Grief to Gratitude

From Meaning to Metamorphosis

By Sherrie Cassel

I saw an angel today; it flitted by and I watched it land on a gorgeous tree stump I rescued from the woodchipper, and which I plan to do something artistic with it on that elusive someday.

I thought of you when the white moth flew by and I remembered how you romanticized those pesky plant predators and about how I fell for it – even now.

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I get a tug on my heart strings, and nostalgia is plucked one memory at a time; it’s just a moth, one a gardener might use an insecticide on. Life is short for these angel moths, death by fowl – or pesticide. We each have an end date, yes?

Butterflies, moths, — the entire Papilionoidea family, and its incomprehensible ability through natural selection to metamorphose into truly new creatures. I see this phenomenon as one of the few miracles in life, but only because I’m not an entomologist.

Of course, I’m talking myself out of the belief that white, pesky moths are filled with the spirits of our dearly departed. I find joy and wonder in scientific explanations based on evidenced-based research; I really do. I get charged up about rational explanations to “mysterious” activity. Maybe it’s a god, the holy spirit, source, or sheer human determination, but something drives us toward immortality, real or imagined.

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There was a giant yellow and black Monarch that flitted by your picture window after he died. You said hello to it every time it flew by. I humored you, wanting desperately to believe, but what were the chances it was the same butterfly each time I came to visit? And what were the chances, the butterfly carried a message from him on its wings?

Yeah, what were they…

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The butterfly exhibit in San Diego is a marvel.

Chrysalides in their various stages are in plain sight on elephant ears and cyclamens, even as fully formed butterflies fly above your head or land on your shoulder. Am I in love with butterflies because my mother gave me a romantic perspective of them? How do I make meaning of a silly memory? Why is it significant that I need an extra layer of knowledge to maintain the wide-eyed wonder I have always had over butterflies. They, as are we all, fearfully and wonderfully made.

If you’ve ever had the gift of being pregnant, it is a remarkable experience. My son used to kick every day at four p.m. I could actually watch my very large stomach shift and see his elbow or foot through the taut skin of my pregnant belly. Another true miracle is the development of a human being from sperm and egg to a fully formed person. I read that among the animals in the food chain, humans remain helpless for the longest period of time in comparison to other animals. We live in the desert, and we have squirrels and rabbits that come into our yard frequently. I had to know what their patterns are, and so I did some research and found out that rabbits are on their own as soon as they can open their eyes. Damn, that’s harsh.

Humans are helpless for years (and for some, for decades).

Butterflies sit in the sun allowing their wings to dry and to strengthen – and then? They fly off to live for a very short time, three months, and some, for only weeks. And still, Solomon himself was not dressed so regally.

They are beautiful in my culture and in others. They are beautiful to me because of my mother; they are beautiful to me because of entomological research and classification. My mother’s knowledge was beautiful folk knowledge; so was my father’s. To every [wo]man is given a measure of faith; faith is defined in Greek as fidelity and a firm reliance on a god, rather than a reliance on one’s intellect.

How do we make meaning from an inkling to a fully developed thought; do ideas fly like butterflies? In a sense, yes, they do, or … they don’t. How did we get from butterfly to resurrection to reincarnation to evolution to transformation and finally to transcendence? If I lived in a cave with all my books (a very large cave) but had no human contact, after years of socialization in mainstream American society, I’d still have everything at my disposal to make meaning. Are there butterflies in the darkness? Hmmm.

I still feel the love of my mother who tried to give us small gifts amidst the violence and chaos whenever a butterfly flew by, especially those parasitic white moths; trust me, the contrast is not lost on me. Memories can disrupt or enchant. We make meaning of memories in the same way we make meaning of anything in life. We take what we can from all the places from where we found pieces of knowledge through life experiences, ours or someone else’s, and we pare away what will not work toward a satisfying life, one in which we may thrive for the time we are gifted with.

My son died when he was only thirty-two years old. Children die every day while some live into their hundreds … some despite the neglect they have exacted on their bodies and minds. There is no meaning to be made here; the facts remain, domestic violence in all its manifestations affect us through the lifespan, i.e., mental and physical illnesses/disorders.

I saw a man who looked, but may have been much younger, about eighty staggering across a busy highway in the small desert town where we live. He was so high on something he actually zigzagged. I don’t know what he was seeing blurrily across the street, but he was determined to get there, even if he engaged in high-risk behavior to get there.

