Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

“Life is just a lesson

Time is a perception

Love will cure depression

This is my confession

You are my obsession

You are my obsession

You are my obsession[…]

“You are My Obsession” ~Trevor Something~ (sic)

What can be worse than the occasional time of retrospection? Rumination. After my son died, I collected every mistake I ever made with him and ruminated about what a horrible person I was to not be a perfect person in his life. Even insignificant things like making him nuke his own Hot Pockets when he was ten…or something as damaging as things said in the heat of a dysfunctional moment when addiction is the center of your world and there is no escape, save for death or recovery. I thought about things I should have said, those damnable “should haves.” I thought about crimes of commission and crimes of omission. Not actual crimes, but metaphorical ones, true fuck ups, whatever the causation or … reason. I hemorrhaged over my sins until I had no strength left .

I felt every tear my son ever shed, and I ached in my heart for any of the pain I ever caused him, and I took on his pain from everyone who had ever hurt him. I took on the weight of his world as well as my darkened world, and I was a total wreck for the first three and a half years of the grieving process. I’d do well, and then like a person addicted to a substance, I’d relapse into deep and complicated grief, and I wouldn’t be able to function for a few days, a week, a month…

I’ve read a countless number of books on grief. I’ve grieved for six years next week. If I have any expertise in life about anything, it is about grieving the loss of a child. One of the things I can say about the curse of rumination, is that the act extends your deep, visceral pain, far longer than it needs to. Certainly, we made mistakes with our loved ones, but in my heart of hearts, I know how much my son loved me and I him, and our love for each other was always hopeful that the other one was happy.

I see this in retrospect. If you had a turbulent relationship with your loved one, the deep mourning period can last longer than is necessary. Crying, withdrawing, and even raging, are all a part of the grief journey, and it is a journey. You will change and grow and transcend your pain. I think sometimes when I go to that place of rumination it’s a way for me to prove to myself that I haven’t forgotten the loss, even though I’ve moved on with my life. If I can just hold on to a piece of my son, even if it’s a painful piece, I haven’t really moved on. How could I? How could I ever move on? But I am doing just that; I’m moving on. Whenever I find myself ruminating on something painful about the disease and the death, I allow myself to feel it, deeply. I may even shed a tear or clutch my chest for a moment, but then the moment passes, and I find a more beautiful thought to replace the dark thought, and I resume my life.

Choosing to move forward with our lives is not forgetting about our loved ones. Neither do we have to hold on to the painful pieces of their lives to hold on to them. Even the most painful of experiences can yield bright, orange poppies, or deep red roses, or sunbursts of enlightenment in our consciousness. I know a thing or two about pain and loss. My greatest treasure was my son. He’s gone now and I’m left with a world full of wonder and the compulsion to find my purpose or purposes. How many lifetimes do we live during our years here?

If being in chronic pain is the only way to hold on to my son’s memory, then as Etta said long ago, “I’d rather be blind” to those memories. My son was an amazing person in brains and communication skills. He was funny. Oh my God, how he made me laugh. He was kind, loving, and loyal to a fault. These are the things I want to ruminate on. The good stuff. In the beginning of my grief journey, the pain kept my relationship with my son alive, but at every turn I was aching deep in my soul. To be honest, the good memories, in the beginning, weighed me down too. Everything was bittersweet; everything is still bittersweet. The difference now is I acknowledge the bitterness and then I reach like a child on the monkey bars testing my reach — for the swing that will take me to freedom.

Ruminating about any regrettable words, neglect of the relationship from time to time, or any thought that lengthens your mourning period, is counterproductive. Regret is inevitable. Long-term rumination about our imperfections accomplishes nothing but guilt, and guilt is a killer, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

We must look for different analogies, those that elicit warmth, comfort, and healing. I could choose to reconstruct over and over again in my mind the addiction years with my son, the physical sickness, the emotional hellfire during the maelstrom of his disease, and I did for a while, during the “Why?” phase of my grief process. Asking the unanswerable is a characteristic of holding on to pain through rumination.

There are some things from which to move away, we must loosen our grip on the idea that letting go is forgetting about our loved one or forgetting the monumental hole they left in our lives; it’s not. Loosening our grip on the painful memories, including the day we said goodbye, is the first sign you are healing. Healing is the goal after a loss. Letting go is the beginning of liberation from the things that hurt us.

I had a friend who is also a therapist ask me during the eye of my son’s storm why I ruminated on the possibility that I was going to lose him, and I didn’t have an answer. I was just one more terrified parent of an addicted child. Six years later I have an answer for my friend, F.K., I don’t need to ruminate. We grieve throughout our lives for different losses, some are grieved for a brief time, some only momentarily, and sometimes, we grieve for so long we lose our way to joyful living.

There are so many wonderful texts out there from different cultures and different religions, and I have my own personal favorites, in new wineskins. This verse in the Judeo-Christian Bible comforts me when I’m about to go down that dark tunnel of rumination.

Philippians 4:8

Modern English Version

Finally, brothers[and sisters], whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, [ruminate] on these things.

And so, I do.

Next Saturday will be six years my Rikki has been gone. I went through hell and back until I was able to normalize my pain and return to emotional homeostasis over those past six years. Learning to live in the world without my son in a way that makes my heart soar when I think of him took work. Forcing a flower out of a failure is the best we can do when faced with our imperfections. Maya Angelou reminds us that “When we know better, we do better.” Yeah, do that. Live your life forward. Deal with your pain so you can let it go and it will no longer command you.

Cut yourself some slack. None of us is born with all the knowledge that will make life easily navigable or the secret that will assure that relationships will always be rosy, or how to manage when someone we love more than life itself dies and we are left with the knowledge we will never see them again. We fumble every step of the way and depending on where you come in on life’s inevitable dirge, you stay in the decrescendo or you reach the pinnacle note, a crescendo you can ride all the way to the other side of pain.

Whatsoever…and so it goes.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

This blog was originally developed to share my secrets for how to navigate grief, how to tame it, how to make it work for you, and how to work joy back into your life. I’ve mostly done that; I hope. I’ve been tangential and discussed things that have nothing to do with grief, my deepest apologies. I still have shit to work through, and I’m so grateful that I have tamed grief enough to get to a place where I can focus on the present moment – away from my distant, hellish childhood, all the way into a future ripe with possibilities.

