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Oct 4

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Crossing Styx

I remember a moment in my office when I realized that the journey of grief was about the past and the future. A new life could spring forth. It was the thought that I could plan how my life beyond would look. I got that idea from a book I’d read on grief. The trouble with that type of thinking is that it feels certain, and life is not anywhere near certain. The illusion of control is what would vanish during the next years of my life. While I can plan for some things, where I was led was, in ways, completely unexpected.

I sat looking out the window at the other houses, and I thought I knew where I was headed. I could have drawn up a plan of sorts. Wrong. While we can think about what we want, it is an illusion. Once again, certainty called me out.

There is something about this process that, if we allow it to do so, leads to wonderful and mystical surprises. Around each bend, things that we can’t imagine for ourselves appear, and disappear. Life has a way of doing that to us. Call it what you want: listening to your inner voice, your own knowing; or just letting go, and letting it happen. If we’re able to engage beyond our control, delightful things happen.

In my case I listen, and I have been doing the listening since early childhood. Whatever it is for you, it affects our footsteps as we walk on our path exiting out of the loss we’ve had to face. That day in my office a few years ago has come and gone, and it has proven me wrong. I had no way of making the connection that leads to a transition, because when you’re in it you can’t see it. When you’re in whatever you’re in, you don’t know what you’ve been sucked into.

The real work of grief and loss is found in the liminal spaces, and the times when we can enter back into that “funeral bubble” where life stops for us and we pause to collect the new understandings. We see old relationships in new ways and call them out for what they were. We allow their existence to come to new places within us. It took me somewhere between three and four years to get to this point in the process. Some of it is good, and some of it can be heart crushing. Like a river surging forward, it affects how we understand ourselves, as we leave a sheltered space to travel to a new destination within our personal knowing. Once again, we board a new boat. We’ve been on this boat since the loss happened. We don’t know we’re there because, their nature, death and other losses are traumatic.

During the past few weeks, I’ve begun researching for a book. The research involves reading memoirs involving grief journeys, and I’ve been taken to sadness, visiting old haunts, and a new understanding of where I was, what I could have done better, and ultimately seeing that I’m at yet another place on the river. While my eyes are wide open, I’m scared, and I have questions for myself. Can I navigate this? What is my new soul work? I think this is that space beyond grief where you know you’re someplace else, and once again you find yourself looking back, and this time knowing how you got to this new shore. For me this new place is an intersection that has involved the spiritual, my sexuality, and coming to terms with where I was in my young adult life. It is scary.

I’ve arrived in this liminal place with new skills, and yet, it’s so fresh to me that I wonder if I’m ready for it all. Arriving at a new point in time is more of a recognition than anything else. It is humbling. Once again, I faced a new set of demons down, and moved myself to the new beyond.

In realizing I’m on a new shore, I pause to shed fresh tears. This new set of questions is so different from that August 2016 day when I cried and wondered how I’d do any of this.

I think that in the beginning of the grief process, our knowing and certainty get ripped from us. While we’re busy having ourselves torn apart in the first days, months, and two years, we can’t fully understand the stirrings within. We get grabbed and taken to an underground we didn’t know was present. The underground is a dicey place for several reasons: 1) you don’t know you’re there; 2) you’re still moving along to someplace; and 3) the more inner work you do, the more you discover. The catch to all of this is that we’re underground, and we don’t realize it.

If I could go back and advise the woman of the past—the one that was scared and questioning the “how” of it all—I’d tell her to trust her footsteps. I’d tell her to honor the trauma that the suicide brought into her life, and to understand that this new journey of learning will bring a new calm, along with new acceptance of the essential things. I’d also let her know that grief is like the River Styx.

In a weird way, the living are the ones crossing the River Styx. We cross an underground river to make a grounded connection. Each living journey is unique to itself, and what we begin our crossing with is not what we’ll emerge with. We enter an underground that will propel us to a new, above-ground life. The living work of grief is to cross the River Styx to find ourselves alive in new ways, and on a new shore. At some point in time, we noticed that whatever needed to happen spit us out on this new shore. We’ve lived through our hard work to discover life post whatever tossed us into the boat and sent us shooting onto the waters of darkness. In places the current was strong, and we survived the journey.

There is no way of knowing that the living also traverse the waters of Styx. Maybe this is why grief, and the journey out from it, is so elusive for so many. We fail to understand that where we are is not anything that anyone can warn us about. We are underground, yet seeing light. Our support systems are what provide the lanterns that shine in this underground of Styx. In this place the light dances, dims, and shines brighter until suddenly we’re out!

The work of grief is dark. Grief challenges us to look deep within ourselves, admitting all things and standing as a witness to our own life, and the life of the deceased. We must honor the truth of each life. Like in Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card, we must recognize the truth of our life, and the lives of those gone from us. We find our truth while traveling in the darkness of the River Styx. The work of grief requires this.

I pause with this realization of the journey well-traveled: WOWZA!!!! I dig my feet into the warm sand on the new shore. This is the afterlife! Post Styx. Goodbye, Styx, and thank you for the boat that served me so well.

Sep 19

Eighty-Four Months

During the summer of 2016, I sat in my office and realized that I needed to make a hard decision: do I leave Jon, or do I stay? Leaving him would mean that I would be able to pursue my own path, and I’d exit the caregiver role that had taken up so much of my emotional energy for the past twenty-two years. I was worn out. Staying in the marriage would mean that I’d continue to do what I’d been doing for most of our relationship.

Leaving him when he was not able to stand on his own yet could mean suicide. He was doing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. DBT was created from Marsha Linehan’s work. I’m thankful that she had the insight to bring this forward for the mental health community. For Jon, it was a slow process, and one that would take many more years. The therapist needed to help him resolve family-of-origin issues, as well as provide him some life skills that would help during times of crisis. In the long run, I’d benefit from what he was doing.

What no one knew in July of 2016 was that in six weeks the horror of suicide would confront me. He was entering into another psychotic episode, and this was the one thing that would cause him to end his life. He wore a mask of fear around facing another psychotic episode and recovering from the damage it would cause. He had disclosed to me that if he felt himself moving in this direction, he would end his life. Not one of us who might have seen it coming saw things for what they were.

As I think back, compassion fatigue had burrowed deep into my mind. I was physically and mentally exhausted.

Looking Back

Where was I? If he told me to gather up the objects that would enable him to end his life, I would go through the house and do so. I would store them away until he felt safe from himself. When he stressed and had a crisis, I talked him down from it. Sometimes it took hours to get him to a point where he would swallow an extra dose of medication. Then I’d need to make sure he slept. When he overspent, I could no longer fight it. I had no energy to go up against the crazy. Everything combined took its toll on me. I felt like I was abused, and there were no bruises to show for the abuse I was enduring. If he felt something, I felt is as well. I was becoming nuts in my own way. How could I not feel for him? He was suffering in ways that cut deep into his soul. I couldn’t sense this in its fullness as it happened. Our humanity leads us to compassion for suffering of this magnitude. Compassion calls us to act when we can’t empathize with something that we haven’t experienced. I will never know what it is like to feel the level of darkness, dysfunction, and despair that he felt on a daily basis.

I asked questions to understand. It is one of the reasons I’ve placed his writing on this site in the form he constructed his blog Jon’s Hideaway. Jon struggled with sharing the little he did share. I’m glad he was courageous.

There were the comments, and the assumptions. I was told that I wasn’t putting enough into the marriage! Holy hell, I was dying inside! 

Being raised in a patriarchy and a high-demand religion wasn’t helping me in any way whatsoever. I raged inside as there was no place for me to turn. Had I gone full disclosure to my family, I would have been told to divorce him. I loved him, and I couldn’t see a path that would have served us both well. What I needed was mental and emotional relief from the situation. When you are dealing with compassion fatigue, you can’t understand the pulling apart of your own soul that is taking place at the time. The fatigue blocks it out.

The Needs of Caregivers

What do caretakers who deal with the bipolar population need? First, and above everything else, we need safe places that allow us to disclose our needs. We need a supportive friend who can listen and keep us objective, and also show empathy. We need someone to spell us off so that we can get out and get away from the stress when the stressful times increase. We need others to come in and help with housework or meals when our energy is low.

One of the huge issues I had with Jon was around keeping his dignity intact. Jon was a brilliant man. Mental illness robs people of dignity. As his caregiver, I fought to shelter him from people who didn’t understand. He was well aware of how mental illness is viewed. We talked about it often.

How do you explain to people that bipolar isn’t the person going creatively mad? Most of what bipolar brings into a person’s life is darkness, dysfunction, days and nights of sleeping, and not being able to care for yourself. Showering can be put off for days. Brushing teeth might not happen, and if a person is alone, they might not eat, or they might overeat.

During the time I was out of the home for a vision rehab program, I had people set up to deal with the crisis end of things. I didn’t have people set up to check in on him. At the end of one of my four days away from him, I walked in on a scene that scared me. He hadn’t fed himself, showered, taken out the trash for pick up, and had I not come home it would have become worse. I called the psychiatrist and got him in. Then, I took a week off from the program in order to stabilize things at home. I wasn’t worried about him attempting suicide: he didn’t have that kind of energy. I needed more help than I had.

What Else?

There is also the obsessive-compulsive factor that surrounds bipolar. Not all bipolars are also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); however, there are components of the disorder that show up for many people. For Jon it was being able to make his guitar. He needed to have the perfect neck for him to play. So, he never really played his guitar: he researched, purchased tools to “fix” it, and then never got to fixing it. There was also the thought that he would record his own music. So, he began to build his own recording studio. Trying to reason with him became a war zone. I stopped fighting with him. I didn’t want the war to resurface in our relationship.

Then the issue of me cleaning our house came up, and I wasn’t allowed to clean the house because I couldn’t see it all well enough to do the task right. He would put it off, and every once in a few months would take several hours and clean. I sunk further into despair. When we moved out of our home due to bankruptcy, and people came to help us move, I was the one blamed for the messy house. Once again, no one asked the why question, and it wasn’t safe to explain it all. As my mother used to say, “Assuming make an ass out of you and me.”

One thing led to another, and by the time he took his own life, I was beyond worn out: I was numb.

Aftermath

While I was able to understand on some level what the marriage had done to me, I wasn’t able to understand it in its completeness. It would take years for that to happen. It has taken over eighty-four months to write this post. It isn’t that I was unaware of compassion fatigue; it is about the fact that grief work involves sifting through so many aspects of life. For me to fully process this has taken almost eighty-five months. For some of you it will happen much sooner in the process.

When I look into the mirror, I see a face that isn’t stressed, a woman who can smile, and a life that is taking me along paths that I never imagined I’d walk. It is enough.

Sep 6

When No One Speaks

In July I attended a webinar on diversity. The presenter knew two things: people of color and compassion for the LGBTQIA2S community. And the presentation, or lack thereof, bombed. Just my opinion, but I know something about the subject.

What really bugged me is that he really didn’t have any presentation; he wanted people to ask him questions, and the hour was Americentric. It was an hour I’ll never get back.

Many people, when they attempt to speak about diversity, completely ignore the community that intersects all communities: the disabled. It is as if they have blinders to the reality that someday, they could become a card-carrying member of the disabled population.

When these conversations occur, if we’re mentioned at all, it is as an afterthought. This really bugs me! We have conversations about everything else that is diversity, and we even talk about use of white privilege and economic privilege, and the disabled are left blowing in the wind.

The voices that should stand for us don’t really show. Parents show for their children. Who stands for the vulnerable adults? Special interest groups? Many of those groups focus on children.

I’ve stood for myself, and I sure wish someone would use their privilege to stand for me. I’m worn out from being the justice warrior in this area. I may be an enneagram type eight, but who will speak for me when I need assistance? For the most part, I’m left to find it on my own.

Finding it on your own can be messy. And the mess in my life came to a crashing halt days after that webinar.

Lessons From Room A341

It began on July 20th, after a day in Utrecht. I woke up tired and attributed it to the running around I’d done the previous day. By Saturday morning, I had to fight to get out of bed, and Sunday I felt awful. Monday, I let the sick state of being take over, thinking that resting, plenty of fluids, and eating would fix the situation. It got worse. The next Sunday, I knew I’d better call the doctor’s office. I was sicker than I’d ever been in my life, and my gut was telling me that I needed to get to the hospital. I also needed the doctor to make a house call. My head was working well enough to know that I couldn’t care for myself. In the past week, I’d become disoriented during the night and couldn’t find my way out of my bed or my room. I couldn’t even think straight enough to turn my lamp on. This was bad. I also knew I was a physical mess. So, Monday morning I rang up the doctor’s office, and around 5:00 PM the doctor came. She called the ambulance, and I settled into more of the disorientation that was present. I was finally able to just lay in a bed.

After eight hours in an ER, and the staff finally able to get the proper IV and other things inserted into my body, I was moved to a room on the same floor for observation. That Tuesday, they finally sent me upstairs to a room. I think it was evening by then. Wednesday, after cultures were grown, I found out my diagnosis. I’ll say that it wasn’t the E. coli that was doing bad things to me—they could cure that with antibiotics—it was the kidneys and my diabetes that went completely out of control. My personal education was about to expand, and I was also about to expand other people’s education as I lay in a bed in room A341.

If there is one thing I don’t like, it is having to explain the why of, after over twenty years of living in this wonderful country, my Dutch is so bad, and why I can’t speak more of it. Being hearing impaired and learning Dutch do not pair well. As languages go, this one is like a spoiled child who keeps wanting to change the rules because no one has told them NO. I lay in the bed, minus my hearing aids, having to tell people to speak only English. The fact that my vision was bugging out on me was less of a worry. I also had to deal with that.

I’m having to explain this to people when I’m really sick, not fully understanding what is going on, and my head is being hit with not knowing what I need to do to process it all. And, to top it off, I’m weak.

I’ve come to the conclusion that teaching hospitals at universities work better for me. I don’t have to explain things.

I’m angry, and all I want is to be shown some consideration, because nothing is working correctly. Why do I need to explain this to everyone? I fantasized about what I’d say when I could write. I don’t remember what I thought. I do remember that it hurt to think about it. I was really too sick to think straight.

The Upside and the Downside

Having my meals brought to me, and discovering that someone in the kitchen was able to do fish that tasted amazing, was wonderful. I had to admit that if one is sick, this is the way to do it. Yet, not having physical visitors took its toll. Messenger and Zoom phone helped with that.

