon fed the kitten, who we named ‘Roo. She bonded with Jon, and we adopted out the mother and kept her. ‘Roo grew into a beautiful cat who loved us and the other kittens we adopted. From ‘Roo I learned to love in new ways.

Humans bond with all types of critters but not all types of humans. We are like animals who are selective in who they allow into their space.

Over the past forty years, we’ve begun a movement to change all of this. This morning during meditation, I began to wonder if we can change from fearful to naturally curious and wanting to know about the differences and embrace them joyfully. 

I want to live in a world where I’m understood. I want to live in a world where the questions I get are ones that lead to that understanding instead of more intolerance. I’m confronted by the human condition: fear.

Here in The Netherlands, the word “revalidation” is used when someone must recover from injury or stroke. The word means to be made acceptable again. It is no different than saying rehabilitation in English. We value a certain level of acceptability, and we attempt to have conformity. While societies choose to punish the nonconformist, those of a different color, religion, economic status, the LGBTQIA+ community, and the disabled are separated from many in society.

A quick search on Google shows that the Han Chinese are the largest race in the world. Other facts that turned up are that the U.S. still thinks that it is the world. And this is not good for the human condition.

My Monday meditation has taken me to a place I would have rather not gone. Is there hope for us as a species? I suppose if I could raise Mr. Darwin from the dead, he’d tell me that the human condition is set, and that evolution will occur, and we will all evolve, and some of us will be wiped out.

I think I’d tell Mr. Darwin that while we are evolving, we’re devolving. While children are becoming more tech savvy, many are losing the ability to form human relationships, and relationships are what it’s about. If we fail to teach children to put down the tech and look people in the eyes, we’re not evolving.

Tolerance is one thing. Understanding and acceptance of what causes us to fear is another thing.

I wouldn’t change who I am because my disabilities have been a part of that process. I’m happy with who I am. The problem is that society doesn’t fully understand me.

Humans are hardwired in a weird or confusing way.

Icebergs and Admirals, Part 2: Reshaping the Self

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma

This is Part 2 in a series about trauma. Please read Part 1 here.

The admiral, in her boat, realizes that this gatekeeping for trauma must be shut down. Her text goes something like this: “Look, I get that there is trouble landside. If this destructive protection continues, I can no longer guarantee that the iceberg will remain stable. We need to shut this down, and do it in a controlled fashion. Let’s get the loyal soldiers of the mind sent out to retirement!”

What happens when the soldiers find out they will be let go is a joyous celebration. The soldiers didn’t want to have to serve as warriors. Who does? Trauma happens, and they get the job.

The process of releasing all trauma stored in the mind is a slow and careful one. With willing participants, it will be hard: it will also be worth the pain of it all. Going through the process is not a pleasant experience.

I mentioned in Part 1 that many people avoid the work of releasing the trauma because they fear that if they do so, they will fall apart, and dysfunction will ensue. Here’s a news bulletin: they are already in that dysfunctional zone! It is sensed by those who are avoidant to the work, and by those who are not able to see what is really going on underneath it all. Those in the second group feel that something is “off,” and while they don’t say anything due to a social contract, they do know that, deep down, things aren’t right.

This can set up clients to embark on a healing journey alone. Sometimes the client gets lucky and has one or two friends who get it. The friends agree to stand with the client in the journey.

Way back in “postland,” I wrote about being in the room with someone going through hard things. This is what good friends will do. I had two such people in my life, and while I knew there would be times when I had to sit with things all alone, I vaguely got where the boundaries and the limits were in that support. Trauma can mess that up for people, and relationships. I came to find out that I didn’t have the full understanding I needed with limits and friendship.

With all things in place, I went into the hard work of getting things repaired.

One by one, the land soldiers were called to the front of a battlement where, for the first time ever, their hard work was acknowledged, and they were excused with honor. Each time this process happened, the iceberg that was out at sea would shrink in its burden and grow in its beauty to become its full and true self.

The therapist allowed my words to stand, and honored them as I did. It was safe to claim my words. Sometimes the sessions left me in deep and dark places, and at other times the session was liberating. All of it worked to create the ability to come to terms with the awful, and to give thanks that I had done what I needed to do to heal the pain of the past.

The healing enabled me to understand that it wasn’t my fault. For some things that I had to let go of, I had been a child at the time. For other things, I had to come to terms with things that happened in my adult life. There were reframings and realizations that I had to revisit loyalties in relationships. All of it was hard and painful and sometimes lonely.

Each time I was able to release a soldier from the burden they had so loyally defended, I felt something float away from that iceberg, and the reason for the solider being there to defend things was no longer present. Over a period of months, things changed—until one day everyone had cleared out of the fortress that had stood for so long.

Now, the work of rebuilding could take place.

Rebuilding means that you can reach for the sun. We grieve the past and begin to celebrate a new future. What healing looks like is a slow discovery of a new life: a life where warriors are no longer needed, and they are sending text messages to admirals guarding icebergs. Now the admiral sends out messages to reject an attempt to ugly up the iceberg, and to get to work on addressing the present issue so that the iceberg will not become something unwanted and sent out to sea.

Healing means accepting the responsibility of facing the stuff head on. Where we once stuffed our trauma and sent it out to sea—to the iceberg—we are now able to assign ourselves to the greater task of dealing in the present. This is functional, and at first it will seem strange. Learning to know when to seek help is a new skill that we now come to face willingly.

It is strange because, for so many years, you did things that led you to feel yourself that you could cope—just like others. You went to school or work, the bills got paid, you did normal life stuff—and you did it stuffing everything away. You fooled yourself into believing it was all OK. It is the ultimate lie.

