Beware of Strangers

To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive-- to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and thus an intensity of consciousness that before we did not know was possible.

Rollo May

Throughout human history, there has been a tendency to fear the unknown. On a macro level, this fear has fueled oppression such as religious intolerance where, for example, during the Dark Ages, countless women were drowned or burned at the state as "witches." Fear of the unknown has incited wars between tribes, hatred between countries, and violence between groups. 

But fear is not merely a societal sarcoma that may manifest in subjugation and massacre; rather, evolutionarily speaking, it is a the most primal and visceral- and necessary- of human emotions. Fear keeps us safe from predators and protects us from endangering our lives. 

If there is a knock on the door, I ask, "Who is it?" in an attempt to familiarize myself so that I feel secure, to ameliorate my fears and keep myself safe from potential harm. The focus of some neophobias is on people, while others fear new experiences, places, or even driving a different path to work. But fear can also hinder social creatures like humans. Fearing people can incite stereotyping and prejudice. The fear of traveling to new places can stunt ethnological appreciation and wisdom. Even driving the same path to the workplace everyday can be inhibitive: What more interesting landmarks might you notice by taking a different path? So, what do we miss by our fears and subsequent evasions of the unfamililar?  

Grief was, at one time, an unfamiliar stranger. My primal response to him was terror and crippling fear. He controlled my thoughts, and I saw the world through his eyes, not my own. Panicked, I could not look this intruder in the eyes. I was paralyzed. I was certain that if my gaze met his, the abyss would, as Nietzsche said, stare back at me and overtake me. Like an ominous stranger at my door, I did not want to invite grief inside my home. I wanted to leave him out in the cold darkness of night where he belonged. 

What I didn't realize then was that this stranger was a part of me now, inexplicably linked by experience. By leaving him outside in the darkness, he became the monster in my dark closet that would haunt me when my mind was still. And unwittingly, I made a decision in 1995 to surrender to that which I most feared. Part of that psychological relinquishment required that I accept grief out of the darkness and into my home.  We sat down together and sipped tea. We walked together. We sat on the back swing and watched the sunset.  I came to know and understand this part of me that felt so foreign, and I began to slowly see the value in the unfamiliar that he brought into my life.  He became more predictable and I feared him less. His roar softened and he did not need to yell for my attention any longer. We gazed into one another's eyes and I survived the facing. 

I can honestly say that now grief, mostly, is my friend and an accepted, not feared, part of me. Now, I trust him to lead me into those places where, as May said, I can truly experience the pain, believing that beauty will soon follow, and knowing that I will experience the intensity of consciousness that far transcends the merely ordinary.

From Helplessness to Hope

MISS Foundation Families Speak Out About Their Very Personal Losses

The Unjust Politicking of Stillbirth by Feminist Groups: 

A Response to Unreasonability

A Cry Unheard

Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.

Richard von Weizsaecker

I picked up a new book last week on the recommendation of a colleague: A Cry Unheard: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness by James J. Lynch. I only wish I'd had this book in hand when I conducted my own research on the effects of social support on women after the death of a baby.  This seminal book is filled with clinical research on the dangers of social isolation, including the effects on the body and health.  Lynch captured data demonstrating the devastating health consequences of shame, anxiety, anger, and fear that was unrecognized, undetected, and most importantly, unheard.  I think this fact, for me, was the most important. It wasn't that the emotions themselves were "bad" or "negative" as contemporary theorists might imply. It was that the person experiencing them, and others too, did not acknowledge the emotions that created the problematic outcomes.  They were abandoned- both by others, and also by themselves.

In sum, he found that such social disenfranchisement can lead to fluctuations in blood pressure and respiration, depressed immune functioning, heart disease, hypertension, and a host of other physiological maladies. He notes that: "Those lacking social support, those who live alone, those who struggle with chronic loneliness, those who lose a loved one, all exhibit sharply increased risks of dying prematurely."

I've posted a great deal about narcissism, grief, and finding gratitude- and how, when the time is right, there is an imperative to move beyond our own suffering and see the suffering of the other.  There are some bereaved who may never move to that space where they are willing, thus able, to do that. Lynch calls this the "black hole". He says:  "Like black holes in space, such individuals absorb all light and all objects around them while emitting nothing back. Nothing escapes their...emptiness."

Conversely, he recommends looking "out into the world beyond the confines of your own skin...listening to a bird sing can lower blood pressure...gazing at the stars" too. "Listening to one's fellow (hu)man in dialogue can lower blood pressure."  Basically, moving beyond the necessary narcissism of early grief.

