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Posts tagged ‘Discharging the loyal soldier’

Sep 2

Three Minutes

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The summers come and pass into falls; the ground hardens, and winter calls the earth into its slumber. Awake, and come forth out of the ground, sweet spring! The cycle continues. And so it goes with grief. We spiral through the cycles of the years. With time, the tears change in quality and quantity, until one day, when we least expect it, we notice ourselves standing on new shores and feeling new emotions.

The longer I move forward, and as the years fade one to another, I realize that if I’m doing this well enough, I’ll find myself challenged in new ways. At the beginning I thought the process of grief was to arrive on the new shore and celebrate something. The something to be celebrated never came. What I came to understand was that doing grief well enough is not for wimps.

The further out I move from what happened eight years ago, the more I find myself in the forest of uncertainty. That place where the monsters of exploration and uncertainty dwell. In a strange and surprising way, this summer gifted me with sanctuary. I wasn’t expecting any of what has happened in my grief journey this summer.

Three minutes of my life have affected me for eight years. In July of 2023, a sequence of events began to unfold in my life that set me in motion towards resolving three minutes of a conversation that had scared and wounded me in a way I’d never been hurt before. I’m healing from his suicide in a way I could not have imagined a year ago.

I tell people that there is grief, and that all grief is difficult, and some of it is filled with unexpected trauma because life is not predictable in any way. We may not see a death coming. We don’t see a person who exits life by suicide coming. They’ve done the unthinkable. They thought of it and carried a plan out. We’re left with a puzzle. Why?

If they left a note, it explains their thinking, or sometimes the lack thereof. Jon left several notes, and they did explain the why. It has taken me eight years to unravel the crazy of the last three minutes of our life together.

He was sick, and while I was in the room with him in that moment in time, I didn’t understand just how sick he really was.

Healing this wound has required me to examine our relationship, and it has led me to a place of forgiveness for the last three minutes of our married life. Forgiveness should never be done without thought. When we forgive, it doesn’t mean that we won’t remember what happened. We’re human, and humans can’t forget things. In time the pain can fade; the relationship can heal to something new. You can’t go back. That will never work.

Forgiveness is about being able to move forward with a new understanding and a new normal. It is about seeing an old rainbow in new ways. Forgiving is about growth and understanding by all parties involved. It is about authentic acceptance on both sides. It is also about realizing that the other involved person or persons may never be able to get to a place of doing authentic forgiveness.

There are reasons why someone may not ever be able to authentically forgive, and so the process backfires:

  • They are being rushed or pressured to move to the “forgive me or forgive someone else” place.
  • The religious may see forgiveness as a sign of healing and progression and lack the insight and understand that this can only happen when enough healing has occurred.
  • “Hug your brother or sister and say you’re sorry.” This one is a doozy! What this actually teaches children is that they don’t really need to think about the wrong they’ve done if they do an action and say two words. 
  • Forgiveness stems from our hearts and souls and has a spiritual base. 

There are also readiness factors for accepting someone’s apology:

  • Has enough personal work been done on the receiving end so that the matter can be discussed and resolved?
  • Is there clarity about how the new relationship will move forward? Have the appropriate changes been made?
  • Is there understanding that a new trust will need to be earned, and that trust takes time to build?
  • Can both parties agree to work on the trust in in an open manner?

Jon isn’t here for me to talk this out with him. I understand now just how sick he was, and that those three minutes of my life happened due to the fact that he was in unspeakable pain. If he were here, I’d now accept his words asking for forgiveness, and the relationship would move forward with new understanding, and we’d both grow. Today I miss Jon.

Aug 12

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Soldiers of the Mind, Part 2: Honorable Discharge

Continued from Soldiers of the Mind, Part 1: Walking the Battlements.

As I write this days after my therapy session, and having sat with my thoughts, I still don’t know how I will discharge this soldier that defended me from something that wasn’t mine to defend. Decades of living, and I realize now I held on to an order of defense that wasn’t mine at all but had gotten routed to me by others who failed to soldier properly.  

