Tag: Healing journey

Reflections, Part 2

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath

Read Part 1 here.

The Healing Journey

In July of 2023, I got sick. I wound up in the emergency room of the local hospital, and my kidneys were shutting down. They were at twenty percent function. I was disoriented, scared, and really not understanding how bad it was. At one point in the process leading up to my hospitalization, I became so confused that I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the bed. I couldn’t even think to turn the light on. That is sick, and that is scary. I found out after things settled that this is common for people facing this type of shutdown. Back to the narrative. A friend finally convinced me to call the doctor, who came and had me admitted, and by then it wasn’t good at all.

I was in the hospital for a week, and then a taxi took me home. I was disoriented coming out of the place because the hospital I was in was new, and I hadn’t seen it before. With low vision, this is a real issue.

I walked into my house, sat down my bag, walked to the sofa, and let out the tears. I sobbed, and then listened as my body and mind told me it was time to heal. It was time to do the work that led to healing all of it. All the trauma I’d stuffed. I had some therapy of my own to do, and it was time to find the therapist who would travel with me as I called the people to the encampment of the battleground. Funny how it works. It took another ten months to get to May of 2024, and to begin the intense work of cleaning out my mind and moving forward.

The healing process is an interesting thing. I’ve seen people who come to me and aren’t ready to do the work, and so they run away rather than to what can help. Others believe that grief and loss can be worked through in six easy sessions, and that there is a magic formula that the therapist can dispense. The fact is that this is a soul journey. It is a journey of the mind, the heart, and the spirit, if you will. It leads us to someplace else, and that someplace is the place of wonder and, ultimately, healing, such as it is.

On August 29, 2016, I sat at my dining table and looked at the lights that had been installed so that I would be able to see in my home. I wondered just how I, a woman with low vision, would be able to survive in a country where my limited Dutch would only get me so far. The only thing I knew at that time was that I couldn’t and shouldn’t make any major life decisions for a year. That is something my father had told me, and it was wise counsel.

And so, the journey of healing and discovery began that day, and in many ways it will never end. We may work through our grief and loss: we’re changed by it all.

The social system here set me up with someone to clean the house. At first, my then church came with meals until I realized I needed to cook for myself. If I needed to not work because I was compromised, I needed to do something for myself. I needed to let the process of grieving take place.

On Friday the thirteenth of January 2017, my mother died of a heart attack. We’d giggled, grown together, and experienced the death of my younger sister Joyce together. My mother was also an eight on the Enneagram. We understood this shared experience in life, and she taught me things despite not knowing about her beloved number. She just did life well in many ways. Because of where I was in the process of grieving Jon, I didn’t see and get fully the fact that my siblings telling me not to fly over for the memorial service was really bad advice. I’ve regretted that, and would do that one differently if I could.

By June of 2017, I felt ready to plan a trip to the US to see family and a friend. What I didn’t know then was that the trip would change the course of my life.

In late July of 2017, I flew to Salt Lake City to see some friends of Jon’s and attend a conference called Sunstone. At the conference I ran into people who were not Mormon, and it flipped a switch. I felt, and knew, that I had to check this other church out.

I then went to Oregon to visit another friend, and travelled on to California to see my family and visit the beach.

Staying at my brother’s place first and then moving on to my sister’s place was interesting. At the time I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see both of them alive.

We made some good memories, and my sister and sister-in-law insisted I take my mother’s green quilt home. Now, they know of my love affair with blue. That green quilt would cause me to do a total room makeover. I painted the room blue, purchased a new bed that was blue and that the quilt would fit on, and realized that I had the piece of my mother that loved green. It has turned out to be one of the things I enjoy seeing, and it serves as a link to her and the love she had for me.

That trip also created a memory of my sis that I could never have done without her help. She got me on the flight with five boxes for less than the price of five extra boxes. I stood there at the airline counter, shut my mouth, and watched in amazement as she talked to the guy. I know when to shut my mouth. So, that quilt and other things came with me to be with me here in my new life.

The trip to the US changed my ability to sleep. In that first year, everything sleepwise changed. I didn’t sleep at normal hours, and family would question me as I called in the wee hours of my Netherlands morning. “Gail, what are you doing?” Well, when I can’t sleep, I call you.

Planning for the anniversary of his death had taught me that if I thought about it in advance, I could maybe, just maybe, control the tears and what would happen. It worked well for year one and failed for year two. What I really learned was that with the body, what we’re grieving will push its way to the surface and force itself on us in ugly ways. The life lesson: let go and don’t try to control what needs to happen. Healthy grief lets grief drive the process so it can heal. Even if grief must be put off because of life that must be done, it will surface, and when it does, embrace it!

What I’ve learned about the first two years of loss are that the tears change in quality and quantity. Looking back eight years, I can see all of the journey better now. How different it was and now is. In letting it all go, I freed myself to trust the grief process in ways that opened my heart and mind to healing, and because of that, I was carried to where I am now. July of 2023 had to happen so that I could write this in July of 2026. I see that now, and that is one of the huge things this journey has gifted me with. Wow, what an amazing place I’ve gotten to!

Icebergs and Admirals, Part 2: Reshaping the Self

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, the work of rebuilding could take place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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