Most of what I’ve learned I’ve discovered since discharge. It’s been eye opening.

When I use the word “sick” in the bullet points below, I am speaking of the “sick” that puts one in the hospital, and that requires longer recovery periods:

  • Being sick can cause trauma to build.
  • Being sick can cause someone to become self-centered.
  • Being sick can close our eyes to the lessons we need to learn around our own situations, and how we treat others.
  • Being sick means we need to listen to others when they tell us to slow down and nap during the day.

I feel awful about the self-centeredness and realize now that it stemmed from trying to recover too fast.

I’m convinced that there are times when nursing staff don’t understand the behavior they are seeing. Trauma can build due to uncertainty, and in the early days of my hospitalization, I didn’t understand that what was going on could have killed me. I was in a daze, and nobody picked up on it. I had told a friend during my time at home that “I don’t have good sick skills.” This is because as a child, what I learned post all of the normal stuff children get was not much. I was a healthy person. It has caught up with me. It is also my personality. I don’t like to stay in bed. I share this because of the fourth bullet point listed above. My doctor told me to take the time to nap if I felt I was tired. She also told me to begin to build up walking strength slowly using my treadmill. I tried to ignore self-care the first few days I was home. Then I made an effort to follow her suggestions, and I found that my strength was returning! 

If we listen to our bodies, we can learn wonderful things! It’s been over a month since this began, and today I’m enjoying a pleasant afternoon at my computer. I’m gaining strength, enjoying insights, learning about myself and others, and understanding that my challenge is to keep healthy in new ways. I’ll keep this short so that I can exercise a wee bit of self-care. I’m doing well with this new routine of mine. I just wish I wouldn’t need to do so much explaining… and yet that is what we in the disabled community must do.

Jul 17

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Eight

Two years ago, I began to attend courses on the enneagram. I’m a type eight. Yes, the one that so many look at as “the worst.” But I don’t agree. I claim who I am proudly! Others have differing personality types with their strengths and weaknesses. I’ll own mine.

When I first read the description of an eight, I was repelled. It didn’t feel flattering. I did not want to see it, let alone identify as an eight. It took me some time to accept that I am all of it, the ugly along with the great things, and there are so many wonderful things about who I am!

The enneagram is a spiritual growth tool. One of the benefits of using the enneagram is that a person can learn to work on the not-so-healthy parts of themselves and move forward into health. This is the journey we are all on: self-discovery and improvement. I embrace this journey fully.   

This last week I was asked by another course attendee what I liked about being an eight. To answer the question, I decided to write this post.

When I first read about who eights are personality-wise, all I could see in the words were the negatives. To tell you all the truth, I readily identified with the harshness that we as type eights can hold ourselves to. I possess an inner critic that pushes me to do my best. I’m not a perfectionist: I require that I do my best, and that I be satisfied with being good enough. I’ve really had to work on this part of myself. Accepting ourselves as good enough is a battle because society tries to force a belief that perfection must be achieved at all costs. I disagree, and see the damage that perfectionism can cause. Let there be “good enough” and let it begin with me.

I am thankful that my “knowing” can also cause me to question. I believe that this quality enables me to sit with the uncertainties, and to learn more about what I once thought were absolute truths. I like that in a crisis situation, I can respond with the ability to provide a workable solution.

We’re leaders, and sometimes we fall into the trap of protecting those whom we see as vulnerable in negative ways. We can also speak to the need to protect the vulnerable and hold deep compassion for their struggles. I’m becoming aware of when this is healthy, and when it isn’t such a good thing.

I like the way in which I’m challenged to confront myself in the mirror of life. I believe one of the strengths we as eights have is to come out of our denial, and to look at our weaknesses. We might spend time fighting the truth about ourselves, and when we embrace what we must embrace, we dig in deep and work to understand ourselves better. I really like this about myself.

I don’t like that there is a part of me that goes to vengeance. I do this when I feel the need to protect myself or others. It is ugly. I’m coming to understand that in challenging my need to protect, and to mount the campaign to go to war over what I perceive as unjust, I first need to look inside and explore myself before I aim and fire.

Which leads me to the fact that we as eights have a tendency to fire first before we even aim or are ready to aim. We can be dense and asleep to how our harsh reactions can affect the fragile souls of others. When we come to understand what our actions may be doing to someone, we can challenge ourselves to that part of ourselves that desires to protect in healthy, compassionate ways. Understanding the enneagram is enabling me to be kind and gentle to myself. I can use my two arrow to give to myself in softer and gentler ways. I can drop into my five arrow, which I do often. I use this arrow to observe myself and others. My five arrow is one of the things I credit to bringing balance to the eight within.

I like the part of me that will explore and is curious. I like the fact that people know that I’m dependable. I also understand that if I set a boundary or a limit to what I can take on in life, it is understood that I’m at my limit.

I am learning to trust in new ways. I like the fact that my vulnerability teaches me that I can do this hard thing.

I have done the activism that I’ve needed to do in my life, and I listen to the call to change my life direction and to try a new path. I’m excited for this new thing. I sense that this is the best thing about eights: when we’ve done the work around our knowing and can sense our new direction, we can and do act boldly.

I love being an eight!   

Jul 10

I Suppose

Before me is a blank document. What do I put on the page? This time of year used to be gentle; it has become hard. What were once simple lazy days with blue skies have become days of reflection and wondering. I tend to review, explore and wonder where I am now compared to the last year. I suppose that surviving a suicide of a husband will do that to you. I realize that his suicide freed him from a very painful life, and it presented me with a rare gift.

I am not shocked or upset by this thought. He gave me the ability to move forward myself. I was given the time and freedom to explore our relationship in ways I couldn’t do when he was alive. I was an innocent when we got together.

Before I met Jon, I didn’t understand that you could doubt or question someone’s love. Yes, I got that there was love that is dysfunctional: manipulation masking as love, and love that I had not seen. In my life, and in my mind, love was gentle. My relationship with Jon educated me in new ways. 

Relationships teach us the good, bad, and questionable things about ourselves. Living under the same roof brings with it challenges and a need for commitment to the process of growth. If there is one thing that enabled our relationship to last, it was a commitment to growth and exploring the hard things together.

Sometimes we couldn’t resolve an issue in a day, and that was OK. Being in hard places is good for growth and exploration. I learned to become more adept at remaining open to the long-term solution. There are things that only time and deep insight can resolve, and the commitment to do the work “until” is essential to making it work.

The best counsel I got from his psychiatrist was to give him space. OK, I needed to give myself space too. Walking away enabled us to resolve issues faster. I’m thankful for this knowledge, and the gift that it is.

There were times when I wondered if he could love me. The bipolar cut into him in ways that he couldn’t even express. His upbringing cut into his soul in other ways. My heart ached for the both of us at times. After his death, the love question surfaced, and I knew I’d have to face it.

There is a time in the grief process when it all gets put on the chopping block. It all has to go on the block. It is the deep work of grief and the exploration of the shadows that we hide from. If we’re willing to do the hard work of grief, we must extract the ugly, unpleasant stuff and dive in. This is where many stop their work. It is ugly and messy, and do “I” really want to face this truth? My innocence committed me to explore this place of shadows. Sometimes innocence is a great motivator.

Some couples do this hard exploration while they are together in life, and some widows or widowers are forced to do this difficult exploration after the death, and before moving into a new relationship. I had to cross into this place after, and I’m glad I did. My willingness to do the work didn’t make it any easier. I’ve always invested in self-improvement and growth.

What bipolar takes from relationships is debatable and unique to each person. It took my innocence. In saying that, I’ve had to admit that while I love Jon, he opened my eyes to a very dark side of the world. I would not have chosen to go into the dark abyss of a hell few can explain, and fewer still can understand, and yet I went, and I find that I don’t regret the journey to this place. It is a gift I wasn’t looking for, and I’m richer for having taken the time to open this gift.

The gift of knowing you are loved comes in many forms. In the first few years after his death, my reflections led me to explore the “he didn’t love me” side of things. Sitting with the doubt, the hurt of things done, and understanding who he was deep within, moved me to the place of love. I came to a realization that through all of it he tried his best, and so did I. There was love in the tiny things he tried to do. There was love in the sneaky things he pulled off; there was love in the gifts he thoughtfully gave, and in a mixed-up way, even in the way he ended his life. In that velvet way, I didn’t even notice the change I’d made in my thinking. Wow!

When I think about what it means to show love in deep ways, he did his best to do that. I accept what he wasn’t capable of doing. I can also view my side of things with more realism. I can take responsibility for the failures and the successes of my part of the relationship, and some of it hurts.

I suppose this journey is about being able to find the deep peace that I’ve needed to put things to rest. Coming to this knowing also brings up the fact that nothing is ever at an end point. Only the final eye closure can and will bring things to an end.

I find that I’m standing taller; I’m wiser, and at the same time I question more.

As I pass into this new place where the gifts are for opening and exploring, I turn, look back, and realize that the lazy summers of exploration have gifted me some cloud-filled summer days. I suppose that’s just fine.

Jul 3

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The Hard Things

This past week has been a roller coaster of sadness, fear, contemplation, and soul-searching. I’ve had to step back and look at the last seven years of my life and reconnect with feelings that I thought were buried.

On August 29, 2016, I sat at my dining room table and wondered how I would get through life as a disabled person in a country where I didn’t have family or many friends. The fact is that I was traumatized, in shock, and trying to make sense of everything with no way to make sense of anything. And so, a journey began. 

I began to read and learn and discard the useless junk books. People spout Elizabeth Kübler Ross’s stages, workbooks on working through it. They said that if you do this, that, or the other thing, you’ll work through your grief, and all will be well.

I call BS. Grief can’t be fixed or cured. I stumbled on one book that I will recommend. The author went through traumatic loss and did what she needed to do to come through things. It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine is an excellent book that portrays the awful, the trauma, and the struggle to stand up again when grief and loss enter our lives. Death, unlike other life events, presents unique challenges for each of us. Someone’s death by suicide adds to our saying goodbye in unique ways. 

Devine’s experience was different from mine, and yet she touched on similarities: the inability to feed myself, to sleep, to drag myself into a new day or to know what to do. I’d had to shut work off and allow for healing time. I was compromised. 

The only thing I fully understood on August 29, 2016, was that for the next year I would not be making any major life decisions that could be put off. My father had taught me this, and it served me well during a time of tears, fear, trauma, and uncertainty. 

I was able to visit the US in the summer of 2017. It felt like I was in a foreign country. It wasn’t home. Europe was home. Going to the States was a chance to explore and connect with family, and to realize that I needed to find my own path. It was time to begin to do the deeper work of change. 

I needed to let go, and to trust that the process of healing would occur as it needed to happen in my life. I let go and engaged in trusting the universe and myself. I had to trust that I would walk a path that needed to be walked. At the end of two years, the type of tears I was crying had begun to change. My life was changing, and I had begun to trust my process. I was headed into new territories. It was a velvet road that I walked. Yes, the road was bumpy, and there was much to learn. The transition was done on velvet and I only realized after the fact that I’d been moving to a new place.

Newbies to this process often ask when the tears will stop, when the pain will stop, when the missing will stop. Things change; things don’t stop. You don’t get over people you love; you work through it all. Learning to walk through things is the real work of grief, loss, and an acceptance of the life we move into. And so, I began my education in standing stronger and finding how to heal from the awful, and unthinkable, of surviving my husband’s suicide. 

This last spring, I completed continuing education units (CEU’s) for my license renewal. The presenter on surviving a death by suicide had me until he played a snippet of a video on forgiveness. I thought about it and I asked why you would need to forgive someone for doing what they felt they needed to do in life. I realized at the end of those hours with him that he didn’t get it in the same way I got it. My husband’s death has never required my forgiveness. It never will. I digress. 

In 2023 I’ve begun a new soul journey that calls me to an acceptance that my vision is changing. Once again, I must face the fact that it is harder to read, to see what I once saw, and to figure out what the new path forward will be. Once again, I’m grieving the loss of what was, and sitting with the fear of how bad it will get. Once again, I’m wondering if I can do this hard thing.

How does anyone get on doing the hard things? I got thinking about this yesterday when I realized that I had a friend who hasn’t quite walked the life path I’ve walked and doesn’t understand the messiness of facing the hard in the same way I do. I hold out space for this person because they’ve had different challenges. 

I think some of us who have faced a constant stream of hard things tend to shortchange those whom we view as not having hard and challenging lives. I’ve had to call myself out on this. What looks like an easy, privileged life is seen from the outside. One of the things the past seven years has pounded into my head is that judging this type of thing is a trap. It’s a trap because we might look at ourselves as knowing more when it comes to doing life. I don’t think we know any more than others. We only know a different thing. 

I get that my clients and directees come to me for various reasons. I expect them to need to deal with hard things. I’ve had to learn that I need to cut a great many people a great deal of slack. We each face our hard things differently. 

I tell you all of this because I’m learning to graciously accept others’ sincere comments about my doing hard things. While it’s second nature to me, it isn’t to them. I realize that I want to respect their desire to support me just as I would support them. My journey is calling me out on being a judgmental person. Oh, this is a hard thing! This is deep soul work.

I think back to when I was in my twenties and I wondered how people older than I was got to where they understood all of this. It’s about not being afraid to call the old self out to the new self. That is what grief and loss is all about. 

Jun 26

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Psychotherapy Soup

Good therapy isn’t a “fixing” of the person. It is about thinking in new ways, learning to ask better questions of ourselves, and requiring better answers of ourselves. It is movement towards something better. Finding what we really need is important. Finding a good starting point can pave the way to new places. How do we go about all of this? 

This makes me think about drug advertising. What? How is that relevant here? There are two countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies can plug their drugs: the US and New Zealand. In these two countries you can turn on the TV and be told that company X has a drug that will fix your anxiety, depression, obesity, and high blood pressure. And they make it sound so easy! Go talk to your doctor and tell them you want _____. The drug rep from company X may or may not have been successful in placing freebies of the drug in the office. It can be a crap shoot. 

I get that pharmaceutical companies spend billions on drug development. I also know that some of this drug research is done for a population of very few who have rare orphan diseases and need something that will enable them to live better lives. I also know that this is one big reason companies negotiate with countries for some tax breaks. Drug trials take years! The cash spent behind the lines is large, and the unseen person power is layers deep. 

