Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Cassel

People tell me I exude joy and contribute to our world’s collective aching heart, a positive worldview (on most days). I used to blurt out to anyone even if he or she were talking about something not even remotely related to the death of one’s child, “I lost my son to heroin and alcohol,” and then for a dramatic effect “He was my only child.” One had a difficult time continuing the conversation without a whammy to those of tender heart, rendering them temporarily mute, then fumbling with the words. What do you say to a newly grieving mother or father? Are there words of comfort that you have anticipated your entire life for such a moment as this? I’ve stopped conversations dead in their tracks, from recipes for green bean casserole to existential meanderings with friends and colleagues. Bam! And the conversation dripped angst and deep, deep pain. I wore my grief like a shroud, a physical expression of grief. One could very well characterize my demeanor nearly four years ago as joyless.

I realize now, my friends and family were inept at comforting me because … how do you comfort a person who has lost a piece of herself, or himself? You can’t. You can ride out the storm with her. You can hold her as she weeps in your arms. You can listen as she pours out her heart in a subconscious desire to heal through purging … to anyone who’ll listen, even to strangers. I’ve learned to maintain. I still blurt on occasion, but now I do it to tell a victory story, the reclamation of myself. The creation of a life I love, in the face of the most supreme pain a person can feel, is a victory story. If I exude joy and positivity, it’s been hard-earned. I did the work through the muck and through the mire, through the pinched face and smeared mascara, through buckets and buckets of tears, and through the nights when I lay curled up in the fetal position during my worst dark night of the soul.

Grief is grueling work. Grief is exhausting and just when we think we’ve got it to a manageable level, something will trigger it and we’ll feel slightly out of control as we wrestle with ourselves to be okay and pull through, or to give in to the hopelessness that grief brings. Just like anger, here one minute and then two seconds later, it’s gone, the shock of a great loss floods us to the very core of our being, and then, the waters recede, and we regain our footing, and see the varying hues of healing: comfort, peace, acceptance, transformation and finally, transcendence.

If I exude joy, it’s because I’ve experienced the kind of loss for which there are not adequate words in any language to express the earth-shattering effects the death of my son has had on me, indeed, will always have on me. In comparison to a single day of incomprehensible emotional and physical pain, I’ll take the joy, please. See, those of us who grieve with intention toward healing, know the difference, intimately, between grief and acceptance. The glaring polarity on the emotional spectrum between grief and acceptance is a reality a person in grief will come to face time and time again. Like the REM song heralds, “Everybody hurts … some time.”

In my experience, acceptance of what was, what is forever lost, and what is possible, are the cornerstones of healing. Acceptance is, yes, in my estimation, surrender to a spiritual precept and to the impersonalization of random chance, as the great Rabbi Harold Kushner said in When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a book I highly recommend. People who know about my son’s death often ask me how I can be joyful when I’ve incurred such a devastating loss. One of my therapists gave me a recipe for a good life, of course an oversimplification, but he said, to have a happy life one must:

1. Have something to love;
2. Have something to do; and
3. Have something to look forward to.

I miss my son to the furthest reaches of the universe. Nothing will ever change this, but I’m still living, and I grew weary of being in pain all the time. I have many people and things I love. I have a job I adore. I look forward to all the possibilities contained in each day. I look forward to going to a job that is purposeful. I love being in seminary. I finally have answers to questions that have plagued me as I redefine my spiritual identity. Those answers heal me and compel me to share the knowledge that healing is eventual only insofar as one is willing to work toward claiming it for oneself. In no way am I suggesting that healing happens in the blink of an eye; it doesn’t.

The metaphor of the heart breaking is an apt image. I don’t understand the physiology of the physical pain that accompanies a great loss, but I know it’s real. I’ve experienced it. I revisit the different phases of my life, the women I’ve been, who I’ve had to say goodbye to with the passing of time and the acquisition of wisdom through the years. I’m grateful for some of the experiences I’ve had in my life, the loss of my son will never be one of them. We grow and change in our worldviews dependent upon how we respond to the tragedies in our lives. I was tired of being sad all the time. I begged the God of my understanding to take my pain away and to throw it in the deepest ocean, but that didn’t happen. I learned to navigate the dance between joy and visceral pain.

