Life after Trauma

Return to sender - of birthdays, silence & sorrow

They say everything can be replaced/Yet every distance is not near

Bob Dylan

Return to sender (Donovan Beeson, flickr creative commons)

 

When I got back from a recent trip, I didn't check the mail for a few days. When I did, I found the card that I'd sent to my daughter - the one who I relinquished for adoption and who I'm estranged from - in the mailbox. There was a yellow sticker on the bottom right hand corner of the card that read, "Return to Sender. Not Deliverable as Addressed. Unable to Forward." I was so upset that I barely touched the card and threw it, unopened,  on the table with the other mail. I was upset because a previous letter that I'd sent came back with a slightly different message: "No mail receptacle." That was a message I'd never seen, so I phoned my daughter's local post office, located in a small town near her rural home. They told me that my daughter was having her mail held or forwarded for a year - I don't remember which - and, then, assured me that if I sent the card  back in a new envelope, addressed as the first one was, they - i.e. the post mistress - would make sure it was forwarded. I believed her and did what she said, only to discover upon my return home, that it had NOT been forwarded. 

 

Angel of sorrow (ekletik2xs, flickr creative commons)

 

I was sad when I made the discovery, but even sadder a few days later when I realized that for the first time since my daughter and I were reunited thirteen years ago, I couldn't send her a birthday card. It didn't matter that I haven't spoken to my daughter in three years. (As of yesterday, July 25.) Somehow it didn't seem so final if I could send her a birthday card, as I've faithfully done on the previous two birthdays since we've been estranged. See more about the story of our estrangement by clicking on the link: Estrangement - telling our stories. Yesterday - July 25th - was the 42nd anniversary of the first time I lost my daughter and the third anniversary of our estrangement. I guess that means that I've only been in touch with my daughter for about ten years of her life. Not for lack of trying or lack of hoping. No, that's the way adoption was done back in the 60s and 70s and, today, both my daughter and I are still living with the aftershocks of the day we parted. We both left the hospital alive on that long ago day, but something died: the normal relationship between mother and daughter was lost forever. Does that make me sad? Yes, yes, yes! More than I can find a way to convey. However, the deepness of the sorrow and frustration I felt yesterday, frightened me. It's appropriate to grieve, but I know that I have to let go of the hope that someday my daughter and I can be a mother and daughter again. 

 

bouquet, flickr creative commons

 

 Letting go of that hope feels so painful that it's hard to think of a metaphor. The best one I can come up with is imagining that the roots of a tree called sorrow are growing around my heart.  Pulling this sorrow tree out feels like it would kill me, but I have to try. "Don't let your grief hold you hostage," my therapist said today, when we talked. Amongst other things we talked about what letting go might look like and we also discussed suggestions for a personal ritual of closure. Letting something go into the ocean - which I live near - was one of the things we discussed. I immediately thought of a small creek in a nearby botanical garden. The woods are deep there, a small wooden bridge crosses the creek, and it's a quiet spot, perfect for such a ritual. Right now, it's too dry for there to be any water in the creek, but come fall and the rains, I can plan a ritual that involves a close friend or, if he'll participate, my son. After all, my first daughter is his half-sister. I can picture the flowers and how they will twist and turn in the current before heading along their journey to the sea. I like the ideal; it's a place to start.

Meanwhile, I still have the card sitting here on the table in front of me. It was a beautiful card, carefully chosen, telling my daughter that I would be in Michigan for a few weeks where I thought she was - indeed, may be - living and suggesting we get together for coffee. Of course, she never saw the card. I'll probably put it in the box with the mementoes I've collected over our decade of reunion. Only time will tell whether someday in the indefinite future we'll be back in touch again. For now, though, I have to get on with my life, and set at least part of this heavy burden down. It's time. 

In the years that my daughter and I led separate lives and neither knew where the other was, I often kept the words of one of my favorite Motown songs in my mind.  "There ain't no mountain high enough/Ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough/To keep me from getting to you." I never imagined that my daughter would be the mountain or the river - that she would be the one who wouldn't let me get to her. More on why adoption reunions fail and how to cope in a future post.