I mention the above to say that psychotherapy referral sites “pitch” different methods of therapy to the consumer. The prospective client/patient might not know what tools the therapist might have that would be most useful in the situation. What you think you need and how you can get that need met becomes a real question. 

A helpful way of beginning this process is to figure out the “what” you are trying to change or get deeper insight into. If you want to stop biting your nails, short-term, behavior-focused therapies would fit your needs well. If, on the other hand, you realize that the nail biting stems from deeper issues within yourself, you might want to explore insight therapy or a combination of both forms of therapy. 

People get pitched to all the time. You hear something on a talk show, read a book that touts CBT or EMDR or process therapies, or a narrative model, and soon you’re swimming in the soup! Referral sites are great for sorting things out. READ the person’s profile!  

I’ll now talk about how I work, and begin, with a new person. 

When you call or mail a therapist, and you know they are accepting clients, please read what they have to say about their work. A therapist might set up boundaries around when they can or can’t take on certain types of clients or patients. My work is done on Zoom, and that means that for my clientele that I take precautions to keep those I work with safe. Respect a therapist’s boundaries. 

To find a therapist who is a good fit, consider some of the following: 

  • If a therapist offers a free consultation, a no-charge first session or something like it, this is your chance to test the waters.
  • Ask questions and see if it feels like the therapist is a person you could grow a relationship with.
  • Is the therapist having you fill out forms before the first session? Are these forms having you consent to treatment before you’ve met the therapist?
  • If you meet the therapist and decide to establish a working relationship, it would be normal to then consent to treatment that you have talked about. What most therapy consumers don’t understand is that until you’ve signed consent forms and have an agreement, you don’t have a therapist. 

When you meet with your new prospective therapist, talk about their working style, ask questions, and let them ask you questions. This is important if you feel like the therapist is someone you will be working with long term. 

In all therapy, there must be trust on both sides. For instance, the person getting the help needs to trust that the therapist will be open and honest and answer questions. On the therapist side, the therapist needs to have the insight to understand when answering a question might rob someone of valuable insight that would be better gained by asking the person to explore the possible questions for themself. 

For example, if you were seeing me and had come to me because of three failed relationships, I might begin to form my own picture of why things went bust three times. If I gave you my answer, I could be off or spot on. In answering, I would rob you of searching deeper. My strategy would be to question with you. We might explore all types of options. In this situation you learn about yourself, you might learn something about me, and we both learn about each other. We dig down into the soup of why stuff is the way it is. 

A reason I’d answer a question is that by doing so it would serve as a confirmation on work you’ve done. You’ve been in the soup; you’ve slurped, tasted, and gotten a sense for how things are. 

When I walked into my first therapist office, there were no forms to be signed. What was said there stayed there. A therapist may or may not have kept notes, and a client/patient portal didn’t exist. The predominant treatment was psychodynamic and process oriented. Now there has been expansion!

What is the same? We have an understanding that talking, insight, doing, and discovering new pathways into ourselves can calm storms of the soul.

Jun 21

Running Scripts

Long, long ago, in a time decades in the past, there was a younger Gail in her early twenties. At the end of my first two years of schooling, and with an Associate of Arts Degree in hand, I discovered my life to be a mess. One of my professors suggested psychotherapy. Scared of what was ahead of me, I trusted the insight of a woman who saw what I couldn’t see in myself. 

When I stumbled into psychotherapy, I’d just escaped from the clutches of two years in a conservative college town that was not the normal California that I had been raised in. Having returned to the sanity of California, and desiring to get free of where I’d been, I found a therapist.   

At first there was deconstruction. Deconstruction is the dismantling of who we think we are, only to discover that our beliefs about ourselves need to be challenged and examined thoroughly. Deconstruction for me took years, and several therapists. I was peeling the layers of the onion of myself; this takes time. The “it took years” can be explained by the fact that I also took breaks in the process to synthesize the movement that was occurring in my life. I needed different therapists for different portions of the road. Some were better fits than others. During my grad school years, the work took on the focus of resolving unresolved issues that would enable me to become clear headed about myself, and with my clients. Ultimately, what it all taught me was that I’d be monitoring my stuff for the rest of my life. I needed to be doing my own work with an objective party who was willing to call me on my stuff. 

On the practical side, what I’ve learned from my time spent in therapy is that I’m a person who might need to step back for a few hours or a few days to sense what is really going on deep down in the soup of my head. When we listen to ourselves, we need to, and must, employ the same reflective listening that we do when in conversation with others. Do we allow ourselves to do this listening, or are we quick with a response to ourselves?  

One “rubber-meets-the-road” skill that we need to use on ourselves is the pause, and then count to 100. When we’re ready to rip someone’s face off, this serves as a means to get calm, think it through, and most likely come back with a kinder response than the angry thing we were going to allow out of our mouths. How many times has pausing saved you? What if we practice this pause with ourselves? 

What if the next time you were tempted to spew a list of all the reasons “I’m an idiot” for doing or saying whatever you just did or said, you counted to 100, took time to think about what you were about to do, and asked yourself the WHY question? What happens when you call yourself on your own self-talk and the scripts you run in a way that challenges all of it, the scripts and the motives for running the scripts? 

There’s a huge difference between running self-destructive scripts and deeply questioning our motives for running the scripts. The former allows us to remain in the same place and feeds the illusion that by running the script we’re doing something constructive about our behavior. The latter moves us into a place of personal responsibility for our thoughts and actions and requires us to ask the “What can I do about this?” question. It requires movement, research, and further exploration that could lead us towards the therapy we need to work on situations we find ourselves in.

Next week in part two we’ll explore the subject of selecting a therapist. See you then. 

Jun 12

Chasing the Fly

I’ve been wondering why there is a rise in stress and anxiety among younger adults. At first, I thought it was because they didn’t learn to play and create as my generation had done. That is one part of the problem. Then I noticed the influence of marketing on these kids. Maybe, and maybe not. As I dug deeper, there was a realization that in competition everyone had to get a trophy, and be special. The topper was the safety issue. When we can’t hear opposing views, something is terribly wrong. Yes, this is going to be a wild post. 

The last few weeks, parents have been posting on Facebook about their kid graduating from kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN!!!!! Get real, people. When, and how, did this become a thing? Personally, I think it’s a retail scam, kind of like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Let’s promote buying something, and don’t forget “Black Friday,” which has now left the U.S. and is doing a migration to Europe. But I digress. Back to what is going on here: adults with anxiety, teens, tweens, and kids with anxiety and depression. Oh, I won’t go down that rabbit hole. 

My thoughts wandered to a question that couldn’t stay buried in the rubble of the mind: Have people become so set on getting ahead and providing all good things that all good things are becoming lost on the way to the getting of them? (I need Bill Bryson to do the research on this and put it in a book so that I can synthesize it and digest how we got to this topsy-turvy place on this hot rock of ours.)

Then my editor told me about Jonathan Haidt. His research is brilliant. I spent the weekend devouring two of his books. They provided some grounded answers along with some thought-provoking questions. 

I think of parents over-scheduling children and not allowing time for relaxation, creativity, and free play. Sorry, people, “play dates” are not free play. There you have it!!!! Play dates!!!! OK, so I’m from a different generation when kids did really crazy things, like when we went to our friends’ homes on the spur of the moment because we could walk or ride our bikes there. When my mother called my friend’s mother, telling her that my friend’s brother had fallen out of the tree at my home, her mother yelled at us to “stay in the house, don’t go outside until I get back!!!!” Yes, George had a broken arm; Jenny and I remained at her place, and our mothers remained calm but concerned. We understood that play had its risks, and falling out of a tree or falling off a bike were some of the risks we took. About a year later, I was the injured person. While at a friend’s home, I broke my collar bone. Life happens. We didn’t stop doing creative things. We explored and discovered things about life. When riding down a steep slope, you must slow the bike and not fly over the handlebars. I rode the bike to my friend’s home, where her mother took a look at things. Yup, I needed a doctor for this one. It hurt. I was OK, and I’d be out of play for a bit.   

This brings me to the thought that we’re sending the wrong message to children now. Life isn’t safe. There should be healthy conflict and exploration in our upbringing. We should be teaching children to explore new things and new places. They need to discuss all sides of an argument and search out opposing points of view. Are we learning to think? Are our children and grandchildren learning to think? 

In 1999 my husband and I accepted a job assignment in Germany. We risked and stayed here in Europe. I didn’t know what I’d be facing as a disabled person here in Europe. What I found was a freedom I’d never had before. In 2016 I made the choice to remain here as a widow. It’s been a challenge, and I’m glad I’ve done it. It was a risk that has been stressful at times but worth the life balance I have because I chose to remain here. My childhood of roaming free, playing freely, and learning from it all provided some useful building blocks. 

During the last thirty years, some of those freedoms have come and gone for many children. In 2018, Utah, followed by Oklahoma and Texas, passed “free range” laws that restore the rights of parents and children to be on their own, just as I was when I was younger. It will be interesting to follow children in these states as they mature. Will these kids display lower levels of anxiety and depression? Will they be capable of riding a bus on their own? Will they know more of their neighborhoods? Will these laws get kids outdoors? Will they exercise more, and will obesity in children decline?  

Will children begin to have less homework and more free time to create?  

When I think about why I began to write this over a week ago, I realize that I want children to experience the fun and delight to be had in life. Remember the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go? If children can go to wonderful places, will things become better for them? Will depression and anxiety levels lower both in schools and homes? This would be great for children, and yes—bad for all the pill pushers hoping to get parents thinking that their kids need drugs when they may not need them. Before you scream, I’m pro wise use of medication if it’s needed. To quote one of my favorite books from childhood, and a book that takes the reader on an adventure with a boy and a fly: 

“I sat at the lake. 

I looked at the sky, 

And as I looked,

A fly went by.” 

(From Mike McClintock’s A Fly Went By.)

My hope and wish is that children will once again have life adventures where they will learn, explore, question, and connect with life in real ways. Let them sit by the lake and chase a fly.

Jun 5

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Navigation (Revisit)

When I wrote this post in 2018, I was emerging from two years of intense pain and grief over Jon’s death. The faith transition I had been on was winding down, and a new portion of the river was opening up to me. Since the posting of “Navigation,” it has become a post that I’ve referred my clients and directees to. This post holds a special place in my heart. I’m well into new places on this river; I wish all who journey well.

-Gail

5 June, 2023

River pilots have been a mainstay of the great rivers of the world, and in the U.S. they taught many how to navigate dangerous places and waters. I’ve used this analogy in closed groups, and am now choosing to use it here in this space. I hope the message is one of hope. This is an imaginary conversation.

The master river pilot and I sit in the boat eating bread and cheese, drinking the cold water of the river we’ve been on. The pilot is silent and waiting for me, the student, to comment.

“Devastation and damage is there. That is what I see.”

“Is that all?”

I slice off more cheese and bread and drink the water.

“No, I see triumph and wisdom.” We turn back to view what was navigated, and we both sit in silence, thinking over the trip that has placed the boat in its current location.

WHOA! We both survey the damage, crazy as it is, and we embrace. I’m sobbing in joy and gratitude. I stammer an “I could not have done this alone,” and take the pilot’s hand. “You didn’t tell me how beautiful it would be, and I didn’t think I could see it this way. This river is magnificent! And so is the damage!” Yes, in my fresh realization I discover that the damage I have navigated has its own beauty.

We can see it all! The mountain and the sacred space. We can see the dark, creepy forests and the valleys that held spaces of peace. I wonder if the people that were there are still present, or if they have also left for new destinations. I notice a city and inhabitants exploring its environs; they are being told to get on the newer, more elaborate boat that has been brought to this point in time. I knew it was time for a new boat, and a new journey. I understood the pilot would not be as active this trip, but that if I asked for help and assistance, I would have it. I had grown much, and it was time to test my new strength against the currents on my own.

I remember the terror of boarding a tiny, dilapidated boat, feeling as if it would get me nowhere, and preparing to sink as I went out on the water. But I remember thinking that if I had to be on the water in this craft, I’d better do my best to save or repair it. And that is how the journey began. I remember beaching the craft and walking inland to a forest that looked dark and threatening. I sat on a rock and cried because I knew I had to go into that place and I was alone and fearful of journeying into the darkness. I wasn’t afraid of what I would find, but I was uncertain of navigating in the darkness. As I sat there, I heard the tinkle of bracelets and earrings. It was a gypsy lady! She was saucy and vibrant and said that she’d been in that particular forest in the past and would be glad to serve as a guide. Together we reached a meadow of great beauty where the gypsy helped me locate a magnificent chrysalis that was just about to hatch, and as we watched it, the most beautiful butterfly emerged. It was the soul of the woman who had gone into the forest!

“This is yours and it will be with you forever.” The memories come back and the memory of the bond between the two of us floods my mind. The butterfly has remained nearby as the journey has unfolded. It holds magnificent strength! I know now that I have been molded by this soaring creature of such beauty, and I still wonder why I have not captured its deeper essence.

In wondering about this, the butterfly responds to my heart:“You have! You have been so busy on the journey that you’ve failed to look in the mirror! All you see is the damage! You know the beauty is there, but have you really claimed it for yourself? You are aware of triumph and wisdom, but are you aware of them residing in you? Don’t you remember when I broke free? Don’t you remember how I soared? Do you think that was only the beauty of my wings? You doubted what I gave you, but I’ve been near you all of this time. I am you, in pureness! Take a fresh look at me!”

I return to the boat and realize I’m crying. I gasp for breath and try to calm myself.

The master looks at me, the student of the river, and echoes the butterfly: “Your butterfly joined you so long ago that I think you have forgotten her full power. You have held her close and soared, and at other times sunk into deep despair. She never left you, and when times required her to, she reached down and pulled you up to travel on the river another day. I sent the gypsy lady to you when you needed a primer that would serve you well and prove to you that you could do this work of Life.”

I sit speechless. What words can I use to respond to this? I don’t have words—only a realization that truth has been spoken.

“When I asked you what you saw, you spoke of the worst first. You have done this type of thinking for so long that it has become primary to your functioning, and yet when you stand tall and survey the surroundings, you also speak to the triumph, and finally, the wisdom that you have gained.”

The master teacher and navigator has me focus on the rapids that I so recently transited.

“Look! What is there?”