People ask grievers how they get over losing someone with whom they were intimately in love, a child, a spouse, a lover, a friend, a parent, an ideology. How does one move forward carrying a grief that will become merely manageable throughout the lifespan? I believe we take our pain, and we express it through any medium that brings awareness to it, either to ourselves or to those from whom we need a comforting word, a hug, a hand. I also think when we are healing or even, when we are healed, we want to share our emotional well-being with those who also are in grief. No (wo)man is an island … right?

The love of my son from his perfect vantage point fuels my desire to be whole, to grow, to change, to be a benefit, and to make him proud of his momma. Life is beautiful. The world can be ugly, but it is also magnificent. My son loved life. He enjoyed nature. He was filled with wonder about every single thing in the universe. I know I transmitted many of my personality traits to him. We celebrated every little ol’ thing. I couldn’t remain in the angst of grief and still have a wonderful life, a life that honors every good thing about my son. I had to move forward to be a good example to his son. I have purpose. I deserve to have a good life. Every day is a blessing. How could I not be joyful?

If you’re in grief tonight, please take care of yourself. Cry, and if your tears become overwhelming, reach out to someone, and if no one is available, just know that the dark night of the soul also has a sunrise.

by Sherrie Cassel

Our grandson goes home on Tuesday after being with us for the summer; it’s been a joy to have him with us. He is the son of my son who died six years and eight months ago. There are so many similarities they share, in addition to having the same birthday, which was yesterday, August 6^th. Bittersweet is how every single thing, experience, song, every wonder-filled thing in life – is described now. Yesterday was just such a day. I celebrated our grandson’s 13^th birthday, the seventh without his dad. There was joy and there was sadness. Our grandson picked up a candle and said, “Hey, it’s also my dad’s birthday. We should light this candle as bright as it can go for my dad.” He’s like his father in so many ways, and yet, he is his own person too. He’s not his father. He won’t make up for the loss of my son. Life will never be the same. The life I shared with everyone and everything previous to my son’s death is over.

I’ve had to build a new life, a life in which all things are new, different, bittersweet. Life is so wonderful and yet there are times when I still feel broken from losing my son. I have heart pangs from time to time when I hear a song or catch a whiff of his favorite cologne and his favorite cigar. I’m grateful for the happy times, more times than the tempestuous, but there certainly were tempests in each of us…and sometimes they collided. I’ve learned to let go of the regret. As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” He lived to be 32 and I was 52 when he died; we learned a lot in those years, and we loved each other fiercely, the way I love his son now.

No, life will never be the same; it hasn’t been, even though I’ve been able to stake a claim for a life of joy and acceptance of how things sometimes turn out. “Into every life a little rain must fall.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow~ No one escapes tragedy. Some people suffer their whole lives. Some people suffer for a season. There are reasonable explanations for the many ways there are to suffer in our world. The explanations can provide comfort, but not before they first present raw emotions of angst and physical and phantom pain.

Every single day is an adjustment period. I awaken from my sleep every morning with the knowledge that my son is gone. I go to bed every night with the knowledge that I haven’t heard his voice for six years and eight months. I go through the day with the knowledge that he is not experiencing a life in which he is whole and not self-destructive. There’s no amount of time during which I am not aware that he is gone. This knowledge makes life bittersweet. I relish the life I have, and then I mourn the loss of my beautiful son’s life because he is not here for me to share beautiful moments with.

His son is growing up without a father. My son grew up without a father. I grew up with a father, a broken and abusive father, which is to say, I grew up without a father who could love wholesomely and unconditionally. History repeats itself. My family has hit a few bumps in the road. The first significant loss was my father. The anger his children collectively held toward him was the glue that kept the family codependent and enmeshed. Grief was a daily experience in our lives. One can grieve the losses of time, security, and worth.

Our loss of my son, for the entire family, has been earthshattering, and as the mother, the only/single parent of a child who has died, I’ve come to realize that I’m not the only one who lost my son. We all did. Some of us haven’t spoken much about our feelings … we’re not that kind of family. I’ve reached out to my husband who has been my rock. I hope you each have someone who has been such a support for you. My younger brother has been here insofar as my existential questions closely following my son’s death. He never said a word; he just listened. I just needed to speak my whys out of my consciousness so I could detach from them and move forward.