  

Why is it important for trauma survivors to speak out?

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr. 

 

I Can't Hear Your Pain

"I need to minimize my exposure to your pain," a friend told me recently, while we were discussing some of the traumatic events we've both experienced in our lives. Sadly, this isn't the first time I've heard those words. Another friend told me that "it makes her stomach hurt," to hear about my past experiences. The friend who I met for coffee last week, happens to be the father of the daughter I relinquished for adoption: aka my ex. The original intention of our reunion was to discuss and heal from the experiences of the past. Now, he's decided that he doesn't have room in his life for me anymore and he doesn't want to hear anymore about my grief. What he had to say hurt, but I had seen it coming for a long time and I wasn't surprised. 

The Loneliness of Trauma

Processing trauma can get very lonely at times. Therapist Dr. Kathleen Young refers to this as trauma stigma and her take on what silencing can mean to trauma survivors is worth reading.  I am a trauma survivor with complex PTSD and complicated grief recovering from and processing multiple traumas that took place over 20 years of my life - ages 17 to 37. That doesn't mean that I talk about trauma all the time. Far from it. I would get exhausted. However, there are times when I want to share how I'm feeling with friends, family and - in the case of my ex and my husband - those who have gone through traumatic experiences with me. I  have several wonderful friends who are not afraid of my pain. They can let me feel what I feel and be who I am. This is not a small gift. Others - even people I love - behave as if trauma is contagious and the less said about it the better. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they can't really understand what it means to be silenced. Sometimes, however, this is no longer possible. It is not healthy to be silenced. The problem isn't that I MUST always speak about my pain. The problem is that the traumas I experienced are a part of me and, even though I am working on healing, the pain may never be entirely gone. And so, I have to limit my exposure to people who want to silence me. 

Speaking Up

My ex followed up our talk with a hurtful email that said, amongst other things, that being reunited with our daughter should make up for any trauma that I experienced in the past and that he wasn't interested in holding my hand while I continued to grieve. If it were only that simple. My relationship with my daughter is a tenuous thing and she hasn't spoken to me in over a year, while my ex sees her and talks to her regularly. Both my ex and my daughter imply that "if only you would change and let go of the past everything would be great." That might be true. But it is hard for me to believe. Telling people that "if only you change, I'll love you," rarely seems to work, at least in my experience. My therapist has often told me not to disown that part of myself that experienced the trauma. I also know that if I tried to silence that part of me, not only wouldn't it work, but I would have to erase a large part of myself and I can't do that. It reminds me of the hikers we met along the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. There was a large dead seal near where they had pitched their tent They had simply thrown some dirt over the seal and moved their tent 20 feet. Both black bears and mountain lions frequent that stretch of the trail and neither animal would be the least bit fooled by dirt. Trying to cover up trauma and grief can be that way: only the person burying it thinks it's hidden.  To get back to my ex, I responded to his email with one of my own. Amongst other things, I said that "I am tired of your anger and your inability to accept me for who I am."  And that's what it comes down to: acceptance or silencing. I have silenced myself for many years and now that I am learning to speak out, I can't stop. I have a voice and I need to use it. That doesn't mean I have to speak out at inappropriate times and places. All I know is that I don't want to be silenced again. And after I sent the email, I felt a burden lift from my heart. Below, Dr. Maya Angelou reads her poem "And Still I Rise," Her poem evokes the beautiful resiliency of the human spirit under difficult circumstances. It is a poem that resonates with me. 

 

 

Has anyone ever silenced you when you were sharing your feelings about past traumas or your grief? What did you do?

This is the first in a series of posts on trauma within communities and why trauma survivors need to speak out in order to heal.  

Breathing Space: taking time for myself

And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void . . . 

I wheeled with the stars

my heart broke loose with the wind.