There really are no secrets to rediscovering joy. When you work your grief process, and again, it is the hardest work you will ever do, reclaiming your life, soaring beyond your grief, into a life of purpose are your gifts through the gruel. My son, heart of my heart, will be gone six years on January 22^nd at 5:55 p.m. He was my only child in a single parent home. We had a tempestuous relationship, but we adored each other, and before he died, we were able to work through a lot. Regrets? Of course. I’d be lying if I said I had none (and I’ve actually heard some say they actually have no regrets). None of us does everything perfectly, some by design and some through ignorance, and we are our own worst critics, for sure.

Lessening our regrets’ grip on us is a step toward healing and through healing, rediscovering joy. I truly believe our ability to heal is correlative with our own emotional health and with it, the possibility for a well-developed resiliency. If you’ve got years of emotional shit to deal with from before you lost your loved one, you’ll find that it resurfaces further complicating a grief process already wrought with complexities.

I’ve worked through much of my dysfunctional behavior – not without vestiges of occasional high-risk behavior, mostly the creation of stress, when a deep breath will solve the whole mess. However, my son died when I was fifty-three, and by this time in my life I’d had the good fortune to heal from my childhood. My purpose is not to rehash it; I’m tired of my own story. My purpose is to tell you that even at 53, when my son died, I was still working through issues of some duration, and so when he died, I had some serious shit to deal with already and then, grief entered the picture.

If you’re having a difficult time, I mean, a crippling time with grief, call a therapist. Find out why the pain has lasted for so long and with such intensity, the kind that makes it impossible to experience joy. My mourning period lasted too long retrospectively. I sat on the couch for three years, staring out into space, adjusting to my monumental loss. I know many of you have done the very same thing, I hope for not as long as I did. In hindsight I believe I experienced complicated grief as I allowed myself to be entombed by it for too long. At some point, it took every ounce of strength I had, to move forward with my life.

I’m a lover of language so a neologism must be really good for me to respect it, however, here’s one I found to be an adequate description of self-direction: choiceful. My husband, a retired English/Theatre teacher, of course, hates it. But I find it to be accurate. We may not have had choices as children, or certainly, we had no power over keeping our loved one from dying, but those of us who’ve survived, what liberation, to be free from the chains of our aberrant childhood, our painful experiences, and have choices.

The grief process is an absolute must; you can’t run or hide from it. When you lose a loved one, there is a very painful adjustment period. You are in pain. You are in the fetal position, numb, and inconsolable. I read in a book early in my grief, immediately following my son’s death, that grief and mourning are two different animals. Mourning is the period during which we are entombed in our grief. We need to grieve our loss; death is final in this world. How could we not mourn? One day, for those of you who feel as if you’re working hard to see beyond your grief, you realize there is more to life than mourning. We are the only ones who can set ourselves free from constant pain, which is intense during the mourning phase. Trust me, I have no expertise in the discipline of psychology (only a Bachelor of Science degree) as a seminary student. So, I can speak only from the point of view of a person who has survived the mourning phase. I must admit, it was tough. I never ran out of tears as I cried every single day for a year, then anger, then numbness, the absolute detonation of my entire world view, my ego, and my heart and soul. Some of you may have different analogies than mine, but I know that losing someone is life-altering, transformative, both healthily and unhealthily. I made the choice for the former.

I lived enshrouded in darkness for three years. I didn’t laugh. Sometimes I had to shut down and not feel; laughing is doable, after a spell. I awakened at the 3.5-year mark. Everyone’s timetable is different. In retrospect, I now think my mourning phase lasted longer than was necessary, and had I been emotionally healthy, the time would have been shorter. I genuinely believe this. I can tell you only about my journey. I welcome you sharing your own experience.

Trust me, as you do the work to heal, one day, it will be like spring for you. There will be grief, certainly; losing our loved one is a monumental experience. But one day, you’ll notice the world is in color again, bright, beautiful colors. You’ll be able to remember your loved one with mostly beautiful memories, and the pang in your heart won’t double you over anymore. Healing is tough work. Physician, heal thyself.* I believe we, both secular and other faith traditions, are the only ones who can heal ourselves. Self-talk is important. What do you tell yourself in moments of pain? Do you say, “I miss him/her so much and it hurts, and I must feel this pain, and then I must let it go.” In the first three years after I lost my son, I cried at the drop of a hat. Opening a jar of pickles had me sobbing because my giant son was the mighty warrior with pickle jar opening prowess. I can laugh about it now, how he came to my rescue when his physical strength became mightier than mine.

What makes you weep? One day, will you able to function in the amazing life that awaits you? Are you ready to allow the pain of your loss to transform you into an emotionally stretched new you? How can you do that? I read everything I could get my hands on about the grieving process; this works for those who intellectualize emotional issues. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with this method; if it works for you (for a time) then it is right for you. However, intellectualizing to the point of not allowing the floodgates of grief to burst, I don’t believe is helpful. I know, I did it for a while too, and then I sobbed until I couldn’t cry anymore; I was just exhausted.

This site is about rediscovering joy.I’m more focused now. My emotions are not all over the place. I don’t cry every day anymore. I reach for and create joyful moments at every opportunity. I have days when the longing still hurts; I breathe, meditate, or pray through it and then allow the healing to wash over me as I reclaim my life. Mourning can last so long, sometimes too long, e.g., my three-year sentence. I certainly took my time with it. Perhaps it was the right amount of time – for me. How long is too long to mourn? I suppose too long is when your behavior is no longer good for you, i.e., emotional health, physical health, i.e., neglecting your hygiene and/or personal needs, or your most important relationships are affected negatively. Sometimes we distance ourselves from those who love us and want to help us find our way back into the world again, a completely different world without your loved one.

When I’m feeling the loss intensely, I put on some music that either gets me dancing or allows me to weep for my loss. My personal experience compels me to share the transformative power of pain. How do we use it to that end? I strongly encourage you to read David Kessler’s book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. After the shock wears off in all its manifestations, we begin to heal. How am I doing it? I educated myself about grief, both academic journals, and by reading those who had personal experience with my specific loss. I sought grief therapy (unsuccessfully – I recommend seeing a LCSW; they deal with grief all the time). I reconnected with the God of my understanding in a way that has led me all the way to seminary in its interfaith chaplaincy program. I started a Facebook page for those who share a common loss with me. I found purpose in my pain. I don’t believe all things happen for a reason; I call bullshit on that asinine presumption. I believe things/shit happens and we are left to pick up the pieces of our shattered selves after the loss of a loved one with whom we were intensely involved, a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child, etc. Further, Kessler is right about the rainbow after the storm, as are the many authors I’ve read surrounding the topic of grief. Knowledge can heal too. Read as much as you can about grief. The internet is a great resource for those in mourning, long- or short-term.