Lynch believes that "dialogue is the elixir of life and chronic loneliness its lethal poison". But what about the dialogue often aimed at bereaved parents? You know- those promptings to "move on", "God has a plan for you", "at least it wasn't one of the older ones", "you can have more", "everything happen for a reason", "time heals all wounds", and "aren't you done grieving yet"s?  Lynch said that dialogue can also be used to create distance, that it can be used to manipulate. He asserts that "empty language suppresses hope...and is spoken from outside our own hearts...(where) human dialogue is ruptured, destroyed, or reduced to a living hell" when abused in this way.  He termed it toxic talk, and far too many bereaved parents have experienced a litany of such dialogue.

I deeply appreciated Lynch's honest explorations as a medical doctor, professor, and human being.  It confirmed that the bereaved should be sensitive to their own needs; and then, when ready, actively engage in moving beyond the self.  The (temporarily) non-bereaved should engage in dialogue that is comforting and from the heart. They should not seek to cure or heal or absolve. Rather, they should seek only to be with the suffering. They should use words with great care and intention, for it is easy to destroy a fragile other with a few, seemingly benign, syllables. 

Allow them to remember, and invite them warmly back from exile.

The First Smile

The world breaks us all, 

and afterward some are stronger in those broken places.

Ernest Hemingway

I remember the day with piquant detail. The first smile after she died, cracking my cheeks, splitting my skull in two. I felt as if I'd committed an act of desecration, voyeurs witnessing my fait accompli. My dead child in her pink satin casket lay there lifeless. And I smiled. 

I do not recall who caused this act of irreverence- or what they said or did to prompt it. I only remember standing outside of myself in shame. Smiling is an act of the living. I was not alive; I certainly felt dead.  But the dead do not smile.  

I knew in that moment I was not one of the dead. No matter how much I beckoned, I knew Death would come on its own will.  I also knew that I was not amongst the real living. I existed in some liminal place between breath and stillness, extinction and existence, nether and numinous, and life and death.  I was broken, irreparably shattered.

For months, I wandered through the valley of the shadows as I vacillated between the world of the living and the world of the dead. I struggled to accept life's mediocrity, longed for my now fugitive naïveté, and wished for ailments of trivia instead of trauma.  

What glue could hold those broken places? What stitch would ensure proper healing? What concoction would purge me of the pain? Which God could heal my suffering and despair?

It would be many months before smiles would come again. But they came. Slowly and painfully. I did not want others to assure me that it was okay to smile and that I should move on and be happy in my life. This, I knew, would one day be my truth. But I was not ready yet. I needed pause. Her life and death were worthy of this interruption in my previously assumed entitlement to an untainted, joyous sojourn. Instead, I wanted others to accept my shame without judgment, to hold a place for my broken, sometimes irrational, state of mind. Often, they could not. Like a leper, raw grief frightened them. 

Nevertheless, I would not accept their platitudes or poisons. I rejected their attempts to tug me toward the future faster than I was ready. I refused to abandon my brokenness in exchange for cheap glue or careless stitching. I indulged in time and tears and tribulation. I became a seeker of healing that would endure, not healing that was shoddily constructed with plastic words, or pills, or even a magic wand, susceptible to rebreaking under the slightest pressure.

What I've realized over the past 14 years is that it was the very grief that frightened them- that raw grief which seeped from my broken places like blood spilling from a wound- that truly healed me. I have become stronger in my broken places.  And I am smiling again.

Synchronicity

“So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, 

to the whole of it,  not part of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I met a fascinating man today who approached me, interested in my work with the bereaved. It's amazing how, when you meet a kindred soul, you can listen and exchange for hours upon hours and never tire of the conversation because it is intentional, meaningful, and consequential. 

We spoke about life and loss, trauma and tribulation, reality and relationships, loving and listening.

Listen. Listen. Listen.  

Repeat the word, twenty times. Softer. Listen, listen, listen.

Listening to the other can have powerfully therapeutic effects. Holding a space for the other through silence.  Being fully present, all senses focused on the other, their moment of disclosure- be it filled with suffering, sorrow, despair, or joy- being that which Pine (1985) calls a prepared explorer into another person's life.  Gadamer says that the important thing is to "be aware of one's own bias so that the text may present itself in all its newness and assert its own truth."

Reik (1954) discussed listening with the "third ear."  This is psychoanalytic listening intent on intuition. It requires that full experience of presence with the other.  He says, "...in order to comprehend the unconscious of another, we must, at least for a moment, change ourselves into and become that person.  We only comprehend the spirit whom we resemble."  I might call this true, empathic connectedness.  Freud calls it "listening with evenly suspended attention."  The results can be astonishing- acknowledgement and validation of a person and their place in the world. Thank you, David.