I think whys keep us imprisoned to the pain of our losses. There are reasonable explanations for our losses, whether it’s cancer or cocaine, or. . . heroin. I find that those explanations comfort me and place me firmly on solid ground. When I’m tired, my brain reverts to old coping skills, sleeping so I don’t have to feel, shutting down emotionally, and isolation. Pain is an indication that something is wrong, whether it’s perpetrated by ourselves, or another person. When we allow ourselves to mourn our loss, the pain decreases one-hundred-fold the more we release it into the atmosphere, until it flows through us ever more lightly with each acknowledgement and release. I wish I could give you a timeline of how many revolutions of the cycle of pain one has to go through before the pain is trace most of the time, and it only emerges when one is hungry, angry, lonely or tired. I wish I could, but again, every day, and sometimes every second is an adjustment to a world without your loved one.

Yesterday, we had a cake for our grandson. We lit the 13 golden candles and sang to him. He blew them out and we munched on cake and ice cream. We had a pillow fight. We watched a superhero movie, and then I went to bed and missed my son. I’d been saving up the bittersweetness all day. I fell asleep like I have for 39 years, 32 while he was living and 6 and a half years posthumously, thinking about him. I have a difficult time thinking about him when he was a baby. I think of his laughter. His son doesn’t laugh as hard as his dad did. He’s been through some shit. My son had a laugh that shook the foundation of the earth – and that rocked my heart, all of it.

Laughter has returned to my alchemy of joy –.  Bittersweet. I have a memory of my son and I in which we drove all over National City singing the oldie song, “I’m your puppet” – and he was making up lyrics to the song and we laughed so hard I had to pull off the road because I couldn’t breathe. I wish I could  make our grandson laugh that hard, but he is his own person, with his own blend of grief. I remember shortly after his dad died he spent the night at our home in San Diego. I went to check on him and he was crying. He said, “I miss my daddy; he was the only one who could make me laugh.”

Maybe forgetting your loved one’s face or voice is a coping mechanism for some. I knew my son for 32 years. I memorized the contour of his face, his little pudgy fingers, his giant hands when he was a man. His joy. His heartbreak. His successes and when he didn’t do so well. I remember every little thing about him – from infancy to death.

Bittersweet.

By Sherrie Cassel

Our grandson has been staying with us for the summer. He goes home next Tuesday. He is the son of my son and my only child. As well as being overjoyed to have our grandson with us, as is everything forever more, this side of Heaven, is bittersweetness. Everything, every experience, every song, every beautiful thing in nature, the way the wind blows in the evening after a sweltering desert day, everything is a bittersweet experience. The experiences are bitter because my son is no longer here to share his time on this earth with me; and the moments are sweet because there are amazing memories, good and loving memories. While the addiction years were hell, the good memories carry me through. I love to say his name and talk about him, and share the good years, and there were many of them.

Sometimes a person can be a trigger for the pain we mostly suppress throughout our days, to get through each day. Our grandson is a reminder that life insists on moving forward. He is also a reminder that my son’s memory is fading in the one person he loved most in the universe. The knowledge of this is difficult. I will never forget my son, barring dementia or Alzheimer’s. His face, his voice, his scent, his laughter, oh my God, his laughter is forever imprinted in my head, heart, and soul.

Do you get sad when people you love have a difficult time hearing you say your loved one’s name because they’re afraid you’ll have a meltdown? Have you learned to shelve your meltdowns until they’re convenient for your new life? I’m not saying it’s easy, or even necessary, to hold off on a meltdown. I still have them from time to time, but my life has suddenly gotten really busy, and being busy keeps me from having overwhelming emotions on a regular basis. Oh, my heart hurts all the time. Missing my son is a constant. I wish I could hear him telling me all about his day. I miss him more than there are words to describe the longing, but, again, life insists on being lived.

I will hold on to my son’s memory for the rest of my life, and I will keep my son’s memory alive in his son when he’s ready to remember him. He was six when his daddy died. Their birthday is Saturday, August 6^th. They have the same birthday. I will cry and I will celebrate on Saturday; this is how it’s been since my son died, this side of Heaven. On his birthday, I’ll take a few private moments, and I will take out his baby t-shirt and hold it to my chest, and I will weep on the day of his birth. So many memories in our 32 years together. I should be grateful for 32 years because some parents didn’t get to have as long with their children. I’m blessed for the time, even the tough years, because we loved each other desperately during those years too.

Memories can bless us, and they can torture us. My son’s name is Rikki. He was my best friend and the only child I will ever have. I’m blessed with a piece of him through our grandson, and I’m grateful. Our grandson is the light of our lives, certainly because he is my son’s son, but mostly because he is an amazing kid. He’s been through so much, and yet, he’s gentle, kind, loving, funny, and generous, just like his father. Seeing our grandson without a father during some very important events and experiences is difficult to see. I’m sure those experiences are tough for our grandson too.