Meaning? Larval and high … butterfly material? I’m afraid, and I’m no clinician, that the guy was lost. He made it to the other side of the street; I made sure, but I don’t know how much longer he got to try to find a purpose for his life before it ends from the consequences of his high-risk behavior. Have I made peace with the experience? Do I forgive him for living longer than my son got to? If meaning is to be made from the experience, I will find a way to make it beneficial to myself and to others who need a butterfly to flit by offering hope – of a spirit world that is very present in the actual world, an afterlife, a remarkable experience of great entomological significance, or just something pretty that catches your eye on a crazy busy day.

I learned to love symbols early, i.e., the moth that flew by my picture window that evoked this piece. I thank my mother for the pretty things I’m able to appreciate in this great, big, magnificent universe. I thank my father for the dark and dismal interludes with brutal reality; believe me, there is a balance I work hard to maintain.

I’m in awe of the people I have the gift of and opportunity to work with; I’m watching their metamorphoses and I’m inspired to burst out of the cocoon I sometimes hide in, when the world gets to be too overwhelming. How can I be of service when I’m hiding because coming out into the blinding light of reality feels too frightening? Be brave, Joan of Arc. Pick up your sword and slay those bastard dragons that keep you in your cave of isolation.

“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

I carry my mom’s love, from larva on through to her physical release – every time I see a butterfly I’m reminded of her … on her good days. Sometimes I see the pesky, white moth – and other days I see the regal Monarch. Sometimes I see the addict stumbling through life, and other times I see the potential for a living reincarnation – a metamorphosis of remarkability, a symbol of hope, or one of despair.

There are painted ladies that fly across the highway during spring. I clean them off my car windows because they appear to be suicidal. I wonder why I don’t get the feels when I’m cleaning them off my windshield; they’re a plenty, maybe that’s why. They are so pretty, but disposable because of their massive annual migration across the desert highway, as overpopulous as carnival goldfish.

And so, then I move on to things we throw away, including people. I have come to the conclusion that we are each butterflies under construction; some have pushed their way out of isolation and confinement and flit against clear blue skies – even amidst the storms of life. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and but for poor socialization shitty parenting, we would all live to our fullest potential.

This is not to say that the darker your origins, the less chance there is that you will transcend them. I’ve seen giant wood moths at campgrounds that freak me the hell out, but they grow among the fungus in the wood. We all grow in different environments.

I have found meaning for the cocoon and it is a safe space to build self-love to critical mass, fissioning away until like the big bang, there is an explosion of such incredible love a new creature, a new creation, a new perception of others, the holy I-Thou relationship with the world and all that’s in it are born.

I’m sure the moth that made me think of Mom and all these stream of consciousness thoughts graced my life for only once in this physical realm; I’m certain; if facts hold true, it will be dead in a week, if it’s not eaten by a predator first. I’m grateful for the romanticism my mom held for the mysteries that made her life livable – despite her reality.

My life is good. I’m in a space where I love to flit – no longer across busy highways. I spent too many decades hidden in a cocoon of safety, but I outgrew it, and so … here I am.

The sky is blue and the predators are few in my life – now. My wings are not overladen with the pollen of the past. I fly lightly landing where I find beauty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One of my professors wrote a book called FINDING GOD IN THE GRAFITTI, and isn’t that the truth? The Divine can be found in the anticipation of a pudgy worm becoming a butterfly whose life is just a wisp of time – or in the pictographs of native Americans on cave walls … ad infinitum.

We create meaning from words and experiences. The butterfly was a tired old metaphor for me after sixty-three years of using it in my writing. Even I got tired of it. But today, this white moth was a Monarch … and an angel … and from its wings was a message from my mother; she whispered, “I love you.” I think; therefore, it is.

It’s going to be a good day.

Freedom

By Sherrie Cassel

I’m “listening to my jam” as our grandson used to tell me when he was very small and when he didn’t want to go to bed. I’m a morning person. I get up at 4 a.m. and play music and dance my way through the alone time I’m so lucky to have. My husband says that the success of a relationship requires two people in a three-bedroom house. We each have our home offices to which we can escape into our own space – this is a good thing. I hit up Mexico once in a blue moon to have some crazy time with my younger brother – in my otherwise very calm life I live with my husband. He is more introverted than I am; I need a little bit of social – too much, exhausting, just enough, not exhausting.

