Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Cassel

Last week, I discussed the book TOUCHED WITH FIRE by Kay Redfield Jamison, about mental illness and the artist’s psyche. Which came first, the penchant for creativity, the events preceding your creative streak, or some pathology in the brain In light of Sinead O’Connor’s death, I’m prompted to discuss my own creativity and my own mental illness. Suffice it to say, my creativity was born from terror, inappropriate sexual behavior, parentification, and just garden variety dysfunction; I’ve read of some families who make my family look like the Mexican Brady Bunch. No, really.

Writing has been my salvation. I had no voice when I was a child in the home of my family of origin. I’ve had some awful experiences in my sixty-one years, and as far as my faith tradition, well, let’s just say I’m one of those who was assaulted by clergy early in my life. I am a hybrid agnostic, which is to say, I both believe and doubt the existence of a god, but I really want to believe. Belief is in concert with the guiding light that kept my mother sane, despite the insanity in our home, and the abuse she took at the hands of my father. No one was exempt from his alcoholic wrath.

I wrote poetry about all manner of things. I read deep and dark books from the time I was very young. My sixth-grade teacher called my mom in for a conference. During the conference he told her I was reading books that were not age appropriate. I shudder when I see what kids are reading today. Information was only as quick as I could rifle through the card catalog, and hope the book wasn’t checked out. Today, they have information at the touch of their Smartphones. (And fewer parents monitoring what their children are inculcating).

I wrote darkly about many topics, and I spent more time reading Poe as a teenager than was emotionally healthy. I read about the desecration of our world and the depravity of humans. I read about psychology when I was a kid, trying to make sense of my chaotic and insane family. I read about the holocaust and the Vietnam War. I was just a kid dodging the shrapnel of my own childhood and finding that there were people, communities, countries that had it worse than I did.

I chose to not read books about child abuse until I was in my late twenties. I nearly had a psychotic break when I began to read my own story in the stories of others. I’m forever grateful for psychologists, which is why I earned my second degree in psychology, and my first one in Liberal Arts in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. We’ll get to what I’m doing now a bit later. Making meaning is the first step of healing. Giving your experiences narrative, bringing them to your conscious awareness, and sharing your experiences with a safe other, are vital, if you want to move forward and grab hold of that life you dreamed about your whole childhood, or during a dysfunctional marriage, or as you were engaged in high risk behavior and finding ways to hurt yourself.

I hope that Sinead left a note or a manuscript so we can learn from her own tortured mind. She lost her son eighteen months ago to suicide. I wonder if she also committed suicide because of her devastating grief. I get it. When I lost my son and only child, I seriously thought I would lose my mind. My heart physically hurt. I had no words with which to explain myself. I have been in and out of therapy since I was twenty-eight. I’m sixty-one now, so for a very long time. I am grateful for four of the several therapists I’ve seen over the years. I credit them with saving my life.

I read a book by Susan Forward called TOXIC PARENTING when I was twenty-eight; it left me raw, unnerved, and suicidal. I called a therapist I had met at a party who gave me her phone number, and I told her I wanted to kill myself. She reminded me that I had a sleeping child who would find me and be forever traumatized, and then she asked, “Can you hold on for one more night and meet me at nine a.m. tomorrow?” She threw out a lifeline, and I grabbed hold. When you grow up in a crazy and abusive household rife with domestic violence, it’s all you know. I spent the night at friends’ homes when I was a kid, and I was so terrified that the fathers of my friends would suddenly become enraged and hurt us, and when they didn’t, I wanted to run away from my family and find a family like some of my friends, a place where I’d be safe.

I still get a little tongue-tied when I’m stressed out, which is why my writing is so much clearer than my presentation skills. I write so I can express what’s going on in my head. What else do you do with a manic brain full of knowledge? I was emotionally unhealthy for many years. I couldn’t truly create until I healed from the abuses in my home, including the things I saw happen to other members of my family. As I said earlier, no one escaped my father’s wrath as he avenged his own abusive childhood by exacting his rage on us.

I’m grateful for the work that I and the four therapists who guided me did. I wouldn’t have had the emotional resources to navigate grief over losing my son to addiction and his broken heart if not for all the exhausting work we did together. my son suffered a great deal too. I think that Sinead, with all her mad creativity and talent, was grieving a relationship she never had with her mother, which she talked at some length about during interviews. She often seemed distant and disoriented during her later interviews. I followed her career since she first started performing and marketing herself. She was painfully shy, which is probably what fueled her public persona, the woman who tore up a picture of the Pope on national television. She was young, but I don’t think the Catholics or many other people, ever forgave her for it.

I honestly believe that a person can die of a broken heart, which is why it is essential after a major or catastrophic loss, including one’s childhood, to get counseling and to write, sing, paint, or dance away your pain. Put it out there on whatever medium your canvas is. Pour the contents of your childhood experience, the sexual assault, the domestic violence, and pour it out on your muslin … nuts, bolts, screws, and various other tools, and pore through them. Take out what you need. Take out what will benefit you toward an emotionally healthy and happy life.

When we are self-aware, we become cognizant of the choices we have. I don’t say, because I think it’s hurtful, that we get to choose to be happy. I’ve had it said to me when I’ve been in the depths of despair, and it just wasn’t helpful at the time. Michael J. Fox in his recent biopic, STILL, made a statement that really resonates with me. In short, he said, “Optimism is sustainable.” Optimism is vastly different from happiness. One can be in dire straits and still remain optimistic; it is from optimism that our creativity emerges because we begin to envision better circumstances, and dependent upon how healed we are, hope floats.

When we begin to be creative in our thoughts, in many cases, we can change our circumstances, no matter how scary doing so is because – we must if our lives are going to get better. There is a phenomenon called “learned helplessness” – and many of us who’ve grown up in violent and abusive homes learned well how to shut up and take it…it’s a behavior that will follow us until we get the help we need.

After Sinead tore up the picture of the Pope, she was ostracized in the industry. Kris Kristofferson took her under his wing and gave her venues in which to perform. If you want to see a life that began in a war-torn country, a relationship with a dysfunctional mother, creativity that was off the chart, someone who was challenged by mental illness, watch the interviews of Sinead through the years. They are quite telling as she began to mentally decline. She lost her baby … to suicide. It has been argued that addiction is suicide; I disagree. When coroners list a death as “accidental,” that assumes that it was not an intentional death. A suicide might even be more devastating, if that is possible, than to lose a child to other types of deaths. How do you cross the chasm from a tortured mind to the willful death of your loved one? What in someone’s life is so untenable that he or she would choose to end their life, dragging down everyone who loves them into the pit of a lifetime of grief.

Perhaps Sinead died of a broken heart.

I say frequently that one heals in proportion to one’s emotional health. Are you suffering from behavior you can’t stop or explain? Are you hurting yourself or others? Is someone hurting you? There’s help out there. 988 is the crisis hotline for suicidal ideation, or just to talk through a crisis with someone. If you have insurance, see a therapist asap. There are also free to low-cost counseling centers. I am so sad about Sinead. I have been dealing with grief since my son died seven years and seven months ago. I knew I could never kill myself, but I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. My broken heart, at the time, was unbearable, and it seemed as if the pain was infinite.

I have done the work to be healed. I have reconnected with the Divine who some people call God, or who I call the God of my Understanding, the GOMU. I miss my son more than there are words with which to explain, but thanks to counseling, the GOMU, my husband, certain members of my family, and a couple of fearless friends, I have discovered that life goes on, and…”optimism is sustainable” (Fox).

I am often accused of being a “morning person” – because I’m an early riser and I’m “up” with a mania, usually, thanks to bipolar disorder, and I’m unfocused, and it takes a couple of minutes for me to self-soothe. I eventually crash and sleep for a few hours, but since my son died, I have mad insomnia. I use that insomniac time to write.