I sometimes forget that I’m not the only one who is hurting. Other people loved my son too. Others love your loved one too. I’ve mourned with my husband and my younger brother. We need to turn to people who are secure enough to handle our pain because they’re not afraid of theirs. Not everyone is, and I don’t fault them. I’m just careful to not share or to not lose it with them. They love me; they’re just not equipped to handle someone’s darkness, and that’s okay. Each person adds an element of what he or she is capable of in our lives, just as we add an element of what we are capable of in others’ lives.

I’m intellectualizing right now, a well-honed coping mechanism; it’s easier than hurting as the birthday approaches. I know intellectualization is a common coping mechanism, and it’s a good one too. I try to not lapse into the practice when a meltdown is necessary, and sometimes they are. Cry, cry, cry, and then pick ourselves up by the bootstraps; save the overflow of tears for another day. I asked our grandson if he remembered his daddy, and he said he couldn’t remember his face or his voice anymore. I held my shit together when he said this. I smiled and said, “That’s okay, Honey. If you ever want to see videos of your daddy, just let me know. I have a bunch of them.” He’s not ready yet. The absence his daddy left will affect his worldview and his little tender heart for the rest of his life. My son touched so many lives.

As you mourn the loss of your loved one, reach out to those who loved him or her, and share your memories, when you have time for some raw emotions. I think it’s important to create a life in which you are a healer, a helper, and a person who offers hope to those who are hurting, from the death of a loved one, or some other difficulties someone may have.

Helping someone else is the fast-track to healing yourself. You’ll see. When you’re able to help someone through the death of a loved one because of your personal experience with the temporary phase of mourning and how you’re successfully navigating the grief process, your heart will heal a little at a time too. Who better to help someone through a tragedy than someone who shares a common experience?

The private site I share with a great group of parents has been my saving grace. I was alone when my son died. I needed a peer-to-peer group with people who shared the loss of a child to addiction, and I began to heal because of the complete and utter understanding of others who share a common experience. Find your grief niche. You will heal in great leaps and bounds if you have someone with whom to share your broken heart. Trust me on this.

I learned to not burden my friends, none of whom, gratefully, have lost a child. Social workers and interfaith chaplains are great resources to launch yourself into healing, because they deal with grief routinely. I will need someone to talk with on Saturday, for a bit. My husband is my person of choice. He has been so amazing with me since my son died.

I’m blessed for so many reasons, even with the greatest loss of a parent’s life; life is beautiful. Our world is awesome. People are wonderful. As the meme says, “We’re all just walking each other home.” My light had dimmed to barely perceptible after my son died; it’s taken six and half years to rebuild myself. I can relate if this is where you are right now, and I want to offer you some hope. Work the grief process. Read everything you can on grief and healing. Write your pain, put it out there, speak out of your consciousness what doesn’t aid your healing. Fill your mind with self-love and self-compassion.

I can encourage you to find something you can hold on to as you mourn for your loved one, but I can’t tell you what will be best for you. I know what’s worked for me, and what continues to work for me, except on those days when I know the dam must burst. I just know I can’t stay there. I did collapse for three and a half years. I collapsed unto emotional paralysis. I stopped growing. I wasn’t healing. If this is where you are, please reach out to someone, message me, and see number below if you’re really having a rough time, and nothing you do on a personal level is helping you move forward.

Send me love and light and prayers as my son and grandson’s birthday approaches. I’m feeling strong today. I hope you are too.

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline | SAMHSA

Rebirthing Relationships by Sherrie Ann Cassel – Centering Grief Resources

By Sherrie Cassel

I’m not retirement age, but I’ve been away from work and people for eleven years. The last nearly three years of pandemic cautionary procedures, I’ve not been in large or small crowds. A new job and seminary can be a huge adjustment period. I’m used to pretty much my own schedule, which is to say, it’s not rigid or uniform. I’m used to a midday nap. I’m used to leisure time whenever I feel like taking it. Being hired at 60 is both amazing and I am so grateful; however, it is also an adjustment. I found myself falling asleep during my regular nap time at work. I left work and told my grandson and husband I was going to take a nap before dinner, and I slept for five hours. I don’t know if I’m getting sick or just exhausted from a new schedule. I’ve tested for COVID twice and I am vaccinated, twice and with the first booster, so I’m hoping I’m not an anomaly by being a breakthrough case.