“Only triumph. I don’t see anything else. But you were there with me, guiding me through the rocks, and when the boat began to take on water you stood and watched as I bailed myself out.”

“I only did that to teach you to trust me as you never have trusted me before. I knew that in your heart you wanted to learn it for yourself. You have learned this part of the river well. Well enough to guide others. Look again and learn from the journey you have been on. You are not that scared, younger woman of so long ago. Look at your hands. Feel your strengths.”

Once again the truth is spoken to my heart.

In the past two years, the journey has taken me to many places on the river. It has been a transit and journey of a new type. Leaving the old and finding the new, only to discover that the old has served in ways I never felt it could.

The boat I am in now is simpler, yet sleek and modern. The guides who have served to enable me to navigate the rough stretches have come and gone. Each has taught me new things. Each guide has specialized in a very particular portion of the river. But the pilot who began the journey with me has remained.

As I think back over the journey, I’ve come to understand the lessons the river has taught me. Pain and growth, whether in childhood or adulthood, teach strong lessons. I’ve gathered them in and managed to weave something out of it all, yet I’m not quite certain what it is all about. I just know that it is there, and that someday I’ll look over it and maybe have some insight that isn’t present now.

What I have learned from all of this is that there are times when the insights we gather serve us well, and other times when our view can trap us into paths we’d rather not wander on.

So, as I pause on this river, look and observe, I can’t get too snarky or certain. I am, like each of you, a traveler on this river. I navigate it with respect. I turn to the master pilot and navigator and announce that it is time to run this new river area. I smile, get a slice of bread and cheese, and more fresh water. I wonder who the new guides will be. I wonder if I’ve learned enough to guide myself or others. I realize that it’s not my call. But the master of navigation seems to feel that I’m ready. I turn my back on the damage holding the triumph and wisdom in my heart and raise my voice to the skies in a way I have not done in two years.

“Okay, cast off!” I drop the ropes that have anchored the boat to shore and sing as I do so. The boat feels good and sturdy, and I know that on this new stretch I’ll learn, grow, and move in ways I have not done before. I wave to the navigator, who is once again on the shore but never out of contact range.

“Show me what you can do now! I’ve been waiting so long for you to run this portion of the river, and run it you will!”

May 29

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Leaving the Bench for the Second Time

The past few weeks have given me opportunities to reach back and reflect on my own process of grief and arriving at a new waypoint. What happened? The more I live, read, and experience, the more I understand the journey I’m on with building a new life.

I’ve reflected on the many people who post early on in support groups. Their partner is newly deceased and they are asking after one or two weeks, “When will the tears end?” I understand why they’re asking this. This type of pain hurts physically. The people who respond, who have had more time in the grief cycle, usually tell the newbies that things will change, and to give it time, which is not what anyone wants to hear when the physical and emotional pain are so intense. 

Here’s my question for people who jump into these groups so soon: Why are you here so soon? That is the first question I ask as I read. I answer it with a list of reasons they might have: times have changed, and society is no longer connected like it used to be. People have lost communities of support.

I’ll say this until I don’t need to say it any more: the Western world has become a place of instant everything. In the West, we’re losing the skill of self-soothing. The need to sit in silence has never been so needed, and yet the volume levels are turned up so that we fail to hear what our bodies, hearts, and heads are telling us to do: sit in quietness and be still. We’ve also lost community. Community enables us to soothe ourselves, and in time turn to others for what we aren’t able to do for ourselves. This is a huge reason people show up to a Facebook group. Instant community that isn’t community. Some of what is there is helpful, and at times some things on these pages are not helpful. 

This last weekend a friend said goodbye to her mum. It has been some time in coming, and when the end came it was a peaceful ending. I’ve been aware that she and her family are in a “thin place.” I sometimes call it the funeral bubble. It is a place of reflection, where time stops while the rest of the world continues on. For those in the thin place, things are altered. We cry; we touch the spiritual; we reflect; we can think new thoughts, and in some ways, it can be rather mystical. It can be a place of solace. Eventually, we’ll leave the thin place and get back on the conveyor belt. It is when we enter the fast-paced arena of life that we demand the instant stopping of tears. We want the pain gone. We fail to realize that just like physical pain telling us and our bodies to take notice of what is going on, emotional pain is telling us the exact same thing: take notice, sit down, you are hurt.

Sitting here, I reflect on the day of August 29th, when I sat at my dining room table wondering the unthinkable: How will I survive? I wasn’t thinking of tears or the path I’d need to follow. The crazy crying jags appeared on the scene right on schedule: as soon as the emotional numbing thawed out. Looking back on it now, I think I was more scared of the crying than questioning when the tears would stop. This type of crying is physically violent. You feel it well up inside, and like an earthquake you hear the rumble of the approaching event. Ready? Shake. Hold your breath and wait for the thing to go away. And then the aftershock hits just when you think it’s over, and it starts up again. These crazy crying jags happen anywhere, nowhere, and some are triggered by memories while others have no rhyme or reason. They happen, and we who survive become embarrassed by the crazy state that doesn’t make sense to us. We leave a grocery cart in a store as we exit stage at right and bolt for the car in hopes of a safe place to let the tears out. We want them gone. Our minds are sending us a clear signal that we’re in pain. 

At this point we might be well into the grief, and well-meaning friends and family want to help by fixing it, and so they offer up help that might not be helpful. The catch here is that they may not understand, and you may not be able to explain any of what you’re going through. The words may arrive on the scene when the pain has lessened. You don’t fully understand any of this until you are years down the road. Don’t rush it—you’ll miss the essential nuggets and treasures that will be so valuable to you in your new future. 

In that new future the pain dims, and the quality of the tears changes to something else. We cry until we cry rarely. We remember with joy and fondness the good and wonderful things. We can objectively look at the relationship with its strengths and weaknesses. We gain understanding. We question; we contemplate; and we ask questions about the paths we didn’t travel down. In our questioning we become open to new pathways. We act by beginning to move towards something new. 

This movement is healthy and essential to living our lives in a new way. Along this new path we might begin to smell the trees and flowers. We meet those on this path and either engage with them or move on. Maybe we find a lovely place to sit and notice what is going on in our lives. 

We leave that space and move forward. We might make some changes, or we may choose to wait and see what changes come to us. I allowed life to be gentle with me. I realized somewhere along the path that I needed to practice better self-care. I needed to honor myself.

One of the deepest realizations I’ve had to sit with is that grief and its aftermath have allowed me to consider options for my life that I had not thought of ten years ago. How I see myself now isn’t the view I once held. This time, while sitting in a lovely spot on the path, something came along and challenged it all. I returned to the crying. I was able to call up the feelings I experienced as a new widow. I remembered. Now I write this. The difference is that this time I’m not in severe pain, and I realize that what I’m feeling and thinking is “get up off the bench, move—this is not your place now.” The tears are gone, and I stand up and step onto a new path—one I had not seen for myself. 

May 22

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Putting the Sledgehammer Away

The last few days have been filled with tears, meditation, looking inward at the past, and realizing where I am in the present. Growth can hurt deep down. Growth is progress that we achieve because of the price we’re willing to pay for it.

I’ve spent fifty years pointing out how those of us in the disabled community need to raise our voices more and speak loudly—and boldly. Last week I authored a post about my experience in a crowded room. My friend Karen read it and told me that she felt as if I were plagiarizing her. How often has this happened to each of us? We come together and discover that our life experiences aren’t so different. The commonality of what we experience as persons with disability can be powerful. It creates bonding in ways nothing else does. It is a gift that I share with Karen, and with others.

“You too!!!?” While this happens all the time, the feeling that “I’m unique” is dispelled by finding out that no, once again, I’m not alone in the world. This realization is juxtaposed with the example of a child who thinks everyone sees as they do, but who knows deep down that they are “not like the other kids,” whether it be due to disability, being LGBTQ2S, or being a victim of abuse: the secret is out of the bag. Adulthood requires that we grapple with these issues.

There are times when our inner selves push each of us to stand up and fight for justice for ourselves or others. We fight to be heard, and to have our realities accepted. If we can’t fight, we’ll likely be trampled because we’re not always seen or heard. Sometimes in that fight we forget who we are; we fade to our unique gifts, talents, and insights. We become swept up in the fight for recognition. I’ve been in this place for forty of the fifty years that I’ve been advocating for justice and change and for listening to the marginalized voices.

This week it all came to a head when I was forced to look inward at where my journey had taken me. The work I desire to do now is more spiritual in nature. It is the work that honors where each of us are. Each of us are equal within this realm. It is not a place of the marginalized: it is a place of learning to love ourselves, and to accept our own authenticity.

This place is one that offers sanctuary to each of us. Here we stand on equal footing because it is our hearts and souls that are heard. In the realm of the soul and the heart, all are welcome, and all are equal at this table.

I spent two years becoming certified as a spiritual director. I spent time discovering the power of meditation. I’ve uncovered places in my heart and soul that have moved me in directions I would have not considered five years ago.

Some of this uncovering is due to my husband’s suicide. Suicide changes survivors. One of the changes is the questioning we must do around making assumptions of others and ourselves. Another change is that we come to understand that people can remove themselves from humanity in a matter of seconds. Some feel strongly that if we all feel a sense of belonging, we’ll choose to live. All of this becomes evident to us as survivors. It causes us to question old things in new ways. We see an old rainbow in a new way. It causes us to do a grand reframe of it all.

The paths we have walked no longer suit our needs. There is a restless feeling when we remain on that path. It is as if we’re binge-watching our life because we’re at a loss about where to go next. We want the old to work, but we know it won’t, and we must come to terms with the fact that we’ve outgrown the friendship, the relationship, the career, or our lives as we understand them. It is why some people shock family, friends, partners, and church members when they announce that they’re packing up and moving to that new place. “Where did that come from?” or “Wow, her death really did a number on him.” The reality is that for whatever reason, that life change was brewing beneath the surface, and the life-changing event was only the catalyst to promote action.

I’ve heard the “if you hadn’t gone to a therapist…” If I had not seen my first therapist, I would have never begun the self-exploration that I needed to do in my early twenties; it was the beginning of my soul work. I would have continued to believe that everything would be alright and settled for coasting through life.

Life isn’t a straight path. Life is bumpy, strewn with twists, bends, and curve balls. We’re challenged to sit with the unknown, and to ask new and unthinkable questions that we would not have dreamt of asking even the week before. Life is messy.

It was in this state that I engaged in a conversation with a friend yesterday. She listened, didn’t need to fix anything, and I know she’ll support me in my new direction. She can sit in the messy, the unknown. To her and to others I say thank you.

While it is the mystical that draws me into soul exploration, it is the practical that grounds me in the here and now. It is a desire to always improve who I am, and to not settle for less than who I can be in my fulness. It is my understanding and my life experience that keep me grounded in the fact that there are people on the margins of life, and that they struggle to have their voices heard, accepted, and acknowledged. I will not forget you. I cannot forget you because my waking reality—struggling to see, to hear, and to negotiate a crowded room—calls me to that remembrance. It is the struggle that I will always share with those who are disabled.

I’ll admit that walking a new life path is daunting. Can I do it? Will I fall and mess up? Will I be able to learn to discover new ways of being along this new path? In a way, I’m putting away the sledgehammer that I’ve used to break down walls that have limited me, and others. It is time to put the sledgehammer to rest. This path calls for a peaceful tool.

I know there will be restful places to sit and reflect because I’ve always found them. What I don’t know is where all of this is going, and that is perfectly OK. I’m able to smell the new air, take it in, explore its excitement. And so, I turn my back on the old, and face something new. I wonder where this will take me? Where do you need to go?

May 16

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When Sanctuary Is Offered

I recently had an experience that I need to talk about. I was deeply impacted by what happened to me, and how it is affecting my life.

While I was in the USA during April, my hearing, or lack thereof, crept in and hit me on the head in a way that hasn’t happened before. I’ve always stuffed it, compromised, and passed off the fact that in a crowded room I can’t hear well at all. I’ve tolerated conversations that drive me to the point of severe sensory overload. I’ve behaved as if I don’t really have a choice but to be socially polite and endure the pain that is causing my head to melt down from sensory overload.

On Wednesday, April 26, I snapped. Maybe it was because I was with friends; it could have been because the noise levels built up slowly over time. Or maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, it all came together in an instant, and I could no longer endure what I’d put up with for years.

I’ve heard it all when I tell people that for me, social situations are beyond difficult. “We can isolate you in a corner.” This is the most common thing said to me. What has never been asked is this: “Gail, what do you experience in a room?” I’ll tell you: What it sounds like when I’m in a room with conversations buzzing around me is like noise coming at me all once—so much noise that nothing can be filtered out. Hundreds of conversations flooding into my brain that I hear simultaneously, and I have no means of screening out the voices that I need to hear in order to have an intelligent conversation.

I’m not kidding around when I tell people that attending social events is like fingers on the chalkboard! Ultimately, I feel as if I’m not believed. A person with normal hearing can focus in on the conversation, discriminate, and carry on in a crowded room. Even with the hearing tech I have, there is not a solution to tune out the disruption of a crowd. I’d love a hearing aid that tunes out a crowded room. They aren’t to be had.

What this all boils down to is the choice to engage socially or to withdraw from group participation. That evening in April changed the way I’ll do things in the future. While sitting at a table in a church social hall, my friend urged me to leave the room and seek out a quiet place. I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t want to look like I was being rude by withdrawing. I had come to be with people, not separate from them. She kept urging me to leave, and then her husband walked me out of the room and into the chapel where the noise came through but was tolerable. I was still fully aware of the noise, and it was tolerable. There we sat. He listened, and I let it out.

I suspect what I let out in spoken words were words so many others with a hearing loss might have uttered. “This is so hard.” Crying, and being disgusted by my vulnerability, yet not being able to stop the tears, I slowly realized that for the first time in forever I was strong enough to speak my truth and the truth of others: It is beyond hard—it is more like impossible to do what we do. I came to know, and understand, that socializing is something I’m better off not doing.

Socializing is something that is not enjoyable for me. It taxes my head and my hearing. I can’t understand conversations and at times might not give a correct response and be looked at as if I’m a Martian. I can’t read lips due to my visual impairment, and that makes it harder. I’m in strike-out mode from the very beginning of the situation. So, count me out.