Pablo Neruda

 

 Wind chimes (D. Sharon Pruitt, flickr)

 

As I mentioned in a previous posting, I've been staying at my parent's house for almost a month now. My mother is in a rehab center with an unset fracture in her right hip. I am staying with my dad at my parent's house, which has its moments. For one thing, I've never been a Daddy's girl. Quite the contrary. Dad and I can clash if I'm not careful  - especially when he's anxious, like he is now. So, the past month has been trying in many ways. For one thing, I am rarely in charge of my own time. Mom expects me to spent large amounts of time at the rehab center. On Monday, of this week, she was at the ER again because she wasn't able to swallow. By the time they took an x-ray, however, whatever was lodged in her swallowing tube, had dislodged. Based on her description of what she ate for lunch, the ER doctor thought it was probably a carrot. I call it the "evil carrot."  Anyway, between time spent at the hospital, in doctor's appointments, etc. I am plenty busy with my mom.  At "home", I am the chief cook, laundry doer, medical liaison, and dish washer. What it comes down to is that I have scant time available for myself. I need that time, the way plants need water. 

Some people refer to this space as self-care. Self-care is essential for trauma survivors, people grieving, and people with PTSD; it is certainly essential for me. I have to have quiet "processing" time or I start to feel anxious or -given the small space in my mom's room at rehab - as though I am suffocating. One of my favorite ways to enjoy quiet time, is to lie in the guest room, which is furnished with much of the furniture that was in my grandparents bedroom in Kentucky - and listen to my dad's wind chimes. He has about a dozen of them hanging from trees in the wooded backyard and on windy days or nights I can hear their peaceful chimes up in my room. I love the sound of the wind, the wind chimes, and the whistle of the train that passes several times during the night. 

 

 

Other ways I practice self-care

• Going barefoot 
• Eating fresh fruit
• Listening to music
• Reading poetry
• Talking to friends and family via email or phone
• Writing family and friends
• Walking

All of these ways are good ones. Little things, like going barefoot in the house, help ground me, while "big" things like going for walks and reading poetry give me comfort and recharge my batteries. Yesterday, I went for a walk and saw, among other things, snow drops blooming, a disappearing snow man embedded with leaves, and heard birds calling high up in the trees. The sun was out and for 25 minutes, all I needed to think about was breathing in the fresh air, enjoying the wind, and moving my feet one after the other. Most days, I take time to read poetry and most days I discover a new poem to love, like the one by Neruda above.

I'm also reading three books that are rich sources for ideas on self-care and self-compassion.

Saved by a Poem

Healing Walks for Hard Times

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

And, at night, listening to music feeds my soul. Here's one of my favorite "comfort" songs.

 

 

Anger and PTSD

Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.

                    Harriet Lerner

Anger isn't good or bad. It's what we do with anger that makes the difference. This afternoon, I was angry with M. (the father of my oldest daughter - the one with the new girlfriend). You could call it anticipatory anger. Here's why. Yesterday, my therapist agreed that now that M. has a girlfriend, he may not be in touch with me when I am back in Michigan. This is distressing because, as with many people in adoption reunions, I've weathered more than one period of silence and thought we were, at last, beyond that. Last summer M. told me that, "You haven't lost me. Our relationship has entered a new phase." I'm pretty sure that he didn't mean silence when he said, "a new phase."  So, I'm angry because I'm afraid that I'll never hear from him again. This is an inevitable - and very real - fear in adoption reunions. 

I don't know that M. will disappear, but the signs are there. And so, I'm having anticipatory anger because I'm at home where I have a safe place to be angry in and I hope that being angry now might help to ease the pain I may face in Michigan. (Well, who said I was rational?) Besides, I can't seem to stop what I'm feeling. Not surprising. People with PTSD often fall into negative emotional loops that are hard to get out of. My usual loop is sorrow, shame and self-blame. Maybe anger is a step up, but it still feels painful. Malcom X said, for example, that anger is better than being sad. "Usually when people are sad," he said. "they don't do anything. . . . But when they get angry, they bring about change." Writer Thomas Moore said that, "Anger gives you the impetus you need to change conditions that need to be changed." 