I can’t really talk about my job other than to say, I love it, and the people are wonderfully loving and supportive with each other. New staff is treated with compassion and kind professionalism. I feel so blessed. I’m hoping I’m better by next week. I don’t want to miss a single day of training.

As you know, I just turned 60 in June. I had many epiphanies, boom, boom, one right after the other. The main thing is, I’ll never be young again this side of Heaven. I will one day be forced to really retire even though I will not want to. As long as I keep moving forward, I won’t settle into grief like I did in those first three and a half years. As long as I continue to create purpose in my life, I will keep on going, and the amazing thing is, as a chaplain, I can work until I drop. Listening to people in their darkest hours is not how I saw my life, especially as my life is winding down. But the God of my understanding has called me out of my grief and out of my idleness to help others.

Am I scared? Nervous? You betcha. I wouldn’t be effective if I didn’t healthfully model the ability to feel an emotion and especially when it’s an overwhelming emotion, that you can ride it out and be okay after reaching critical mass. Trust me, it took me years to learn that, and I will learn it and relearn it for the rest of my life. People are far more fragile than we wish we were. I thought I was strong and could handle anything. When I lost my son, I learned that I was not tough as nails. I found out I was really quite fragile. The loss of my son broke me. Six years and nearly seven months have passed since my son left this world and broke my heart. So, I know what it’s like to be broken, and… I know what it’s like to be healed.

I know, like Mother Teresa intimated, I was broken wide open, and the whole world fell in. I hold no illusions that everyone can be helped this side of Heaven, but anyone can be loved, even those some may think of as irredeemable. I’ve been reading a book about Job from the Hebrew Bible, from an entirely novel perspective. As I read, I found tremendous wisdom about suffering in our world. Some people get mad at the God who, in my theology, gets let off the hook. Humankind has miles, perhaps one-hundred generations to go before we love each other and don’t hurt each other because might will no longer be right. Well, maybe not this side of Heaven, and certainly not in my lifetime.

Again, things break us from time to time – but we also heal, in time – which makes the experience navigable. As you all know, we are at the mercy of random chance when tragedy strikes. No one deserves it, but it happens to the person of great wealth (Richard Cory) and it happens to those of the most humble means. Everything does not happen for a “reason” – things happen, and we are left to repurpose a life that has been seismically shifted.

When your worldview is blasted to smithereens, or your safety and security in this world have been violated, the world can seem unkind, and sometimes it is. Some people suffer their entire lives, and some for a shorter amount of time, but not unscathed. Just as people are fragile, however, sometimes we soar above the chaos and painful experiences. We create, or as I see it, we co-create a life of worth, value, and purpose.

So, no, I’m not ready to retire yet. I may never be. My heart still aches for the loss of my beautiful and tortured son, but the loss no longer immobilizes me into chronic mourning, the kind that will keep me down if I don’t keep going. A lot of time for a lot of rumination is not good for me. I have thirty-two years of memories with my son. The sound of seagulls makes me weep. The song from the Music Man, “Goodnight my Someone” slays me because I sang it to my son when he was an infant. Any song by Bread, even though he wasn’t born yet when Bread was a thing, and he would have hated their music. I smile sometimes when I think of him and other times I cry. It’s a crapshoot. If anything, I’m much more fragile than I was before, softer, less hardass. My heart hurts every time I see a person struggling, and I want to help, and if I can, I will.

Retirement? Not at 60. As long as I’m this side of Heaven, I will always try to accept the purpose for my life thus far, and I will keep moving forward, learning, living, and loving.

By Sherrie Cassel

I encourage everyone to find a medium that works for him or her. I’m not feeling all that grand, but not being able to shake this fever, or sleep, I find comfort in my coping mechanism as I pour words out onto a page. If you ever want to share the fruit of your creativity, please, message me and I would love to. We each express grief in various ways. I welcome yours.