Creativity came to me through pain and because I needed to be heard. I needed to know that it really was as bad as I thought it was during my childhood. I wonder if Sinead ever came to terms with her relationship with her mother. Shortly before her son committed suicide, I saw her in an interview with the BBC, during which she was way out in left field. My heart ached for her.

There was a time when I had no self-awareness. I behaved inappropriately. I raged at the world and myself. I hurt myself in ways that were it not for self-love and self-compassion, I’d still hate myself for. If you are creative, where did it come from? Out of a deep need to be seen and heard? We must be able to tell our stories, to speak of our pain, to share our joy, and to help us to make sense of the effects of random chance. I wish Sinead’s son, Shane, had found his voice.

I’m glad I finally did.

So, what am I doing now? I’m in seminary in a spiritually integrated psychotherapy program. I managed to earn my A.A., my B.S., and I’m in a master’s program now, one class and an internship away from graduating, and then I’ll be applying to a Ph.D. program. I was able, thanks to hard work with therapists, and research, to rise above my grief and remember that I had a dream too. So do you.

Make it real.

Artwork by Gottfried Helnwein

By Sherrie Cassel

Years ago, I read a book called, “Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,” by Kay Redfield Jamison. I read this because I was interested in my misdiagnosis at the time of depression, and I mistakenly thought depression and manic-depressive illness were the same animal; they are not. When I was first misdiagnosed with clinical depression, I was having an episode of depression, ranging from barely functional to so high on life, without substances, that I could not concentrate on anything for any length of time.

So, I was in a slump when my GP told me I was suffering from clinical depression, so he prescribed desipramine, an anti-depressant which sent me into a full-blown manic episode that lasted for five years. I scarcely remember those years; it’s tragic. Bipolar disorder is the mental challenge I navigate these days, on great meds, and happy as a lark.

I don’t blame the doctor. I was seeing a marvelous therapist, an MFT, who could not prescribe medicine at the time, and she recommended I see my GP to see if he would prescribe something to take me out of my slump; it was pretty severe. Well, it took me far from myself in a different way. I had energy to spare. I exercised obsessively. I was hyper-sexual. I was happy, all the time, but I would crash some time down the road when I was taken off the medication. I did well for a while, but then I would crash and burn from pushing myself so hard because the medication had me so energized, I could not manage to be in control of my mind and body. Fortunately, the Spirit is willing.

Psychiatric appointments were a rarity for someone on state assistance (because my loser ex-husband never paid child support). I didn’t see a psychiatrist until only nine years ago, and I’m sixty-one! I’m forever grateful to Dr. K. Samson; she didn’t see me for only medication management. She spent time with me and was genuinely interested, and terribly sensitive when I went in to see her after Rikki died. Most psychiatrists see you for about fifteen minutes every three months; it’s difficult to build a therapeutic relationship when you see someone only four times a year for fifteen-minute stretches.

Before I found the right combination of psych meds, I was a mess, like the Tasmanian devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons (for those old enough to remember him). Or I’d be like a sloth and sleep away most of the day. Bipolar disorder is no joke. I’m glad I know about it now. I’m grateful to be on the right medication to keep me sane and stable. I just wish we’d known more about the disorder before I hurt a lot of people I love.

I’ve always been a writer, ever since I learned how. I authored a story about a town made entirely of pickles. I wrote it when I was seven. I graduated to really bad poetry, and finally found my niche in the essay. I thought about the people in Redfield-Jamison’s book, the Shelleys, Van Goghs, Byrons, ad infinitum, who have contributed to art, and how they were challenged with mental illnesses that were not understood at the time. I shudder to think about being held underneath freezing water to cast out demons or to wash one clean of mental disease. We’ve come along way in biopsychosocial and spiritual understanding of mental illness and we are lessening the stigma surrounding taking medications.

Some artists are hesitant to take psych meds because they believe their mental illness is the muse who fuels their creativity. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t have a margarita and write with any cohesion at all. When I used to smoke marijuana, I wrote really terrible poetry. So, I’ve never been fearful of stopping an activity because I thought it would mute my muse. I think of Kurt Cobain, Robin Williams, Amy Winehouse, and other wildly creative artists who may have benefited from legally prescribed psych meds rather than self-medicating with substances that render the self incapable of thinking clearly. Creativity is a conscious and deliberate strategy using one’s medium or media of choice to get a message across, either from a very personal point of view, or a very distant one.

My husband and I are both literary artists, which is to say, we write about all manner of topics. He’s more political than I am, and I’m more vulnerable than he is — publicly. When the spirit moves me, I find that I must write. I must have silence; and I must be clear-headed. I don’t even want background music. Part of my bipolar disorder makes me very sensitive to sound. I hate it. I believe my psych meds help me to be a better writer because I can focus now on whatever task lies before me. At the seminary I attend, there is a hardcore writing push. I had several papers to write simultaneously for each of my classes. I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I have topics I love to research and to write about. I love learning. When I was taking desipramine my mind was a tangled web of confused synapses. I feel almost amnesiac about those five years. Is it good to lose five years, especially if those five years are wrought with humiliating stories of salacious behavior and alcohol consumption?

If backseats could talk.

I gave myself all sorts of self-deprecating monikers and I wrote about things that hurt me, and I wrote about them a lot.

Is the artistic temperament different from those who are not “creative?” I wonder. I have a difficult time isolating the variables. Was it DV that caused me to be so compelled to speak to the darkness in the world, or is it an innate temperament? Is it nature – or is it nurture? I’ve been asking myself that question for 31 years, and I know this question has been asked by philosophers and fools alike.

Is the artistic brain prone to unsettledness? Do we roam in the dark and then traipse in the written word to share our experience and the insight gained from them? If we give in to modern medicine, do we deny our voices, or are they tempered to the point they no longer are representative of who we are? I strongly encourage those of you who are artists and straddle the fence about psych meds, check out the book; it’s essential reading for those who struggle with the mental illness and for those who don’t feel good about themselves because of their mental illness. We’re in great company.

My son and I were estranged for about ten months, but we reunited shortly before one of his last birthdays. I was a full-time student at a local university in San Diego, and even through the utter heartache of the separation between my son and my grandson, I had the best semester of my academic life, 4.0 and on the Dean’s List. My heart was breaking though. I saw a therapist, Kelsey N., who was just dynamite. She pushed me to face some harsh realities. “What if your son never comes back to you? Will you collapse, or will you proceed to create a life of purpose and meaning?,” she asked me one evening in session. I was crushed. I felt defeated by the question. “What do you mean, IF he never comes back?” I wasn’t prepared to accept that as a possibility.

My semester ended and I had the Winter break off and I stayed in bed for a solid week. I got up to use the restroom and then I went back to bed and just slept an entire week away. I thought it was exhaustion from a difficult semester academically, but it was more than exhaustion. I am mostly manic, and I love my manias. I get so much accomplished. I was conditioned to crave adrenaline. I do my best work in a crisis. Our bodies get old and less able to handle all the stress hormones that flood them when we are faced with a scary challenge over and over again.

Nadine Burke-Harris, in her outstanding TED Talk, discusses the damage about how too much flooding of stress hormones is detrimental to the individual throughout the lifespan. I believe psych medication can help to calm a person, to self-regulate, to soothe oneself in an emotionally sound and emotionally healthy way. I also think that some people can manage without medication using mindfulness techniques, meditation, exercise, creating. I’m not suggesting that medicine is the answer for everyone; it was the answer for me.

I’m not a Van Gogh, which is to say, my mental illness has never caused me to chop off my own ear. Oh, to be sure, I’ve been self-destructive in other ways; I mean I do have twelve tattoos, and before the tattoo numbing cream, I had them done in full pain and agony. Who’s to say that the intentional infliction of pain in getting inked is not destructive? The psych world calls the behavior masochistic.

I create more and ever so much more with a clear head since I’ve been on medication. I don’t regret it one bit. I love the fact that my brain is at homeostasis most of the time now. I’m balanced and happy as often as I and my meds can achieve that happy place, where I’m free to be me and free to create to the best of my ability.