The ultimate truth is that humans are not made to live in a state of trauma for their entire lives. Trauma can cause illness, the inability to function at our highest capacity, and shattered relationships. Trauma will lead us to believe that all is really well when, in reality, all is not well at all: it is the ultimate lie masquerading as truth, and the ultimate truth is that it must all stop. And so, the delusion of safety shatters. The real sobbing is the signal that, at last, the soldiers of the mind can be released to go sip drinks on the warm beaches and relax from their labours.

Healing is all about doing the right things for the right reasons. Healing is about grieving what once was, and celebrating the light of discovering that there are better ways to do life.

Healing also means that the admiral guarding the iceberg is given permission to send what was once hidden beneath the surface back to land. The admiral now protects the iceberg in new ways. She tells the land folk that they are strong enough to handle what comes up in life.

As we strengthen muscles that have been dormant for some time, we learn what we missed out on. We celebrate the new life before us.

We have WOW moments, and we learn that we can move ahead. For the first time, the carnage of the life we lead is seen clearly. Healing is a series of incidents that lead us to new self-discovery. The work of healing from trauma is about being willing to say WOW as much as we need to. It is about finding the courage to do something real: heal ourselves.

Icebergs and Admirals, Part 1: Melting

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma

This post is going to attempt to explain how the mess of trauma operates in the mind. There are players in this post: the iceberg, which serves as a safe place to store the trauma, and the loyal soldiers who are assigned to defend the fortress on land, or the mind. The soldiers send the trauma to the admiral, who is in a boat by the iceberg. The admiral is a gatekeeper who lets trauma in to be stored inside of the iceberg and can alert the players to the situation as needed. The therapist is a neutral facilitator of the healing.

Walking out of trauma is tricky. We believe that trauma is completely “land based,” guarded in our personal land fortress, as we explored in “Soldiers of the Mind.” But that isn’t the whole story.

While our “soldiers” have been busy protecting the “battlements” of our minds, the real action has been going on out in the blue ocean waters, where “icebergs,” the storage centers of our trauma, have been building over time. On the surface, they look steadfast and serene. The trouble lies beneath the surface, where they grow and expand, slowly but menacingly. The beauty of the iceberg is deceptive, and each time more growth occurs, it is at the expense of its beauty. Underneath is where the ugly resides. Below the surface, jagged edges form, and they pierce anything that touches them. It is bloody and painful.

On constant surveillance of our iceberg is our “admiral.” Sitting on her ship, she tries to forestall the inevitable: the heat wave that will cause the iceberg to melt in an uncontrolled manner. Melting happens, and it happened to me.

Melting, or the discovery of how significant the trauma below the surface is, caused me to sit in my living room on my sofa and sob. Sobbing was the awakening of how ugly the underside of my iceberg was. It took three more months to commit to a step that led me to do the work of healing what was below the surface. The jagged edges had to go.

I’m all about rubber-meets-the-road solutions, so I’m going to tell you how to find what you need to heal the iceberg.

I had to talk to a great many therapists to sift out the right therapist from wrong fits. This is where my journey began.

I wanted someone who was reliable and intelligent, someone who had done their own deep soul work, and who understood trauma. I wanted someone who would call me out if I tried to raise walls and distract myself from the process of the work. I quickly established the places where I would not find this person. I finally found the right person, wrote an email, and had something set up when, kerplop! I broke my left femur and I had to delay the onset of treatment.

Who and what I found was someone who was qualified, had done their own work, would be able to treat me like the client in the relationship, and hold me to this role. While I am a therapist, this is about me doing some hard work. I didn’t need someone who could not hold that boundary. Adam (not his real name) could do all of this. Gender wasn’t an issue for me with finding the right person. Qualifications were the top priority. And so, with the admiral guarding the iceberg both above and below the surface, the work of reconfiguring the iceberg began.

The admiral’s role in all of this is to serve as a safety while the real work beneath the surface occurs. The therapist is going to take things apart in a safe manner and move cautiously to rebuild what soldiers on the iceberg’s mass have defended, while the soldier’s job is to defend on land what is actually occurring beneath the iceberg and out at sea.

The best way of explaining it is that while the trauma happens on land, it sends out messengers who can deliver the needed information to be stored in the iceberg. Trauma is a two-front war.

How this all happens with things getting sent to the iceberg is not our fault. If we did not send things to the iceberg, we’d be in an even larger mess.

Healing from trauma is going to destabilize the iceberg. It is a good thing, this shrinking of the iceberg. Lots of stuff that has been sent out to sea to be protected is going to get knocked free, and with the freedom, a healthy, pretty iceberg will float proudly on the surface of the water.

So, with the admiral controlling the iceberg, the job is to alert the mind to when critical mass has been reached. Once again, and this time in reverse fashion, the admiral contacts the land forces, alerting them to the fact that the iceberg is in a dangerous situation, and that destruction is certain should things go any further.

In a very real way, this is what caused me to sob on the sofa, and to finally, after decades of filling my iceberg to dangerous capacity below the surface, let the admiral know that it was time to clean the mess out.

I think what most people do is bargain with their subconscious and strike a deal to coexist and believe that they can stuff things away. The crazy of it all is that we are not at fault for trying to survive. There comes a time when stuffing away no longer works. If we look at the iceberg as a container for what we are not willing to take apart, then it will all eventually blow apart on us.

The reason people don’t seek treatment is that they have come to believe that they can get by without addressing the pain. They keep telling themselves, “I’ll just do what I normally do with my inner pain and let it sit below in my iceberg.” The thing is, the iceberg just wants to be a beautiful part of the ocean landscape, and it didn’t ask to be made a most ugly thing: it got assigned to that role. Not our fault, in so many ways.