So, what is it I need to change? I think my anger is telling me that I need to keep myself safe and not be so open with M. It's not possible to be open to another person and put up a wall at the same time - it's like how you can't simultaneously open and shut a door. That makes me sad because I thought we were making progress. Now, I can see that it wasn't that simple. M. wants to get on with his life and, despite what he said and even promised, probably isn't ready to process the hurt we went through together and be friends, as we both hoped. At least, that's my therapist's take on things. 

Putting up a wall won't be easy because trauma survivors have an overwhelming desire to re-write the traumas of the past and create happier endings. When it comes to M., I have this in spades. This phenomenon is known as  traumatic reenactment. In our case, this is reinforced by the powerful biological drive to be a family that two people who have a baby together experience. For M. and I, that family was destroyed but the part of our brain that stores trauma doesn't realize that it's too late to become a family now - at least a family that is raising a baby. Which brings me back to anger. I know anger is warning me to go slow and be careful and it is also telling me - which I do not want to hear - that I don't have any control over what M. does. I only have control over how I respond. And that's scary. I'm afraid I'll be too angry to cope at a time when my parents need me to be calm not enraged. Anger can be either constructive or destructive; it all depends upon how you handle it. So far, I'm managing but I don't like the way anger feels and I'm pretty sure that I'm in for another roller coaster ride on the PTSD emotional express. I have that same queasiness in the pit of my stomach that you get just before the car plummets down the first steep slope. Courage, I tell myself, courage. But only time will tell "which of them I'll become" - the out-of-control angry person or the angry person who looks her anger in the face and tries to hear what it's saying.

  

How do you cope with difficult emotions? Which emotions do you find the most difficult?

Sweet Bitter Tears

Loss is the absence of something we were once attached to. Grief is the rope burns left behind, when that which is held is pulled beyond our grasp.

                                                Stephen Levine

 

 

Crying

Last night, for the first time since I've begun Sitting With Sorrow, I cried. Crying doesn't come easily to me these days. But, last night I felt very sad and after lying in bed thinking about how sad I was, I started crying. I cried and cried and cried. I cried so much that my voice was hoarse this morning. (It helped that my 17-year-old-son was staying at a friend's last night.) 

As I laid there crying, I was thrown back into the saddest moment of my life. My high school sweetheart and I were in a hospital room. I was giving birth to a baby who we had agreed to relinquish for adoption. My labour had begun around 6 a.m. that morning, and as evening drew closer, I was taken to the delivery room. My boyfriend was not allowed to come. When our baby was born about an hour later, I wasn't allowed to touch her - I must have heard someone say that the baby was a girl (no one was talking to be directly). I could see her for those brief moments when they must have been cutting the cord that connected us; she had dark hair and beautiful hands. I was alone, but I didn't realize it because I was out of my head from the drugs I had been given and talking to my boyfriend, who I thought was in the room with me. Then, a nurse wheeled me out of the delivery room, away from my daughter.

Thinking about that moment, I cried harder. This wasn't quiet crying, this was over the top crying. I could sense how much pain there was inside me, like a dark river winding through my heart. As I cried, one word kept coming into my mind - HELP. Looking back, I realized how much pain my boyfriend and I must have been in and I also saw how there was no one there to help us or comfort us. When we had agreed to relinquish our baby for adoption, no one told us that it would hurt this much. And, as I continued to cry, I realized that I wasn't just sad, I was angry. Very angry. The adults in our life had betrayed us and none of them were there to help pick up the pieces. (This story is not intended to be a commentary on adoption. It is my story and so, that is what I must tell. Trauma can result from many experiences: this is where mine began.)