Not all who struggle with mental illness are self-aware enough to know what is happening in their brain, and so they live unconsciously, with one crisis after another, and never see that they do have some control over their reactions to circumstances, at least they have control over what is taking place in their emotional landscape. We can normalize with external resources, i.e., counseling, a curandera, a good friend, clergy, our out-of-control emotions when we reach critical mass. I love that breathwork has become so popular; it’s necessary. There is nothing thar brings you right smack dab into the present moment. When you’re concentrating on your breath and breathing at a pace and with the depth that feeds your brain enough to handle your shit, you can’t help but find yourself present in your life during moments of crisis.

I look back at how far I’ve come from a family of origin rife with DV and addiction. I married a loser the first time around, someone as damaged (still is) as I was. I got therapy; he didn’t. Divorce is a trauma, and even though it was the best possible thing for me and my son, it was still an economically devastating time for me and Rikki, and it was the end of the dream that I had been rescued from the DV in my home by a handsome prince.

Well, life turned out so differently from what I dreamed.

I will always be grateful to the therapists and Dr. Samson, the lovers who briefly (and some VERY briefly) touched my life, my amazing son and teacher, parents who tried, siblings who tried, the GOMU, a song I heard when I was only 10, a book I read when I was 30, and the one I’m reading now, the mountains that cry out the name of my Creator, and all experiences in my life have shaped me into the person I am today.

I’m not ashamed of my mental challenge (illness sounds so stigmatizing). An estimated forty million people in the U.S. are on psych meds, and about forty million more would benefit from them, as would our country. Five-hundred and sixty-four thousand in the U.S. are homeless on any given night, many of them challenged with mental disorders that make it difficult for them to navigate life well.

I also recommend reading anything by Gabor Mate and Bessel van der Kolk. We are in trouble here where our brilliant minds are shrouded by mental illness. I knew a man named *Abraham who attended a church I went to for a number of years. He would often burst out into uncontrollable laughter during the service and be otherwise disruptive. I often had to stifle a laugh when he laughed because I was thrilled that someone could be so unabashedly himself in the scrutinizing public eye. I spoke with him later in Sunday school, and he was really quite brilliant and articulate. He could pull it together for a few minutes, and then he’d say something that bordered on truly scary, and I was grateful I was not alone with him. He was homeless, and he needed medical and psychological assistance. He was murdered on the street by another homeless and emotionally challenged man.

If you’re challenged by a mental disorder, no harm, no foul, and definitely nothing to be ashamed of. In a country that boasts of its hegemony and it’s place in the global food chain, we are woefully behind the times in providing mental health to its citizens. I recommend NAMI as a resource. SAMHSA is another good resource. If you’re fortunate to scrape enough to pay for health insurance, please try to schedule an appointment with a mental health provider. If you are so inclined, meds are available. If you are an artist, you will always be one. You will find that you’re still compelled to share your truth, like Monet, or like Goya, and many shades in between. Creativity is in your DNA; it just is.

*Fictitious name

By Sherrie Cassel

She had a mastectomy yesterday. Her comment to me when she was first diagnosed with cancer was, “I’m 81 and I know I don’t need them anymore, but…”, as she drifted off to consider the way her life would change, not just her body. After surgery, in the recovery room, the first thing she said to me was, “It’s over, Mija.” We’re hoping the surgeon was able to get all the cancer, but we’ll just have to wait to get her margins back before we’ll know for sure; it was a very aggressive cancer. Scary times for the mother of four adult children, grandmother to an angel grandson, and great-grandmother to a great grandson. I know my mother is 81 and we don’t get to keep our parents forever, and I suppose we’re never ready to lose them, but I’m hoping she lives to be a 100, at least, I hope, irrationally so.

I want to talk about the grief of losing a body part and how it is a similar experience to losing a loved one. I have a friend who lost a finger an eon ago, and she grieved her finger. I had a radical hysterectomy 30 years ago, and although my scar is pretty extensive, it’s in an area that is not visible to others. Along with the loss of my uterus came the loss of being able to reproduce. The loss of the miracle of childbearing was a tremendous loss. I was engaged at the time, and we wanted a baby together, but that didn’t happen. I couldn’t hold babies, not even toys for a couple of years after the loss of my uterus. The loss was a blow to my femininity, just as it is for my mother. When the physical loss is visible to others, it is particularly devastating. Breasts are important sex traits. We put a lot of stock in them. Not only are they instrumental in childrearing, but they identify us as women.

Another friend of mine had a cancerous leg amputated a few years ago. She lost a vital part of herself, and there are limitations she has now that affect every aspect of her life. Along with the phantom pain, which is quite severe, is the fact that the rest of her life she will be adjusting to those limitations as new ones crop up on the daily.

See, as much as those of us who’ve lost a loved one with whom we shared a primary relationship, there are many things for which to grieve. I don’t rank reasons to grieve; I just know there are more reasons to grieve than just my own greatest loss, the loss of my precious son. Those of us who know a thing or two about grief, with a big G, i.e., the loss of a child, spouse, etc., or the loss of a home, ad infinitum, understand like no other how lifechanging losses can be. I’ve lost friendships in which I was wounded, but the adjustment period to the loss was not significant. I have many friends and many relationships I nurture, so moving on was easy. I do not have another child in whom I can pour myself. Grief occurs in gradations, different levels of intensity, and depending on our ability to tolerate tragedy, it is long- or short-lived.

When we lose a part of ourselves, a body part, or a person, we will grieve. I can speak in terms of a cancerous uterus and how essential it was to remove it, despite the emotional cost. I can speak in terms of the most monumental loss for me, the loss of my son and only child. David Kessler’s book FINDING MEANING: THE SIXTH STAGE, was so helpful to me as I began to make meaning of my loss. I had to ask, “What now?” “How do I want the rest of my life to play out?” “Where do I go from here?” and finally, “How long must I grieve before I start to feel better?”

Each of these questions required the personal will to pull myself out of the deep grief I was in and find a way to normalize it, make it tolerable, and still maintain a wonderful life. I agree, it took herculean strength, or for my womenfolk, it took the courage of a Joan of Arc to reel in my out-of-control grief and tame it to a tolerable level. Grief can be hell, but it is not sustainable 24/7; I believe we would die both emotionally and physically to stay in that emotional space. I know from my own experience, the pain felt physical…and I responded physically. I know what it was like for Rachel, from the Hebrew Bible, to howl in grief; it is a grief felt around the world, in every culture. We may handle it differently from one another, but it’s a universal experience. I once read that elephants mourn the deaths of members of their parade (collective noun for elephants, one of three: herd and memory can also be used). I like the use of parade because it illustrates a celebration for life as our homeostasis, with a temporary period of mourning/imbalance. My own parade was temporarily halted, for about three and a half years before I was able to handle those existential questions I mentioned earlier.

My mother is returning home a changed woman, in every way a human can be changed. We grievers are forever changed by our losses, big and less big. Loss is a trauma to the soul and the body. I told my brother this morning, that the loss of an intimate loved one is a detonation to your soul; it rocks you, sometimes for a long time, sometimes for a lifetime. I didn’t want the latter for my life; I want to be happy and to enjoy life, but at some point, it is largely up to us the speed with which we heal.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of educating yourself about the dynamics of grief; it helps to know that others have found transformation and transcendence after the loss of a loved one or a limb, or some other significant loss. I see the commercials with veterans and amputations from one of the many wars we’ve had in my lifetime. I see their courage, and the urgency they have to live a full life, in spite of the physical adjustments they must now navigate. I recommend reading victory stories from others who have incurred a similar loss to yours. Create a blog, write, paint, dance, sing, and weep as the need arises. The adage, “This too shall pass” is true. We’re not meant to mourn for a lifetime. We are here to enjoy life and to connect to the Sacred, whatever that means to you.