I’ve been looking at certificate programs I can do before the Ph.D. program begins. I’m looking at one on grief and trauma, no longer for myself, but to be a trauma-informed spiritual practitioner. I thought, during my introspective morning, how much I’ve grown, transformed, and how much grief, pain, and emotional paralysis I’ve managed to transcend, so much so that I want to learn on behalf of others. I want to offer people who are hurting hope that they won’t be in acute pain forever. I want others who are grieving significant losses to know they are responsible for their own healing – from birth to our current age and social location.

I read a book by Steven Pinker, OUR BETTER ANGELS, fascinating. In his book he shared his findings of the research he had done on the progress of our species; and he did this statistically.

Statistically, says Pinker, we no longer kill entire races of people; well, some of us don’t; I’m speaking globally, of course; so, the homicide rate is down. Illnesses that were once pandemic are stunted, and in some cases, eradicated. We, as a species, learn, adapt, survive, and pare away behavior that doesn’t engender social and spiritual fitness, i.e., trading in chronic pain for a bit of joy in between random chance’s tragedies and periods of smooth sailing.

I’m grateful for therapy and spiritual advisors whose lives intersected with mine for a season, a reason, and some for their lifetime. I’m fortunate for all the Teachers in my life, teachers from whom I learn and inculcate life lessons of great magnitude.

One of my teachers was my first therapist, nearly one-hundred (feels like it) years ago, I would credit her with saving my very fragile self until I could stand on my own; it took decades before I was able to shed all the poor coping mechanisms I’d learned in my family of origin.

So, this is not a diatribe lamenting my fucked up childhood; I’ve spoken about it until I’m blue in the face; and, I’m moving forward with the awesome and wonder-filled life I am creating, along with the G_d of my understanding, and all the people who bless my life, from clients to friends, and most especially to family members who are willing to navigate common experiences with honesty, courage, and empathy.

I love the term “family of choice”; we don’t get to choose our families, but we do get to choose the people we will allow to be in our lives, people who have the capacity for prosocial behavior, and hence, the ability to love wholesomely and navigate conflicts with sound minds and self-awareness. We, truly, deserve nothing less than emotionally sound people in our lives, and if your life is filled with pain, suffering, anxiety, unresolved trauma, and people who hurt you, ask yourself why these people are allowed in your life.

In the nearly ten years since I started my grief blogs, following the tragedy of losing my son to addiction, I’ve run the gamut from visceral pain to almost manic joy and many days of a mixed bag – through the muck and through the mire of grief, and not just from losing my son, although losing him is the most profound grief I’ve ever felt. I grieve other things too, relationships, social locations, life events, my uterus, my youth, ad infinitum.

I found so many answers for myself in seminary, a very liberal and progressive seminary, that I’ve been able to pare away so much from a life-limiting theology and worldview. There is a question, certainly every seminarian, and we must ask ourselves as we navigate the inconsistencies in life: If there is a G_d, or G_d is truly omnipotent then why is there suffering in the world?

This is a question I found the answer to in seminary, and because of the stellar academic experience I had in seminary. My Ph.D. advisor, with whom I interviewed asked me a series of questions, some I answered well; others, I had no idea what I was doing. I even told the director of the program that I had four pages of notes I had drawn up after looking up possible questions for an interview for a doctoral program. I was ready, of course; but when it was my turn to speak, my notes did not help me, despite the great amount of time I spent organizing and outlining my talking points. To be quite frank, often my ramblings yield fruit, and this is one of the things I adore about language; we each want to be heard and when someone hears me, truly hears me and we connect, what a jolt to mediocrity!

Right after my son died, and I mean “right” after he died, I had a “friend” tell me to get out there and help someone else and my grief would begin to subside. Right information, wrong time. To be fair, she has not lost a child, fortunately for her, and so her insensitivity I now chalk up to ignorance. Ten years and four months later, no harm, no foul. I’ve since walked away from the willfully ignorant; they’re out there too, people who refuse to educate themselves toward the pinnacle achievement, in my opinion, of humankind: self-awareness. There is nothing greater than to truly understand yourself; take what you need and leave the rest.

We are creatures of habit and so we can sometimes operate as automatons, rigid, mindless, and prone to boredom. I don’t know who said it, but I read that it is a sign of unintelligence to allow ourselves to become bored. I agree and disagree; it’s a blanket generalization assuming we all have the same educational opportunities; we don’t. My mother went to the eleventh grade, but through her years of trauma, drama, and all the building blocks that created her person, she was among the wisest broken women I’ve ever met. I learned a lot from her – even when she drove me crazy.