Meanwhile, back in time, back in the No Mercy Hospital, I had pulled inside of myself, the way a fox might take shelter in its den. This is called dissociation. I dissociated and, for that reason, I cannot remember anything of what happened during the two or three days I stayed in the hospital. And that is also why, today, I still carry much of that grief with me. When I was 17 I had to let that grief go because it was too large for my boyfriend and I to handle. And so we buried it. Both my therapist and doctor say that in order to heal from that first trauma, I need to grieve it. And so, although my crying hurt, it was also sweet: a first step on the road to opening to grief. Grief counsellor and author, Stephen Levine, explains the wisdom of opening to grief. "I'm not suggesting that our grief will completely go away," Levine writes, "but rather that it can come to rest in the open heart and softening belly. . . Healing, then, becomes not the absence of pain but the increased ability to meet it with mercy instead of loathing." (Levine 2005:19) 

I start with that moment when we lost our daughter because it is the hinge moment in my life. Years ago, my husband salvaged trees that had been cut down to use in wood sculpture. The largest, wettest trees took a monumental effort to split. He used metal wedges of various weights and sometimes the wood would split and sometimes it wouldn't. Usually, he could tell fairly quickly which it would be. Either the wedge would bury itself in the wood or after anywhere from a few minutes to nearly an hour, a small crack would appear. Then he knew, he told me, that the wood was going to "give way." That moment when I lost my daughter was like the first moment when the crack appears in the wood. My life was going to give way. It took another year for it to completely come apart. And that, too, was something I cried about last night. And then my husband made me a cup of cocoa and we sat together while I drank it and then I washed my face and went to bed. 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

 

 

The symptoms of PTSD are not "in someone's head" . . . Rather they are the aftereffects of an event or series of events severe enough to profoundly alter a person's thinking, feelings, and physical reactions.

                Aphrodite Matsakis

I've brought together two videos that discuss Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One is from the point of view of a pyschologist. The other is from the point of view of someone who experienced trauma, and was later diagnosed with PTSD.  The differences in the way the two women talk about trauma are quite fascinating. I've included both because the psychologist provides a good general overview. Lisa French puts a human face on something that can seem frightening and abstract.

I generally don't like labels. However, in my own life, receiving a diagnosis of PTSD was the first step on my healing path. I was diagnosed with complex PTSD in approximately 2005. Complex PTSD means that instead of encountering a single traumatic event, I experienced multiple traumas, beginning when I was 17 and not ending for many years. Unfortunately, by the time that PTSD began to enter the psychological vocabulary, I was living in northern Canada and had no access to counselling. Years later, I moved to Vancouver and had the good luck to see a doctor who specialized in PTSD.  Although she normally works with combat and peacekeeping veterans, she became my lifeline. When she talked to me about PTSD and what it meant to be a trauma survivor, a light went off in my head.  "Aha," I remember thinking, "so that's what's been going on for so many years." In future posts, I will write more about what it means to have PTSD and why, in the past two years, my need to grieve and process the hurts of the past has become stronger. "It's time," my inner voice is telling me and I am finally ready to listen.

 

Starting my journey

I have a cat who sometimes seems more like a human than a cat. She isn't very big and she has short little legs, medium-length fur and an adorable face. Sometimes she's adorable and sometimes she isn't. But when she wants something, she definitely lets me know. First she meows, then she meows louder, then she comes and stands beside me and reaches up with one of her paws and nudges me on the arm, just like a person would. And then, if all else fails, she reaches up even further and takes a little nip. (Well, maybe not exactly little.)

 

What does any of this have to do with sorrow? Well, lately the sorrows I've been carrying around for a long time are getting like Goldie. First they started meowing, now they've graduated to nipping - maybe even biting.  It's time to listen.  I've been meaning to take time for grieving for a long time. I have experienced several major traumas in my life and a number of smaller traumas. I have been sad at times, even terribly sad; however, as my doctor and therapist like to say being sad is important, but if you don't know why you're being sad, it won't help you recover from trauma.  Most of the authors I've read, along with my therapist and doctor, all agree that you have to understand something of why you're grieving before the grief can help you to live with trauma. I don't use the word "heal" from trauma because these same people agree that once you hve experienced major trauma, you will never "get over it" in the way we may think of getting over a cold.  Rather, you can learn to be aware of how trauma has changed your life and how becoming aware of both your trauma and the sorrow related to it, can help you get on with life. In other words, sorrow grows hope and learning to be mindful of both the trauma living inside and the sorrow connected with it, is no small thing.