Find your medium/media and create beauty from your pain. I couldn’t sleep and was up reading the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible. Jeremiah (and other scribes) lamented the loss of the esteem his country had previously enjoyed. He grieved loudly and intensely. He asked the God of his understanding why he had turned his back on Judah. Maybe we all search for someone or something to blame when we incur a monumental loss, how could this be, we ask ourselves. We lament over the losses, and in my opinion, having an internal locus of control that emits courage and emotional resilience will create a post-traumatic growth that helps us to flourish in our lives.

May it be so.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

What is it about death that transforms reality into an idealization of a person who has passed; it’s almost like we send them off to heaven with our transcendent image of their sainthood. That is how it happens. As Rikki’s momma, I have collected every wound I ever caused him, and sadly, I collect all the wounds that anyone else had ever caused for him. I let them go, a little at a time. No one is perfect, certainly not I. My beautiful and tortured son was not perfect. He was perfect for me, and had he had his druthers, he could have chosen far better than I to be his primary caretaker/parent. I’ve been a wreck for much of my life. I’m grateful to be on this side of 5150 now.

I cannot expound upon the urgency of counseling enough, especially before you enter a long-term relationship where progeny is a consideration. Nip the family dysfunction in the bud. Refuse to buy into the family mythology – the one that suggests everything is fine, when clearly it has never been.

I’ve watched my mother elevate my father — in death — to the status of a great man. In life he was a dreadful father and husband. No one is perfect, and some of us are so far from mid-center of perfection, that life is always upstream … with a steep incline … and in our dysfunction, we drag those whom we love, especially those we love, upstream with us.

I’ve learned the very necessary lesson of self-forgiveness. As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” Ain’t that the truth? Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, you get to make amends to someone who is still living, if you’ve behaved horridly or hurt him or her. But how do you make amends to someone who has died?

Can you?

I’m seven and a half years into the grieving process for my beautiful son, Rikki. During those seven and a half years, I frequently suffered from mad insomnia. I had ample time to rehash, replay, and repent the way I hurt my son. Regret and guilt are natural outgrowths of grief. Did I love him enough? Did I say it enough? Did I show him that he was loved? Did he know how fucked up I was? Then — after we self-flagellate we learn to let go.

When you know better, you do better.

I believe, some days, in a heaven, maybe out of desperation to see my son again, to hold him, to kiss him on the forehead, to tell him how much I miss him, and to hear all about his utter joy over the past seven and a half years. Is heaven a placebo? I’ll find out one day, I suppose. But letting go of guilt, self-blame, and shame over past behavior is so utterly necessary that without doing so will guarantee that we enjoy life very limitedly. The world is our oyster, and inside, is the pearl of great price. We earn it, hard.

If you’ve hurt someone and the relationship is worth it to you, make amends. Sometimes we aren’t forgiven, and that really hurts, but live with a clear conscience. When you do that, the world opens up for you, and your heart fills with love for all living things, and joy is attainable. First, you must let go of the guilt and release the regret. Stand up straight and own your shit, but then move past it and claim a life of amazing possibilities for joy, happiness, emotional soundness, and unending love for yourself.

Forgive yourself. Life passes by so quickly; Rikki was only thirty-two. I remember once I told him that his problem was that he was too kind to people who hurt him, and he said, “Momma, if the worst thing people can say about me when I die is that I was too kind, then I’ve lived a good life.” A good, short life. Maybe after someone dies, we let them off the hook for any infractions, small or monumental. I forgave my father for his many assaults on our family. I still haven’t forgiven my ex-husband, Rikki’s biological father. There are a few people, including myself, whose dysfunction hurt my boy, and I’ve forgiven all of them with few exceptions. The ex has a lot for which to answer. But that is no longer here nor there. There is no need to be in any kind of relationship with him. Some things are just unforgivable. You’ll know when it happens to you, or if you’ve ever made a blunder from which there is no return. It happens. We’re not perfect, and those of us who were raised in chaos and horror, are really not perfect. Even in self-awareness, our road is uphill, until we reach the pinnacle that Maslow called self-actualization.

I look at people through the lens of understanding now. Had we been loved well and nurtured lovingly with concern for our well-being, and not to make our parents look good, we would have, in turn, loved better, and been kinder to those we love…instead of avenging our wounds at the expense of others. Bessel van der Kolk, world-prominent traumatologist said, “Traumatized people traumatize people.” One of my professors borrowed the sentence and made it more accessible to the masses when she changed the word traumatize to hurt, e.g., Hurt people hurt people.

My son and I ran the gamut of dysfunction. We had a lot to say to each other before he died. Family dysfunction is common in the United States. I grew up in it. My son grew up in it. My parents grew up in it. Historical trauma can be carried into successive generations, to the fourth generation; seems I read that somewhere. My son and I also had plenty of time to say “goodbye” and…”I’m sorry.”

A friend of mine turned me on to the Akashic Records. I don’t know its history or culture of origin, but I do know that it’s like an ancient empty chair experience. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Those are the sentences to be said as you listen for the voice of your loved one to speak to you from their place of peace. I found it to be very healing. I think the better you know someone, the better able you are to anticipate with accuracy what your loved one would say to you. I got Rikki loud and clear. He was my son, after all. We thought like each other. We hurt like each other. We loved each other, fiercely.

Have I idealized my son? No. Again, he was my son, replete with dysfunction and brokenness. I was fortunate that I had the opportunity to make amends before he died, and he with me. He was not — as I am not — perfect, but he was, as I am, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Sometimes we learn to love ourselves later in life; sadly, some people never learn to love themselves at all. Don’t be one of those people. Find something to love, something to pour that love into — art, philanthropy, people, and of course, yourself. Those things are only possible when we are unencumbered by guilt, regret, rage, sadness, and a victim mentality. Rikki loved so many things and people. He was beautiful and broken, but toward the end of his life, he knew the healing power of forgiveness. He didn’t hold grudges. He always reached for understanding before jumping to judgment. He taught me about those things, and if I can be a bit histrionic, his life changed mine. His death is shaping me still.

Grief is lifelong.

If you’re in my circle, and you hurt my son, he would try to understand what happened to you to make you strike out at him and others rather than cast you aside. He’d give you chance after chance after chance, until it was necessary to put up a wall for self-protection. I strive for the same understanding, and I extend my momma’s heart in love when I tell you, “All is understood, so all is forgiven.” Rikki and I are grateful for the great times and the happy memories. So, don’t fret. Let it go and set yourself free to be better than you were when you hurt him or hurt someone else.

Make amends with your loved ones, even those who are no longer present with us. Light a candle. Do a ritual at the beach, or some place sacred to the two of you. Talk to them. Weep and then forgive yourself. My son loved to see people happy. Every picture I have of him is him smiling or laughing. He wasn’t perfect. I remember one time he said, “Momma, you know what my pet peeve is?” And, I retorted, “One among your infinitely many?” We laughed for twenty minutes!

See, I could have wept for seven and a half years for the ways I fucked up with my son, and I did weep for quite some time, but life kept beckoning me to grab hold, to stay with the living, to be grateful for the time and the lessons with my son, to be present for his son, to be present for myself, to forgive myself. If I can’t be present for myself, then I can’t be present for anyone else, and I have people in my life who adore me and who I love with all my broken heart.

Please find a way to move forward and to claim a life of amazing possibilities to do amazing things in this life. Dedicate those things to the ones you love. Honor your loved one with the life you wish you could have had with him or with her.

Life has changed for me – forever. I’m not the same person who raised my son. Before he died, we were out walking our pit, Lily, and I told Rikki, “Boo, I’m not the hardass who raised you.” His response, a chip off the ol’ block was, “I know Momma. You’ve changed.”