Dear Joyce

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

Dear Joyce,

I remember all too well the day you dropped dead in front of us, and as I ran to call 911, Mom ran to you. That was in 1977, and the decades have passed, and now the conversation my brother and I have is about what Joyce would be doing now. It is strange how you left breadcrumbs for us to follow.

You were only fourteen when you had the heart attack, and we’d hoped that the pacemaker you now lived with would give you a long life. We couldn’t have predicted what happened that hot July day. The beginning grief was about the loss of our sister. With time the sorrow diminished, as months, and then years, expanded into decades. Now I think about the forty-eight years that have passed, and I imagine.

I think that, with your love of small children and your medical curiosity, you may have gone into pediatric nursing. You got little children far better than I ever did. You loved their quirkiness, and they loved you.

Your braces were off, and you had contacts. You were feeling happy about your appearance, and I was glad. You were one of those people who had a healthy love for yourself. That is rare for any time. Most people struggle to love and care for themselves.

You were having to do the hard work of life. As Richard Rohr would put it, you were doing first-stage and second-stage work at fourteen. The book Falling Upwards explains what I was seeing with you way back when. Rohr explains that things like disability cause us to sort out stuff sooner in life. This sorting process is also true for the LGBTQ community. You were tuned into needful things at a young age.

It saddens me that so many people feel that bringing up the dead is a no-no. Please do! It was delightful to talk with my younger brother about you. I loved hearing what he thought about where you’d be. We know you’d have children.

I think about you and Daddy working with you on pitch on the flute. You couldn’t hold a tune, and you really wanted to be a good, solid musician. Daddy worked with you and taught you to find and hold the right pitch. I gotta tell you, your lack of pitch drove me nuts! We were at opposite ends on pitch. I couldn’t understand how anyone could not carry a tune. I’d been singing before I could talk, and I wind up with a sister who had to learn to do what many people can do. That’s OK—you had gifts I didn’t have.

You were saying “have a nice day” before happy smiley faces were a thing. Remember the year you made dinner plates with art on them for the family? You made one for yourself, and it said “have a nice day” on it.

People who haven’t lost anyone might think that this is a strange post. A letter to a sister who is long gone. It is good to think about the good things, and that bad stuff. It is part of the process, and it will play out at different times in our lives.

Yes, you could be a real brat at times. I love you—even if at your birth I couldn’t figure out what this thing that cried, ate, and generally did nothing to enhance my world was good for. Then you grew, and we sisters got matching dancing dresses. You became fun, and then you got all the bold, cute clothes. Not bad, considering that Beth and I never could have pulled off what Mom knew you could do with cute clothes. Just so you know: we told Mom all about it when we were adults, and she said that we lacked the personality for cute and bold. Mom was right.

I’m so glad I wrote this to you. It has been a lovely walk in the past. I need to do it more often. I wonder what you’d say about this?

Love you,

Gail

They’re Leaving the Table

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Yesterday I spent my day writing a post. Today I need to rethink it.

Sunday, I spent over two hours talking with my younger brother. It was about our family, and then it morphed into family in general.

I’ve spent time thinking about the days of the past, and I’m realizing as I gather my thoughts that the days of the past weren’t so good for everyone.

I’m a product of my parents, and the boomer generation. My parents lived in a simpler time and yet were closely connected to two world wars and the Depression. This affected how parents raised their children. While others I knew got cars, and credit cards, I didn’t have that experience. I grew up in a middle-class home and lived a simple life with little travel. But we never went without the essentials.

My parents had talked before they married about the option of my mother working versus staying home full time. They chose the one-income option. This turned out to be the choice that enabled my mother to be at home with my younger sister, who had cardiac issues. It was the right choice.

It also meant that we learned things that other children didn’t get a chance to learn in the same way.

I learned to dress up, go out to eat, and display proper table manners in public, and my mother didn’t have to deal with her kids having a meltdown in a store. It was a different time. It was a time during which there was more social and familial civility. We gathered for family dinner and ate what was served up. That was the plus side.

When I think about the not-so-good-days of the past, I think about all the suppression that was occurring in so many homes. The song “Saturday Morning Confusion,” recorded by Bobby Russell, keeps going through my head. This wasn’t my family; it was many families. This thought causes me to return to all the secrets that were held by my generation and older generations: the physical, emotional, sexual, and other abuse that got hidden because bad things didn’t happen to good children, or in nice families like yours and mine. Oh, what lies were told! The reality of it all is that the family isn’t what it once was. My generation, like my parents and those before, didn’t tell the secrets of that past, and so they festered until the 1980s rolled around. What good old days?

Let’s face it. As the above song speaks of it, Daddy tells his children that Daddy is ill after going out for a beer with the boys—a beer that went into several beers—and now he’s dealing with a hangover instead of enjoying the kids he loves. Meanwhile, Mom is trying to make it all good. It wasn’t good then, and the kids had to deal with the issue of Dad drinking, even though he knew he shouldn’t have gone out with the guys. The confusion of Saturday is that kids were forced into dealing with dysfunctional parenting, and the show was the break from reality.

How it Worked

There was a time when conversations happened around a dining room table, and we’d learn to hold differing points of view and remain civil with each other.

Children learned to listen, and to explore differing viewpoints, and while it might have gotten heated, it would remain civil (well, in mostly functional families). People held respect for each other (well, for the most part—like I said, in families that understood healthy boundaries).