As a veteran griever, I’ve read countless books on grief and even though I’m the griever, I’ve read books about how to help other grievers. David Kessler’s book on The Sixth Stage, When Bad Things Happen to Good People by the Rabbi Harold Kushner, and now Daryl Potter’s book which shows a different side of grief and about the people, well-intentioned, who don’t know how to comfort us, except by using what he calls the Standard Version, a theological ideology that assumes suffering is brought about by our behavior, what some people call “sin”. I don’t aim to proselytize on my page, but this book is just so accessible, even in its academic tone. If you’re not familiar with the story of Job, it is about supreme loss and confusion about why people suffer. Potter’s book has helped me to understand how people have arrived at the misconception that we bring suffering on ourselves. Not so. If you’re fortunate enough to have friends who love you, even in their ignorance of your grief, even if they espouse the Standard Version of why people suffer, I can rest assured that I did nothing to bring the loss of my son to my life. We can have our hearts shattered in any number of ways. Everybody grieves at some point. Find comfort where you can. Find comfort through the God of your understanding. Find comfort with friends who are willing to learn a new theology, or a new philosophy about why suffering occurs in our world. Potter’s book, because Potter knows a thing or two about grief and supreme life challenges, has touched me and empowered me to not be a victim. As they say, “Shit happens” — and we’re left with the fallout, but not without the gift of healing from wherever you gain personal strength. Even if you’re not a “Christian” — the book addresses the kind of grief that no one wants, but the kind of grief that makes us question the chaos in our world and yet, provides a level of comfort that I’ve not found elsewhere. Thank you, Daryl, for your gift of writing, the wisdom that has come from your self-examination, and for the clarity with which you help others, myself included, to remain hopeful and liberated. –SAC–

By Sherrie Cassel

Good morning, readers, fellow grievers, friends and family. This morning I wanted to share a little about my experience in self-examination through the grief process. I’ve had six years and seven months to navigate the process, even though with my son having been so dreadfully ill from years of addiction, I began the grief process long before he died. There were other losses I had not grieved until I became grief; I exuded it. When I focused on anything it was grief-related, but strangely, the grief was expansive, like a deep, dark, weathered wooden treasure chest. There was something at the bottom, but there were so many other jewels to examine before I reached the bottom, where I had no idea at the time, peace, joy, and transcendence were waiting for me.

Not everyone agrees that family of origin issues arise throughout the lifespan, some good behaviors are modeled and some dysfunctional and maladaptive; trust me, I know about the latter, and it’s taken me six decades to see the need for the former. Life is one giant lesson and in each phase of our lives, we adapt, we transform, and if we’re very fortunate, we transcend the things that have dragged us down and stunted our personal and spiritual development.

Tragedy strikes and we’re left with a time of grief and adjustment for however long it takes to reach a level of healing that affords us joy and peace. Everyone is different. I’ve learned so much from the brave souls at various grief sites, including two I manage. I’ve read the most humbling wisdom and watched these parents heal, grow, and thrive. I’m inspired by them daily.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experiences. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a social worker. If I have any expertise in anything, it is that I’m extremely well-read (facts and connections) and I have successfully grieved for six years and seven months. I’m an interfaith chaplain-in-training. In the beginning of my grief process, I was an emotional wreck. I mean, really, a wreck. I agonized and ruminated on my loss, on my son’s last thoughts, on why, why, why did God take my son? I had thought I had worked through my victim-thinking. I have been in and out of therapy for the past 40 years to work through my family of origin issues, and an external issue that has affected me for 53 years. I thought I had worked through all the whys in my life. There is an answer to every question, right?

For me, and only in retrospect, can I now see how the victim mentality was not beneficial to growing through the pain of my life-altering loss. I suppose we haven’t evolved far enough away from creating victims in our society to see the need to release the collective victim mentality. I am speaking only to my own experience. For my childhood, I was a victim of domestic violence (DV); as an adult who has spent the time in therapy and in intense self-examination, I am no longer a victim. I’m a thriver.

I thought I had worked through all the victim stuff before I lost my son, but it turns out, when our lives are destabilized, old coping mechanisms that are embedded deep in our brains from as early as in utero environmental conditions, and that have helped us respond to stressful moments, and helped us to survive arise. My brain, during the interminable why stage of my grief process, in my opinion, was intensified by the victim-thinking strategy I learned as a child.

Rationally speaking, six years and seven months, I know why my son died. I can even tell you why he started using. They are all reasonable explanations, even though they are often not comforting, except in the sense that there are answers, and sometimes a reasonable answer is enough to help you breathe through your loss. In the phase of the existential whys, there were no answers, and like the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, no matter what I asked, the answer just left me with more whys, and with no resolution, “vanity, vanity, [what’s the use?]”.