If you must shoulder regret, carry it only as far as it helps you to build emotional muscle and then drop the weight and move through the rest of your life with your newfound strength, free from regret and/or guilt. Life’s a few short trips around the sun. The past no longer needs to be prologue; the past contains lessons for how to improve ourselves. Own them. Inculcate them. Allow them to change you, and in turn, you’ll be able to help change the dynamics in your family and in your other relationships, especially those which are hurtful and over-the-top dysfunctional. Sometimes, for self-preservation, it becomes necessary to walk away from a person because the cost to your self-esteem, emotional safety, and your heart is too much to ask of anyone.

But for the love you once held for those you’ve hurt the most — here, say it with me.

“I’m sorry.”

“Forgive me.”

“I love you.”

by Sherrie Cassel

The temperature in the high desert is only 84 degrees F. It’s perfect, no humidity, sunny, bright, and just beautiful; it matches my mood. See, I’ve had a long stretch of good days. I can’t remember the last time I cried. Oh certainly, I miss my sweet boy every second of the day, but…I no longer mourn every day, which is to say I don’t sob every day, or sit with a vacant stare for hours on end. I’m able to function with high levels of social skills again, perhaps with an enhanced amount of compassion.  Losing an only child, I’ve been to the rock bottom of hell; I know a thing or two about pain that is transformational and transcendental. Yes, the weather reflects my current mood.

I know grief is a lifetime sentence; it comes in small waves and sometimes it comes in tsunamis. Either way, losing someone you love to the permanence of death, is a seismic event in one’s life. I can be going about my business when something will catch my attention and my focus is on something my amazing son said or did, or how he made me and everyone else laugh, or how he laughed. Something will catch my attention and I feel a physical pang in the organ of my heart, and in the metaphor for the seat of love, and a tender spot that can be broken. I still get catches in my breath when I have a trigger, e.g., a reminder of a person, place, thing, or memory that elicits a reaction. I swear a heart pang feels physical. I’ve three times gone to the emergency room thinking I was having a heart attack, but fortunately, it was just a panic attack.

People don’t think that panic and grief go hand in hand; but they do. I remember at an Al Anon meeting, my sponsor told me that I wasn’t afraid that my son would die, but that I was afraid of how I’d feel once he passed away. Triggers work the same way, at least they do for me. Something catches your attention, and it elicits a reaction, a heart pang, for example, a catch in your breath, the welling up of tears in your eyes. The reactions can be expressed in any number of ways. On an angelversary or a birthday, the panic begins a few days before the day. I’m generally okay until I see the date, and I never know how I’m going to feel on special days, so I try to not plan anything on them. In seven years, I’ve had some commemoration for my son. One year, we all smoked a couple puffs from his favorite flavored cigar, right at 5:55 p.m., the time he died. I found that to be very comforting. I haven’t done anything since. For me, I find it best to be alone with memories of my son, and my husband to lean on should I lose it and need an ear and a hug. I light a candle and keep it burning all day and all night. I refuse to look at the clock until I’m reasonably certain 5:55 p.m. has passed – and I made it through – another year.

People tell me I’m strong; some people have even told me I’m the strongest person they know. Well, losing a child doesn’t compare to, say, a holocaust survivor, but then comparisons of pain are really not quite fair, are they? Each of us carries our own burdens, by accident or by self-infliction. I’ve had a fair number of both. So, strong? Resilient? Flourishing in the face of a world that is neither fair nor unfair, but subject to the law of random chance, a comet hitting earth or another planet and decimating it. Man is scarcely able to comprehend his own extinction. I get it too as a grieving mother; how do you manage to continue on with your life when you’ve lost someone who meant the entire world to you? The extinction of someone you’ve had the most intimate of relationships, for me, it was my son, who I carried for nine months, who shared my DNA, both actually and figuratively.

If neuropathology defines the disease of our neural pathways, including those in the brain, then what entity defines the damage done to our consciousness. Grief is a natural byproduct of the human condition as we deal with death on a daily basis, but at some point, grief can become pathological, if not attended to through spiritual guidance and/or psychological and psychiatric help. I’ve been sharing my son’s story for seven years. I’ve peripherally discussed what it’s been like to lose a child, to grieve a child, to work through, blood, sweat, and tears, to heal, to transform, and to transcend grief, and learn to flourish in spite of the pain that I’m aware of each time I think about my son not being here for me to be a part of his life, and to have him be a part of mine – never again. Some days I actually do believe in heaven. Some days everything hurts, and everything is a trigger.

The DSM-V (the bible for the helping professions in the social and behavioral sciences) states that grief that lasts longer than two weeks is major depressive disorder (…). Those who study grief and have significant academic creds behind their names, have also stated that after a few more weeks, months, years, is what is referred to as complicated grief. I thought I was tough. I’ve had to be a hard ass most of my life; well, I don’t anymore, thanks to my adoring husband. The appearance of strength can be an illusion. I don’t think I’d call resilience strength though either.

The ability to transcend the things that hurt us is a gift; it allows us to flourish – sometimes after flailing for a time, but self-awareness and language are the pinnacle achievements of humanity, in my opinion. Without language, I would not have been able to create a grief narrative, to make sense of my pain, to find out who I am despite the chaos or trauma I’ve experienced in my life, to become self-aware. When you know who you are, healing takes place more rapidly, in my experience. I have access to several grief sites, including one I manage. I’ve been running my blogs for nearly seven years. In some of the blogs, there are people I’ve seen soar off to do amazing things with their lives; one woman leads a grief group in her community now. Some of us have gone back to college and gotten degrees. Some have found tremendous purpose in their lives, in spite of their losses. Sadly, in seven years, and no one can really say how long one should grieve, but there should come a time when the pain becomes less intense, more tolerable, excluding the occasional trigger reaction(s). There should be a resumption of life, often far more life-enhancing than before the loss.

I admit, I bled out every chance I had to tell my son’s story. I was a desperate woman on a mission to shout out to the world that those who struggle with addiction are people too, with hearts, souls, consciousness, feelings, ideas, and not bad people; it was important to me to be my son’s post-mortem PR. He was my prince, damn it! I purged about my pain until I was tired of hearing about it. I’m fortunate I have friends and family who, if they were tired of hearing about my loss, never let on and listened, and brought me food, and loved me through it. I hope you all have people in your life who are truly present for you when you need them to be.

I cannot emphasize this enough, but only because it was something I failed to do, you must reach out and ask for help, from clergy or another type of healer. I sat on the couch for three-and-a-half years staring into space accomplishing nothing. In my defense, I did reach out to psychologists, but found of the four I went to after Rikki died, none of them had training in grief; it matters. Those in early grief may not be able to function in a wholesome life in the beginning. The pain may be too great to bear without some assistance: monitored medication, meditation, narrative therapy, ad infinitum. Some of us are better equipped to bounce back than others, even those who have experienced a great deal of chaos and trauma.

People tend to see only grief when they become aware of the fact that someone has lost a loved one whose loss is like losing a limb. They see a huge, flashing neon light that says GRIEF with several exclamation points. I’m not strong; I’m emotionally sound. I’m not strong; I’ve worked hard to reclaim a life whose urgent plea is that it is to be lived, fully, in the face of some of our greatest losses.

Just as I was the desperate mother telling her son’s story posthumously, I’m now desperate to tell another one, the story in which the saddest protagonist awakens to herself and finds her kin-dom within, that place where we are all one and whole, wherever that place may be…glimpses here of a future after death? I don’t play roulette with the God of my understanding (GOMU). I guess I’ll know for certain at one second after the white light carries me off into its eternal warmth, or it will that be that, and the hellish things of this world will finally be over. Who knows? What I do know is that those of us in grief are not one dimensional. Like the person who struggles with addiction, we have multi-faceted, multi-dimensional personalities too. We are not only our grief, and when it’s time to make your warrior cry that says you can see beyond your grief, do it loudly. People who are in the early stages of grief need to hear your narrative. People who have yet to find tolerable levels of grief pain, need to hear your story and about how you’re coping.