Children can’t be guaranteed that their parents will have the tools to raise them to think and to become peacemakers and tolerant. We’ve lost the ability to communicate with each other and to hold differing views.  

Researcher Jonathan Haidt nails the issues down in his multiple books that cover the effects of social media and the smartphone on Western societies’ children and adults.

Families have left the dinner table for life in cars as they run from lesson to lesson to create the child that might look good on paper for the application that will hopefully get them into higher education. But the child is rude and spoiled, as well as anxious. The result is a child who has little respect for others, or the ability to manage themselves in life.

OK, we’re not sweeping the issues that were once swept under the carpet or tossed into pretty box concealers to not be discussed anymore. We’re not holding conversations.

Now the concealment is all about a different type of neglect, and the old abuses are still present because we haven’t wiped them out. I think Bobby Russell needs to add some verses to that piece of music.

We’ve become connected to devices and disconnected from each other.

Did the damage of Covid and children being cut off from each other help or hinder? Did it help our families?

My point is that the family is dismantling itself, and that means society is coming apart because we’re not able to hold conversations like we once could.

If we can’t talk in our homes, and learn to hold civil discussions at the dinner table, how will we do it in classrooms or boardrooms? How will we come together as we must to grapple with society’s need to come together? We scream for world peace, and yet we can’t set our smartphones down to smile and engage with the person next to us while out and about. Children might be texted to come to the table rather than being a part of getting things on the table—if that even happens.

Let Op!

At this point in time, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had close calls at a train station because someone is not watching when they’re out and about. If I get bumped, my white cane that should serve as a warning is disregarded. I’ve stopped being polite. “Let op!” means watch out or look out or pay attention—you get the English idea of the Dutch term. “Let op!” is now my response to rude travellers glued to phones. More confusion, and this is why I’m not able to be sure I’ll be safe in a train station.

This is about two things: parenting a generation and setting some common-sense boundaries, as well as manners for people.  

As a therapist, I shouldn’t take things too far. As a member of society, I’m excused.

As a therapist, I hear the sad tales of families that don’t work, people seeking a healthy relationship and hoping to get it all fixed. The solution is conversation on all levels. It begins with one person saying hello and smiling at someone they don’t know. Maybe, just maybe, we can get to less confusion.

Ripples

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

A woman screams a deep and damaging phrase to her partner, and he responds in kind, hurling at her his own demeaning phrase. It goes on for minutes until, worn out, they both turn away from the argument. Though they apologize and make up, the damage is done. There is now a ripple in the pond, and it is spreading outwards. You can’t take words back. It doesn’t work that way. Words said in anger damage the soul.

Apologizing can help, and yet I’ve come to understand that the words may never fully be gone. We’re each human, and as such, we can’t wipe out our memory. Short of a medical catastrophe, the memories remain, and the words that were spoken continue to spread out in the pond of life. There is no taking them back.

I got thinking about all of this while dealing with someone’s actions that affected my life, and several others. In this case, it was an event that sparked things off. The consequences of that period of time have spread ripples on the pond. A rock got thrown into the water, and the mess will never completely go away. Just like the couple who are fighting, and who really aren’t using their heads to think through what their words and actions will mean, the ripples spin out of control in all directions.

I’ve learned to let things die down, and then go in and salvage what can be salvaged from the damage.

There is no good way to clean up in a pond where the ripples have spread out to parts unknown. That pond might have other sources where the water enters and exits, causing what might have been seen as just a wee bit of damage to become an ugly mess; looking at it becomes the stuff that nightmares are made of.

With years and the wisdom that comes from living longer, we can learn to clean things up in a better way. With that comes the realization that there are consequences for foolish choices and behavior that, if we’d kept our heads together, we might have done differently.

What do you do about the ripple? How do you sit with pain? How do you begin to break the cycle of familial violence?

On my desktop there is a folder that holds a great deal of pain. It contains writing that made up posts presented on this blog. I avoided going to these places until I realized that not going there was making things worse. I came to realize that I had to take the risk that healing some deep wounds would entail, or else choose to not move forward in my life journey. There are times when going through it is the only way to get beyond the damage that ripples and other life obstacles have caused us. Change is hard. The big issue with some of this is that if, for example, families pass down their dysfunction to the next generation, it has a way of becoming larger, and as it grows, helplessness develops. This is why breaking the cycle of poverty is so difficult. It is why breaking the violence in a family system is such a challenge. This is why we, as humans, want to avoid pain, and when we’re in emotional pain, we become desensitized to the pain, and think that a life without this deep, horrible pain is a fairy tale, as if we’re wanting unicorns to appear. What is really happening in practical terms is that we’ve gotten so used to being in pain that we can’t see how we’re being affected in negative ways. Emotional pain has a language of its own. Sometimes we can only relate to someone if they speak the same messed-up dialect that we learned. This doesn’t stop the cycle of dysfunction: it causes it to thrive. 

You and I both know that unicorns and other fanciful creatures do not exist. What does exist is a pond where ripples spread out. To break the flow of the cycle, we have to create the desire to step into the body of water with both feet and take the first step forward. Doing the first step confuses things, and we can begin to create new patterns in our lives that enable us to sit with the pain constructively. And, as I keep telling people, it’s hard work, and not for wimps. Stop the ripple.

The practical side of stopping the ripple is to find a therapist that understands you and that you can connect with. This may require some time and research. To do the work might not take as long as the search itself. On the other hand, a good therapist will be able to help you to figure out what issues you need to explore that you aren’t seeing on the surface of things. Things can get pretty murky in the ripple.

The fact is that the ripple might seem dormant when it is actually teeming with life that we have become oblivious to.