Why hadn’t logic and reason won out in this situation? In moments of reflection, I felt relief. I hadn’t seen things in the proper perspective. I kept thinking at lightning speed that I knew better! No, I didn’t. Not really. 

How Our Soldiers Trick Us

The lie I was telling myself was that I needed to protect the people who should have been protecting me, and who failed to listen to the child and young adult in a vulnerable position. My own inner warrior was hurt, angry, and tired of carrying something that wasn’t mine to carry. This heavy backpack had been placed on me at a young age by people who turned their heads instead of seeing the wounded.

Here I was, in a war of the mind because I had not been able to let go and say that it wasn’t my responsibility to defend. As I write this, I’m angry. I’m angry at people who should have cared enough to stop the circle of violence that raged in my life. I’ve not had one broken bone due to abuse—the brokenness was in my head. The warrior screams out patriarchy! Now there is new understanding surrounding some of the choices I’ve been guided into making over the past decade.

Our soldiers believe what they are programmed to believe. It starts when we’re young, and it creeps in slowly. By the time we’re adults, our thoughts and behaviors have become ego-syntonic. All seems normal. We don’t question what is present, and we defend our inner normalcy. The disruption comes when the cracks begin to form, and what we once believed as syntonic, or in harmony, with ourselves becomes ego-dystonic.

A good way of thinking about this is to think of how you first thought of your home as normal, and then you went to friends’ homes where there wasn’t chaos, or a parent or sibling wasn’t abusing someone. There was a different feeling in the home. Things were done differently.

Inside your head, that soldier is having to sort it all out. Wait a minute! Slowly, how we once viewed our world is altered. In healthy adolescent development, we begin to challenge and to rethink it all. We rebel to grow and to find our own personal normal. It is when we fail to question our own status quo that trouble begins to brew, and our soldiers light torches to signal threat when there may be no threat at all.

Soldiers must be called off because they are trained to act according to procedure. Most soldiers don’t question the orders because questioning can get you into a court-martial situation. Teaching our soldiers to question in intentional ways and to break cycles in our minds is needful.

A year ago, my head began to spin after a close encounter with death. It took about five months for everything to unravel and for me to really understand that my soul was not at peace. It was a thought that began to nag at me and to challenge the ego in new ways. Syntonic became dystonic, and I knew I had more shadow work to do. For that, the soldier had to leave my head and be told thank you and goodbye. The defender of my mind needed to be honorably discharged from service. It was time to stop a raging internal war and to survey the carnage. This run of the river would be much different than other stretches I’d run.

Running the River

It would take months of research to find the new therapist, and that would be helped along by an incredible spiritual director who would support what I was about to do.

In The Way of Discernment, Elizabeth Liebert lays out the framework I used to enter into the process of discovering who to see for this healing process. I found a gifted healer.

As an enneagram type eight, I understood that I’d need to let myself navigate the entire circle to bring to the forefront everything I’d need to prepare for the crash that was about to arrive. I’d let myself prepare and plan for the journey by spending time thinking about what might happen and planning for the unforeseen that would arrive. I’d observe myself closely and track it all, and I’d not stop the emotions from surfacing. I’d also ask for some helpful companionship. I’d do all of this prep before the first session, and so when the first day of talking came around, I was ready to have the soldiers of the mind face confrontation.

With many soldiers ready to be discharged, the last one stood, steadfast in her knowing that she alone was right. She wasn’t right at all. This warrior woman was not going to leave the castle battlement without a good reason to do so, and I was being handed reasoning that made sense. It wasn’t I who needed to protect anyone! The fault lay elsewhere.

Ritual and Healing

For me, rituals that I construct have always played a role in freeing me to go to new places.

In the fall, winter, and spring, my home is filled with the scent of burning candles. I breathe in the scent of a room and move to peaceful thoughts and days where the light and darkness move me to a quieter place. As the spring returns light and new growth to the earth, I hope for new things.