Discover your passions and your life purpose. Choose a new career. Go back and finish that degree you started before your heart was broken. Norman Cousins said, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Hang out with those who make you laugh; trust me, it helps, especially on those days when you feel the foreboding darkness getting ready to envelop you in mourning again. Certainly, shed those tears, and then reach for that brass ring of joy.

Ecclesiastes 3:4-14 4

There is a time to cry and a time to laugh. There is a time to be sad and a time to dance.

I’ve had my dancing shoes on for 2.5 years. I sing a new song and I’ve moved beyond the dirge. Trust me when I tell you, you’ve got this. You really do.

* Luke 4:23

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

And so here we find ourselves; it’s Christmas Eve – again. As a veteran griever, my son will have been gone 6 years on January 22, 2022 @ 5:55 p.m., I’ve learned to navigate the bittersweetness that is now part of me, a part I carry with me every day into every moment for the rest of my life. I have a grandson, the son of my beautiful son; they have the same birthday. Chance? Yes, of course. I cried the first two years after my son passed, both sets of holidays. I’d wrap presents and I’d cry. I’d see our grandson’s delight and I’d get misty-eyed. I still get misty-eyed when I hear “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash. There are some songs I haven’t been able to listen to since he died. The lights, the sparkle, the joy on little kids’ faces and all the community events that bring us closer together are so magical, for lack of a better word. Even if the reason for your season isn’t the Christian Christmas story for you, the world is glittered in silver and gold, and we can be enchanted by the festive dress of our globe across cultures.

I’m effusive. I’m a Pollyannish realist. Some call me a cynic with ruby slippers. I’ve always neurotically shunned sadness. During some of the most dismal eras of my life, I have found the strength to celebrate various events … life. I especially don’t like to be sad in the company of others (childhood conditioning). But holidays make us wistful for the time when our loved ones were still alive, gracing us with their humanity. When that doesn’t happen … we ache in our hearts as if he or she just passed away, or transitioned, or … died all over again.

Religion, theologies, philosophies, and childhood experiences, i.e., healthy attachment, good physical health, and a well-developed sense of emotional resilience, are components we juggle along with our grief. Grief is a piercing note in the soundtrack of our lives now — for perpetuity. I don’t believe, at least it has not been my experience, that the acute, deep, visceral grief lasts forever, even if you’re two heartbeats away from an ER visit because your broken heart feels like a heart attack. I know a thing or two about panic attacks since my son’s death – but it’s been an awfully long time since I had a meltdown. I do feel when they are coming on, but I can control the intensity and even shelve it now for a more opportune time.

In the beginning, I gave into my overwhelming emotions; I didn’t know I had the power (see, there’s those ruby slippers again) to normalize my grief and heal on my own terms. The night Rikki died I clung to a God I grew up with, one who could make miracles happen for the righteous. I knew I didn’t qualify, but I prayed and prayed and prayed and my son still died. Even after he took his last breath, I said to this grossly misinterpreted God, “Please, you raised Lazarus from the dead; please raise my son from the company of the dead. PLEASE.” Well, we all know how that turned out. No miracle for me.

My perception of God is broader, more transcendent, way the hell different than the God I grew up with, and this God is healing, loving, non-judgmental, inclusive, compassionate, and present in a way that I had not experienced until only very recently. I’m grateful for all the people who gave me the gift of their presence during a very dark time for me and for my family. We all lost Rikki. But going through grief there has been a renewed spiritual connection to God that has gotten me through some of my grief. Also, exhaustive research on grief, a grief site I belong to, friends, family, and the blood-letting work I’ve done to heal have helped me tremendously. I strongly urge you to find a safe friend or family member to be there for you if you’re impending meltdown is scary. Don’t go it alone unless you know you can.

I hung my son’s ornament on the tree; it has his beautiful face on it. I got a tightness in my chest which was my way of halting the feeling so I could get through decorating the tree. I put on Christmas carols and my husband did most of the work. My semester ended and I was exhausted. Grief also makes us tired too, exhausted, really, especially in the acute phase. I don’t know how I got through the first two Christmases without my son; it’s a blur.

My world changed the second my son died, and I’ve worked my ass off to heal and to find a purpose for my life since I’m not being called “Momma” anymore. Grandma’s got a nice ring to it and I love being a grandmother. My grandson and I are very close.

I love mosaic art. The artist takes broken pieces of ceramic, mirrors, stones, and creates a work of art. I know this is probably a tired ol’ analogy, but I think of those who are grieving hardcore this holiday season, and what they are going to do with their broken pieces this holiday season … in the face of others’ joy. I have a friend whose husband just recently passed away, only weeks ago. They are a love story that spans many years and are an example of what that kind of love can accomplish. The wife has done nothing but encourage others since his death, absolutely joyful. Inspiring.

How do we manage through the dark nights of the soul when they fall on significant holidays? Once you do, you can create meaning from your pain and begin developing your purpose, because life is meant to be celebrated through the closed curtains, which is living through the pain. I try to not be too effervescent during the holidays because I don’t want to be insensitive to those who are hurting; I know your heart. But my mourning has been turned to dancing; I’m blessed in that respect.

I can’t tell you to be of good cheer or that things will get better soon or that you’ll hurt less tomorrow, because bottom line is not everyone has a reason for the season, and I’m not just talking about the Christian Christmas story either.  Some days are celebrations and some really blow. It’s a crapshoot which one we get in our Christmas stockings.

I like that the end of the year gives us the opportunity to make certain we lived it to the hilt, and that the year was not wasted, so, not fraught with regret. The night before the new year is a time for introspection and/or drunkenness. (Hey, we’ve all been there a time or two.) What goals do we have for the coming year? What milestones do we hope to achieve? Can we ever find the energy, the courage, the desire to celebrate life again? I know we can.

Each of you who is in the middle of a heart pang of some duration this holiday season, I wish you comfort. To those who have the energy: I wish you joy. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. Oh, tidings of comfort of joy.

By Sherrie Cassel

Christmastime is here again. Next month, on the 22^nd of January at 5:55 p.m., my son will have been gone for 6 years. I don’t know how it is possible that 6 years have passed; it feels like just yesterday I said goodbye to him. Or see you later, alligator. We find ways to comfort ourselves, some through arduous work and some through self-destruction. The former is lifelong; the latter is tragic although it doesn’t have to be lifelong.