Grief is a journey; it’s not one we chose to be on, but if you’re on it, you’re on it, and you know how crazy the roads can be, windy and dark, blinding in the sunset, and blinding when it rises, loud like metal rock in a Guantanamo cell, and sometimes quiet, barely audible. Navigating grief doesn’t make me strong; it is just another illustration of how helpful and necessary therapy is. Again and again and again, I say that healing takes place in proportion to one’s emotional health. I had to stop asking, “Why me?” and start asking, “What now?” What now gave me the opportunity to find purpose in my life, and I found that being of service to humanity is where I will best use my gifts. Being able to navigate grief successfully, reframing your narrative from the “Why me?” narrative to the “Now what? What can I do to make a difference?” is an obvious way to measure a person’s emotional health and healing.

Grief is ever-present, and it brings into focus the bittersweetness of life, every little ol’ thing in life. For the autumn trees to turn into acres of flaming leaves, the leaves must separate from their life force, and die. A baby is born; an old man dies. Each having value in this life, bringing joy and one day, sadness. I loved my son actively for thirty-two years, and I love him still, just differently, still prominently, just differently.

The wind is blowing, and the temperature has come down; it’s sunny and just a stunning day, in all ways that make for a good day. The birds were chirping this morning, and the squirrels were eating the food we leave out for the rabbits. I saw a couple of road runners running up our dirt road. I had coffee with a friend. We laughed and talked about the future. Who knew one day I’d be looking ahead – without my son, without my precious, precious boy? I save my meltdowns like I used to save my sick days. I get around to taking one or two after too many days of being strong.

My son and I were perusing the aisles at the grocery store we used to frequent, and we were talking about his soon-to-be (at the time ex-wife). I said to Rikki, “You know what your problem is? You’re too kind.” He responded, “Momma, if the worst thing that someone has to say about me when I’m dead is that I was too kind, I’ll take that.”

I wish I could say what my legacy will be; my son’s was kindness. I’m not ready to cash it in just yet. I still have so much to do. And driven, yes, I’d like for that to be said about me too.

From Ben Cassel

Here’s the Sherrie story: The rules don’t always apply.

The rule that says that your formal education ends when one’s hair is still influenced by melanin? That doesn’t apply.

The rule that says you have to figure out what you want to be when you grow up and THEN grow up? That doesn’t apply.

The rule that one’s relationship with a higher power must be traditional and dictated by others based on their own experiences and interpretations of the world? THAT one REALLY doesn’t apply.

There are lots of others that don’t apply, either.

One rule does, though: She is a model of Bobby Kennedy’s “Some people see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’”

Today, during a break in her pursuit of a graduate degree, she turns 61. She learns more stuff all the time – but her innate intelligence and the wisdom born of pain and triumph are enough for a wall full of degrees and gowns and hoods and cowls.

I am an atheist, but not an observant one: I read the Bible for the metaphors and characters that are the foundations of our civilization. Besides, I was an English major, and we have to come to terms with the Bible, Shakespeare, and – if one is an American — Walt Whitman. Among my favorite stories in the Bible is that of the Widow’s Mite.

Jesus watched as the rich hypocrites came in to the temple and — with flourishes and lots of noise — gave to the temple large sums of money. This was their surplus, the EXTRA money that they had from manipulating and victimizing the poor and needy. And one of those victimized people, an aging widow, made her offering of two mites – an amount worth the same as the least valuable Roman coin.

Her sacrifice was greater. I picture her moving slowly toward the place of the offerings, trying to be unobtrusive as she offers her pittance. But Jesus honored her gift far more than those of the hypocrites who trumpeted their gifts, which represented very little sacrifice at all.

Many years ago, I gave Sherrie a pendant with a widow’s mite. I wanted to show her that I recognized her spirit of giving, of sacrifice. Indeed, they are the foundation of who she is.

Happy birthday, my love.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

“For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven” Ecclesiastes 3:1. Every generation has its utopian visions of potential panaceas for what have been the most consequential blights on its seasons. What would Dr. Spock say to the new generation of those who consciously parent today. Would Skinner still believe it’s enough to model good corporate behavior, a handshake and a formal address to the young man or the young woman who will go out into the world and know how to treat someone corporately, but still miss the mark relationally?

I want to talk about how trendy and marketable grief has become. With hundreds of thousands of books about grief, one scarcely knows where to begin to reach out for relief. In some ways, it is comforting to have a plethora of resources, and in some, when your brain is in grief fog, too many options can be overwhelming. Grief certificate programs abound, and the pendulum is now swinging in the direction of compassion, vulnerability, and an emotionally sound expression of love for everyone; as REM says, “Everybody hurts sometimes.” In my undergraduate psych program, we talked a lot about being “trauma-informed” – and approaching our care receivers with the kind of care that assumes they’ve been through some shit, and most of us have; some have experiences with the capital S and some with the lower-case s. Indeed, everybody hurts sometimes.

There’s a Nouwen book called THE WOUNDED HEALER, which really speaks to me. To use a combat metaphor of a wounded soldier (I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam war – war metaphors were wildly popular in the formation of my worldview). With the application of trauma-informed practices in the lives of others for whom I will provide spiritual care, I’m now free to apply the trauma-informed approach to my own inner-work, my spiritual battle toward wholeness, in a world of busyness and inauthenticity.  A country sends its military personnel to basic training, to learn the strategies of war, if need be. Along the way, they may incur emotional and sometimes physical injury. Sometimes those injuries strengthen them to be the best possible Soldier, Marine, Sailor, Airman they can be. Sometimes those in military training don’t make it, and so they leave with complex PTSD, or they die in our inane wars, even in 2023.

Pat Benatar has a song called, “Love is a battlefield.” I don’t think love should be, but I know life often is. For all of us wounded healers, it behooves us to continue our healing journeys through qualified self-help channels. I no longer writhe in my challenging childhood; it happened, and I survived, and I was fortunate to have therapy for many years as I waded through the detritus of my childhood and pulled out the gems that could be found. I never grieved my childhood, consciously. I acted out from the brokenness, but I hadn’t really worked out the “issues” in narrative form. In one of my classes this semester, I read a line in a text that said, “All trauma is preverbal.” I didn’t have the words to create a narrative for my challenging childhood, but I do now. I also have the words that heal me from the dysfunction in which I was raised.

I don’t think it’s enough for me to heal, although I am forever indebted to the educational provisions in the United States, and forever indebted to the psychological and psychiatric communities for their constant research into how to teach us to self-soothe in healthy ways, and how to resurrect ourselves from the entombment of a wretched or problematic childhood, or relationship. Many have heard about posttraumatic stress disorder. We all carry it within us to some degree. Perhaps, and this is just my hypothesis, grief is a response to PTSD, the kind for which we have no words, the kind that is deeply embedded in the part of our brain that longs for voice. When I was in the social work program, we learned about posttraumatic growth. If we can flail in life, then we can also flourish. But how do we get there? Grief is a disorder du jour, but it’s nothing new. Each generation, and each organism demonstrates grieving/mourning rituals, and this is a quantifiable fact. I can’t speak to the “emotional” climate that animates the grief cycle, but some cry, some become stoic, some retreat, some bury, some cremate, some flail and some flourish as they prepare for new life, allegorically and in actuality. Transcendence stories abound because we are a tenacious species, even, and maybe especially those who come from backgrounds of bloodied, slivered glass; we grow in proportion to our greatest tragedies.

When my son died, I was an absolute wreck. I ached systemically. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe on occasion from convulsive sobs. I couldn’t find comfort. We each have a grief trajectory, and our own ability to heal ourselves is in direct proportion to our emotional wellness. Have we processed previous grief experiences sufficiently? Are there layers of unhealed parts that need to be voiced before we can truly grieve the current all-consuming grief? I recognize, now after seven years of research into my own grief, that I was experiencing complicated grief, not unlike complicated PTSD. When we’ve incurred many traumas, we need to find a qualified psychological or spiritual care provider to guide us to the other side of our trauma/pain, to disentangle us from those things that keep us tethered to a painful past and that prevent us from forming relationships with safe others.