This past spring was a time of preparation for the castle battlements to be cleared.

My first therapist had created a story for me. It featured a lost girl who sat on the edge of a forest, and she knew that she had to go into that place, and she was scared. She went in with a guide, and in a meadow beyond the scary she discovered a butterfly with a gift: a lavender pearl.

That pearl has traveled with me for decades. I’ve crossed through many hard places, and the butterfly and pearl have been with me.

Building our own rituals of healing is a multi-level thing. It requires finding our spiritual, emotional, and mental epicenters.

I do know that my goodbye ritual began with a prayer of healing, hope, and understanding that I was not walking into this particular forest without two friends by my side.

I admit to not knowing how I’ll send this last warrior away, but she is on notice. It has been a week, and as I make my way to the battlement to hand this warrior woman her honorable discharge orders, I’m uncertain of what the goodbye ritual will look like.

Maybe a candle will be lit, a chocolate offered, a sunflower presented as a means of closure on this chapter of my life. Maybe a new dress? I know it will be meaningful to me, and to what the future can bring. I’m beginning to cry just thinking about it, and that’s a sign I’m on the right path.

Aug 5

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Soldiers of the Mind, Part 1: Walking the Battlements

“Gail, this is not your shame. This is your x and y and q’s shame.”

I sat in my chair, stunned, completely speechless, and relieved. I was also feeling so many other things in that moment. At the end of the session, my therapist looked at me and said that I looked exhausted. I was, and it is taking time to sort out what happened to me in that hour.

Decades of sadness, anger, and a feeling of needing to protect something washed over me. Logically, I understood I’d been protecting something. But what? I loved those people, and yet I didn’t love what had happened. I’d ripped the duct tape off the final wound and insult in my life, and there was nothing to say at first.

First, I needed to think about what had just happened in order to open up the way for the words to come.

What I was feeling in that first moment with my therapist was the shame of a burden that had been placed on me by others. Vulnerable, and with my heart wide open, I sank. And then I asked a question only I could answer: How do I resolve this? How do I jettison decades of damaging thinking? 

My usual process after such a session of deep shadow work is to let the heavy stuff sit in its juices, and then return to it hours or days later.

This time, things are slightly more intense. I’m sitting with the verbal release of the burden and am now asking myself how to let go of things spiritually and emotionally. It is going to take time to figure out what I need to do to let go completely. This is new for me because other issues have healed naturally.  

The difference between knowing what to say and feeling what has to be said is vastly different.

Feeling what needs to be said is about more than empathy; it is a different type of knowing. It is a real understanding of what is at the bottom of the dark well shaft where the light doesn’t reach. It’s dark and cold, and it doesn’t smell so good down there. At times people live in the well shaft, and people need to know how to find an exit.

Most of the time the help we need to exit the well comes from within ourselves. Healers can guide with questions so that we can find our way out of what might be equated to crossing the river Styx.

Richard Rohr, in Falling Upwards, speaks of the need to discharge our loyal soldier. This concept stems from Japan and the end of WWII. Soldiers had returned to communities where their warriors were no longer needed, and yet the communities still needed the men. How could they become useful in new ways? The soldiers needed to be released to make way for the new.

Many times, our old defenses are like soldiers walking the battlements of our castles. They are alert to our needs long before we realize we need to defend ourselves. They send the signal by lighting the torch. Slowly, as the message gets passed from one waypoint to another in our psyche, the soldiers that are needed are called to the front to defend us from our own monsters and goblins.

This journey is rarely pleasant, as most soul work isn’t easy. Acceptance is the process of facing what our psyche would have us deny. Our soldiers stand strong in defending our status quo. Our status quo is all about having us stay in our comfy clothes when we need to put on the clothes of work so that we can leave the safety of sheltered environments and look at the hard things of life.

Next week, in Part 2, I will share how it was to leave that safety of my sheltered environment to look at some very hard things.