I just finished my first semester of seminary, and I am, quite frankly, wiped out! Seminary is the greatest experience, next to motherhood, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Finding purpose through my grief process has been the most unexpected gift in a really shitty and painful situation. We finally put up our tree yesterday. My husband has developed a nice kidney stone. My back is aching from being hunched over after writing five papers and poring through research that was enriching, but my back is not happy with me and so, both my husband and I are in pain, and our grandson is no longer enchanted with presents and trees…or lights, alas. And so, it goes (Vonnegut).

My husband is a gem of a man. He put up the tree because he knows how much I love Christmas, even since my son died, and he knows how tired I am. I have worked through so much of my dysfunction that I am now at a place in my life where I am genuinely happy. Who knew? This post isn’t a pick-me-up, you can make it through the holidays post. This post is about how you can be so exhausted from living your life to its fullest and still miss the hell out of your loved one. I miss my only child. And I undoubtedly will weep a bit, just as I do every holiday, but I get through it.

The holidays early on were very difficult. I remember one Christmas only three years ago, and I was wrapping Christmas gifts and I just lost it. Again, my husband is a gem of a man; he knows what to do for me because he doesn’t guess; he asks.

I want to share a few things I do to get through the holidays when my son’s absence widens in diameter and in depth.

1. I cry.
2. I get out in nature.
3. I call a friend.
4. I plan a party.
5. I read about whatever the hell is wrong with me and try to figure out how to manage it.
6. I cry.
7. I laugh.
8. I pray.
9. I write.
10. I ask my husband to hold me.
11. I read The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart: An Emotional and Spiritual Handbook by Daphne Rose Kingma
12. Help someone else through the season.
13. I hungrily pour through the books of Ecclesiastes and Job and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, comforted by the discussion reminding me “there is a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and that hell can be an incubation period too.
14. Ad infinitum, as a progression…sometimes I even dance…to a song that heralds my son’s liberation from the sadnesses that we all experience.

I used to take a couple of puffs of my son’s favorite cigar, early in the process, and it made me feel so close to my son I could feel his Presence. Again, we find ways to comfort ourselves. This no longer comforts me; it’s difficult to say what will. It’s also a crap shoot whether I need comfort or not. Some days are chaos in my heart and some days my headspace is clear and calm. I know you all understand, even if you’re not in acute grief.

I have my son’s ornament and I will put it on the tree today. My back still smarts, and I feel a Scrooge-moment coming on because holidays take work, through grief, through loneliness, through depression, and through company when you’re an introvert. This year is ending and another one without my son begins, and as much as the ghost of my son holds part of me captive forever and ever now, life is ephemeral … six years … 59 years … a lifetime.

I’ve used my process wisely, even on days when I thought I had no control; I really did. Each year I’ve donned my Santa hat and participated in Christmas, even when it hurt. I made my first Thanksgiving dinner this year … almost six years later. We enjoyed ourselves and I shed a tear or two while I was cooking, but life goes on, and exhaustion can be a good barometer of a life well-lived. I’ll always reach for that as a goal. But, yeah, I’m feeling it too. I’m right at the precipice between joy and a temporary slump. Only very temporary; I don’t have time for a nose dive.

Maybe I just need another cup of coffee, one with peppermint extract, and a Starbuck’s peppermint brownie to keep me in the Spirit, and a rocking Christmas song.

Yeah, that’s what I need.

Bah humbug, she says — with a grateful heart.

Dedicated to Paula Bateman – Thank you.

Always looking for great resources

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

For Simone Biles

I am in awe of young Simone Biles. Not just because she is a champion for mental health, but because her athleticism is magnificent. Watching her command the air in The Biles’ Triple is without a doubt, one of the wonders of the world. As Simone has shared about the rigor of her training, the stress she was under to perform optimally for America, and with her own blend of mental health issues, still she is heralded as the greatest gymnast of all time. Her success can be a monumental inspiration to those of us who find that grief is most often an uphill battle. When I talk about working your process, I never mean to suggest it is an easy process. Much like Miss Biles, the amount of work it takes to get to the other side of grief, is substantial, and very often grueling.

The longstanding Kubler-Ross model of grieving certainly scratches the surface of the initial grief experience with denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance as our dance partners for as long as it takes for us to get to the graceful twirl of acceptance, where, as David Kessler, in his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage says, we begin to find purpose and meaning in life again. I haven’t achieved the Simone Biles’ Triple in my own grief process, but I am in love with life again, and even though I have lost the flesh of my flesh, my only child, I am grateful for my life.

I tried to leap through the air before I learned that it would be necessary to be a hot mess for a long time. The first year I sobbed convulsively every single day. Everything hurt. The emotional pain felt so physical I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the emergency room, where I was told that I needed to find a way to deal with my grief. Well, no shit. But the fact remained, I didn’t know how.

Healthy death rituals might not have been modeled for us as children. In my Mexican American family, for example, there was a clear division between adult themes and what was meted out to the children as reasonable burdens for us to carry. Some parents don’t want to burden their children with things like disease, social ills, factual history, and the very profound and inevitable grief that follows the loss of someone or something holy in your life.

I had thought I wouldn’t be able to maintain this site once I began my seminary journey, but like a hardworking gymnast, I wrestled with grief until I was no longer its captive and have made the choice to continue blogging as time allows. I don’t know that grief has an end point. My eyes still get misty when I hear I Will Never Be the Same by Melissa Etheridge. I don’t have meltdowns anymore, but I do have brief flashes of pain from time to time, but they’re manageable now.

Dr. Eugen Kogon, in his The Theory and Practice of Hell, attempts to normalize the horrors of Nazi Germany. I shuddered as I read through the book, and I have not been able to finish it because reading about those horrors proved to be too much for me. I know when I’ve had enough now, and I can control what I allow into my head and heart spaces.

So, how do you normalize pain? As I’ve said many times since that earth-shattering day nearly six years ago, I couldn’t even manage personal hygiene after my son died. My husband took over all my responsibilities while I adjusted, through hell fire, to the loss of my amazing and beautifully tortured son.

Grief. I would write a book about it, but there are so many good ones out there. Educating myself about grief, and tears, lots and lots of tears, are why I was able to find myself and a life purpose. During the grief process … in spite of the pain … we are given the opportunity to be absolutely selfish in our quest for self-preservation and self-examination. I had 32 years of love, devotion, and dysfunction with my son. I remember in early psych classes, the image of Freud’s model of the mind as the iceberg submerged in water, with just its tip exposed. I thought it was an apropos image back then, but I had no idea how deep my iceberg went until after my son died. I’ve been in and out of therapy for over 30 years. I know when I need an emotional tune-up and I check into services for a while. Learning to take care of myself is a gift from the grief process. Grief isn’t just about the loss itself. In my opinion, the grief journey lasts as deep as your iceberg is. Does that make sense?