The ripple didn’t happen in a short time period. This means that shutting it down will most likely mean overturning all the rocks you need to look under that are in the pond. This might take some time.

What this process teaches us is that, while there aren’t unicorns, there are realistic solutions when we thought that nothing could be done. We no longer seek the unicorn; we seek the open doors that allow us to pass into new places. This isn’t magical; it’s hard work. The doors may seem closed at first glance, and then they open.

Speaking for myself, I’d say that I just do what needs to be done. If I speak professionally, I’ll say that it is about conquering fear. Ripples in our lives stop when we dare to interrupt the flow of things, and contemplating doing this can bring up all kinds of angst in our minds.

Change is scary. It is the great unknown, and it is an existential issue. When we move towards change, we are risking something unfamiliar. We’re used to our warm blankets and fuzzy slippers, and disrupting the ripple requires us to do the hard thing. Giving up old ways of thinking and being in our lives is scary, hard, and uncertain. I get why people don’t want to take the risk, but I’m saying that it is a worthwhile risk. It may sound like I’m talking unicorns. What I’m talking about is a new and better way of greeting your life… without ripples.

The Burden (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

This post was originally published on November 7, 2022.

The disabled carry so much inside. On a daily basis we are challenged with what we let people know about our lives and our needs. Is it a good day or a bad day? Do we need to ask for help, and if so, how much of that help might be robbing us of our dignity? You may be thinking that we need to get over it. If you aren’t in our shoes, please think twice about that remark.

I like to think of myself as independent, though as I’ve lost more of my vision, I’ve had to ask for more assistance. I try to do as much as I can, and I’m noticing that the abled world is making it more difficult to do so. It adds to my daily burden. 

At first, I was going to write a regular post. Sitting here, I’m going to do this differently. Here it is: 

What I Do

As I 

wake, I notice

My legs

And

Scan the rest of my body.

I’m rested.

I move from the bed realizing that I can walk when others can’t do this.

I engage in morning listening to a book because

I can no longer read print easily. 

And,

I give thanks that I still can hear.

Today should be a good day. 

I think of those I know in wheelchairs 

or 

struggling to walk this day.

I hold them in my heart and hope that they will have the help they need to survive

Another day.

My mind travels to those who must have assistance in all things.

We don’t think about that much unless we’re directly affected by someone in that situation, and

I hope that caretakers will treat them with dignity on this day.

I leave the house to run errands

And

The sun shines in my eyes.

Even with sunglasses 

I strain to make sense of the path that

Is covered by foliage.

It is beautiful and crunchy and 

I love it.

But

I can’t make sense of the path with my cane.

How would I explain my reality? 

I try.

But

It is so different from yours.

You can’t really understand 

This life of mine.

Then I must explain to the abled that 

I can work, 

because they can’t imagine me doing what I do.

Should I do nothing all day

When I can do something I love? 

More of a burden

That I haven’t created.

I feel: 

Judged,

Enraged,

Worn out,

Like screaming!

I want to cry.

To protest.

To yell at people.

But

WHY? 

The disabled person’s greatest burden 

Is

That

We get lost in the shuffle 

And

Are not seen when we need to be seen.

The Route to the Root (or Changes Happen When We’re Prepared) (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health

This post was originally published on January 11, 2023.

As I journey into my seventh year of being alone, I marvel at where I am, where I was, and still cringe at where I need—and want—to go. The process of grief is also the process of growth. Growth hurts. If growth is not hurting you, think, look, and observe your life because you might not be doing your best work. Growth is a combination of insight and forward movement.

When I think about what it takes to engage this process called growth, I’m taken back to the basics of what we need to survive. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs serves as a great framework for why growth works, and what it takes for growth to work. I would propose that personal growth and discovery cannot even begin to be considered until the two basic tiers are secured. The reason for this is that in a crisis situation, which much of growth tends to stem from, we need to first secure physical and safety needs. Looking within can’t begin until we do the prep work. Once the bottom rungs are established, the freedom to build the upper rungs becomes possible. 

People talk about doing grief work, and the fact is that until you are in a safe place, with your basic needs met, you can’t go there. In a real sense, no matter which route you might want to take to do your needed work, it won’t work unless the basics are firmly established. 

Looking back over the years, I can see that it took the first year to establish and secure the first three rungs. While I had food, clothing, and shelter, and I was “safe,” I needed to feel as I was safe in the new situation. As I began to be able to feel that things were stable, I could move forward and look at the third rung. In looking at my need to belong, to be supported by friends, and to know that I had the love of people I cared about, I could sense that it was time to move forward. Grief is movement in motion, and if we aren’t ready to engage in the forward motion, seeking professional help will not be helpful unless you know you need to do the work and are willing to engage in the process at a lower level of readiness.

I don’t talk about doing therapy or spiritual direction much. I hardly ever mention either. The route I took to get to the roots of my own grief issues began in one way and ended in another altogether different manner. 

I’ve talked about the “Please Do’s” and some do nots. I’ve seen people face their hell with powerful honesty, and I’ve seen others run like a bat outta hell from the work that needs to be done. This past week, I heard the “How do I?” question again. It’s all part of the route to the root. 

A therapist should converse with, question, and guide people to discovery. Short-term therapy is the quick fix. You might gain a skill or two. It will work, and you can learn to manage the basics. Short-term therapy won’t fix the deep-down stuff because the deep-down stuff is buried and in need of being discovered. The discovery conversations take much longer and are centered on enabling you, the client, to understand yourself fully. These conversations happen when we’re able to move up the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of Maslow’s needs pyramid, which is where deep changes happen.  