I’m done compromising when a compromise won’t ever work. I’m done with people not understanding the reality of my hearing situation. I’m done being nice because being nice won’t get me what I need in social situations. Done.

Now, you’re thinking, certainly, that there is help. Try a google search, try several searches, try to find a simulation of what we go through. You won’t find that information. What you will be told is to get your hearing checked. If you’ve got friends that you want to help with a fix, there isn’t a fix. 

The downside to this is the social cut-off, and the isolation it brings. Saying no to social events cuts one off from so much. I’m taken back to the time when, as a teen, I quit doing dances because I was not asked to dance, and I was too scared to ask anyone to dance—even the “girls’ choice”—so I stopped going. This has its parallels. The difference is that I’m older and making the decision to meet the needs of being disabled. As I sit here typing, there is the uncomfortable feeling that I’m doing this for myself, knowing that it will cut me off in so many ways. I’ll now have to deal with holding a line, dealing with well-meaning people who want to make themselves feel better about things than listening to what I’m telling them. What I feel, and have to do, makes people uncomfortable. Staying home, staying in, and keeping my head in a good place is something I need to do for so many reasons. Please honor me by honoring my needs. Listen to someone when they say NO. There are good and healthy reasons for the boundaries disabled people set.

Realize that I can do a small group in a quiet space. If you really want to see me, call, drop by to say hello, and leave the mention of group contact out of it. I’ll most likely know what is happening. I’m not going to become antisocial.

This experience has taken me to the thought of legislating accessibility. While the US government has put the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) into place, and government web sites and buildings must comply with the ADA, it does follow that a business or other organizations must do so. Smart business owners have made things accessible. Ramps and ATM/PIN machines are two examples of accessibility. The catch here is that one cannot create quiet social places. I get it. There are things that cannot be mandated or legislated. I must care for myself, and sometimes that means speaking up, being an obnoxious person, and fighting for a peaceful environment. One night this last April, I found some peace in a sanctuary where I was heard. Being heard has led me to caring for myself, and a journey to speak out for others.

The path forward is to educate. It begins by listening to understand another person’s reality and their point of view. It progresses when we each become sensitive enough to consistently honor another’s truth, not by fixing it but by honoring their reality and what is needed to meet their needs. Maybe it is sanctuary.

May 8

Editor’s Pick: The Relationship File

As Gail’s editor, I’ve had the pleasure of reading and editing all the posts here on The Gift of Being Heard. This week, to conclude a series of “author’s picks” of posts from the last several years, I am pleased to have my own pick. While there are many pieces that stand out for a variety of reasons, I decided to revisit this one, as it poignantly touches on several issues that resonate with me, such as how we can avoid antagonism in the midst of sweeping changes in one’s life, and how relationships really do continue after death, regardless of whether one believes in an afterlife. Most memorable for me, however, is the insight Gail shares about veterans returning from the First and Second World Wars, and what this meant for their processing of trauma and grief. For better or for worse, we live in a different world now. We have gained so much. But what have we lost? I hope you enjoy this post, especially if you missed it the first time around.

-Claudia

In the last decade, I’ve lost my husband, mother, brother, and sister. I’ve jokingly told my younger brother that he’s under orders not to die on me. I’ve also said goodbye to an old faith home and welcomed a new place of faith into my life. All of this comes with grief, loss, mourning what was, and needing to reexamine relationships.

Of those who have exited life, only one was old enough to do so; the other three were all far too young to go. The reality is that they are all gone. The relationships now stand for review in the memory file, and what is done is done. The past faith home also stands in a memory file. Everything is up for discussion and it’s all fair game; nothing is sacred, not even my mother, whom I love deeply.

In looking at all of this, I must turn back the clock to the year 2006, when my husband’s questioning of his faith began. At the time, I wasn’t questioning, but I did want to hear about what he was thinking, feeling, learning, and what was making him angry about it all. The process altered the way we communicated, and it led me to my own path of discovery. It was a good thing, and ultimately, I took from it that relationships can change and that the change can be for the better. We didn’t need to go to antagonism. The concept that we could be different and have a healthy relationship was new to him. We could talk and nothing was off limits. That was where we were when he made his exit. Because examination of things was possible while he was alive, it made it possible to return to the relationship after his death and turn over some of the things that I needed to look at.

Relationships don’t end at death. We carry them forward; they are woven into the tapestry of our ongoing existence. As much as we may wish to erase someone or something from our lives, we can’t. We learn through turning over the rocks to look at it all.

This is also true of my relationship with my mother. I was fortunate that for approximately eighteen years, my mother and I spent every Monday in conversation. We’d giggle, laugh, cry, learn from each other, and talk about things that were deep and serious. Obviously, we spent hours before that time in conversation. When she made her exit, the “I love yous” had been said, and the one question I never asked—the one that I’d like to go back and ask now—I think I know the answer to. Her death came less than six months after Jon’s traumatic death, and I did not go to the memorial. My not attending was a bad choice, and I learned from it. Being there is needful in so many ways.

As I examine my relationship with my mother, I can make peace with what negatives there were. I think the fact that we had that conversation base to draw on has really helped. Pushback was allowed.

Then I look at my sibling relationships. My two older siblings and I didn’t always understand each other. I’m sad about this, and I also know that it wasn’t of my making. I tried. Could I have done more?

In looking at the hard question of putting things right in life, and after they’ve made their exits, I’m challenged by the meaning of our relationship. What is “right?” I love them both. I know that they, each in their own way, loved me. As I take relationships apart, I arrive at the same nasty conclusion that I did in life: They never understood disability the way they needed to understand disability. They were never able to completely understand me. I’ve come to the conclusion that I can be at peace with my end of the relationship and that is the best I can do. This brings up another question for me, and it is one I’ve been musing on for some time.

Why is it that in death, loss, and grief, many people choose to move forward without the work of examining the loss they’ve had in life? The urge to replace someone or something can be strong, and it can also damage us. The more I sit with this question, the more I wonder if it has to do with the fact that our society has radically changed relationships, trauma, and life in general. I’ll explain using WWI and WWII.

Both of my grandfathers were veterans of WWI. They came home on ships. They came home together with war buddies, and in large numbers. On the ships they had time to process the violence and the trauma, and they supported one another. WWII came around, and their sons enlisted and went off to two different fronts: Europe and Japan. They also witnessed violence and trauma, and they came home on ships. They also came home to a hero’s welcome. Their fathers had processed the war and now could mentor their sons. War breeds atrocities, and WWII left the world with several that can never be undone. Old times weren’t any simpler, but they were slower. What’s changed? My grandfather knew the wisdom of allowing his son to prune the rosebushes and tend the garden. He worked through some of the trauma that way.

Leaving the site of battle is a matter of days or hours now. People now come home by boarding a flight that will carry them home. Veterans now come home to a fast-changing society, fast tech, and a culture that is in constant motion. They return traumatized and, in many situations, misunderstood by loved ones and society in general. It alters relationships. This is not to say that my parents’ and grandparents’ generation didn’t suffer from PTSD and other war-related issues. I’m pointing out that their return was slower and allowed for a different type of processing time.

I’m suggesting that maybe we’ve become immune to the damage we’re causing to each other by not slowing things down. In the past seventy-plus years, we’ve moved forward in both healthy and unhealthy ways. This applies to how we treat our relationships.

Are we willing to slow down and take the time to process our lives a wee bit more gently? Parting is hard. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, the past does catch us, and sooner or later what we failed to look at in the near or distant past resurfaces to bite us when we’re not looking!

I reflect back to a night around the dinner table when my father lost it over food. I realize now it was a war memory that he should have sought therapy for, but in those days doing therapy wasn’t common. At the time, it had been about thirty years post war—pruning the roses had not resolved it all. I wonder what would have happened had he looked, talked, and resolved? I wonder how our family would have been changed had he looked. I know how I’m being changed by working slowly and deeply on the past, whether it is peaceful or difficult. I’m moving forward in a healthier manner than had I rushed into my future life. I’m walking into something new, and I hope I’m doing it with grace.

May 1

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Author’s Pick: Velvet Deconstructions

This is the last in a series of “author’s picks” of posts from the last few years. This one was originally posted on August 10, 2022.

In 2006 my husband fell down the rabbit hole of a faith deconstruction process that would last until his death in 2016. In 2006 I listened and supported, but didn’t follow down into the rabbit hole of Mormonism. I didn’t feel I needed to know what was and wasn’t down there. It wasn’t my time. It has to be the right time to fall down that hole.

At the beginning of this tale, I should state that I was raised in a home where reason and logic were present. This would come in rather useful in the years to come.

It took me six years to go there. I’m sure that seemed like a long time of waiting for Jon, waiting for me to dive rapidly into that same hole. When I did, it was scary, sad, depressing, and full of questions, culminating in a process of mourning what could no longer be. In 2012 I entered what I now look back on as my “velvet deconstruction.”

I’ve never written about this because, to be honest, I haven’t seen—or felt—the need to do so. That has changed. What changed?

This year I’ve read a series of books that began with delight and quickly turned to needing to rethink, reframe, and reconstruct the Western Jesus. I realized my journey had challenged me in ways I hadn’t seen coming and left me feeling as if I was splayed on a spiritual floor. This time around it wasn’t velvet: it was brutal. As of the time of this writing, I’m healing, looking back, and wondering why I missed this until I was so deep within the process that the mess was ginormous.

Having a crisis of faith should be normal for everyone who is on a healthy self-development path. James W. Fowler researched and wrote about personality and faith development in Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. Stages is a classic and outlines our cognitive development throughout life. This is an academic work of research. What I really love about Fowler is that he illustrates that we never fully arrive. We cycle through all the stages over time, arriving at a higher level, only to begin the process over again. As with all things in life, learning never ends, and we’ll be doing it until our last breath.

So, I should have seen a second deconstruction coming, and I didn’t. I’d settled into a sweet spot, and when it ripped me apart it really tore at my soul!

How did this all happen? The simple answer is that I moved from one stage to another. The more complex answer is that I began to explore my values, my beliefs, and my life in new and deeper ways.

While I began to explore faith, I was enrolled in a rehab program for people with vision issues. It began as a five-day residential process, and during this time of my life I was confronted in a bold manner, asked to face my visual realities, and supported on multiple levels. And, in the end, I was able to confront myself. Looking at my religious life became an extension of that. For fifteen months I reconstructed my visual self; I wrote about it in Living With Disability. It was a life-changing experience.

Because of the work I was doing in this part of my life, it followed that I would look at the rest of my life. I began to allow myself to feel the sadness and pain of understanding that things are seldom what they seem. And so, it happened on a Sunday morning as we drove to church that I uttered the words that altered everything: “Can I make this church a place to stay and do good things?” That was in 2013, and I was trying to figure it out while realizing my husband’s need to stay away from it all. By 2014 I was still in place to try and a find a path to change. That all ended in November of 2015 when Salt Lake City announced what became known as “The Policy.”

This policy was set to discriminate against children who had an LGBTQIA+ parent in a relationship that was not heterosexual. That evening at dinner I lost it. How could a church deny baptism or anything else to a child?!!! Up until that moment I had thought I could make it work. Now I realized that I could not support such thinking. (The policy was reversed in April 2019 and the damage that was done couldn’t be undone or unseen.)

Suicide alters everything in the way you think, and in 2016, when Jon decided that the pain and suffering, he’d been enduring for the majority of his life needed to end, I was changed. I began to realize that I couldn’t go back to that church, and slowly during 2017 I drifted into nowhere land. I wasn’t making any major life decisions. I was moving to something, and someplace, new. I didn’t understand what it was—I just knew I was changing.

I was traumatized from a suicide, trying to re-establish a life. In the fall of 2017, I was discovering that another faith home was calling to me. I had to check it out. Certainly, I could look and still stay LDS. October of 2017 rolled around, and I found myself in a Starbucks at the Utrecht train station, having a conversation with someone whom I would come to love and respect. He wanted to know what I thought, not what I felt! It was in that realization that I knew I had a problem. Everything in me had been raised to be LDS. I was dealing with multiple generations of Mormons in my family. How could I even think of leaving? It wasn’t doctrine so much as other things that were tugging at me, calling me out to something that felt so different, so new, and where I needed to be. I told myself that I could attend this church service on Sunday evenings and it didn’t mean I was going to do more than that. Why would I ever leave? I didn’t need to do that.

I began to read, to learn, and to discover new ways of thinking. Growth is about freeing the soul and giving it permission to walk into new paths. By the spring of 2018 I was no longer feeling I could stay LDS and realized my value structure had shifted or rewired itself. I let go and relaxed into the process.

Looking back on all of it, I can see that this entire process was velvet. While there were tears, trauma, and fear involved, the process was gentle. Considering everything I went through from 2006 through 2018, it really was velvet. How could this be? As I look back, I think I view it as gentle because I wasn’t trying to force tings. I allowed the questions to surface, didn’t panic, and the few difficult situations didn’t last that long. The most difficult week was a conversation with my mother, and it ended with her apologizing to me. My mother and I could talk about most anything and giggle over life. We had a mutual respect, and she was open to many things that many LDS would have flipped out over.

I’ve come to the conclusion that faith transitions or journeys are more about a rethinking of a value system. Many people who choose to develop and leave the safety of certainty can remain in the same faith and approach things differently. For others, the choice to stay in one’s faith of origin is not an option. There are times when what we need changes because our ladders are sitting against a new wall. Sometimes the search can take years. The search for a new faith home can lead us out and to something completely different.

As I complete the last few months of my spiritual direction certification, I’m amazed by the paths that people are finding that bring them peace. I look back with my new understanding, and the new tools that got put in my toolbox, and offer up gratitude for both the velvet, and the not-so-velvet of the past few years. My new home is just what I needed.

Apr 24

Author’s Pick: Radical Compassion

For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some “author’s picks” of posts from the last few years. This first one was originally posted on December 31, 2019.

In 1958 there was a pandemic, and my mother happened to be pregnant with me. It was only a slight case; she didn’t even know she’d had rubella until after the fact. It was during an era when medical abortions were done if the parents and the doctors were willing to do so. My mother told me that they didn’t ask, so the docs didn’t offer. Nature took over and produced a child who had been conceived to be healthy, but who became injured while still in the womb. That is what nature does.