If emotional scarcity was prevalent in our lives before our loss, every single thing in life will be perceived through the lens of that scarcity. If we haven’t dealt with our own shit prior to the loss, navigating grief in an emotionally healthy way is impossible. Trust me. I know.  I thought I’d had enough therapy to have crystal clarity about everything in G_d’s green earth. If you want to make the gods laugh, right? My grief process was a harrowing experience because ghosts demand attention until you lay them, consciously, to rest.

I’ve had a strong, pathologically so, work ethic. I’m driven and have perseverance in the same way Miss Biles does in the way she practices her skill/physical artistry. Those who find their way through the grief process, those who find themselves, and those who recreate themselves through their grief processes win the gold: a life full of meaning and purpose.

I’m nearly six years into the grieving process. I’ve sobbed until I hyperventilated. I isolated myself. I did all the things people do when they grieve; it’s a process. My son died from complications of substance use disorder. I started the grieving process before he died, and I’ve carried it with me since his death. I come from many permutations of religious practices; religiously, I’m a mutt, but in the Hebrew Bible there is a story about Jacob wrestling with an angel and he won’t let go until the angel blesses him. We wrestle with grief until we tame it, until it no longer commands us. No, we don’t walk away unscathed; Jacob had a limp for the rest of his life.

I dance with grief now; but I’m the one who leads, and my limp is getting increasingly less noticeable.

By Sherrie Cassel

The five and a half year angelversary of my son’s death has come and gone and the next one is waiting for me to catch up to it in January, a new year, another without my son. I know how much it hurts to love someone with every single cell in your body and then lose him. I can still see myself in the early days of grief, curled up in the fetal position and wailing until I couldn’t breathe. This is an accurate picture of pain, deep, deep emotional pain. I can’t tell you how I felt, but I can show you. As much as I love words, they fail to even skim the surface in describing the raw nerve ending that is jagged from having been torn from its holy counterpart. We’ll not see them again in this lifetime.

The day he died I thought I’d never be okay again. I thought I’d be a hemorrhaging ball of grief for the rest of my life. I wailed every single day, and I’m talking loud sobs of utter grief. A momma in mourning. Time passes and so does the intensity of the mourning. You learn to navigate the ebb and flow of the waves, sometimes ferocious waves, and sometimes waves so small, you can scarcely see them, but their effects are every bit as powerful, perhaps, they move one to be peacefully introspective, without the sustained throb like in the early days of grief. The memories don’t knock us down anymore.

For those who follow me, you’ve seen me morph in several permutations over the years. Grief is like that; it transforms; it transcends. Some of the email I receive from readers has been like a topo-map of your own transformation and transcendence. You’ve shared with me how your grief process was tamed by your willingness to grow and respond to grief with the determination to live a life of purpose and as much joy as you can stand. I am both honored and humbled by your stories. I have been inspired by your own blogs and I appreciate the readership.

I’m finding that as each season of grief has come and gone for the time I’ve been in grief,  I’ve learned how to prepare myself to acclimate to the everchanging weather patterns of each season. I haven’t had a tsunami in a very long time. My eyes moisten and like a tiny spiderweb I’ve walked into, I wipe it away, unscathed. Certainly, I have those heart flutters when a trigger passes through me and I feel it like a shot to the heart, but then I’m able to normalize the anxiety that comes from thinking, “Oh shit, here comes a meltdown” to breathing through it, and allowing myself to ride it out.

I’ve also found that I was the one who needed to introduce myself to grief as the alpha and not her beta. There are many times in our lives when there is absolutely nothing we can do about a situation, and that is a fact, but we learn to accept it and work within that situation. I have lost a person who was my heart and soul, and that is a fact. I was thrown into grief having had no healthy role model to emulate: it was truly sink or swim.

I hope to be a person who offers hope that the grieving process is navigable and that as much as it hurts, you will retrospectively see the beauty as you transform and transcend the pain into a life worth living again, or maybe even a life worth living for the very first time. As an artist, passion fuels every aspect of my life, but I had no idea the passion I poured into my craft could just as easily be poured into my life. I was busy raising a child as a single parent, climbing the academic ladder, learning, ad nauseam, to the exclusion of some very important relationships. In retrospect, certainly there is a twinge of regret, but how rich are my relationships now? So vibrant and full. I celebrate those I love as often as I can. I celebrate life.

Who knew that a momma who lost her only child would find a reason to celebrate again? I made a comment on a Facebook post about feeling like a pariah right after my son’s death – you know, at dinner parties and small gatherings. I felt as if people couldn’t handle my grief and so I would work so hard to not fall apart in front of anyone. Maybe that’s how they did feel. I know the fact that I had lost a child made the possibility more real to other parents; I felt tainted. Of course, reality is all about perception and all the concentric circles vibrating outward and inward like a heartbeat. The comment was about how at the time I couldn’t see past my own grief. Every single thing in my life was interpreted through the Rosetta Stone of my grief.

I don’t see myself as one dimensional anymore. I am not a giant ball of grief. I believe, however, through grief we will know ourselves better than we ever thought possible. Much introspection is done when a person is in grief. Best-case scenario is that a person will work her process. I’ve written about this many times over the years I’ve been writing about grief and my grief process; the process can be grueling, and it can be wonderful. If you’re newly grieving, you won’t believe me about the wonderful part right now and I totally get it. I didn’t believe it either when someone told me I would heal.

The gifts that have emerged through the grief process have been hard-earned and substantial. I have sobbed, screamed, and scoured the academic literature in hopes that I could find a way to escape the process. Science has some great insight into the grieving process, the part that can be measured through statistical formulae. But see, the heart is both a muscle and a metaphor, and its metaphorical contents cannot be measured with numbers. The metaphor is a picture, the red heart on your refrigerator that your child made when he was in kindergarten, the red heart with bleeding arteries, the red heart with Cupid’s arrow through it beating for a lover, ad infinitum. And sometimes, although it can get buried under life’s aches and pains and schedules and priorities, there is an infinitesimal spark waiting to be fanned by the flames of your passion for life. Grief doesn’t take passion away from us; it doesn’t extinguish the spark. We do.