My son died because he became addicted to drugs. He used drugs because he was in a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain. He was in a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain because he’d had a very rough beginning, family of origin issues, historical trauma, a biological father who abandoned him at 11 months old and who never looked back, and a tempestuous last relationship that destroyed him the rest of the way. Old wounds that he never dealt with except through maladaptive self-soothing. Those things killed him, and it helps, and it hurts to know. I have answers. I may not like them all the time, but I have them.

I didn’t lose my son because God needed to teach me something, or because God needed a new angel, or because of any one single thing. My son died because of a combination of things, all with sad and reasonable explanations and consequences. I used to get really frustrated when well-meaning people, including the chaplain who came to Rikki’s room the night he died, tried to comfort me, because there is truly nothing that can be said. If someone had said to me the day after he died that life would be hell for a while and then I’d start to get better, I wonder if I would have heard her or him. I wonder.

I know the more I read on healing through grief, the more I engage in healthy (not dark rumination) self-examination, the more I participate in things that feed my soul, the more wonderful and emotionally sound people I surround myself with, the more I heal, change, and transcend, self-actualize, become a part of the Whole. If I remain a victim in my life, my grief will be at the mercy of my self-imposed victim-mentality. The whys under this type of framing are unmerciful and unrelenting, and they are also personally and spiritually growth-inhibiting.

I know this. I stagnated for three and a half years. I gained weight. I sat staring into space. I wailed daily, paced the floor, shaking my fist at God, or burdening people who loved me with needing them to come up with answers that might temporarily comfort me. Neither of those things helped. Only time and healing work would help.

I don’t know if there has been research done on those who are either unaware of their victim-thinking, or unwilling to relinquish it and how they fare with the grieving process in comparison with those who are more self-aware. Interesting. I know that once I turned the corner from victim to victor, the victor-mentality would carry me through to clarity about my son’s death, and this would bring me to a place of comfort and help me to find peace about my son’s death.

See, it’s hard to heal when your greatest grief is buried underneath all the ways we pretty up our experience, so others won’t have to deal with our grief, and maybe even so we don’t have to. Grief is ugly. Grief is painful. Grief sometimes feels hopeless, as if you’ll never feel good again. Remember all you’re worth and give your victor-self permission to come out and take you through the rest of your life.

There are stages of grief, thanks to Kübler-Ross. The model has worked well, but as we awaken to our own grief experiences and see grief is not linear, but a crazy entanglement and fight to the death for your life, true healing is ours. I know when I’m hungry, angry, lonely or tired (HALT), my first line of defense is the infernal, Why me? The strategy worked for me once upon a time; it doesn’t anymore.

Since I’m learning about myself through self-examination, from birth to present day, the grief process is more of a journey toward self and spiritual development. I sometimes relapse into the self-tormenting whys, but at least I can see myself heading down a road where grief is not manageable, and I can turn around and try to find a comfortable place to rest until the light doesn’t hurt my eyes anymore. There are days when the light dims and I need to be there from time to time, but we belong in the light, even in grief.

By Sherrie Cassel

How many times did you bring me seaweed from the ocean?

I recall a mountain of it when you brought pieces of it to me

like a bouquet of flowers stolen from the neighbor’s yard.

Sshh, it’s a secret.

Searching for sand crabs, urging you to not go any deeper

because I could not swim to save you if you were drowning.

I couldn’t. I tried to save you from drowning in your pain

and the drugs that assuaged it for a brief high, but never long enough.

You were a phenomenal swimmer.

but you couldn’t save yourself either.

You got caught up in the rip tide and it pulled you under

over and over again, until you were lost, without

a template for how to navigate the deadly current.

I watched you from the shore. You were so far away and I

just couldn’t get to you. I did not know how to navigate

loving a son so much it hurt, loving a son so much and

being powerless to swim out to save you.

I begged you not to go too deep. A Jewish psychiatrist

told me in her faith tradition, we choose our own trajectory,

and you chose yours; that hurt to hear, even though

you thought you were Poseidon.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

There’s a story in the New Testament of the Christian Bible which speaks about a person who owed the King a substantial amount of money. When he went before the King, the King had mercy on him and forgave him his debt. When this same debtor had the opportunity to forgive a person who owed him money, he refused. The King became very angry and threw him in the debtor’s prison. I’ve always loved the story. An inability or unwillingness to forgive is a harsh reality in many of our lives. The more wounded we are, the more difficult it is to forgive. I have had unforgiveable assaults in my life, and while I carry the scars and intermittent rage at the loss of a sense of security, I no longer rage at the world or people I love. I find healthy ways to self-soothe and decompress.