My first therapist stirred it all up. I did a great deal of growing and learning about life. It would take other therapists holding space for more mature work to be done. All therapists listened, and the really good ones called me out on my stuff. I learned, I hurt, and I grew.

Insight therapy is about a process and involves creating a relationship with someone. Hopefully that relationship will reflect the reality of our lives when we’re engaged in the outside world. What insight work offers us is a chance to understand how we relate to the world in better, and possibly healthier, ways. Sometimes it is sobering, and at other times delightful. The lightbulb moments are the best. 

I’m thankful for insight work. I’m thankful that I’ve been called out on my stuff, and for the professionals that walked with me into uncharted personal territory. 

After Jon’s death I returned to the model I knew and discovered that I needed to do a different form of growth work. Four years ago, I was tapped out. The psychological road was too familiar and worn, and I realized it was time for another type of insight work. I didn’t need to be fixed, which is what much of therapy is focused on. I needed to do the work of the spiritual, and I had found a great spiritual director who listened and called me out in new and wonderful ways. It has turned out to be an amazing growth route.

Direction focuses on the spiritual. For some people it is about where God might be leading or guiding us. It is not about organized religion or any church; its goal is to accompany the person on their life journey and not fix anything. I began the process in 2019 and the growth from direction has been a gift. I’ve done much of the same work around grief and loss and have been led in my once-per-month sessions to reflect, grapple with a new life, and navigate the storms the changes of 2016 offered me. 

Over the years I’ve spent time in chat rooms, seen people rush to find solutions, and have noticed a trend to escape the crying jags, the uncomfortable, and want it all to go away soon. I watch, do some head shaking, and realize that as much as it is normal to want to avoid pain (physical or emotional), we get to the route of what ails us by committing to the wrestle within. As much as I would have liked to feel more control over when the crying jags hit me, letting go and letting tears come naturally sped the growth and discovery along to a better place. I discovered in the tears that I was crying for any number of reasons. The tears took me into looking at our relationship and opened a gateway into understanding the positive and the negative of all of it. 

The struggles of the first two years enabled me to do the work of the last four years. I wouldn’t alter the path. Had I not sat with some really hellish things and dealt with the crisis, the fear and the uncertainty, I could not have gotten to a point of deeper insight. 

In this age of instant gratification, the challenge is to wait for the good stuff, and to trust that it will arrive at a good and healthy time. Grief and loss work is done in layers and can take years. The areas of my life I’m working on now are things that I could not have dealt with in the beginning. There are reasons for where I’m at now. What I face now are is what I would term “essential but go slowly and uncover safely” issues. The route that has taken me to my root has been spectacular!  

Where Were You When… ? (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

This post was originally published on July 28, 2022.

On July 27, 1977, my life stood still as I watched my younger sister fall to the ground dead. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and we were in Paradise, California, at the 76 gas station. During the next two or three hours, word spread in our church community. People would later tell me where they were when they heard the news. No one asked where I was: I was living it.

That was forty-five years ago! The memory is still present, but the pain and trauma of what happened that sleepy summer afternoon stand in my mind; the wound of that past experience healed but will never leave.

To this day, those who knew Joyce remember where they were and what was happening. They tell me where they were, but they don’t ask where I was when it all went down. The code of “don’t ask” slammed it all shut. They don’t need to know. To this day, I don’t know what was said about where my mother and I were. We witnessed it all in its horror.

The truth is that our trauma was not for public consumption. My younger brother never got to say goodbye to her. I left with two cousins for school, and he was now home alone having to adjust to being an only child—when that wasn’t the plan. You never plan for something like this, and yet I had thought about it because I knew she could die.

Her death messed things all up. We had to re-group, re-think, and adjust to life with no Joyce. Forty-five years later, the memories of people telling me where they were surface. Today is her death anniversary.

My mother and I talked about it when we were older and had distance from it. Death was riding with us that day and somehow my mother knew it. She thought it was going to be her that would die. We finally talked it out and realized that we were glad we’d finally said the words—late as they were to our journey of loss.

The truth is we all remember the “Where were you when…?” question. Those of us who are old enough know where we were when JFK, MLK, RFK, and others were brutally cut down. We remember the Apollo 11 landing, Challenger, the other shuttles, and now school shootings. We stand as witnesses to personal and societal pain.

We’ve taken to gathering at impromptu memorials to share as a community, and yet there is still stigma around personal trauma.

We’re not quite there yet with personal trauma; it’s like the accident that everyone drives by slowly in hopes of seeing the gory stuff. It’s about people wanting to be voyeurs into pain that they would not want seen themselves.

The catch here is that the “Where were you when…?” question enables us to talk through our own trauma around the incident. So many knew my sister, so many loved her, and no one had expected her to drop dead in a phone booth in Paradise, CA. So, the collective mind was collectively blown. Because of the collective trauma, we process it how we can.

For whatever reason, all of this came up forty-five years after the fact. I now live in The Netherlands, I’m far from family, and so, I’ll put this up instead.

Today I purchased flowers for myself and they turned out to be her favorite color: yellow. I’ll enjoy them for her.

I look at the clock and think about the fact that at this time forty-five years ago, we all had to eat. Some of us went for pizza and some stayed home at my aunt and uncle’s place. I went for pizza. I know, weird. The next day, my parents and my younger brother got into my father’s car and drove home and planned the service and all that went with it. Where was I? I was assigned to clean the house and so, like the dutiful daughter I needed to be, I vacuumed and answered the door for people paying respects. I think I’d rather tell people where I was when JFK was assassinated. Where were you when…?