I didn’t just wake up one morning after my precious Rikki died, and declare myself healed. I dragged myself through the jagged terrain on bloodied knees, begging the God of my Understanding for relief, by any means. I researched and read. I sobbed. I journaled. I sobbed. I wrote. I sobbed. I felt every single pang that hit me like a lightning strike straight through to my soul.

My parents gave their children a strong work ethic, maybe that’s why I think of the grief process as work: conscious work. Others may have other analogies they use to describe their processes. I strongly encourage you, when you can catch your breath for a few hours, check out books on grief. Read about others who have incurred a similar loss as you. Breathe. Pray to the Spirit of your understanding. Develop a new exercise program. Write. Sing. Sob – every single time you need to.

I strongly encourage grievers to read When Bad Things Happen to Good People by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. I read it soon after Rikki died and I knew early on that healing was within reach; blood, sweat, tears, and time, would be necessary. Another book I recommend is The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart by Daphne Rose Kingma. I’ve read this half a dozen times, while my son was dying from addiction, and several times since. There are some great suggestions about things to do when you don’t think you can take one more tear. There are just so many wonderful resources out there. Even so…as painful as it is, we all will break a little…and on some days, we will shatter.

I like to see things repurposed. I like beach glass and how creative people can envision beautiful jewelry in the smoothed multicolored pieces of glass. I love to know that something I used to drink from is now an item that can be reused for other beneficial purposes. You get my point. I love knowing that we can take our grief and repurpose it into something marvelous, something that will fan the passion in our heart to a roaring flame. I love knowing that we can take our broken selves and put the pieces back together in a way that is so seamless you can scarcely see the scars.

I’m finding that I have vision now beyond my grief. I see possibilities for a beautiful future now.

“I see trees of green, red roses too.

I see them bloom for me and for you,

And I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’” (Louis Armstrong)

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Yesterday was a tough day, 5 ½ years since Rikki, my beautiful Rikki, left this world and broke my heart in the process. I try to not ruminate about the hell we went through when he was struggling, but sometimes when I’m looking at his picture, or watching old videos of him when he was fine, beautiful, not addicted, I get really sad. Generally, I try to think only “happy” thoughts about my beautiful boy, but still, the darkness can emerge as unpredictably as a Texas tornado.I thought about the young and tortured man who died on January 22nd, 2016, at 5:55 p.m. His mind was tortured. His body was ravaged by addiction. Where was my beautiful son that day? He was a shadow of his former self.

I watch the videos and I hear his laugh and I see his vibrant and brilliant personality. I see his joie de vivre. I see his passion for life. I see his hope for a future with his little boy, but when I think back on those last few months with him, I don’t know where he went. I’d catch a trace of him every once in a while. His sweetness and kindness never left him – even as his mind began to go.

I cannot express enough the horror I felt each passing day that my son was being destroyed by addiction; I felt like each new day I had no idea whose life I was living. I was helpless to help this amazing human being no matter how much I begged for him to get help, no matter how much I had to admit about myself to reach him, no matter how much I sobbed or pleaded with God to save my son, there was a point of no return where all hope was lost – even as I unrealistically held out for a miracle.5 ½ years…in 6 months it will be 6 years my baby was lost to me. That’s significant, I guess. I try to make sense of my grief cycles. I try to normalize my pain so I can function in the world and maintain wholesome relationships, but I have my days.

I cried yesterday and this morning, just a little, not like I used to when I was first beginning the grief process, but enough to know I was feeling the loss of my son’s potential. He was so beautiful.I kept myself distracted with nonsense things to do. I don’t know when the last time I had a meltdown; it’s been a while. Do you get “past” them? I’ve been told by parents whose children have been gone for 25 years, and they still have days of deluges. I know there is not a “standard” for doing grief; I tend to go longer and longer periods of sustained calm…and then the weather will be gray, or I’ll see something he would have loved…or I watch his son grow up without a father, and I weep for all the lost opportunities for my son and for us without him.

Does that make sense?

I work hard to “be happy” – but my efforts don’t always work. I spoke with my best friend in the whole world today. I kind of raised her so she always felt like mine, but now that we’re in our almost 50s and almost 60s, we’ve finally achieved an equality that makes us more friends than parent/child. She is a person who knows me almost as well as Rikki did. We laughed and it felt good. Yesterday I texted one of Rikki’s friends, like a brother, really, to ask him to not forget Rikki and when he thought of him to please text me to tell me. I was desperate for a connection with the Rikki who was well and who will always be remembered as the amazing individual he was. I was feeling really lost yesterday, even though I put on a brave face, and I soldiered on.

Isn’t that what we do?

I did every single thing I knew to do to save my son. Yes, I know better now and if I had known then what I know now, I would have been better at self-care and hence a better example to him. But I was so desperate to save his life and I looked desperate, wild, crazy, defeated. I know how much I love him and how hard I fought to keep him here with me and our family. We were in a battle for his life, and I was in a battle to keep my sanity during the most insane time in my life. We lost one battle and I’m winning the second one. I keep hanging on to today and trying to let go of yesterday – even though it keeps me tied to my son. Happy memories are better for me and for my relationships. I have had 5 ½ years to catch my breath from the horrors of addiction and 5 ½ years to sort through the things that hurt us and the things that benefitted us and helped us to have more good years than bad ones. The bad ones were doozies toward the end of his life, but I love him, to the core of his Soul.

I miss him so much and I am sad that his life ended so dramatically and traumatically, but I am so grateful for his beauty, his brilliance, his kindness, generosity, gentleness, humor, grace, forgiveness, and undying love for me and his son.

I’m going to let those thoughts be enough for me today. Yesterday was a feat in soldiering on. I chose to not let my sadness turn into an entire day of sobbing. I could have and I have on many occasions, and I know meltdowns are unpredictable, but just as I was getting ready to go into day two of a grief funk, my best friend messaged me, and we messaged back and forth until I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t breathe.

And that was really good. Today I had to honor my son by talking about how wonderful he was – the bad years were really just a short time in proportion to his 32 years, even though it seems like the addiction years lasted a lifetime – and my heart tells me that the addiction years will bleed into my life for perpetuity. After a day of trying to keep my shit together, today I will put on a smile and keep focused on how lovely and delightful my son was. We both deserve that kind of peace. I just miss him is all.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

In the early days of grief, attempting to enumerate the infinite characteristics that made my son my favorite person in the whole world, hurt, almost mortally. I would listen to his voice mails over and over until I hurt so badly, I would curl up into a ball and weep – and until I was gasping for air. Who knew one could feel pain all the way to her soul and still survive? But here I am writing about grief, healing and transformation – five and a half years after the death of my son and only child.

