The rain is falling outside, and finally my plants are drinking water. It wasn’t this way ten years ago: the day was so different from what I’m doing today.
PTSD holds one’s mind captive, and you only free yourself from it by sending the order out to the iceberg, calling a summit at the battlement, and declaring personal war on the mind. I didn’t know I’d be doing this ten years ago, and I couldn’t imagine what a peaceful day this has been. It was worth it all.
Wow, did I just do this?!!!! Yes, I’ve done the navigation in several different boats. Looking back, I started out in a dinghy, and while it was stable, it wasn’t sleek. Part of the river I went down was all about Styx and getting to new shores, and then getting back on a new boat and going further. The thing about Styx is that I can’t tell you where that ugly and dark place began. I can tell you where it dumped me out: it dumped me out when I realized that there was hope in all of this. I went inland and took a look around. When I got back to the water, once again a new and sleeker craft was there for me.
Tonight I will gather with four friends, and we’ll celebrate all that I’ve done. It will be good to eat cake and to have a friendly chat.
Today, ten years ago, I was in shock, and I was traumatized. I was on the phone to family, and while I know I was doing it all, it is as if I’m looking back on events that happened, and in my mind as if someone gave me a “forget-it-all pill.” I have no memory of the stuff that happened that day. Clearing the trauma took it all away.
Today, while out, I spoke naturally, used Dutch, and smiled at people, and all along the way I’m marveling at how normal it all is. This is an experience that hasn’t happened in the last ten years of doing August 28th.
I’m not on drugs. I’ve experienced the seasons of grief and come out in good shape. I’ve discovered that grief is a soul journey calling us to attend to ourselves as gently as possible. We ride the train until we’re expelled at the central station and forced to find a new line. In our wanderings we discover shops and hiding places we haven’t seen before. We take delight in the new discoveries and understand that, while it doesn’t seem like it at first, our loss and the grief it has brought is a gift. You can’t see this at the beginning because all you can do is cry. For weeks and months, it seems as if your universe has done a number on you—it has!!!
You are not in a dream; you are in a place feeling things you never knew about, and never in your wildest dreams could have imagined for yourself. And then the tears change, the river changes, and you exit the winter of grief to find the first vestiges of hope. It is spring! Slowly and gently, spring will move us into summer. We stay in summer, learning and growing, until finally, one day, we’re seasoned well enough to invest in the warmth of fall, with its rich and deep colors, and now, with our wisdom, we understand that the tearful winter of grief enables us to exercise new freedom.
While some of this has been really hard, I won’t take it back. It has made me who I am, and I understand that it all links together.
I waited for the right day to say goodbye to Jon: I did that in 2022 at Bracelet Bay in Wales. Today I greet the next decade with curiosity and hope in my own tiny home, and with a new future. The woman sitting at her dining table on August 29th of 2016 did a great thing. I really did this! Today, it was a non-event that has for so many years been an event. Today, it was just another day.