Dancing with Brokenness

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

This year I’ve had the opportunity to serve in a leadership role. I’ve been doing this role for several years, and this year I’ve become more prominent.

I thought it would be more of the same, and as it turns out, it is teaching me new life lessons. I’m not opposed to learning them though. I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m learning not only about others—they are teaching me about myself.

As a therapist, people come to me broken, and as a spiritual leader, people can present in the same way: broken in the soul. Yet I don’t see someone in that way at first. I’ve always maintained an effort to see the whole within, and I’m learning that sometimes, to see the whole, you must also understand the broken.

And so, it has been my task to open my eyes to the broken in order to heal it into wholeness.

Some time ago, I wrote a post about one such person. I was thrilled when this person had a huge light go on! I am thrilled to know that the light is slowly becoming brighter with every passing month.

What is it about wholeness that causes us to not see the broken, and the broken to not see wholeness within?

Are we as humans so afraid of our inner selves that we choose to not look at them? Has society sent such a strong message of the correct image we should see in ourselves that most people won’t look at the real image, and when we are forced to see the broken self, it then repulses us? Do we put up a mask in hopes that no one will see the real us? Do we then become fearful of removing the mask we placed on our faces, and hide from ourselves?

Jon said that he was flawed, and worked to correct what nurture had put wrong. He was an example of persistence in healing himself. I learned from him to look inside in ways I hadn’t done before.

I arrive back in my circling to the leadership lessons I’m learning. Maybe it’s because I’ve dwelt in the margins most of my life, and have been mistreated at times. Maybe it’s because I had to grow up in ways that other children weren’t faced with. I did have to sort out what disability meant in an abled family and society. While I’m a happy person, I’m not always positive, and so I was amazed to discover that I naturally see the whole in others. How does that impact everyone I encounter? My attitude might also stem from walking the battlements. What came from doing the work around trauma was peace of mind. What also emerged from this healing was the ability to see the entire person in a clear light. I realize the hole that was deep down can now be understood. The brokenness that is felt, and sometimes seen by the person, and others.

The catch is that we can’t see others in a clear light until we see ourselves in that clear light.

At my almost midway point in this year’s experience, I’m understanding that good leadership is about perspective and being open to the lessons we’ll learn from others, and becoming open to learning ourselves.

We do a dance with our brokenness.

The gift to ourselves is to be able to emerge to heal the brokenness, and to see and feel the release into the healing light. Sometimes the emergence is rapid, and at other times slow and painful. In the end, and with the right vision, we heal. The process is gradual, until one day we wonder about how we got to this new place, and how it is that we find ourselves resting gently on a new shore. We see ourselves new, and feel the wholeness, and ask where did the feeling of brokenness go?

And so it is with lessons. We slowly heal, and with the pain of learning from our errors, we grow. We learn what we can and can’t do. We learn how others are affected when we change. We learn our way into a new understanding, and as we understand, we learn to think it through in new ways, and with new whole insights. Lesson learned.

Purge

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

I got mad, and I yelled at someone. I don’t like myself when I get that angry, and this weekend it happened, and I’m feeling it.

As I began to focus on the “why” of my anger, and where it came from, I realized that what I’d done to someone I care about was deeply hurtful. Could the healing between us take place? 

I’m still in contemplation and prayer mode around this, and in sitting with what happened, the answer is yes, and you must care for each other to heal the pain, the wound, and the heart.

Learning about Relationships

My mother was big on keeping peace in the home. So, like with most parents, “say I’m sorry” was often used. The problem with that term is that most kids just say it and move forward. Children aren’t really taught about what it really means. I was told that if you say that you are sorry for something, you should work to not do it again. In theory, that is a nice thought. With most humans, we have to learn it by doing it wrong a few times, and then getting it right eventually. My mother also told me to think about it. That was actually helpful, and I could pocket it in my head and let it percolate on low and quiet until it made sense to me.

What does sorry mean? It means that you’ve thought about it, and you won’t do it again. Working towards what will become an apology means that you go deep into the soul and do the work that will enable you to purge your behavior of the wrongdoing. Jon was really good at this. Before I met him, I had the ability to go deep within and do the thinking, and to sit with my thoughts. What Jon taught me was the ability to root it out of myself. He taught me about purging oneself of one’s flaws. When he said that he wouldn’t do it again, he meant it. He’d purge himself of the behavior.

My mother might have wanted me to say the words and make nice. She wanted me to think about things. I needed to purge myself of the behavior and mean it to the core.

Some Rules

Forgiveness is a process of recognition and acceptance: recognition of what we did, and the acceptance of why we did it, and how we’ll work to repair it. It should be done between those affected. When we put it out for public consumption, it creates more damage. Keep if off threads and other forms of social media. There are some hurts and pain that need to be dealt with quietly and in private. Think about what you are posting, and why. To forgive each other is a process, and it takes time and deep thought. I don’t post things that are super personal. It tends to backfire!

Take your time to think, and to act. You most likely got into the mess you’re in because you didn’t think, or because you acted rapidly. Fast action creates further issues. Fast action is often impulsive. Sleep on it, get some distance, and then when calmer thoughts prevail, thoughtfully respond.

Reflecting

The sun is out today, and I am inside thinking and doing the work of Monday. I’ll take a walk, and I’ll focus on what I did that is causing me to feel awful: I got angry at a friend when I should have shut my mouth and listened. It wasn’t a good thing. Getting yelled at isn’t a good thing; doing the yelling isn’t a good thing. Being able to contemplate and forgive is a wonderful thing. Saying, and writing an apology is a needful ability in our lives. Accepting the apology will keep peace and purge the soul of the negative feelings. It’s all about the deep, inner purge.

