What Trauma can teach us:
Standing in and Accounting for my own Resiliency
When I was in graduate school, in my doctoral program, one of the professors used to make us practice our “elevator talk.” It was in reference to our research and dissertation topic and how we could pitch it on job interviews. Essentially, this meant what is our research area? And—can we represent it in a short and concise manner—not to extend beyond the length of an elevator ride (up or down a few floors).
Today, I thought of that, because my therapist asked me—
“What have you learned from your grief and trauma?”
I smiled and said, you are asking me to articulate what I want to say in my book and why I am writing it.
She nodded, smiled back, knowingly.
And this is what I said, something along the lines of—
I want to emphasize to readers that even after you’ve experienced intense losses, enormous grief, and you are traumatized—that there is still healing possible. Moreover, with therapy and somatic healing, and processing—in support, through stories, in community—it can even be a blessing, as it forces you to address other hidden mental health needs and/or intergenerational trauma, that you may not otherwise have been made to have to address.
Laura McKowen in her book, We are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life, notes this. She lays out that her thing (read as unhealthy coping mechanism) or “addiction” or “alcohol abuse,” or alcohol disorder, hitting her bottom, also was a blessing.
Because it made her confront some of her underlying issues that drew her to drink. I certainly have abused alcohol and I’ve looked to socializing and external validation and relationships to calm myself, my own nervous system and to run from my own trauma and grief, my own internal wounds.
But—even before all of that, having two suicides in my family, I also see as parallel to what she shares, and also a blessing, in disguise. The silver edge of—perhaps not the rain cloud—but the damn tsunami.
Why? Because…It’s heavy shit. No one expects you to be okay after two suicides in your immediate family.
My best friend has told me that if I was a homeless crack addict, no one would blame me with my life story.
But, that’s too easy. A cop out.
Because it evades adult responsibility and accountability. They all died and finally it was all up to me.
I feel like all this shit that has happened in my life has pushed me to address intergenerational trauma and wounds, and my own dysfunctional childhood, so that I would live a different life from my family members’:
I don’t want to abandon myself, the way that every single one of my family members did—as I reflected on today in therapy.
I realize that I have carried around a lot of feelings of abandonment, which has come out from my therapy sessions. I realize this parallels my mothers’, my emotional inheritance from her:
My mother also felt very abandoned, which she had every right to feel, from her mother abandoning her at age 13, to her sister’s suicide, my father’s alcoholism and then his suicide.
But worse of all, she abandoned herself, and I don’t think she ever regarded herself as worthy of living for herself, really cultivating her own sense of self.
Even though she had one. She didn’t believe she did, or was worthy of one.
Because her entire identity was in service to others—her husband, kids, students, friends. And when they were gone, she seemed to lack purpose and simply wait to die.
I learned that…too well. From her actions, growing up—
So, my lesson is from all of their stories, lives, and tragedies—
I am working to cultivate a stronger sense of secure attachment on my own, not in service to others. Even beyond a partnership/romantic relationship, but also beyond friends or professor position—Danielle—who she is, not in relationship to others or career.
I’ve spoken with several friends of mine and other former classmates my age, and it is amazing how many of us—middle-aged women—are discovering this, about ourselves, or re-discovering ourselves.
Usually, unfortunately, it is because we have lost ourselves through abusive relationships, alcoholic partners, a deceased spouse, or in the ever-present demands of raising children.
I take solace in my solitude now. In just being. I feel calmer and know that my body has undergone somatic release/body healing. And that I am working to form my own, secure attachment, rather than the anxious and disorganized one that I have had, relying on others, and inconsistent relationships to create my own false sense of calm and peaceful existing.
I also know this—many others that are my age will not/have not experienced the amount of grief and the losses that I have—many my age are grieving grandparents, with both parents still alive and well. Siblings still alive and well. Many still have extended families and support networks. All of that to say that—
While I am thankful for my friends, my close family and extended family is incredibly limited. I have had to face a type of solitude that many don’t have to until much later in life, when their parents and siblings start to pass.
Usually that’s 30-40 years from now. I realize this. It makes me thankful for my friends and social/soft skills to cultivate and build community wherever I go, but also—
The other side of that is this—
The ways in which I have ended up alone—the betrayal from partners, the deaths of my family members, etc—
All of it has pushed me to confront loneliness and feelings of abandonment—and to have to work to turn them into positive solitude. All of that has pushed me/is pushing me into translating that into developing a stronger sense of self and secure inner attachment.
That’s my own journey. Not a blue print of map for others, who may have their own shit.
But I have learned this—
When you are cracked open and raw, suffering and grief-stricken, traumatized, and at your most broken—
Is also a point of vulnerability and growth, to emerge from something bigger and greater than you ever were before.
The experiences of extreme loss that I have had have taught me a great deal about suffering, grief, and how suicides shape our perceptions of ourselves, our own inner turmoil of shame.
But they have also taught me that—when we embrace that which makes us vulnerable, share our stories, and are willing to do the work on ourselves in therapy, that we can heal….that our life story need not echo our family’s stories.
That may not make much sense to others, and seem somewhat insignificant, but when your life has been so heavily shaped by suicide losses… and given the ways in which mental illnesses are still so heavily misunderstood and stigmatized in this country, it is no small thing.
Processing my inner-body trauma has been integral to overcoming my shame and owning that—finally, truly, I can accept—I have lived through that worst period.
As my therapist said to me today, through processing the emotions and the pain and trauma in my body, my rational brain can now catch up with my emotional (“gorilla”) brain.
This is what we mean by brain and body integration that those with PTSD/trauma lack.
Now, finally— my mind—in its different parts—can make sense that those experiences are finished and behind me.
It doesn’t mean more shit won’t come, but that—
I’m finally catching up to all that has happened.
It has taken awhile. And it was a lot.
But the result—calmer, more peaceful, and resilient, happy, and standing alone.