I’ve spent the better half of my life in and out of therapy. I asked my professor how in the world do you take someone who’s a mess like I was and untangle them, and he said, “You take them where they are” (Lee, 2023). I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade or deter revenue into going into the pockets of those who have written books on grief that have been wildly successful. I’ve read many of them. But grief is not a mystery; it’s an inevitability, just as assuredly as are life and death. Grief hurts a great deal, and then sometimes, great pearls of wisdom can be pried from the clutches of deep, inconsolable grief, and when we are able to normalize that grief, we can be a healed healer and show others the hope that lurks around every corner of the healing path.

For me, grief has been both a blessing and a curse. I have never been more self-aware than I am now — since my son’s death. I worked on the process because my tripartite soul longed for homeostasis, normalcy, mundanity, healing. I was tired of being in pain. The acceptance that my son was not coming back to this life with me was an adjustment period that shook my universe. I begged. I bargained. I dabbled in unreality. My son was gone, but I’m still here. What do you do with that?

You make a choice: to flail or to flourish.

There are few times in life when self-preservation is not seen as selfishness: grief provides us with an opportunity to do some deep healing work. Before I could see past the grief, I had to ask myself why I felt the need to blame myself for Rikki’s death, for all the things that ever hurt him. Somehow, I needed to grovel toward the gods of punishment before I could move on. Perhaps the darkest part of grief serves some adaptive purpose. “For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.” When a loss occurs, for a chunk of time, there will be a time of mourning rituals, tears, wakes, burning of belongings, etc. I read that ants bury their dead in a graveyard, and then, they get back to the work for which they were created. What were you created for? How can your healed healer make the world a better place?

Oh, we’ll grieve, loudly, silently, sometimes barely perceptively, but we will grieve in our lifetime. I like reasons, explanations, some understanding of correlations and causality, and maybe it’s just those with consciousness that grieve to the depths that we do. If you haven’t found your medium yet to voice your grief narrative, start doing some research into where your grief tapes are coming from. My voices told me that I was singularly responsible for the death of my son. Upon painstaking research into my past, my embedded theologies, and the building blocks of my constructed worldview, I’ve let myself off the hook. I first had to self-flagellate before I began to see that I wasn’t being punished or paying my just desserts for the broken mother I was to my beautiful boy. Shit happens, pardon the street language, but it does.

The Good News I share today is that life goes on, we ache, and we rejoice. If you’re still stuck in grief after years, unable to move forward, you’re probably dealing with complicated grief. I strongly urge you to get into therapy, read about grief, read about healing from grief, and find something to pour all the love you have for your lost one into something generative, something purposeful. Why are you here?

Grief has gone viral, but it’s still a topic we’re afraid to touch, perhaps, especially in first world countries whose focus is on the capitalistic sunny side of the street. No time for sadness. No time for grief. And yet, processing grief is so important. How can you truly be free if you’re carrying around the dead weight of a person, place, or thing who or that needs to be released so you can help others rediscover their mojo, or perhaps discover it for the first time. We’re all a little broken, but we’re all equally healable.

What happens after we die? Where do we go? Is there life after death? Why do people die? Why did my son die? The questions that emit from the death experience are plentiful, and the answers to those questions are exercises in our uniqueness to work through the guts and the gore of grief on our way toward grace. Grief is a manageable task; it just takes time. When we realize we are not at the mercy of our emotions, we can control the intensity of our emotions, and we can move forward in our lives.

I was at the mercy of my complicated grief for three-and-a-half years. I was completely immobile. I sat and cried three-and-a-half years away. At the 3.5 mark, after reading extensively about grief, I began the most expansive journey of self-exploration. I’ll never regret the time I was in despair; how do you lose a child and remain stoic? I couldn’t. I stagnated. I gained fifty pounds. I had no social contact with friends and scarcely family. In retrospect, I was well prepared for the pandemic after three-and-a-half years of social isolation. But the point is, I awakened one morning and took stock of my life. I was only 55 when I woke up from the loss of my son. I went back to school to get my bachelor’s degree and then I went way back and got my associate degree, and now I’m one class away from my master’s degree and applying to the Ph.D. program. I also lost the weight I had gained to protect myself from the full impact of the pain from losing Rikki.

I woke up and since the day I realized that I mete out the grief when I have time, or when something triggers the grief, things have gotten better. Grief and mourning are two different phenomena, in my opinion. Grief is the state of mind and mourning is the action that stems from a terrific loss. If you’re in grief, this is a good time to research the many books that have been written about grief. Journal, paint, sing, write your own book. My son died from complications of substance use disorder. I have a blog that is specifically for parents who have lost a child to addiction, context matters. Find a group that speaks to your specific loss. My grief group on Facebook, After the Storm has saved me on many occasions. I’m a veteran griever at the seven-year mark, but I still have my days and nights when the loss howls through my soul and I miss my son beyond all comprehension, but I turn to my group, or my husband, or I go inward and self-soothe, in emotionally healthy ways, until I’m okay again to come out and rejoin the living.

After you’ve healed from the broken healer, share your healed healer with others. The world will get better when we collectively grieve the “sins” of the fathers and mothers, at the global and at the familial level, from genocide to domestic violence.

If you’re deep in grief now, just know that at some point you will be able to control the time, the place, and the intensity, but first you must just go through the tough times. I don’t know if ant consciousness allows for emotionality about the grief process, but I do see the value of their death rituals, burying their dead in a place allotted for the dead, and then heading back into the fold to fulfill their life’s purpose.

I hope this makes sense. I’m an avid reader of social and behavioral sciences and of theology. Since I’m out of school for the summer, I’ve been reading like a maniac, but there comes a time when you must put down the book and formulate your own ideas. Ideas aren’t meant to be put under a bushel, so to speak, but to be shared in your families, communities, and countries.

Your grief story is important. When you’re ready, please tell it; it matters. I had a woman who sought me out after reading a poem I wrote about my son’s addiction years. She said she just had to know me because I was telling her story. Others have told mine. We’re all in this together.

Namaste.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Here I am smack dab in a moment of clarity. Don’t worry; it won’t last. They never do. Thirty years ago, I was listening to the Counting Crows, AUGUST AND EVERYTHING AFTER. Adam’s reckless voice and unbridled passion were all the rage, an echo of neo-masculinity whose response would be Alanis Morrisette’s warrior cry. I was in close relationship with St. Jude, over a lost cause I was “dating”, but life had no real complications, save poverty and low self-esteem. Things have certainly changed since that devolution.

It seems I’ve always been in school. It’s not just the goal of seeing the letters Ph.D., after my name, or hearing someone call me Dr. Cassel, it’s about the journey. It’s about how much better my life is today because of education, the education I’m privileged to be getting in community colleges and universities, in seminary, and through the education I get through life experience, if I’m paying attention. How best do I do that? I don’t allow myself to get stuck in the past and I work hard to live mostly in the present moment, because tomorrow will take care of itself, and truly, there is nothing that can be done about the past moments, especially those moments that have defined us. We are the sum of our parts, see Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems; a fascinating modality.

I’m listening to AUGUST AND EVERYTHING AFTER right now during my “me” time. The world is much different than it was only thirty years ago. The world has changed. My country has changed. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. The laws of nature, the laws of physics operate without too much conscious interference by man. There are some things I’m glad to know we don’t yet have answers about. I get bored very easily; I need a mystery. I’m also a lover of science, so when my mysteries are explained away through logic and empirical data, I revise and adapt. I do not consider this as defeat. I consider it merely a shifting of a personal paradigm, an expansion of my worldview. There were times when I was threatened by having my positions challenged, living in a dualistic world that separated its constituents into the rights and the wrongs, into winners and into losers.