What greater gift can you offer to another than intentionality, consequentiality, and meaning?

And I submit this: Offer this gift, also, to yourself. Listen to the thoughts and the emotions and the memories and the pain and the struggles and the fears and the sounds and the beauty of you.  

Do what you must do to become who you must become.

The Risk of Love

The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves.

Gordon Livingston, M.D.

How does one live in a world where children die? 

Living in 21st Century, relatively affluent American society we are unaccustomed to the idea that children die. Yet, there was a time, not long ago- and still true in many parts of the world, when many, many children died. Two dead children in a family of four was not the exception just 100 years ago, or more commonly five dead children in a family of ten.  But our worldview- our very expectations upon which we construct our futures- patently rejects the idea that our families can be swiftly shredded at Death's whim. Due to medical advances, sanitation improvements, and other accoutrements of modern life, most have become wholly unfamiliar with early death, both during infancy and childhood as well as early adulthood, in Western society.

In fact, many believe they can beat Death at His game. Many nonprofit organizations exist to eradicate Death. They are single-cause focused. They want to cure, prevent, heal, and prolong. All worthy causes, indeed. But Death is a formidable enemy who will not secede. We may cure cancer one day, or heal brain injuries, or prevent suicide or car crashes or stillbirth or SIDS...but Death will, for us all, come one day. We can only hope that He comes for the parents first, and then that He comes for parents at the end of their lives, and not prematurely.  We can only hope that for the rest of the world's children, too. Sadly, in a world of inequity and suffering, this is unlikely.  

That is why the MISS Foundation exists. Because since the beginning of man's time on this planet, children have died. And until man takes his final step on this earth, children will continue to die.   We can be imprisoned and paralyzed by fear, anxiety, grief, despair, and sadness. Our children's lives are certainly worthy of such psychological woes.  I think of the purgatorial state of the mother in the film "What Dreams May Come."  Her prison- one of her choosing- was painful for me to watch... it represented a familiar place to which I'd once condemned myself.  In a sense, perhaps, punishment to an austere life is the only justice a mother can give her dead child.

Perhaps not. 

Perhaps, instead, our penalty for outliving our children is the task of seeking connection in the midst of an imperfect world, reinventing ourselves in the midst of our child's ghost, rebirthing in the midst of suffering, or finding a way to love despite the pain. Love, Livingstone says, is the ultimate risk. When we cannot change the parts we wish were different, the unfairness and cruelty of life, we've only one  choice.  To live or die.  Yet, to surrender our existence would be to abandon all that is beautiful about our children who died. Indeed, he says, living after a traumatic death is both an act of will and an act of surrender. He speaks from very personal experience.

Livingstone is a bereaved parent twice. His eldest son completed at suicide, and his youngest, only 13, died of leukemia. How does one exist in a world where children die? I think, perhaps, through that for which we are willing to risk everything- love.

Secrets and the Place for Exceptional Memories

Grief colors my world. It is the lens through which I view most everything. I was cleaning out my drawer this morning and came across a note written by a then-seven-year-old boy in love with his mother. The note read:

This is to you mom.

I love you more than life itself.

You are the best mom ever

and when I say ever
I mean ever
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Josh had written me this note, folded in into a tiny pocket that contained a photograph of us together that he'd found in an old album. Most every mother I know would save such a tender memento. Many would have a special place in their homes for such exceptional things for their children's children, so that in two decades they can narrate each treasure, reconstruct and reminisce a childhood past.

Most mothers do not know what I know. They do not know the secret.

So, I took the sweet note and put it into a large storage box, my place for exceptional memories, that holds my children's cherished nuggets. And while exploring amongst the many things in my place of memories, I realized that I saved more than the average mother. I even saved the word "love" scrawled on a tiny corner of a paper napkin, with a red, quasi-heart shape drawn by Josh at age three with a backward "L" and an "E" that resembled his age at the time. I saved every tooth. Every photograph. Every expression of love and every piece of art. I stockpile and hoard memories like a bereaved mother.

I do not save only for their future. I save also for the what ifs; that one in twenty-thousandth chance that I will lose one of my other children to death. It seems unfair to live in constant awareness of life's fragility. I wish I did not know the secret. I wish I'd never been shown. Yet, I do know. I am aware, and I cannot feign ignorance.

I know that you do not forgive yourself easily when a child dies.

I know that no alcohol, no pill, no distractions, and no book can cure the pain.

I know that children can and do die, and that Death is a cruel and unforgiving victor.

I know that there are no guarantees, and that control is an illusion.

I know that good, competent mothers sometimes lose their children, while unloving, neglectful "mothers" sometimes get to keep theirs.