Sitting with sorrow is a journey that takes courage and time. Focusing on the sorrow in my life, befriending it, cannot be done in between working long hours, caring for children, or whatever demands fill up my days. As my doctor said, "healing is a process not a race."  Or as poet Mary Oliver put it, in her beautiful poem "The Journey," "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice- though the whole house began to tremble. . . " I don't know if my whole house is going to tremble, but my inner voice is telling me that now is the time to sit with my sorrow. This time I'm going to listen.

The Journey

This blog will be the story of my healing journey. There won't be any gimmicks, other than getting through each day, one day at a time. Hopefully, some of what I learn and think about and do along the way will resonate with those of you that have also experienced trauma, have gone through - or are going through - grief or are just dealing with the many stresses of midlife.

Take a minute to listen to this beautiful song.

Lay Down in Sorrow

What about you?   What are some of the things that get in the way of grieving?

 

Let's walk this path together

If you put your soul against this oar with me, the power that made the universe will enter your sinew from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm that lives in us.

Rumi

Song of the Day

 One Day I Will Walk

 Sometimes, those of us who have experienced trauma or who are struggling with grief, can feel very alone. I know that I often feel alone.  Sometimes, I also feel like I inhabit a different world than other people because the things I have experienced are so different from the sorts of things my friends have experienced. And, really that is the definition of trauma, "Something outside of the normal human experience." (I will talk more about my experiences in future posts.) But, we don't have to be alone. We can join a support group or join an online community. I haven't had much luck in finding an appropriate support group where I live. And that's why I've started this blog, to find others like myself, others who know that life can be unexpected and frightening. As Buddhist author, Pema Chodron said, "We breathe in knowing that our pain is shared; there are people all over the earth feeling just as we do right now."  That thought eases my loneliness.

 

Some days we walk in flowers . . . 

Here is one of the flowers that I encountered today.  I walked up to the coffee shop near where I live. Once there, I ordered a latte, which came with a beautiful foam heart. I carried my coffee to an empty table, sat down and spent an hour reading and writing. Then I walked home again and on my way I met a man with a baby. I can rarely resist babies. This one was particularly beautiful. I asked the man how old the baby was. Four months, he said. What's his name, I asked. Novak, he said. Hi, Novak, I said and smiled at the baby until I got a smile back in return. A beautiful smile, the kind of smile only babies of a certain age can give, a smile of complete innocence and joy.

Some days we walk on stones

I'm not sure yet all of the stones I will encounter today. By noon, there have already been several and I know there will be more before the day is over. I checked my email this morning and, like all mornings during the past year, there wasn't an email from the daughter who isn't speaking to me. And, even though I realize there probably won't be an email from her today, it still hurts. I don't completely understand why she won't communicate with me (More on that later).  But it is a rare day that I don't feel her absence.

Second stone - I spoke to my parents on the phone. They are in their late 70s and live 2,000 miles away and my mother hasn't been well. We talked for a while about how she's doing and then she said five little words that always wring my heart: "I wish you were here."  I know my parents face many challenges and my sisters who live closer help them with those challenges and I can't. Not right now.

Third stone - my husband is not comfortable talking about grief and other "dark" emotions. He hasn't gone through the kind of trauma I have. He has grief, as who doesn't who has reached the age of 50? But he rarely speaks of his griefs and when I try to talk to him about my own grief and trauma, it sometimes seems like I am speaking a foreign language and then I feel very alone.

What flowers or stones have you encountered today?