Education, whether formally or informally, is a gift to yourself and self-awareness is a gift to our world.

I knew a woman who, during my fundie days, I called Sister Lily. She went only to the sixth grade, but this woman knew her Bible, both exegetically and through memorization. She was doing exegesis before it was a “thing” for women. She had folk wisdom that even the most elegant formula cannot produce. She taught me to see what’s between A and B and about the many shades of gray and the fog I must navigate to be close to her G_d.

I’m so grateful for quiet time in the a.m. My husband is retired and so he can sleep in every single day should he choose. I’ve always been an early riser. I need the silence before the onslaught of routine tasks, people, people, people, and learning as much as I can in every place I can. I guess, to be honest, if I didn’t have something in which to pour myself, my grief would still be as intense as the day my son died, and the months and years following. As my former friend tried to convince me, feeding the unhoused, fostering a pet, releasing the pain; easier said than done. I’m no longer acutely mourning; don’t get me wrong, grief is for a lifetime. The intensity has lessened and I’ve become more emotionally healthy; it’s been a bit of a hike.

I’m no longer acutely mourning my childhood; and I’m no longer nursing the wounds from my past, from my childhood to losing Rikki. I have found relative peace and depending on your “definition” of success, we are successful, in my opinion, when we experience both joy and sadness and can navigate the fluctuating storms and calmness in a spirit of gratitude and without falling prey to the Job-ian plight of victimhood. I know I’ve spoken many times about the book WHEN BAD THINGS TO GOOD PEOPLE by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. Kushner was the first person who made sense to me as I navigated early grief, a fucking mess. Pardon my expletive; there are just times when an expletive is the only word strong enough to express an intense experience or emotion. Kushner said, basically, that when bad shit happens, it is the luck of the draw, often with no rhyme, no reason. There is/are a specific answer(s) to our existential questions, but they’re individual to our unique carbon imprint. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

But I digress (again). Grief, I’m sorry, is forever, and in between pangs of pain when we remember we’re missing our loved ones, there are also wonders we’ve yet to experience. If you’re newly grieving, or you’re having a difficult time letting go of experiences that no longer need to control your behavior, read Kushner’s book. Read everything you can get your hands on about self-awareness and see a therapist to get to the core of the grief that holds you back, from zero months and on through the lifespan.

I’m sixty-three years old and I’m just getting started. I want you to know that you can heal as a process and thrive as a result. If you’re holding on to unresolved trauma, see someone who can help you to unwind it, and send it off and packing. I have healed, mostly, from my childhood, with vestiges of occasional poor self esteem and an occasional “why me?” But I have all the answers about life this side of heaven. They may not be your answers, but they satisfy my soul. When an existential crisis arises, ride it out, and see where it takes you. If you lose someone you love, there will be a period of adjustment during which you will be in a great deal of angst. If you’re navigating a childhood rife with domestic violence, find a therapist who can walk you out of the perpetual cycle of pain. You/we don’t belong there. My son died when he was only thirty-two. A friend of ours died when he was only seven. And still again, a young man we adored died when he was only thirteen. Life is so daggum (better than cussing) short – if everything happens in and with the breath of an angel, then there is so much to enjoy on this side of our deaths.

My playlist has ended, and my husband is still slumbering. I feel free this morning; it took a lot of hard, painstaking work, but when I say I went from grief to gratitude, I mean it.

Namastѐ

When Healing is the Only Choice

By Sherrie Cassel

Three months have passed since the ten-year angelversary of my son’s transition, and it took me a while to adjust to his death. I’m not sure one ever gets past the death of a loved one; we just learn how to navigate the world without that person who felt like an appendage that was ripped from our body – without anesthesia. I’m not kidding; there will always be a touch of pain that fits like a glove for each of us. Again, we heal in proportion to our emotional health. Some of us have a lot of shit to work through before we can even get to the core of our grief – so we may mourn properly.

See, I’ve been in and out therapy for many decades. I touch base with my therapist when I feel the need, which, BTW, is far less frequent than in years past. I have worked painstakingly hard to be well from the domestic violence and terror in which I grew up. I was in so much pain after Rikki died, I had no idea that one could physically ache from the loss of a loved one. We do.

I still feel the pangs from the greatest loss of my life. Yes, the longing for unreality, “Lazarus, come forth”, is very real in the early days of grief. I ached even during the fantasies that he wasn’t really dead, only gone on a trip, but would return to me. In my earliest grief, before and after my son died, my dreams stopped coming to me because it hurt too much to dream – dreams that will never come true. I’m not a magician; no matter how much I begged the God of my understanding, Rikki was gone – and he is never coming back to me – in this lifetime.