Author’s Pick: No Life Hacks

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

This post was originally published on February 7, 2023.

The Quilt

In 2017 I traveled to the US to attend a conference, to see a friend, and to spend time with my family. 

My mother had died on January 13th, a Friday. It came five months after Jon’s death. To be truthful, I was still crying for Jon; now I had to cry for her as well. I was numbed by Jon’s death; I did my best. I knew I would be bringing some treasures home; I didn’t know just how much.

My mother loved green. Her bed had this lovely green quilt, and it was filled with many other colors as well. The tiny flowers that danced across it brightened up a room. 

While at my sister’s, my sister and sis-in-law came bouncing in with the quilt: “You need to take this home, Gail!”

HOLD IT!! I don’t do green—I do blue. I didn’t have a bed that would work with that quilt. I took the quilt. What would I do? In December of 2017 I ordered a new bed with a blue headboard. The quilt would work with that bed. My mother would approve. Yes, I had decided to honor her with a bed large enough that the quilt would work. It felt good. It resolved something; seeing the quilt on my bed was just what I needed. 

Had I tried to force emotions around my mother, the gentle peace that came to the process would not have happened. The fun and delight in finding the bed would have been stolen, and the crazy part of all of it, the part that made it my mother, would not have come into being. The memory of it all is delightful! 

As I sit here writing this in 2023, my mind is taken back to the recent past. I’m thinking about the fact that grief does its thing on its own timeline. If we do our work with that in mind, things will surface when they are ready to surface. There was no need for me to “hack” it, or force anything to happen. 

While I’ve done a great deal of work around Jon, I thought about my mother, who was ready to go when she went. It is the two most recent sibling deaths that I haven’t fully processed. 

The Nightmare of 2021-2022

I was raised in a large family. I’m the middle child, the middle daughter, and now one of two living siblings. 2021–2022 is a time period I’d rather not relive. It was a time when I had to face the possibility that all three siblings could die. 

April and May of 2021 played out like a horror story. It began with a phone message from my sister, Beth. I knew. I knew that this call was to tell me she was dying. She was hopeful, felt they could treat the liver cancer. But I knew. Over the next year, it unfolded until an ugly death scene played out as her husband witnessed the end in a period of fifteen minutes. By the time the hospice nurse arrived, she was gone. A year of sadness ended. I miss her but am glad her suffering is over. Writing this seems to bring insight that, in many ways, the year of processing was what I needed.

My two siblings and I understood the fact that my brother wouldn’t live to the end of 2021, and, mercifully, he died that fall. A call from my sister-in-law alerted me to the fact that he’d been admitted to the local hospital late on a Friday evening. He never regained consciousness, and around Sunday at noon he was gone. When I got the WhatsApp message, I yelled into the cosmos; I was so angry at him for not taking better care of himself. I was at him: crying, yelling, and making peace with it was all I could do. Singing at his funeral was also a good thing. 

Returning to May of 2021, my younger brother had a heart attack. When the testing was done, he was facing a quintuple bypass. (As far as I know, the record is a septuple bypass.) I cringed. With that heart attack, and the surgery he’d face in July, I had to face the ugly truth, and I’d better face it full on. He might not survive it all. 

I didn’t want to do any of this grief work, and yet, it stared me in the face like the ugly monster in the dark. I could become the only living sibling. Yes, I have nieces and nephews, and even great nieces and nephews. The thought of being alone, thousands of miles from family, was terrifying to me. 

Fast-forward to 2023, I’m fighting the tears that for some reason won’t come, and need to come. There is no “life hack” for this. As much as I know I haven’t done all the work yet, I can’t force it. When someone forces things, the result is more work. If we allow our minds, our hearts, and our bodies to open to the process, the heart, head, and body will be much gentler in leading us to where we can release the emotions we’re holding safely. I find myself in a place of peace, patience, and willingness to sit with the stillness that whatever is needed will be delivered to me when it is needed. I don’t need to fight the unknown. It will find me. No hacks needed. This is super liberating. 

Once again, I realize that sitting, writing, and reflecting does the work for me. I don’t need the tears: I need the time to build peace within myself. It’s a good place to be. 

Support Sites at the Right Time 

In this era of wanting instant gratification, the art of waiting is messing up the soul. When I first started this process in 2016, I waited to look at support sites. When I did search out a site or two, I was stunned to see that people were coming to these places so soon after the death had occurred. 

It works differently for each of us. I sat with the pain; I had a friend who listened, and ultimately made my way through two years of hell. 

I took knowledge from the sites; I came to a realization that the path into the grief process would become my unique journey: no two paths are the same. Each of us face differing life circumstances. While we might each want the tears to go away, they go when they’re good and ready to do so, and not a moment before they have done their work. Learning to wait, getting support for it, and learning to live in the present moment with all of it is needful. Trying to push it disturbs the process. 

One of the gifts I took from the support group was that I was right where I needed to be. Being able to read someone else’s experience affirmed to me that I was doing well. The other gift of the support group was that I became less judgmental of myself and others. I learned to accept my own process. The online support groups served as a place of understanding and peacemaking for my own needs.  

I slowly returned to life, rebuilt, and am still to a great extent doing the work of creating the new life I desire. What I envision for myself in year seven is so different from what 2016 looked like. The deep spiritual and soul work I’ve done is nothing like I would have imagined it would be. For me, knowing comes with the understanding that I’ll continue to grow, reflect, and reach upward towards new places. Yes, once again the spiral moves me upwards. It is good.