There’s a whole world of gray in need of exploration; necessity is indeed the mother of all invention. Brainstorming from all the memes that come flying out at you from the opaque uncertainty of developing thoughts yields a lifetime of possibilities. So much [does] depend on a red wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams. Was your wheelbarrow constructed of the sturdiest and finest wood, pure metals, buffed to a shimmery candy apple red. Was it loved into existence, or was it put together on the anvil of a broken builder’s distortions of love? How do you know? Oh, you know. I was in a class one evening and I made the comment that there are people walking around in life who live unconsciously. A colleague said, “If a person were walking around unconsciously, I’d get her to the hospital immediately.” Some people take things literally. I meant that there are many people who walk through their lives without any sense of self-awareness. They have no idea why they behave the way they do. They know at some level that things are not working, but they don’t know how to give themselves what they want, a tranquil life, enough to pay the bills, to enjoy one’s life, a partner who is willing to go the distance through all of life’s storms and sunny skies, or the intention to live an unpartnered life, one that is satisfying and filled with wonder.

I’m learning to get my head out of the sky from time to time so I can manage life from a practical and not merely a theoretical perspective. I have a summer off before I apply to the Ph.D. program, an actual summer … a whole summer off to heal, to read for fun, to write, and to do the water aerobics class this summer, and to care for my 81-year-old mother who will be recovering from breast cancer surgery. The summer will fly by and I hope to intentionally have some good times with my friends and family.

We did an assignment in my Trauma & Grace class this spring semester where we had a chart that was supposed to reflect how well we did at self-care throughout the semester. The class was intense, superb, but intense. Needless to say, this spiritual care provider in training, did a piss poor job at self-care this semester, and as a result, I got sick three times with the flu! But I did a lot of intentional living. I spent some of my time wisely, and some, well, I lived fully in the moments of some bad choices, but my body is not as young or as resilient as it once was when I used to drink all night, the town “barfly” – and then got up and did an aerobics class at six a.m.! That was me?! Yep, once upon a motivated self time. Where did she go? She wakes up from her hibernation in the spring and stays alert and intentional until mid-November, then like Persephone, she retreats to the netherworld where she can think uninterrupted, and she reads, researches, and writes.

I no longer languish over my challenging childhood like I once did. I know what I remember and I know what I know and have worked through most of it. I’ve taken the chaos stew of my pre-verbal and scarcely verbal childhood and created a victory narrative. I waited a long time for “normal”. I didn’t know what it looked like and so I had no idea how to create it for myself or for my son. I kept choosing cowards or clowns, and it wasn’t until many years in therapy and meeting my current husband, that I began to know what a healthy love for another person is. My husband is inordinately patient; he taught high school for nearly forty years! He loves me wholesomely and he is the smartest man I know. I love having a person with top notch conversational skills sit across from me at the breakfast table every day. I love having friends who are deep and soulful, alive with rapid production of units of information, from recipes to the biopsychosocialspiritual explanations for human behavior from the most magnificent to the most base.

I love that I can talk with my husband about anything. My son was also a tremendous conversationalist. We talked for hours, often into the wee hours of the morning, then we’d wash our faces, brush our teeth, and head out to breakfast in some Mexican café that served menudo and micheladas and we’d listen to the Mexican vocal artist on the television and catching a phrase here or there, congratulate ourselves on holding on to a piece of our heritage. Una mas, por favor, as we raised our emptying glasses. Always a celebration, for every little ol’ thing.

Oh yes, “normal” – what is normal? Without getting a rise out of anyone, I can speak only for myself. Normal to me is a life in which there is no intentional pain; normal yields life enhancing activities, for the individual and for her consequent relationships. Normal thought processes provide the resources to choose symbiotically for itself from others who are in a good head and heart space to offer from her abundance of emotional resources rather than from her scarcity. Trust me, I was the latter for a very long time, until I got the help I needed. Therapy: I cannot emphasize it enough. Find a way to love and nurture yourselves. I see so many people give themselves crappy lives because they have no real ability to choose good life travelers to accompany them for a short while, or a long while, and so they keep choosing partners who have no surplus of healthy emotional resources to share with them. History repeats itself until one day, it doesn’t. I pray those I love who aren’t there yet get there quickly, more quickly than I did. Life is short. One day you’re having a baby … and the next day you’re burying him. Not to be morbid, but I’ll be sixty-one in a couple of weeks. I’ve had quite a run, from barely conscious to self-aware, from an anemia of emotional resources to a cornucopia of abundance. Getting from a mentality of scarcity to one of satisfaction and even transcendence has been a long journey, and I am loving all the lessons I can apply in my life, and in my relationships. Some lessons I’m loving a little less than others, but each lesson is helping me to grow toward the best and most wholesome version of myself.

I like the word “wholesome” – as opposed to “high-risk behavior.” High risk behavior can be anything from smoking to genocide; there’s those shades of gray again. There are so many ways to express our lives through our behavior. I have people tell me I have a great life. I have a partner who is truly my best friend and someone with whom I am passionately in love. We could always use more money, but we are doing fine in the areas of our lives that really matter to us, so we accept with gratitude the things we have, a roof over our heads, food, a comfortable bed to sleep in, minds that are hungry for knowledge. We are both student and teacher to one another, always in flux, because we are constantly learning about ourselves and our world. Love that doesn’t hurt? who knew?

Having the mindset that an attitude of gratitude keeps the blues away can help on some days. Shake the cobwebs of that deepening emotional funk and find a ray of sunshine in your storm; it’s there. Sometimes it’s the tiny spark that remains after a particularly trying time, resting in between rounds, to rev up and charge you enough to accomplish something magnificent or something necessary. Life can be exhausting sometimes. I was a single, working, mother whose socioeconomic status left me strapped for time and strapped for money. I survived pay check to pay check, and still did a fair amount of living, engaged in all sorts of high risk behavior, because I didn’t know that I was worthy of love. I chose one broken person after another, men who couldn’t love me, women who were manipulative but upfront about their dysfunction. There were no surprises. I fully intended on being screwed through life and before I began to live an intentional life, I fulfilled my own self-prophecy. No disappointments, just infinitely many confirmations that my world was, in fact, a shitty place.

I’m grateful for the person who kept me safe (sometimes) pre-self-awareness. I think it makes a huge difference in the quality of one’s life if she understands and knows herself. I live in a small desert community near Joshua Tree, California. My husband and I moved from San Diego, a hustling little suburb, near the Mexico border. The traffic was bad. The impersonalization and social distancing started well before the pandemic, and my husband and I thought we’d try small community for a change when my husband retired. I will most likely never retire. I love research and I love writing. One of my professors told me that he thinks I’m a gifted writer who should write a book. How does one narrow down a topic among the infinitely many? Food for thought.

There’s no point to this post, only to purge, to put it out there and hope it lands somewhere with someone who needs to know there’s hope. How much are you willing to invest in your life? I’m loving life and I miss my son. The longing is for a lifetime. Grief is a brain secretion that hurts into the depths of my consciousness, the one that embraces me into the fold, past, present, and future, and the one that connects me to you. May you have peace today, and if peace is not possible, may you have a rockin’ support system. Look on the bright side. Things will only get better. Things could always be worse. Get on your bikes and ride! There are a million platitudes circulating our noosphere; some are helpful, some need to be reinterpreted in a way that reaches a large number of people who are hungry for social and personal change.

I’ll leave you with this, we are at the mercy of random chance, a lightning strike away from the end of a life, yours or someone you adore. What are you willing to leave unfinished? A dream? A relationship? An oeuvre? Get those emotional and neural pathways unstuck. Get therapy. Get well.

Get well.

I love the contrast of transcendence and survival in this photograph, and how precarious is our hold on fleeting moments. Can there be peace in scarcity? Yes, I think there can be, also, peace even when prosperity is but a dream. I’m going to try to find the photographer and properly credit him or her for the use of this powerful photograph.