When Rikki was so sick from addiction, I was given anti-anxiety medication. After he died, my psychiatrist upped the dosage to three times a day, instead of the one I’d been taking for a few months. Death rocked me. My beautiful and tortured son’s death just shook my entire universe. I’ve since, ten years later, no longer need them, but early in my grief process, I could barely manage life.

As I began to feel all the pain inside me welling up, grief was the tip of the iceberg; there was so much crap to sort through that I couldn’t even be self-aware enough to see that my pain was intensified by past traumas that had not been resolved. I read everything I could get my hands on about grief and navigating the grief process so that I could begin my healing process. Grief must be processed, just like anger, resentment, terror of the future after the death of a loved one, etc.

How much unresolved trauma do you still carry, in addition to the utter and profound grief you carry from the loss of someone with whom you had a tight relationship? Please, start looking at all the experiences you’ve never grieved; they matter.

I haven’t written here for a bit, and I have started and halted writing something because – I’m in an excellent space right now. It’s taken me years and seminary to begin to thrive again. I miss my son more than there are words to express the loss of my only child. I’ve had to repurpose my life. I was a mother for thirty-two years; my purpose had to change after Rikki died. As much as it hurt to move forward in a great deal of pain, I began to see that I still have relationships that need me to be present if they are to survive. I don’t know about you, but I love that we are an adaptive species; we learn, best-case scenario, from our life experiences, those which are kindly memorable, and even those which are not.

I found my new purpose in seminary and in the challenging internship I was in for two years after my coursework. I found a group of amazing women I’m blessed to work with. They are amazing and inspiring, and I learn from them every day. What is your new purpose? Have you traveled in your grief process toward healing and wholeness? The journey begins with you and that first revelation that “this is not it.” Pain should not impede our ability to transform and to transcend our emotional dysfunction from past times and soar into a brand-new world, one in which we learn to navigate our very compelling and yet, temporary chronic pain.

I no longer double over in pain – even though I still feel it when there’s a trigger; and I’m always aware that my child has died. Uber aware. My son flows through my DNA and placental evidence of having had a child. My child. The relationship is eternal. Those who have adopted children also know the pain of the loss of connection, temporarily, with your loved one. Grief is truly an exercise in soldiering on – with your backpack of tears to take out when you need them, and we do need them early in our grief process.

I was aching on the ten-year angelversary; I booked myself solid, just as I always to. I’m not saying at all that to shelve one’s grief is preferable, but sometimes, it is necessary for us to get through the day and God help us during the dark nights of the soul; my dark nights are no longer pitch black, but they do still occur when I’m not mindful of my cumulative healing – after so many years of tough experiences, including the death of my son, my mother, our good friend, Eric, ad nauseam. We lose people and that is a fact of life.

We must be proactive in our post-traumatic growth. How does one heal from the death of a loved one? I encourage you to read everything you can on the grief you carry. I reached out to other parents who’ve incurred the same loss as I have. We click. We understand the lead up to our losses and the crosses we must bear – for our lifetime. I know I’m no longer in chronic pain; but occasionally, a trigger will present itself and I must feel the pain elicited by it. I must feel it and process it – whether it’s old stuff or new stuff – including grief.

Today I get to head out to work with some people who, again, are amazing, and whose healing process I get to witness and to learn from. Have you discovered your purpose post the loss of your loved one? I was a mom, and for good, better, or worse, I had to find a new way to live in the world without my son. His pictures cover my walls. My computer is full of files of pictures of him and artwork that touches me from his childhood to his death. He was my compadre. How are you handling your grief process? Are you finding that it is overwhelming? Does old shit come up for you, unprocessed trauma and therefore, unprocessed grief from times past so that current grief seems too difficult to get to the other side?

I wish I could guarantee that the pain is minimal when you lose someone, but I can’t. The fetal position in a darkened room is not uncommon after the death of a loved one, even if you knew it was coming, as I did with my own son.

He “went gently into that good night” – and I’ve been left to coach myself through old trauma and the new trauma of watching my son slowly kill himself with alcohol and heroin. I’ve worked hard to heal, and I imagine, the healing process is lifelong.