There is an air of bittersweetness that infuses every breath I will ever take again on this planet. But I can talk about what made Rikki amazing — without weeping and wailing now. I have a hard time with people who knew him because they carry memories too, and commingled with mine, they weigh down my eyelids with tears and place a lump firmly in my throat. I know it’s been five and a half years, and maybe some people are stoic about their grief sooner or later (or maybe even never) than I am. I never could be stoic. I can keep my shit together now (right time, right place), but I still have the occasional sucker punch to my heart. And in the early days of grief, months, first three years, it is fair to say I was a hot mess, rightly so, and I couldn’t detect an undefeated bone in my body.

Time brings you to a greater distance from the loss and from the gruel of the preliminary steps toward healing, all of which are pretty gnarly experiences, and tragically, all of which are necessary. For example, I can now watch videos of my son and not be crushed. Maybe once you’ve been crushed, you can never be crushed again, at least, not in the way that prevents you from ever recovering yourself or from reshaping yourself from a flattened cardboard box after being processed in the recycling box crushers, to a brand new human being, full of life, love, joy, and wisdom – and best-case scenario, full of the desire to be a benefit to the world, to live purposefully, and to grab hold of life with zeal – even after losing someone you desperately loved.

There are some things in life that are neither fair nor unfair. Most significant events in our lives happen at the whim of random chance. They are neither merciful nor unmerciful. They happen and we are left to reshape our lives; emotional fragility can seem eternal, but I promise, it’s not. We flap our injured wings until they are strong enough to help us take flight into a world without our loved one. I wasn’t all that enlightened prior to my son’s death. We learn to grow … even if in the beginning we must force the seed of hope to germinate in our hardened husks.

As Hemingway said, “The sun also rises.” The darkness may envelop us for a while, but in the morning, daylight, warmth, and possibilities. Sometimes chance knocks us on our asses and sometimes we rise from the ashes of our decimated dreams following the death of our child, spouse, dear friend stronger than we ever dreamed we could be, complete with the creation of new dreams. There will always be bittersweetness – especially on some of our best days.

I’ve graduated to the point where I can celebrate my birthday (59 next week) with friends and family, loud music and alcohol without carrying the crushing weight of grief on my back. I know grief is part of who I am now, but as I’ve said before, I control the duration and the intensity. I didn’t have that kind of control in the beginning. I was at the mercy of pummeling grief, and I had no strength to tame it. Over the past five and a half years, and if truth be told, for my life thus far, I became resolved to fight to come back to a life in which sadness didn’t rule.

I wake up with the sun. I know there’s so much living to do and I try to accomplish joie de vivre from the first hint of light ‘til the moon is covered by the clouds. If you’re hurting today from your loss, I wish you a rush of peace for no apparent reason at all, a chance to catch your breath, and moments of hope. You’ll be in a very difficult place for a while as you find your way to being whole again.

I can speak to only those things I know from my own experience and/or the experiences of credible others. I know the work involved in healing yourself. I can tell you; it gets better. You will always miss your loved one. Some days will stab you in the heart and others will make you smile as you remember something wonderful about your loved one, bittersweetly.

I have photos of my son all over my home office. I have paintings he did adorning my other prized wall hanging, my Bachelor of Science degree in psychology. I have his journal notes and a yellowed God’s Eye he made in the second grade. I had packed them all away when we moved; I always knew which boxes they were in, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. I had his clothes packed away and one day, when I was strong enough to open them, I pulled out one of his t-shirts; it still smelled like the aftershave he wore, the cigars he smoked, his own earthy scent. I hugged it for a long time with my face pressed into it. I wept silently and then I folded it and put it back in the box. One shirt I took out and wore it around the house for a while. I washed some of his favorite shirts and I folded them and put them in drawers of clothes I’ve forgotten about. I run across his shirts from time to time when I’m looking for something I haven’t worn in years. My heart is no longer looming large on my sleeve, but there will always be a sliver of it peeking out, unprotected from triggers. I no longer live my life in anticipation of the next emotional shoe to drop, however.

I live for me and in a weird way, I live for him too.

He loved gray; it was his favorite color. He had the hardiest laugh, and oh my, how he laughed. We laughed together all the time. His eyes were big and dark brown. He had an amazing wit, biting, but never unkind. He was intelligent. He loved to read all the up-to-date news and most recent scientific findings. He was amazed by life, and he never lost his sense of wonder. His ability to forgive those who hurt him was humbling and inspiring. He had deep concerns for our species. He was articulate. He wrote poetry I found after he died, and yes, I’m his mother, but I was deeply moved by his eloquent heart. I miss telling our stories together, each one of us with a variation on a theme, some major, some minor. We had a life together. My relationship with my son’s memory has changed from one of deep sorrow to one of deep joy.

I feel like it’s taken me a lifetime to get here.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Many years and a dead child have caused me to become introspective — to a fault. Coming from confusing, dictatorial, and frightening Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic roots, guilt was my north star for much of my life. There are some things I should feel guilty about, and I do, but wallowing in it because I get some desperate pleasure from rescuers rushing to my side to assuage my guilt through positive vibes and caterpillars transforming into majestic monarchs in Hallmarkian memes, does not serve me well, nor does it serve well anyone with whom I am in relationship. But then I have become more realistic in the second half of my life.

People are people and we all fuck up.

I think the notion of original sin sometimes gives us excuses for when we are bad. If I can assign my bad behavior to an entity representative of a satan, i.e., his demons/minions, then I have no responsibility for my high crimes and misdemeanors, or sins, if you will.I want to say that I have concluded that I am responsible for my personal development. If I stagnate, it will have been because I have become lazy. There is so much to be excited about in life. I have a spiritual Base that informs my life and my behavior. My “spirituality” is a private matter; I am fed by a supernatural being, and that is that. I will not try to save or compel you to attend church with me; to be honest, I don’t attend church either. I’m so afraid that the pastor is going to say something that offends my relationship with and my understanding of my Creator. There’s a lot of biases and misinformation in churches today, and in their theologies. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is a verse used by extremist zealots when they are being judged, but summarily dismissed when they are those in judgment.

But again, people are experts at one thing for certain and that is: fucking up. Crimes/sins of omission and of commission are easily mastered even by those considered to be paragons of virtue. Some things “just come easy” and blowing it is one of those things. There’s a little too much truth in that last statement, I’m afraid. I’ve been working diligently and compulsively to be different than who I was the first 44 years of my life.

Undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder would claim too many years of my life and it would wreak havoc on many of my closest relationships. In my grief process, not the perpetual one for my son, but the one in which I grieve the loss of time, time which would have been better spent in therapy learning to love the way I wanted to be loved and unlearning survival skills that I no longer need, i.e., I’m not the hardass I used to be. Paradigm shifts lead to acts of conversion, an exercise in transformation, and they are absolutely essential if we are to grow into fully actualized people.

I grew up with a punitive God, but as I’ve aged and studied sacred texts and researched the latest scientific literature on the biopsychosocial character of human beings, I’ve learned and even been liberated by a more expansive understanding of the God of my understanding.I don’t know if this is a logical fallacy — at least, I’m not sure if it’s one of the major five — but in the interest of an argument in my own brain, the Judeo-Christian Bible states in 1 John 4:8 that God is love, and in my need to *know*, I ask myself, “If God is love, can God be *only* love, or can God be love and some characteristic that *subtracts* from love? But then that makes it a lesser type of love, so then, is that “not” love? Right? Then Who or What is God?” This permutation of a developing thought in my brain morphs and trans-morphs exponentially. Medication has made my brain less spastic, but mental illness is the thorn in the sides of millions of people, one that is for the duration of our lives. If we’re fortunate to have gobs of money or excellent insurance, your mental illness can be managed, and you can have an amazing and emotionally sound life. Sometimes people don’t have what they need, even in America, and so we see them broken in the streets, addicted to drugs, homeless, and lost.

I wasn’t fortunate soon enough. I was a single mom who made minimum wage while going to school to try to make a better life for my son and me. I didn’t find psychological/psychiatric help until I was in my late 40s. I’ve fucked up in so many ways with people I love, and if truth be told, my feelings have also not been spared, especially by my next of kin. But then, in my family, we all grew up bullies by adaptation.

I could allow myself to fall prey to a victim mentality and feel sorry for or bad about myself for all the mistakes I’ve made. I could fall prey to the theology of a punishing and vengeful god. I could even blame my mental illness on the *devil* — and not on chemical imbalances for which God has provided us with logical science and technology to help us rise like Phoenixes from the ashes of untreated mental illness. I could blame it on a lot of things that would be copouts. But I won’t. In my early life I had models of dysfunction and mental illness. My son did not fall far from the tree. His addiction was to self-medicate for his mental illness; he also had bipolar disorder.

I’ve had to learn to forgive myself for all the ways I made messes of my life and sometimes the lives of those I loved. If God is love, and I believe God is, then I am loved beyond all comprehension. What is love? Is it energy? Is it a brain secretion? Is God love? You wouldn’t know it to see how some proselytizers have misinterpreted the Great Commission to include a nice big sledgehammer and an anvil upon which to beat you into submission to their understanding of the punitive God with whom I grew up.

I’ve had to learn to forgive others and I’ve learned that forgiveness like grief is a process. One step forward, two steps back. I think I know a little about the addiction from which my son suffered. There were glorious days in recovery and then there were relapses. That dynamic is not exclusive to those who struggle with substance use disorder; recovery and relapse occur for many reasons for many persons, from cookies to cocaine.

We each have pinnacle moments and desperate lows, recovery and relapses., good days, bad days, great days and days filled with sorrow and life’s assaults. Life isn’t fair. Random chance hits us and sometimes it misses us. Because I know this, I can grab hold of life to a greater degree. I met my current husband when I was 44. I was in school and I was in therapy, mostly because I would have periodic meltdowns because of my statistics class.

My husband was and is everything no person had ever been in my life. He is kind. Compassionate. Loving. Brilliant. Exciting. Safe. He and the God of my understanding taught me how to love because they love me so completely. I was in and out of therapy intermittently for 20+ years trying to figure out why I hated myself so much; it wasn’t until the bipolar diagnosis that my life and emotional soundness began to emerge, like the scent of eucalyptus in the rain. I began to heal through hard work and with medication.

The 9th Step in the 12 Step program(s) is the one in which a person must make amends to those who she has wounded or been unkind to. You don’t know how to change things until you know what the issue is with your thought processes. Change does come with self-awareness; I know this to be true because I am a different person now, whole, happy, and at peace. Guilt rises from time to time, but it is largely because of my uber-religious background. The God of my understanding understands me and loves me anyhow.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a [wo]man, I put away childish things. For now, we see though a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:11-13When we are damaged, we don’t develop in maturity or emotional soundness, sometimes for years, sometimes ever.

If you find that there is a little too much drama in your life, if you find that your behavior is hurting you or those you love: get help, from clergy, psychologists or psychiatrists. There is hope beyond guilt, shame, regret and churning ruminations of your past mistakes.

Along with grief and sorrow are awesome wonders. I want to look for them. I want to love the God of my understanding and know that I am worth God’s love, even in all my fumbling glory. We learn the language of forgiveness, but it takes us years to achieve it. If my God is love and God loves me even with my myriad human foibles, then if I am taking my argument to its logical conclusion, then I must forgive myself and my fellow imperfect brothers and sisters.

I have bipolar disorder. I am *not* bipolar disorder. I blew it with every single person in my past. My husband has only experienced the person who is well. He never knew the person who would go off the rail. I am so grateful for our psych doctors and for medication. I am so grateful for the sacred texts and the scientific texts that urge us toward letting go of things that hurt us and that cause us to hurt others.

I will be an interfaith chaplain in two years. After coming through the most significant loss a person can endure: the loss of my son and only child, I have allowed myself the self-aware journey toward healing. I know that the gift of helping someone to heal is a calling. It’s time. I’ll be 59 in 10 days – and through the grief process from losing my son, and from allowing myself the time to grieve over time lost from things that broke me temporarily, I have found my purpose.

Life takes us interesting places, sometimes places we can traipse happily in, others are not so good, and sometimes, for some, unfortunately, there is only horror. But people can heal. Don’t ever give up on yourself or those you deeply love.Caliban in the Tempest thanks Prospero for giving him language through which he achieved self-awareness. Every time we have new knowledge is an opportunity for us to grow. I feel like Caliban in that I am grateful for the language that explains the historical trauma in my family, the mental illness that challenged us since time immemorial. I am grateful for healing ourselves and our relationships.

It’s time to stay firmly planted in the brave new world of emotional health and the acquisition of joy. It’s ours you know; it just takes hard work.