In talking with my mother about this issue, she once told me that she could understand both sides of the argument and why a woman would choose one or the other. From her I learned that the issue around the health of an unborn child, or the termination of that pregnancy, is not an easy, cut-and-dried process. The choice to raise a disabled child came with a great deal of pain and learning, as well as tears and sorrows on all sides. Society blames and doesn’t help. My mother learned radical acceptance and radical compassion. I watched, I listened, and I learned from her.

In the past month, I have sat and watched as so many have blamed gun owners, children, the shooter, the NRA lobby, and Congress for the travesty of yet more dead kids. I hurt for the families and friends who have lost children. I am angry that people are using an act of violence to force a political solution, as well as a mental health solution, to this situation. There is enough greed and corruption to go around! There is more than enough blame that is being spread to the innocent. I want to scream “NO! STOP IT!”

I do support change. I’d like to see assault rifles, code red drills, bullying, blaming, and greed to be taken off the streets. I’d like to see respect and support become common. I’d like to see corporations become responsible for what they are putting on the streets. I‘d like to see violence in video games and films done away with. I’d like to see everyone have access to good mental health care and not just a set number of visits per year. I’d like to see education and understanding for all.

I’d like to see scientists search for effective medication that could reach into the abyss of a shooter’s mind and allow that person to be healed with both medication and talk therapy. It is dark in that mind. It is lonely in that mind. To be able to befriend such a person would be rare. Why? Because what such a person thinks is so black, so far from the norm, so chaotic that most professionals can’t—or won’t—even go there. I’ll venture to speculate that the person owning the thoughts is just as terrified of going there. What I’m talking about is a radical compassion for others.

Few have been able to show such compassion because few are the Buddha, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, or others. To be part of that universalizing place takes a lifetime of journeying. However, each of us is capable of listening with love and compassion. You do it as a child when you show sorrow for your friend’s pet that passed on. You do it when you spend time listening to a friend sharing grief. You do it in a darkened theater when you let out the buried pain that you can’t show for yourself or someone else, but can show for the character in a film. You do it when your best friend tells you that they are coming out, and your love for them takes you to new places of joy and acceptance for who they are. You do it when you ask “Why?” and come away with only more questions, but a determination to find one solution and you join a cause. In joining, you move to radical compassion, when you sit down in a room and listen to the others who believe differently than you do. You do it when you realize that “they” care just as much as you do. You do it when you take a hand and find a way to work together for peaceful solutions.

I saw it in my mother as she was faced with how society treated her two disabled daughters. I saw it in her heart when she wept and yet didn’t lash out at others for the treatment that came to her children because other parents didn’t teach the same values of love and acceptance.

I want to see more kids step up and take responsibility for the things they can do. I want to see those of us who are older applaud the courage that we are witnessing and show love and compassion for the process they are initiating. I’d like to see each of us stop and think about the words we speak and the actions we take in our daily lives, and how they might affect others. I want to be on the path of radical compassion with my fellow human beings. Right now it feels sparsely traveled. I think back to my mother, and if I can do what she was able to do, I’ll be doing well. Join me on the journey. It isn’t an easy journey, but my mom thought it was worth doing, and so do I.

Apr 17

Author’s Pick: Sanctuary

For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some “author’s picks” of posts from the last few years. This first one was originally posted on May 23, 2022.

There is a musical trio known as The Kingston Trio, and during their recording career they recorded a little ditty called “The Merry Little Minuet.” While it might have been humorous, it was also a serious commentary on the times. That little minuet has been playing in my head lately. The world seems to be falling apart. Wars, discord, unhappiness, and a pandemic all seem to be conspiring to bring us individually to a point of asking: How do I create a safe place of sanctuary for myself?

Those of us who have walked in the grief zone may be one up on this—but not necessarily. It depends on where we are in the process and how we’ve managed our self-care.

Sanctuary can be defined in many ways. The religious may see it as a place of worship. The spiritual person might see it as a state of being or a place in the heart. Still others may choose to view sanctuary as a specific location: their happy place. For this post, I’m going to use a bench found along a walking trail sheltered by trees that let the sun in so we feel its warmth.

How do we find this safe place? My experience is that it only comes to us as we shed the tears of pain, longing, desire, and uncertainty. It comes with the casting off of old certainties and beliefs and diving headfirst into the blackness of the unknown. It comes to us as we search for what we need and hope will spring forth from the ravages of trauma and personal havoc. In our recovery and rebuilding process, the hard work of deconstructing what was tires us out.

During our deconstruction process, we wonder about the ending. At first we stumble into momentary places of relief, but they are fleeting. Our work propels us forward to other new places of discovery. Slowly we encounter a place that offers us more than a brief rest and begins to take shape as a place of reflection and pause for our weary souls. Soon this place of the heart begins to heal us and to hold us in a place that we come to think of as sanctuary. It might hold us in a sacred place where only we’re allowed. It shelters and welcomes us. We can go there as needed.

With time, our reconstruction requires that we view our journey with both its pain and new hopes. We re-examine the old and discover the gift of the new. While what we’ve been through may have been hell, the place where we’ve arrived is a gift we’ve given ourselves.

Whether your personal grief was the loss of a loved one, the loss of health, mental illness that has left you debilitated, loss of faith or a faith transition, a failed relationship, or whatever hard thing life served you on your platter, you know this journey and place.

What does the above have to do with all of the crazy that is occurring in our world today? Those of us who have been to these dark places hold wisdom that will be useful to us in making peace with the world as it is.

We can and often do serve as witnesses that there is hope and support for you. We understand that pain can go away. We’ve asked the “When will this ever end?” question and discovered that we must hold space for searching our hearts. We’ve faced our personal realities and given them permission to blossom into something new and powerful.

We’ve come to learn that meditation, yoga, or a new spiritual self leads us to a park bench that we had no clue existed. We now sit on that bench and offer the questioner a place beside us. We can serve as life witnesses and companions for the weary because we did our own work.

As I reflect on the good, bad, and unpleasant of the past decades of life, I’ve come to realize that a topsy-turvy world can calm itself best if we center ourselves and take the time to quiet our souls. I look back and see how I didn’t have the skills to make it to a park bench. While I could manage a life-crisis situation and come out on top, I did not understand how to walk to the bench. The loss of my husband taught me to find the park bench and to be able to sit quietly on it. There is no drama here—only peace for my soul.

I think back on “The Merry Little Minuet” and reflect on my concerns for our present world state. Yes, I’m concerned that the U.S. is falling apart. I’m concerned that there is a war going on about a two-hour plane ride from here. I’m concerned that we’ll never feel as safe as we once did about viruses getting loose and infecting the world. I search my head and heart and in them I find peace because I’ve created a sanctuary for the soul. It is mine, and no one can take it from me.

Come, sit by me.

Apr 10

Author’s Pick: Music Bridging the Gap

For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some “author’s picks” of posts from the last few years. This first one was originally posted on March 2, 2020.

“Love in any language,

Straight from the heart,

Pulls us all together,

Never apart.”

And once we learn to speak it,

“All the world will hear

Love in any language

Fluently spoken here.”

Sandi Patty sang this song and it was authored by John Mays and Jon Mohr.

Throughout my life, it has been music that has saved me from the insanity of life’s happenings. Music has been a vital part of my day. It has calmed me, allowed me to express emotions that I could otherwise not readily connect with, and it has allowed me to create wonderful things. There is one other wonderful thing about music: it is an equalizer.

My earliest memory of music is of my father playing the piano. I grew up hearing Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn, and countless others. Music was sometimes what I would drift off to sleep with. Music was also a chance for me to sing. I couldn’t do many things as a toddler, but I could carry a tune. I was singing before I could talk or walk. Because of my father’s music background, I was tested for absolute pitch, or perfect pitch, as it is more popularly known. I don’t quite have that, but I’m not far off from it. Considering the fact that I also have hearing loss, this isn’t too shabby. I’m proud of what I can do with music, and that I’m good enough to sing with a string quartet. It would be great to sing with an orchestra. What a blast that would be!!!!

I’ve sung in Italian, German, Spanish, and Latin. Music is a way of universal communication. Music, when done well, can shine as an example in any language with the beauty that it contains. I am discovering that there are beautiful recordings in the Dutch language. When I listen to them, the guttural Dutch sound becomes a thing of wonder. When the singer sculpts the words, well, there is an understanding that bridges the gap. Just like the “I love you” that is spoken in any language, the meaning cannot be misconstrued. So, “love in any language” becomes “music in any language.”

Music is the one thing that anyone can do!!! Think about it for a minute: You can teach someone to carry a tune and match the note. But, you don’t have to teach a child to open their mouth and sing. Singing comes naturally. Intelligence and physical ability are not factors here. Music is everyone’s gift of being heard.

Bridges to the Heart

Throughout my life there have been many bridges. One of the most powerful of those bridges has been volunteerism. During my life, I have been both a volunteer and the person on the receiving end. Both sides of the process are filled with positive feelings.

There are many ways of giving. Some commit to careers of service to others. Many people choose to give to an organization that represents something meaningful to them.

As I stop to think about the process that my future guide dog will have gone through, the first phase of that is the volunteer family who will take “my Eyelette” into their home and love and play with him, or her. What a gift!!!! Taking the time and the love to raise up a playful puppy in a healthy manner so that it can become a healthy guide dog for someone else!!!!

There is someone here at the Loo Erf who came in as a volunteer and he has affected me greatly. He loves what he does and it shows. The tricks and tips and encouragement that he has given me are gifts. It is a treat to have a braille lesson or a Dutch session with him. Personally, I think he has given this place a piece of his heart over the last ten years.

When I was in my twenties, I spent time doing an internship that involved those with mental illness. I gave several hours per week to those who were in need and in return I received a new view of life. They taught me to laugh in a new way. They taught me understanding. I learned so much from each of them. I still think of them and wonder where they are now.

We used to watch one of the animal rescue shows. Many of the animals were depressed and beaten down, but with the love and help of volunteers, they became “cute animals.” So we renamed the show “cute animals.” Volunteers are great!!!! Volunteers change lives.

My Pitch

Think about giving some of your time. The rewards are phenomenal. The sacrifice is well worth what the recipient will return to you in love and appreciation. Get out there on the web and Google up your loves, because somewhere out there, someone needs you to give to them.

Apr 4

One Wish, Please

We watch as suffering comes over the world. A mother cries for her lost child. A father mourns the death of his son, who was sent off to fight a war that should have never been. A parent mourns the loss of the son or daughter they believed they had in order to discover the new trans child they will get to love. A child endures bullying at home, while another child becomes the bully at school. Somewhere in a police station, a human being’s rights are violated. Marchers descend on a capitol in hopes of bringing a message of solidarity with those on the margins. A young boy witnesses the death of his friend on the streets of the inner city. We become one of six. There is trauma in all of this. 

It seems that the cycle never ends, despite the cries of the injured and the questioning of parents, and others who care about the victims of what can’t be stopped. If only the emotional pain would end. Life doesn’t offer that. We protest the needless suffering, bigotry, senseless acts of violence, and raise the question of where and how it all began. Ultimately it begins in the home. 

If I could wish one thing for the world we inhabit, it would be to have functional homes, where each human being is loved, honored, respected, and has a recognized voice. A home where each child is raised to enter the world as a functional adult who is ready to take their place in society and contribute to making the world a better place. What a wish! I’m not wishing for utopia. I’m wishing for something better: a healthy peace for all. It starts in homes. Oh, I want to see this happen! 

A home with a loving parent(s) who offers up a platter of love, protection, and acceptance to a child so that they can become who they were born to be. I salute the courageous! I honor those who try to learn and understand what might be different to them. I honor the parent who says “I don’t understand, and I’m committed to learning” when their LGBTQ2s child comes to them with fear of the consequences of coming out: first to themselves, and then to others. 

I applaud the enabled person who struggles to meet daily challenges in an abled world. The parent who shepherds the child in the hard times as well as the good times. Homes need to be safe havens for all of us. 

I’m not building to a kumbaya moment here—that takes a great deal of work. I’m building to something else: peace. The peace-filled home that spills over into the neighborhood, then the city, and spreads out to all corners of all nations: it begins within our homes. 

Saying it is one thing, and implementing it is quite another process. My husband’s psychiatrist once made the point that all voices in a family need to be heard, acknowledged, and respected. Parenting isn’t about giving orders; it’s about guiding, setting boundaries, and being willing to have hard conversations with growing children of all ages. Parents create a micro-community in their homes when they commit to bring tiny humans to dwell with them. 

It’s about accepting your child for who they are, and where they are, offering a safe space to explore their identity, speak their point of view, and explore their own values.  Eventually, children need to make their way out of the home and into the world. Happy, healthy adults have experienced many of these things. 

Mentoring begins from birth. Mentoring is about parents doing things with kids, making it fun, teaching them the value of working for something, and waiting for results. It’s about offering children healthy choices so that as they grow, they develop empathy, social skills, insight, and inner strength. 

Boomers were raised by parents who dealt with the Depression and WWII. Their children faced the 60s and 70s and began to question the culture of parents and grandparents who came out of a more authoritarian view. And then, things started moving faster. I believe that with Gen X and beyond, we’ve never quite caught up. Time has sped up, society has changed radically, and with it, the home has been rocked on its foundation. There is a real need to re-examine relationships and to have hard conversations about what works and doesn’t work. 

One of the consequences of this radical shift is that parents say “yes” when they need to say “no.” Yes and no have to do with setting a healthy boundary. It is about helping a developing child understand long-term choices and offering the mentoring to enable them to think it through for themselves. Now more than ever, children need the skill of thinking it out for themselves! The thinking starts when parents offer up limits such as a healthy diet that incorporates varied food choices, or reading to children daily and offering up experiences that teach the young child to choose good and age-appropriate things. It’s a confidence builder. It continues as the child matures and is able to make task-appropriate choices that will enable them to learn and grow. When a child experiences failure, with a parent encouraging them to give it another go around, they will! I also understand that some parents are faced with needing the village to step in while they work three jobs. Who we put in our villages can enable parents to have that needed assistance to raise the child to healthy adulthood. Successful single parents and two-parent families have a village to back them up. 

I acknowledge that I’m speaking from a point of privilege. I grew up within a home where there were two parents, and they were able to provide the basics but not the luxuries. Money was tight and there was a village of extended family and community.    

With the way things have sped up, it is essential to cultivate relationships that include extended family, friends, community members, schools, and charitable organizations. A parent may not know their village until a crisis happens. 