I urge you to get professional help or turn to a trusted clergy member if your grief is crippling you from living your fullest potential. I don’t know that my son knows anything beyond the grave, but I’m willing to entertain that notion, to save my sanity – the sanity we lose temporarily when we lose a loved one. How much pain can one endure? How much pain from the loss of a loved one are we willing to endure, and for how long? I don’t have a time limit for grief; it took me four years before I felt like I could proceed with my life, return to the university, hit up seminary, rebuild neglected relationships, and learn to be fully alive.

To be fair, other than cursed algebra, cancer, and losing a son to addiction, the grief process has been painful, transformative, and transcendent. All I can tell you is that you must read everything you can get your hands on about grief, your specific grief, healing from grief; and you must reach out to safe others for counsel and comfort.

None of these things are easy; and it takes as long as it takes. If your grief paralyzes you, it is imperative that you reach out for emotional support. I never did find a therapist who was well-versed in grief; it’s an art. I did, however, create two blogs in which grief is the topic. I went back to college and finished three degrees. I found a job in which I can be of assistance with helping people adjust to loss.

What’s your dream? Do you still have dreams? What’s holding you back from pouring all that pain into purpose? Death hurts like a …. I’m a seminarian….trying to not cuss – but just like grief, I relapse into a foul-mouthed daughter of a Marine. What’s your outlet? Do you have one (some). I find it’s helpful to have many tools in your emotional tool belt. Grief is not easy; it will never be easy, even when death is imminent.

I wish you continued healing from all the places that hurt – past and present – and as is true of all experiences, I wish you to heal as you navigate this world without your loved one.

Namaste.

Tap Dancing through the Grief Process

By Sherrie Cassel

I listen to Taylor Swift’s LIFE OF A SHOW GIRL at least three times per day; it speaks to me; it speaks to me about an innocence I was not fortunate to experience in my childhood. Sixty-four years later, it’s really okay now. I’ve learned to absorb all the amazing experiences in my life and place those firmly in my brain, where all my memories are stored. I will keep the beautiful things easily accessible – and hold on to, in the back of my brain, all the lessons that I learned in the shadow world. I know I need them to prevent me from allowing myself to be hurt by the same people who have hurt me my entire life: family; and … those shadow memories are there to keep me safe from family and from things that will only hurt me. I’ve given up self-inflicted pain and traded it in for self-awareness.

How does one feel safe when a loved one is ripped from this world? If it happened once, it will happen again. Death is part of life – and I know, no one wants to hear this when she is deep in her mourning phase. But, yes, it is true; death is a part of life; it is inevitable for those we love, and ultimately, for each of us. Chipper, I know.

As you know, it’s been ten years since my son transitioned/died. I’ve grown through the most painful experience in my life; nothing else compares to losing Rikki. And … nothing else ever will.

My son. My heart. My soul. My life before he left us.

My life has changed dramatically, for many reasons, therapy, self-examination, self-awareness, self-love, working the grief process, but mostly, my life has changed because of the loss of my son. I still feel the tug at my heart when I think of him, and he’s always just a thought away. I will always have an air of sadness because I will grieve for my son until I soar off into the sunset, hopefully, if there is an afterlife, to dance with my son in the Cosmos.

Hey, anything is possible.

I remember dancing with my son throughout his life. The last time we danced together was when he was visiting and it was just the two of us. He wanted me to hear his favorite “oldie” at the time, “If You Wanna Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life,” a funny song, a very danceable tune. He had a hillbilly dance he would do to make me squeal and we laughed until we couldn’t breathe. He died a few months later.

Life is full of double-edged memories, soft and gentle, or steely and cruel. I know I say it all the time, and the insight didn’t come easily to me; I had to fight for it, but after we have sorted through the most painful parts of our losses, comes the ability to choose things/memories that bring us joy rather than pain. After a spell, the need to feel bad will morph into the desire to feel good again; trust me, it will happen.

I’m a firm believer in post-traumatic growth. I don’t know how the DSM-V categorizes grief from the death of a loved one, but I know for myself, my son’s death was exceedingly traumatic. I also know that in ten years’ time, I’ve managed some monumental feats. I’ve found reasons to dance toward productivity and generativity.

Speaking of dancing, I remember the first time I danced to my jam after Rikki died. I wept pitifully afterward. How could I go on when my son was torn from my life – like he was torn from my body when I gave birth to him? I did; I wept for an hour, curled up in the fetal position, wanting to die so the pain would stop.