I don’t know if forgiveness is what I’ve achieved with people who have hurt me or who have hurt my son, including me, or if I’ve totally achieved self-forgiveness now that I have come to terms with all the ways I’ve fucked up in my life. Like the King in the story above, who am I to judge? I don’t mean this in a way that keeps me a victim; but I am so less than perfect that grace is what I’ve found for myself and for those who have hurt me and my son. Grace through the most hardcore self-examination, a phase in which I took a really long hard look at myself, working alongside therapists who helped me to untangle the mess I was.

Forgiveness, I heard in an adult enrichment class, is a process. The first time I heard this, I thought, “Wow. Yes!” But in the eight or nine years since then, my perspective has morphed from one of process to one of practice, from the inside out. One has to heal her own individual wounds before she can forgive those of others. In my opinion, understanding transforms into forgiveness and with that a journey toward radical compassion, and perhaps, forgiveness is the sum of self-examination.

I understand more than I did as recently as yesterday. We’re constantly learning about ourselves, the world, and our place in it. We also learn about why and how we choose friends and/or life partners. Relationship issues arise under the best of circumstances, spats, misunderstandings, hurt feelings. However, when you’re fraught with unfinished business, the kind that may have caused you trauma and stunted development, there is hypervigilance and hypersensitivity, to pretty much everything. Once we awaken to the pain of our traumatic or hurtful past, we can speak it out of our consciousness, at least enough to have a wonderful life, one in which we are not constantly overreacting or questioning what we see and/or know to be true, because we believe in the goodness in ourselves and in safe others. For those who are not safe, we can release them into their dysfunction; it’s not our responsibility to fix them. Fixing ourselves must be the priority. If our behavior is harmful to ourselves or others, something is amiss in the potential paradise that is ours.

I’m not suggesting that forgiveness, however you define it, as process or practice, is a requirement for a good life. Some people never forgive their perpetrators or those who have hurt them in other ways and live perfectly fine lives. For me, however, life is much richer now that I have an understanding of others’ wounds from which every reaction prompts an overreaction. Trust me; I know. I lived there for a very long time.

Radical understanding has led to radical compassion. Some of those who have hurt me and/or my son have been written off for my own protection. Some I love enough to help them find their healthy self and work at a more understanding and kind communicative relationship. My light must be used now for the betterment of my relationships with my fellow persons and society.

I’ve worked hard to be a happy person, not toxically positive, but truly happy, knowing, because I KNOW about loss and supreme grief, that random chance could hit me with another tragedy, or life can sometimes offer only challenges, or any number of things that might take the wind out of my sails. Life isn’t always smooth sailing; I know this now, and while no one likes to have to deal with tragedy, frustrations, or fresh wounds, they each occur periodically throughout our lives. Bumps in the road, mountains to climb, tragedies are just part of life. Once reality is truly on our radar, we can deal with those things without being shattered when they arise.

The truth of the matter is that those who have hurt me and my precious son, including myself, wish that we could have done better and had we known better, we would have. Had we better experiences, the kind that nurture and don’t hurt, we’d still have occasional dips to normalize, but our responses would be less reactive and more healthily deliberate. We’d still also have mountainous challenges to sort through, but we’d shed our victim mentality and take charge of our lives, our healing, and healing our relationships, even those relationships in which the person has passed. The Ninth Step of Alcoholics Anonymous is one that encourages making amends. I’m sure it’s mentioned in other sacred texts as well. In my opinion, I don’t believe one can begin to truly make amends until he or she is healed enough to see the need. I could be wrong.

I had to wake up. Life was passing me by. I was wounded. I’m scarred, and those scars are something I am always mindful of, but am I reacting to an old wound, or can I respond from a mind that lives rationally in the present moment? That’s an important question to answer for oneself.

I love the sunrise in the tranquil quiet before my husband and grandson awaken. I have my coffee. I spend time in contemplation, and I ask for the grace of the God of my understanding to get through a day in which I am consciously in the present moment, working to remain so in every event that occurs in my life.

Wholeness is hard-earned. Finding wholeness is a process. One step forward, sometimes two or three steps back. But if we keep moving forward, even when we fall back into old coping mechanisms, life can be glorious, despite the wounds. Trust me on this.