My wish includes people sharing a meal and coming together to learn from one another: people who discover that in diversity, there are both differences and sameness. The sameness begins with recognizing that we are all humans residing on this pale blue dot. The diversity offers up the gift of human understanding, culture, and a differing world view that teaches us to learn, listen, and understand. In table fellowship, we offer up the gift of being heard. It is listening that bridges gaps, strengthens the person, enters the home, and moves forward to influence the neighborhood, the community, and eventually the world. 

Mar 28

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Adult Work Is Life Work

This weekend I spent several hours completing some Continuing Education Units (CEU), so that I can renew my license. I’m at the point in the process where I’ve done the required courses and can now attend to the exploration of new things. This is where the fun of learning comes in. This time around, my focus on deepening learning took me to learning something I know something but not enough about: LGBTQ2s or LGBTQIA+, the choice is yours. 

I have friends and know people who claim identity in this community. I work with those who claim residency in the LGBTQ2s community. The weekend of learning was helpful, and I learned some things I didn’t know from an instructor who really knows his stuff. It was time well spent. 

All of this got me thinking about the process of coming out to oneself, and to others. Coming out isn’t a one-time event: it is a constant. There is risk in uttering the sentence that includes the words “I’m lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or queer.” The person speaking those words in a conversation of one or one hundred is putting themself out there in a way that you might never have to, or need to, do. It’s a risk. Then I got to thinking about my own truths. 

I’ve been a part of the disabled community all my life. How much do those I work with and associate with really understand about my daily life and what it takes to do what I do? 

I’ve made mention here that I have a spiritual life. I don’t talk about it; it’s private. We’re in a time of Lent, and this season I felt the need to add to the process rather than fast from something. I added in the need to interact more, and in many ways come out fully as the disabled person that I am. My faith community accepts everyone. LGBTQ2s, the person of color, and the disabled. At times it challenges us to have some difficult conversations. Last night, after a month of services around service and giving, and bringing in the voices of my sisters who are disabled and a part of this community, I came out. 

Speaking my truth was soul wrenching. It took six takes to produce a video that I could share—a video where the tears weren’t streaming down my cheeks. A video in which I let anger, but not rage, show. A video where I could speak my heart and soul, and let the words stand. It was raw. I’ve done raw before, and this was raw. 

Most of the time, when the disabled explain their disability, we tend to work up a pleasant presentation that informs and instructs. This wasn’t that type of pitch. This caused me to really think about what I wanted to say, and not say. Still, at the end of the service, I found myself sitting with the tears streaming down my cheeks. I’m still raw. 

Coming out is about sharing, embracing, and being embraced. Coming out is also about risking something new, and discovering where the support in your village resides: who will stay, who might need to leave. And leaving the village has to be an option for safety reasons. At some point, the former resident may do the work needed to return as a productive village member. Hold the option of leaving and returning, and the hard conversations around that as a possibility: it happens. 

If coming out is a process, it is also seasonal. We mourn in different ways throughout our lives; we reframe, rethink, and return to explore places we thought had been completely explored and thought through. In our exploring we discover new ways of being, and new places to dig deeper. The work of life is not done until the last breath is taken. 

If the work of life is never completed, if coming out to ourselves and to others is always a work in progress, what options do we have to get on with the work in all of its wonderfulness? How do we embrace the joyous, work through the difficulties, resolve, rediscover, and then move forward?

There are two ways that I will talk about. Both versions of self-discovery are useful. Both can lead to the same outcome. Both are lifelong. The first is to find a therapist who does long-term growth or insight work. This is about depth, and not running from your personal truth. It is about putting someone on your payroll who will walk with you as you discover the places in your life that you need to move to. It has nothing to do with behavior and everything to do with relationships. The greatest area of focus will become the relationship you’ve built with yourself. 

The second option centers around spiritual direction. Spiritual directors, like therapists, have various areas of focus. As our spirituality is as individual as we are, so is the direction. This isn’t about an authoritarian person telling you what to do: this is about you discovering how spirituality is working in your life, and where you are feeling pulled, led, or, for some people, called. It works the same way as therapy in that we sit and talk. Maybe I light a candle, ring a sound bowl, or offer a prayer, if that is what the person desires. Sometimes we both sit in silence and reflect on what has been said. The sessions usually happen once per month, last an hour, or sometimes longer. SD is a place that is well suited to come out to yourself on multiple issues. If you need to do some therapy around something, you’ll be told to seek out a good therapist to do that portion of the work. 

Both therapy and direction can focus on the spiritual if the therapist has the ability to do spiritual work. SD, on the other hand, doesn’t touch that type of change or “fixing.” Directors don’t look to fix. 

I now realize that my life would have been deeply enriched by spiritual direction. I’m glad I know of it and can offer direction as part of what I do. 

At the end of this writing session, I sigh, breathe deeply, scan my body to see where I’ve gone, and how I feel. Not so raw, and somewhere else. Where have I moved? I don’t know. There will be more to come on this, I’m sure.  

Mar 20

Reflections on a Sunday

Yesterday my Sunday peace was shattered by the sound of sirens. I live one block or so away from the police station, which is very quiet, and safe. Needless to say, I’m located in a safe area of town. That wasn’t the situation yesterday, and first one siren shattered the silence of the peaceful Sunday afternoon. 

I noticed that the siren came closer, until I thought that it must be nearby, even on this street. I lowered the shade and looked out, seeing a police car with lights flashing parked on the other side of the street. Then more sirens, and within several minutes, two ambulances were parked there as well. Injury? Domestic violence? I don’t know the people in that house. It was only then, standing and looking at the police car and the two ambulances, that my brain took me back in time to 28 August of 2016. You never get over suicide; you get through it. I sat here at my computer and continued to work on the project I was doing and slowly began to let what was surfacing in my mind out. I had been a part of the disruption to a quiet Sunday that day. I know the police were here, and I know the mortician showed up, but I don’t know what other cars were here. When the nice police officer told me to go inside, I went, and I would not emerge from my home until after 10:00 that evening. I was on autopilot then, doing what I was told to do. 

I won’t ask what happened, because I don’t want to know what act of “whatever” shattered my day and sent me back in time. After all this time, stuff still emerges. The peace and forward movement seem to be an illusion that a look in the mirror can shatter in an instant, and yet, if we avoid the mirror, we avoid life. 

Lately, and as I continue to age, I’ve discovered that not all “old people” have wisdom. I’m taken back to the lyrics of Neil Diamond’s “I’ve Been This Way Before” and reminded that “Some people never see the light until the day they die.” Now I understand that many people will die clueless about themselves and their lives. When I first heard the words, I thought to myself, I don’t think that is a wise way to live a life. And so, I look in mirrors and I choose to stand rather than run from the images there.

Standing at the mirror is hard work, whereas running from the images will claim our lives in different ways. What? What’s this you say, that if I run from the mirror, doing so will alter my life?  Yes, when we face the mirror, we must look hard. What do we like? What aren’t we pleased with? Why? Then we need to explore the reasoning behind the expectations we hold for ourselves. We are faced with new insights such as “I’ll never get into those jeans again because I’ll never be sixteen again and my lifestyle has changed.” How about this one? “I’ll have an older-looking face because I’m older and have lived x number of years.” The recognition that the mirror brings to our lives is good. It calls us to reality. 

I know a hospice chaplain who shared with me one of life’s and death’s realities: “How we live may determine how we die. Anger doesn’t make for a peaceful death.” I had not really given it much thought until she said those words. I love my sister, and yet the last fifteen minutes of her life were the most violent she’d ever seen. It is true that she died from liver cancer, and that the cancer was destroying her body, and it is also true she was one angry person. I don’t know for certain that there was a connection there; what I do know is that I’ve known peaceful people to die peaceful deaths. The exceptions would be the violence we can’t control. 

Reflecting on all of this takes me back to Jon and his death. He spent a great deal of time with the mirror because he had to sort out the bipolar and the family—and, ultimately, his life. He told me that he’d researched the how so that if he made the decision to end his life, it would be a one-time action. 

There is a part of me that will always have wanted to send him off with love, and yet realistically that is something that could never be. I’d be doing jail time. 

We may get through a death; we can face the good and the bad realities of a relationship and choose to move forward. We never get over the reality of what happened. We don’t get over it because you don’t get over someone you loved deeply. 

If you get through it, what do you do to get beyond what has happened?  You look in mirrors. That means you commit to asking some really hard, and sometimes scary, questions. Getting through the bad stuff in life means that we have to commit to deep changes, such as not running from the reality the mirror is showing you. Yesterday, it meant that I lowered the shade, stood at the window, and allowed the peace to be broken and the memory to return. It can make us squirm because of what we must do. It also causes the peace to return when I realize that I can continue to do this hard thing well. 

Mar 14

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One of Six

This last week, I began to complete my Continuing Education Units (CEU) for my license renewal cycle. I need to be properly informed. A course per day keeps me that way. 

For most of the needed hours, you can choose what to learn; you must comply with the legal requirements for the license renewal cycle. This year, along with the regular legal courses, there is a requirement to complete several hours on suicide assessment. I cringed. I don’t want to go there; I know things about assessment that no instructor MA or PhD is going to know. 

It began on Thursday with two hours on suicide and grief. Geez, dude, it never ends! I’m glad he said it. He disclosed his survivor status and I thought, OK, a person who’s been through it. I was still in caution mode. What does this guy really know if he lost his brother when he was eight? 

Suicide is a delicate subject, and so is death in general. You have people that believe that children are too young to know the truth. Children who have to face active shooter drills in school! I think adults underestimate what children can process given the correct, age-appropriate information. Death, and death by suicide, are no exceptions. We need to have honest conversation with children about death in all its forms when it arises. Kids have questions. 

There is a culture of fear around suicide. While I don’t support anyone actively dying by suicide, I support honest discussion on the subject. I believe that those of us who have faced this in our own lives tend to understand it better. Talking about it can enable the person having suicidal feelings to explore them, discover the facts, and separate the truths from the fiction. 

Here are some facts and fictions that matter:

Fact: When someone feels a sense of belonging, they are less likely to die by suicide. The feeling that a person belongs, and has someone or someplace to seek companionship, can make the difference between life and death for many people. Places such as the Utah-based Encircle organization are excellent examples of this. These places provide services and a safe haven for LGBTQIA+ souls who otherwise might be at risk for suicide. Creating belonging goes a long way.

Fiction: Saying you’re going to commit suicide is an attention-seeking act. Let’s not judge this too quickly. The saying of the words are an opening for discussion. Someone might want to open up the conversation in a real way; they might want listening. They could need professional help; they don’t want you to fix them. If this is being repeated, it calls for gentle prompts to seek more listening than you are qualified to provide.

Fact: Suicide can happen when the person perceives resources are gone. Notice the use of the word “can” here. Some people who die by suicide are in therapy, feel a sense of belonging, and ultimately still choose to end their lives. This is particularly true with the bipolar population. It is also true of other mental health diagnoses. Sometimes, despite the resources available to someone, the mental suffering and anguish are so great that the perceived ending of the suffering becomes an option. This was Jon’s situation, and I understand why he did it.

Fiction: If they get help, it will solve all problems and the issue of suicide will disappear. As cited in the fact above using my husband’s death as an example, help doesn’t always meet the need. He had help, but there was the pain of waking up every day and feeling the depression. It didn’t let up, and at the end it developed into something else that caused him to die by suicide.

Fact: A person may spontaneously decide to end their life and carry out the act in less than five minutes. One thing that can alter this is having a safety plan in place. Who can a person call? Are the numbers ready at the touch of a fingertip on the phone? Is there a place they can go to so that they are somewhere else for a time? Are weapons, and other lethal methods, out of reach? 

Fact: They may feel like a burden to others. This is real and should not be discounted. A person in chronic pain, with a chronic illness, or with other issues needs to be heard deeply and be given authentic information that supports them staying around. 

Fact: For every suicide, there are six people affected directly. There are more affected in an indirect manner. In my situation, there were more than six people directly affected. This isn’t about dishing out blame; it is a fact. The fiction here would be that if you mention this fact to someone, it will stop them from dying by suicide.

Fiction: We can prevent all suicide. We can’t, no matter how much we may want to do so. There are some situations where even best efforts are going to fall short of prevention. 

Debatable: No rational person ends their life. This last item is the reason why there are laws in states and countries surrounding the ending of one’s life. It is why it takes two medical doctors to give the OK on such a thing. In countries where this is legal, the use of this form of euthanasia is lower than most people would guess. It is also something that most physicians don’t want to do for a patient. 

Back to the main focus. 

I want to bring up the stages of grief, and why they don’t work here, and will never work here. The stages of grief focus on the living and those who are dying. A hospice chaplain or mental health practitioner will have the skills to guide the dying and those who are loved ones, and in some cases friends, to a resolution around the impending death. The living are given the chance to make peace with the death that will occur. They can plan for it. 

Given the above information on Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of grief, once it happens, there is no resolution. We can’t resolve issues in the same way we can with the living. If we’re doing the work of exploring our grief and pain well, we’ll also uncover new thoughts and ideas that we can’t explore with the dead: they’re gone. 

The fact is that stuff resurfaces in different forms. What you thought you had worked through rears its ugly head and you are faced once again with the death, the fight, the misunderstanding, the thing they did or you did. You might rehash a feeling of “if only” and realize that you can’t take it back. 

Ultimately, the resolution comes to us when we accept that there is no resolution for death, and suicide in particular. You never get over this; you do get through it by not going around it. Navigating our lives will change, and while we’ll move on, we’ll never move over it. Some people feel that forgiveness can resolve the issue. I’m of the opinion that there is nothing to forgive. They did what they did, and while we might carry unresolved guilt around not being enough, once again we need to cut ourselves some slack, offer up a huge helping of grace, and then we can move forward with our lives. 

Mar 7

Where’s the Village?

Anger, rage, and the ongoing process of being shoved to the margins as a disabled person: it places the disabled in a position of being labeled as angry, and while some of the label might be justified, not all of our anger as a community is justified.

This past week I was given feedback (privately) that I have anger issues around disability. It has caused me to experience some sleepless nights, and to question how much of my own stuff I’ve worked through.

After sitting with the feedback, crying, and realizing that I don’t want to offend or put people off in such a manner that I would not gain support of the issues I’m passionate about, I decided that I do have some unresolved issues.