I love music and I love dancing. Dancing was a natural thing for me; I grew up with the disco beat, and I love rocking to it. Years would go by before I would dance again; it was just too painful. I have Rikki’s son now and we dance together, silly dances that make the other laugh hysterically. I still feel that pang in my heart because Rikki should be here with us – dancing and laughing with his son and me – but – he’s not.

I’ve had to reconcile the dancing seasons in my life with the deepest pain – sometimes, like Cohen sang, “[…] with a burning violin,” and other times, jamming to “When the Saints Go Marching In,” with Louis Armstrong’s raspy, celebratory voice. I’m fortunate to have been exposed to a wide variety of music; one might even say eclectic.

Rikki loved music too; and he LOVED to dance with his momma – just for shits and giggles. I miss him. I miss dancing with him. I miss him for his son whose memories of his father are beginning to fade. I will keep them alive for him. I will dance with his son – and we will laugh like Rikki and I used to.

If one can analogize the act of dancing with the process of healing, then that’s what most grievers do, those who are self-aware enough to navigate the process in a healthy manner; we dance accompanied by a frenetic composition of adagio and allegro – the adagio the leitmotif veining the piece, but it will always be heard, sometimes faintly and sometimes, so loudly – one must tap it out until she collapses in exhaustion rewarded by further healing, never complete, but always occurring.

Does this make sense?

This morning, our grandson and I are early risers, there was an “oldie” playing in a movie he was watching, and it was my jam, so I started dancing and he burst out in joyful laughter; it was a great way to start the day. Of course, it made me miss my son. Of course, I thought about how he should be here dancing with his son and carrying forward our tradition.

Sometimes, I stomp dance like Shiva and sometimes, I dance like Ginger Rogers, stomping or graceful, both dances are to the tune of deep, life-long grief. I spent too long with the dirge, marching toward a lifelong sentence of visceral mourning. I don’t want that perpetual darkness to enshroud me like a mourning shawl – always visible to everyone – so they can avoid me like the plague. I know how much it hurts; I also fell into what is called complicated grief. I don’t know what the right amount of time to be in acute grief; I wish I knew for sure so I can answer that question for the parents at my other blog. I spent three-and-a-half years in deep, paralyzing grief. There was no dancing during those years; it hurt too much.

In retrospect, I wish I knew then what I know now: life goes on – even after great losses. The music doesn’t stop until we do. I wake up at 4 a.m. and turn on my music, of late, Taylor Swift, and then … I dance and I sing … and I miss my son … and I welcome those I love into my dancing – and I laugh, stomping out the rhythm of my healing process, until the music begins to wind down into the grace of a waltz. Both types of dancing have their purposes.

Tears can sound like, one, two, three, one, two, three, grief, a dance of its own. Lee Ann Womak sings a song in which she shares her wish for the world in, “I Hope You Dance.” I hope you do – even when the tears flow because of a memory of the person with whom you should be dancing.

Dance anyway.

I love interpretive dance, i.e., the dance of anger, the dance of jubilation, dancing naked before the Jewish God in ecstasy, free-form dancing, mosh pit thrashing, and the dance of deep sorrow. Sometimes there are no words, even in my jam, and so I dance the dirge until I no longer need to. I don’t need the dirge as much as I used to. I prefer the dance of ecstasy.

But grief is as incomprehensibly as deep as the ocean, and equally as unpredictable in its intensity. We can sink, or we can dance on water; the latter is a miracle of post-traumatic growth.

I encourage you to believe that you will grow from your grief, even when you buck; if you hang in there, you’ll be dancing again – even when you weep afterwards. I wish you the music you need today.

[Dance] with me, [dance] for the year
[Dance] for the laughter and [dance] for the tear
[Dance…] with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good LORD will take you away. ~Steve Tallarico, Aerosmith~

For everything there is a season […] a time to dance and a time to mourn […] Ecclesiastes 3:4

Transitional Objects

By Sherrie Cassel

I’m staring at the dried, yellow flowers immortalized in clear resin and mounted on a piece of dark wood. This is a gift my son gave to me when he was just a young child. With no child support from a dead-beat biological father, money was always tight, and thrift stores were so much more exciting than fighting for parking spots or racing to get the last of something everyone else wants just as badly. Or counting my change to buy my son a brand new pair of shoes.

Even after Rikki was making his own money and had developed his own style, he loved thrift stores. Going to them was like going on an expedition, a treasure hunt, and we always found something. My mother used to say I always struck gold when I’d hit up the thrift stores.

