There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we look for ways to make the pain go away.
Sherman Alexie
Whitney Houston performing in New York City
It was the 80s and women singers were HUGE. In those days, my husband and I were raising two teenaged foster daughters and every day after school they would plop themselves down on the couch and watch music videos. Today, music videos seem quaint artifacts of another era. In those days, they were the only show in town. Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Tina Turner, our girls adored them all.
They were all great performers, but there was something truly special about Whitney Houston. Young and beautiful and shining. When you heard her sing "The Greatest Love," you couldn't help but get tears in your eyes. "Everybody's searching for a hero/people need someone to look up to." Whitney was "someone to look up to," for our daughters. We believed in her and in them too.
The 80s were filled with bright shining moments. Our daughters were fabulous volleyball players and doing well in school. Whitney kept ringing up hits, seemingly just as beautiful year after year. In those days, I believed that our daughters were going to escape the curse of alcoholism that blighted the native community they came from. Sadly, that's not what happened. Both of our daughters are now in their 30s and struggle with alcoholism. Whitney's struggles with substance abuse were newsworthy and her death put substance abuse and addiction in the spotlight (again).
Unlike Whitney, our two girls are still alive. One is a binge drinker who manages to hold her life together just enough to stay alive. She's had more than one wake-up call over the years: a nearly fatal car crash while she was drinking, two stays in the hospital with liver and kidney problems, and other things I don't even know about. Our other daughter is one of those drink-every-day-kind of alcoholics. She hasn't - as far as I know - had any close brushes with death, but she has lost four brothers to alcohol or drug-related causes. I'd like to think that Whitney's death will serve as another kind of wake-up call for both of our daughters. One has already phoned. "Is it true," she asked. "Is Whitney really dead? What happened?" When I told her, she said, "That would never happen to me." If only that were true. Sure, she may never drown or OD in a bathtub in a fancy hotel room. But unless she stops drinking - I doubt she'll live to see 50. I really hated to write that sentence, but I think it's true. Just today, she phoned and told my husband, when he asked how she was, that "I am going to keep on drinking." (Photo above, one of our daughters on the beach in Vancouver)
Depressing? Yes. Hopeless? No. Today, I ate lunch at a lovely cafe and a man sitting nearby was working on his laptop and, as is my wont, we fell into conversation. They were talking about Whitney Houston on the television that was mounted on one wall of the cafe and, it turns out, the man had been in sobriety for 5 years. We spent some time discussing why it's so hard to "get clean." He thought that the person trying to get sober really has to want it or they won't work hard enough. He also thought that you need to get to the heart of the pain that fuels the addiction. And that's the connection to PTSD: both of our daughters have experienced significant traumas in their lives and they drink to ease that pain. I don't know why Whitney had substance abuse issues or what her pain was. I'm only sorry that whatever her demons were, they destroyed her.
One of the last things the man told me was that sobriety takes a long time to feel good. In his case it took over a year. Then, one morning, he said, he woke up and noticed that the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Here's an iconic poem for all those who didn't make it past substance abuse to the shining sun and singing birds.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