The issue around the anger is twofold. The first part of the anger stems from how society has misunderstood the disabled, underestimated us, and passed judgement on what we as individuals can and can’t do and what we need to make our lives work. This in itself is enough to cause riots, and the riots don’t happen. Why? Because we don’t have the energy to riot: we’re burned out. 

We’re burned out because we’ve reached out to different communities and we get put to the marginal space once again. It sounds like this: “Sure, we care about you as a disabled person, but ____ takes precedence. We’ll get back to you and address it.”  When someone uses “but” in this way, it feels like a negative. It feels like everything before the “but” just got washed out to sea. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) solved some physical issues. Someone in a wheelchair can access an ATM/PIN machine. There are ramps, not always convenient to the wheelchair-bound person who needs easy access. There is still the battle with health care about what one needs or doesn’t need. I hope you’re getting the idea. I haven’t even touched on government issues. In the government arena, it is both good and bad. Oh, do I lump education in with government? It is society.

Then the other part of the issue arises, and this is an emotional killer: a disabled person can be ignored, discounted, not believed, ridiculed, or told that they look weird or act strangely. And, in 2023, the hardest insult of all is “Why were you born?”

Is it any wonder I’m royally pissed off around this issue? No. 

I realize that I can’t save or fix the world. I can only guide someone to a resolution of their issues. I can only do my personal work around my own issues, and sometimes that is a daily chore. So, in an effort to heal misperception, I’ll offer up some tips. 

Nature does what nature does and nobody is to blame but nature. Nature does its own thing during pregnancy and sometimes nature creates a person with a disability, an orphan disease, or a deformity that can’t be surgically corrected. It’s a part of life, and for the believer, God didn’t do this to your child or to you. You are not being punished. Life happens and each of us are the lucky souls that get to deal with what life deals to us each day. 

Sometimes injury happens. Injury can take many forms: a car accident, a sporting accident, a bad fall, a stroke, a fire, a natural disaster, a fight in which one person is injured. Even a person who is trying to protect themselves from danger can make a choice that creates disability. How a person arrives in the wheelchair, deformed, blind, deaf, or brain injured is the backstory that each disabled person must come to terms with.

A good definition for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a sudden injury that causes damage to the brain. It may happen when there is a blow, bump, or jolt to the head. This is a closed head injury. A TBI can also happen when an object penetrates the skull. This is a penetrating injury. Talk to a competent physical therapist and they’ll be able to tell of ways people get injured that I haven’t listed above. 

We each have a back story: What’s yours? Remember the kid you saw having the meltdown in the grocery store, and the parent just stood there, and you passed judgement? Not so fast! The meltdown may be due to something other than poor parenting. It might be that the child is overstimulated by the environment: too much noise, music, too many people, and not enough brain development to use words to disclose what is happening on the inside. A parent with a disabled child understands that during a meltdown might be the wrong time to swoop in and remove the child in distress from wherever they happen to be at the time of the meltdown. If the parent knows that they could be injured by the child, it’s a hard call. Are you thinking that the parent needs to leave their child home? The parent might not be able to afford the luxury of a qualified caretaker for the time it would take to run all the errands in the universe. This might be their only option. 

Once, while on a chat site, the issue of getting hired came up. The person wasn’t hired because the company want “that weird-looking person working as the receptionist”—a job that this person was qualified to work at. When companies hold this attitude towards the disabled, they drive the person to a place of unemployment. If a person with a degree can’t become employed, what do they do? If they try to get government assistance and are told that they fail to qualify for benefits because they are employable, what are they to do? If they make the effort to work with a job coach, and the job coach has little to no training in working with the disabled population, where does this person go for help? They wind up in chats, the crazy builds, the anger builds, and those who can are told they can’t. This is an issue! 

Money doesn’t grow on trees, and a government can’t finance all of it. True, and companies could do better as well. This issue is for another post. This is complex. None of us live in a utopia. Some of us are able to create a supportive village that can lend a hand. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the village reaching out the greater community to assist with those who are disabled in our society. I’ve only touched on a few key points here. 

The village is where it begins. Maybe someone in your village can begin by writing letters, making phone calls, and learning how to assist with the disabled child or adult. Offering to understand the backstory, the lack of resources, and the battle that a parent might be fighting between working and caretaking are all good steps to understanding the meltdown in the grocery store. 

Why do I have anger issues around disability? Because there are not enough caring villagers who will stand up and lend a hand. Please, become a caring village member and find out about someone you might enjoy knowing. 

Feb 28

Going In and Coming Out

It is a fact that grief is unique to each of us. We go into the process thinking that there are rules, and we emerge knowing there are no rules. Nothing is certain because nothing in life is certain. As much as we may deny it, at the beginning we’re grieving because something happened that was unexpected.

After Jon left this life, I didn’t do anything major for two years. My rule was simply to not make a life-changing decision during the first year of a life crisis, and I extended that to a second year. 

When the severe crying was over, my days were mostly calm, and I was moving into year three when the real changes began. I’d taken over the larger room and turned it into my space for when I would return to work. This meant sorting through things that had to go. They were his, and I didn’t need his stuff in what had to become a new space. This process has taken several years. 

I decided to let things happen in a natural manner. My desire to trash things has gotten the better of me at times, and this time I’ve exercised a great deal of caution.

The big change has been sitting with the space, thinking about what I really want for it, and allowing the thoughts to come as my head let them come. It is also about making decisions that are realistic. Like a person becoming sober and clearing their head, grief—and the journey out of grief—will take us to places where our heads clear up. Think of it as grief sobriety. This doesn’t happen rapidly; it takes distance and hard work. Sometimes clearing the head takes years because we don’t have the ability to ask the correct questions in the beginning. 

Doing a reclaim of the self is about time. Who was I before this relationship? How did this relationship make me a better person? What did the relationship do to me that wasn’t good for me? How is my relationship with myself affected by this event occurring in my life? Each of these questions are questions that we answer as we look long and hard into a mirror. Ultimately, we answer the questions, and this allows us to move forward. 

One of the tiny things that I realized was that I’m living with chipped cups and plates. It began to bother me each time I took a cup or plate out of the cabinet. Last night, the feeling hit a fever pitch when I saw something that I liked, and for a price I loved. The thought entered my mind that I didn’t need to live with what was not pleasing me. I could replace my daily table setting with something that would make me smile. Ordering that blue set was liberating. Ordering the set triggered an insight into what I was doing in the home to make it mine. Now, with my eyes open, I was seeing clearly. I need to let myself enjoy the space I have here. I’m widowed, loving my space, and I can do what I want, when I want to do it. That is the plus side of moving forward.  

The Gift of Grief

There comes a time in the process when we ask ourselves: What do I want my life to look like moving forward? This is the gift of grief, growth, and exploration. 

Creating our future comes our way when we’re able to make peace with the past and move ahead with an understanding that we’ve done the deep work of our past life. We are usually older, wiser, and with the living we’ve done comes a freedom to think it through at a slower pace. 

The healthy side of grief allows us to slow down and to plan an unrushed future. I think of this place as being in a condition of contentment.  

Coming out of grief could mean we’ve been deeply affected by any number of life situations: death, divorce, realizing that we are LGBTQIA+, coping with a disability, experiencing traumatic events, growing up and moving out on our own, or something else. Recognizing that we’ve been in a foggy place, and now the skies are clearing up, is what coming out of grief is all about. Most people quietly leave where they were for where they are. We don’t even think that we’re glad it’s over because it’s a velvet transition. 

While entering the grief space is, for the most part, traumatic, walking into the future is soothing. 

If had been told at four years after the loss that I had to sit down and plan the future, I would have planned a messed-up life. At four years, I was ready to work and to learn again. I was ready to think about what I wanted beyond that point in time. For instance: I wasn’t ready to consider new tableware. I wasn’t ready to make the emotional parting: I needed time to say goodbye. 

Gail’s Learning Since 2016: a Few Tips

Allow the tears to flow and the anger to do what it needs to do within yourself and avoid others who tell you that you’re on a schedule. 

Don’t force something that will happen naturally. Forcing emotions that aren’t ready to surface can be distressing. 

Making life decisions before the end of the first year of whatever it is you are coming out from might not be such a healthy place to go. Take the time to let your head clear. 

With some types of life situations, there are things that have to be done legally, and they are on their own schedule. You might not begin to grieve until the resolution of an estate or other major happenings. You may need to sell the home, move to a new place, or do other things in a rapid manner that will affect your grief process. Cut yourself some slack. Do the essentials and work to calm things so that you can connect with your grief. 

Isolation within a relationship is not healthy. Being so content that you spend time only with a partner can lead to social struggles when the relationship ends. Stay engaged with others! Healthy relationships thrive on variety and a sprinkling of others that we can engage with. 

Your address book will rearrange itself. I can tell you from personal experience that some family couldn’t deal with a suicide, or a faith change, and they distanced themselves. It was the same with people who I thought were friends. Grief shows us who is able to stick around when the life waters get choppy. There are also others who show up in amazing ways. These are people who are living life in a way that allows them to join us where others can’t go.  

I believe the greatest thing I’ve seen and learned as I’ve traveled this path is that rushing into anything that can be slowed down will pay off in a huge way. Rushed relationships can end sadly; rushed life changes can land us in a pickle. Saying we “won’t ever_____” may cause us to need to recant the words. Judgment can come back to bite you, and wanting it to all go away will cause you to miss out on discoveries that will make all the difference. What we think we want at the beginning isn’t what we’ll need at the end of the process. We don’t need a quick fix: it’s a thoughtful journey, this walk in the woods. 

Feb 21

Semi-Rant

Death can numb us physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Most people don’t die without it affecting others with some level of trauma. Think about it. Even the person who dies in their sleep can have a partner wake up with a dead body beside them. There is trauma in this. 

While birth can be a joy-filled time, death isn’t. Sure, we might be thankful that they are out of pain, no longer suffering in other ways, or “at peace.” Death leaves the living with the reality of feeling and doing what we need to do to get through it and move forward. We can behave poorly after a death. Remember, we’re in no condition to think straight. Whether we realize it or not, we’re in the twilight zone. We’re not ourselves. We’re in the death bubble. Sooner or later, we’ll need to exit that bubble and get back on the conveyor belt of life.

Getting through the process is about reconfiguring our new lives to work without the loved one, or not-so-loved-one, in our lives. We’ll miss the former and think we can get on just fine without the latter—until something doesn’t go quite right. Then we’re facing the whatever it is and making it right. 

Anything can happen. Parents don’t think kids are grieving correctly; kids feel or think a parent should get over it; grandkids miss the grandparent who the parent is celebrating the death of, and they are numb to themselves and each other. 

All of a sudden, rifts develop; people once invited are uninvited, and people fight over petty things. What was not resolved in life becomes a nightmare for those who remain. There is more numbing, and it seems that we no longer notice the real pain. By now it might be all about anger, loss, and a grief we can’t speak of because those we thought would be there to hear our pain ran out on us to escape into their own pain. It’s a cycle, and it only resolves itself when someone says to themselves or others, “ENOUGH!!!!” 

If we’re lucky to have someone with the insight to call out the crazy, we might just get to a new place with it. That person may be you. You may be the only fix that there is. The reality of it all is that we can only fix ourselves. The great personal thaw means that you engage with yourself in the healing process. This can be the greatest challenge of all: to heal when no one else gets the repair work you are doing. 

In the seven years I’ve been dealing with my own grief and loss, and the pain of others, I’ve seen and heard some really painful stuff. I’ve asked myself why people move on too quickly and don’t do the work that would lead them to true peace, and then I think about the crazy of it all. 

Is it possible to have burnout from grief? Can someone burn out from too much pain? I think they can. I recall a health course I took in the fall semester of my second year of university work. I was sitting next to two guys as we all filled in the stress scale the professor had distributed. In the period of one year, I’d gone through two significant family deaths, made a major life change, and had checked a few other boxes. I looked at them; they looked at me, and all three of us realized that our scores were much too high to be normal. It was the nonverbal, silent signal of knowing. I wasn’t in my right mind. What was I doing there? At the end of that year, I moved home, found a therapist, and began to sort out my head. Looking back on all of it now, I realize that I’d had enough physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. I was so deep into grief that I didn’t know how deep I was into grief. I came out of it, and now understand the crazy. 

I believe that one of the things that saves us from yelling at others to get over it is that when we do the work of getting through it, we’re gifted with the understanding of the hard work that must be done. We’re able to hold compassion for the crazy place grief, loss, trauma, and burnout can carry us into. 

The work begins with a desire to pop the bubble of denial, and to seek for better ways of facing our pain. 

For some people, death is death: it is what happens at the end of life. It is what it is. For another group of people, death opens up a need to make sense of the existential mystery of why it might have happened. For yet a third group of people, they engage the theodicy mind trap. I’m sure there are other possibilities. It is to theodicy that I’ll turn my focus. 

Is it any wonder people turn from God when God gets abused? The use of theodicy— a way of explaining why God allows evil to happen—to explain loss, pain, and stuff that happens for unexplainable reasons can drive a soul mad. I understand that there are people who abuse, and even purposely damage, their own children. It is wrong, and I hope that such abusers are discovered and dealt with, and that their children are given a chance to live better lives. Children don’t sign up for mistreatment. Theodicy is a form of mistreatment, and is spiritually disrespectful to all human beings. Higher powers do not create death to teach someone a lesson, take someone because they are needed someplace else, expect us to bypass the grief process and focus on an afterlife, or cause intentional suffering (for instance, the birth of a disabled child). 

Tragic things happen, and we must face them honestly. Nature does strange things to bodies, and we must accept nature doing its thing. The human gene is a tricky thing, and we can be brought up short by the screwy things our genes do. Early in life I had to learn that nature behaves in unruly ways. It just is. That being said, I’ll return to the stuff that can be controlled. 

I can, and need, to control my own behavior. I can decide to behave kindly towards others in pain. As difficult as it is during the process of grief, loss, painful experiences, and whatever else I experience, I can choose to apologize, show compassion, and make amends as needed. In the end it takes less energy to show kindness to myself and others. It also keeps my brain well balanced. I’ll cry, scream, get angry, look in the mirror, face down the monsters, and make peace with it all. In the long run, that will serve me well.

This has been a nice semi-rant. I hope you learned from it.

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