What You Seek May Be Seeking You
A neighbor introduced me to Kirkland Newman’s podcast “The MindHealth 360 Show”. Newman is a friend of my neighbor who stops by during the Christmas season to drop off gingerbread cookies she and her daughter bake. A cookie bonus podcast.
I jumped on a random episode. “Dr. Bassel van der Kolk on Trauma: How it affects us and how to heal its effects.” Here’s a link to van der Kolk.
Following Donna’s death, I went all deep dive into grief and loss. Add to that a TBI that nearly killed me in 2012. At that time, I stumbled on Post-Traumatic Growth. I wrote a long post linked here. I revisited it again here.
This is from the earlier post:
A few years back, I researched and wrote about Post-Traumatic (PTG). PTG is positive psychological change following trauma. It is not going back to who we were but fundamentally changing who we are. Many have characterized PTG by “stronger.” How true. The science sees it this way: PTG is a positive psychological change, which occurs following a traumatic life experience, and those negative experiences drive people to reexamine their world and life. (30 -70 % of survivors say they’ve experienced positive changes Linley & Joseph 2004) Put another way, we fall into shit and come up smelling like a rose.
Memes, poems, messages, and videos about grief and loss are not idle thoughts banging around a social media beaker hoping to heal someone by creating a new compound. It turns out there is a bit of science and evidence going on that makes these memes work harder to heal us. Think Post-Traumatic Growth.
Trauma?
I never self-identified as a trauma survivor. Not sure I even ever wanted to say, admit, or speak about my trauma. I was all into my grief journey what I will call my pity posts.
Doing volunteer crisis counseling, I chat with those experiencing deeply painful trauma. Trauma is not an Olympic sport. It is not a competition to compete in. I was not worthy enough. My not identifying as a trauma survivor is more in tune with my self-worth minimizing.
The primary point Dr. Kolk makes is the critical nature of our attachment system for trauma recovery. When Donna was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and told she had six months to live, which, though excruciating, was extended to three and a half years. She was my attachment system throughout our marriage? Her looming death was present. It was trauma that I would not see.
Being her caregiver connected me to her. You don’t feel traumatized when you are a caregiver. There’s no time to be selfishly self-centered . Dr. Kolk notes that helping others, notes that caregivers, other tasks of support, alleviate the hormones of trauma. (Did not know that.) So here I was facing the loss of my attachment system. My attachment system that had been in place for over 30 years. While simultaneously having this trauma walking behind me like a stalking horse.
The podcast presented some ideas to consider. Our connection was singular in every way. We both felt great security with each other. We were each other’s attachment systems; we did not have an extensive network. I was more extraverted. Which could be classified as an attachment system. Not the same depth or degree as we were to each other. Nor did my masking and hiding my vulnerabilities allow me to dip into a larger support I had outside of her.
Donna was in the same state. She was not one to seek support, share fears, nor bemoan her plight. Her life from childhood on was self-made. It was self-made art. As a viewer, few were ever allowed to see behind the art. I do think a couple of close friends she exposed herself to. She was strong and singularly focused on living her life on her terms. It wasn’t until the very end that she displayed her fear of her death. Never spoken, only witnessed in heartbreaking tears.
A point that is made in this podcast was that trauma can come from that attachment system. This was new. Donna’s death was my trauma. She was my attachment system. Caregiving while she was in treatment was the conduit I navigated for attachment and security.
When Donna passed, the security of the attachment system was severed. Dr. Kolk makes note that if the person that the trauma is from is your primary attachment, it becomes significantly more painful. Donna did not cause the trauma. It was Stage IV Cancer and her death. It left me adrift on where to turn or whom to turn to. Truth be told, I did see a grief-told counselor, spoke with friends who were there, and engaged fully in learning about loss/grief. It was a bandage on a gapping wound. I took comfort in believing how that wound was letting light enter me. Seeing myself in new ways and recognizing the love there, recognizing ways to be present for others.
Here and Now
All I did to manage grief was valid. Writing, self-care, exercise, helping others, and more. It worked to smooth the jagged shards of glass cutting me from the inside out. Not enough. I was still in a state of amber. Locked into grief recycling. In a way, I was attached to grief. Through my grief, I was still attached to Donna. All of this served me well. Or so I thought.
Dr. Kolk and this podcast exposed me to an idea I would actively not embrace. Her death. My loss of her agency as my attachment system was, in fact, trauma. Trauma became PTSD.
Accepting the death as trauma is new. I lost my only attachment and fell into unrecognized PTSD. I masked my struggles by posting, writing, and supporting others. What I did not do was speak directly to the trauma and its outcome. I played hide-and-seek with it and the death to believe I was trauma-free.
This podcast and what I learned is allowing me to scaffold or layer her, her death, my memories, my life post-death, what I haven’t done, and more. In a way, this opens me up more. Frees me.
Post Script
This piece has been sitting calling to me feeling unfinished (meh) until another randomness stepped into my field of vision. Which seems to be the thread for the past few months. That will be the topic of another share: pulling the loose end of yarn in a skein to knit a sweater. (I do wonder was it true random or I was primed to see it?)
“Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth” is an opinion piece in the NYTimes. Written by Michael D.C. Drout. He’s an English Professor, editor of the journal of Tolkien Studies, and author of “The Tower and Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation”.
Not sure why I read that other than Donna was into “The Lord of the Rings”. I thought I could see a bit more of her in this piece. This random moment presented me with the closing on this.
Drout shared a word Tolkien coined, eucatastrophe. Defined as “is a sudden turn of events in a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and plausible and probable doom.” There ya go.
Drout ends with this:
“A light springs in the shadows, a single star gleams high above the cloud-wrack, and we catch a glimpse of the joy beyond the walls of the world because it is real. We see a path toward a place not free of sorrow but in which tears are blessed without bitterness because beyond the circles of the world, there is more than memory. We find hope.”
Sigh. If only we can.