I know that one day, one year, ten years, twenty years, and fifty years is never enough time with your child.

I know that there is no accepted trade, nothing you can barter, to renegotiate your child back to life, not even offering yourself instead.

I know the secret that life goes on, but not really.

So day-by-day, I seek to live in the moment. I feel compelled to save, cherish, hold, adore, and express, wanting no regrets that accompany not saying that which needed saying and not having enough memories. After all, what's a grieving mother to do with such a burdening secret, such a recondite reality? That is, allow it to help me love more profoundly and surrender to the awareness that each moment, every breath, may be the last.

Losses, Life's Many Losses

Now that we are parting

rain has returned

I want to be nothing

only the fragrance of some scattered

rose and pass like smoke

now that we are parting

the music will fall and settle

in the pages of your books

and wait to be opened

now that we are parting

my eyes follow invisible

birds across the ceiling

hands become wind

and earth turns faster

than a night ago

I leave a white cloud

in your hands

now that we are parting

I will dress in rain and

watch the warmth behind

some distant window slowly

take on your name

-Lidija Šimkutė

I found an old stack of letters a few months ago from my first love. There were about 60 letters from him- the envelopes had browned, dried like flowers left in the sun. The creases were perforations now, and thinning paper is hard to fold for the hundredth time.

It was 1984. And he loved me so. I, in return, loved him beyond my wildest imagining. We were to spend our lives together. Through a series of tragic interferences and events, he returned to his homeland, across creeks, dams, rivers, and oceans, and into another time zone. He may as well have left earth's atmosphere for an unsophisticated 18 year old girl in love. Still, I waited. My heart overflowed with hurt as I replayed his promise to return, spoken hurriedly as he boarded the flight that would carry him out of my life and into the dictatorial grip of culture and tradition.

It would be more than two years before I would see him again. To say that my heart was broken would be an understatement. He was married, and the sliding door that would be mine was decided, not by me and not by him. 

This was my very first experience with loss and resultant grief. It was grief from which I would never fully recover. Though I would go on with my life, choosing new relationships along the path, no one could replace this man with whom I'd fallen hopelessly in love years- even decades- earlier. The effects of this relationship's ending would endure far beyond the weeks, months, and years to follow. The effects would shadow me throughout my adult life.

And so this is loss. It takes many forms. Sure, losing a relationship is vastly different from losing a child to death. Yet, there still is a very real grief process that accompanies all losses. People are not replaceable with another. This is why it is important to mourn the uniqueness of the person and the relationship that is changed or lost. Within me, there will always be an 18 year old girl who lost the most precious thing in the world to her. And I will always miss him, and what we could have had together.

And within me, there will always be the mother who lost her most precious child- the fourth one- the irreplaceable, unique little girl who I will always miss, and what we should have had together.  The shadows of my grief stick like paste; and though I tried to hide from them, they only changed form with the casting of light. And so this is loss.

Indeed, the window on my horizon has taken on many names of those parted. Josephine and John, Joseph, Elisabeth, Cheyenne. And I am dressed in rain.

Mother's Day Redefined

May 11th is Mother's Day. Few people spend this day contemplating the women- the mothers- who will suffer on this day. It is a day, instead, for celebration and gratitude.

There are times in our lives, however, when we must redefine our understanding of previously held beliefs. For many, Mother's Day is such a time.

My mother died at a young age, suddenly and unexpectedly. The woman who gave me life and who would help me to discover both who I was and who I wasn't is gone from this world. I cannot offer her my gratitude this year by taking her out for brunch, showing off her grandchildren. This requires me to see myself as a daughter- and her as a mother- in a much different way than I did for 35 years. I will remember my mother and my daughter. 

Yet, the event that would really challenge the essential meaning of motherhood for me would be the death of my daughter. I experienced motherhood in an entirely different way; and since her death, have sought ways in which I can remain her mother. It is not the way I wanted to be her mom, yet, still it is mothering indeed.  I've had to supplant the normal ways in which I would have filled that role, mainly through service to others. I will remember my motherhood and daughterhood.

For some reason, it's easier for others to understand that on Mother's Day I will think of my own dead mother and miss her, honoring that relationship and mourning all that I've lost. Yet, on Mother's Day I also miss my own child, the MISSing piece of our family, and I mourn all that I've lost, while remaining incredibly grateful for all that I have.  

I've redefined motherhood to include the absence of their presence. 

This Mother's Day, I will think of them both and recognize, in my heart, that I am still both a daughter to my mother and a mother to my daughter. And, I choose to remember- to re-member- my precious girl. I will turn toward our love and the grief and bring them as a whole into my heart. 

Death, simply, is not bigger than that.