Objects can be evocative. This morning, the resin ball reminds me of where my son purchased it and how he was so proud of himself to give me something he bought with his own money when he was barely out of toddlerhood. Yes, this is a beautiful memory. I’ve had it with me for decades now; it is more valuable than gold to me. Funny, how voices, ours, someone else’s, or even our ancestors speak through our mementos.

My son spent a few times in rehab before he died from heroin and alcohol addiction. During the time he was there, he learned a lot of life skills through different media, i.e., collage, painting, poetry, etc. Rikki painted two pieces which hang on my wall in my home office. I see my son’s soul through each element of his artwork, each piece of tissue paper in his collages, each color.

“Things”, in Spanish “chingaderas” – can bring us to our knees, make us laugh, or give us pause for thought, i.e., The Korean War Memorial, or a tiny ball of resin. This object reminds me of the 70s when this type of art was popular, as were sand candles and macrame. This object of beauty gifted to me by my son beckons me to the 70s, an idyllic time for me, and even though – my son was not a part of those years, I carry him with me into my past, just as I carry him into every single day since his birth and since his death.

As Bruce Hornsby sings, “That’s just the way it is.”

Walter Benjamin wrote an essay about how he shelves his books. My books may be as valuable to me as gold is to our economy. I’m not a hoarder, but I have an extensive library. As much as I love the entire sensual experience of holding a book in my hands, to save space, I’m eternally grateful for my Kindle.

I don’t have a method to my shelving; if they fit, they go on the shelf. I have the kind of memory about some things that mentally locates items, i.e., I’ll know where I saw it last, even if it was days ago. Nothing to write home about, but my books are in no particular order, and most of the time, I remember where on which shelf a book is I’m trying to locate. My son loved to read too. I have his copy of his favorite book, THE COUNT OF MONTECRISTO. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. The book is holy because it was so special to my son.

The resin ball is holy because it was a gift from my little boy and it has traveled with me for over forty years; it sits prominently on my desk. Some people speak about different energies, and while I’m not sure of the many types of energies there are, i.e., I know nothing about chakric science, so I can’t speak to it, but I do feel as if there is something very holy about most everything, i.e., artifacts of beauty, and it is true; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

For example, I love the artwork of Gottfried Helnwein; I find it to be gorgeous, while some might find it a bit macabre. “The Song” especially speaks to me. I encourage you to check it out. Today I’m going to rearrange my office in preparation for a house guest, and because, well, it just plain needs it. I anticipate I’ll run across trinkets and tokens I’ve carried with me throughout my sixty-three years.

I have a doll named Minerva I’ve had since I was single digits. My mother, who saved EVERYTHING her kids ever made for her or that belonged to them, kept Minerva safe until I could tolerate the memories that came with her. I had forgotten all about her. She represents cold, hard survival. She is plastic which I never found to be conducive to building a comforting transitional object. My teddy bear, Pohleeta, didn’t survive the years, but she was of far greater comfort to me than Minerva. Pohleeta was soft and squishy, like a mom should be.

Minerva was my first object lesson in projection. I chopped off all her hair and made her ugly. She travels with me now; and my mother dressed her in a cute outfit she found in a thrift store; it’s a multigenerational thing, or is it poverty that is the mother of amazing creativity /inventions with one’s finances?

Minerva sits atop one of my smaller bookshelves. She sits next to a doll my mother purchased, again – from a thrift store. The doll is ugly. She has the same hair cut I gave to Minerva. My mother found cute clothes to dress up this poor little orphan baby doll; this speaks volumes for both my mother and me.

I have my three degrees on the wall in the order in which I received them, B.S., A.A., and M.A. placed on my wall with a sun and a moon in the place where my doctorate will go when, if I’m able to complete it before I hit that road to eternity. Life has flown by at the speed of light and here I am, looking toward my 64th birthday. I’ve come so far…on the shoulders of giants.

The wind is howling in my tiny desert town; there’s a chill in the air. I’m doing really well in my life. I have what I need, maybe not always what I want, but my needs are few these days. Give me a book and put me in a corner and I’m happy as a clam!

This rambling has been brought to you by serotonin and dopamine. I’m on top of the world, and one reason is because I took the energy I feel toward my son in the form of love and I infused the resin ball with it; the object inspired me to miss my son, to remember him tenderly; and it reminded me to hold on greedily to memories that are sweet, especially when darker memories become intrusive. Bait and switch that hurtful memory. I’m not saying to dissociate, but if you’re not in a space where you can have a meltdown, change your thoughts; you really can.

I wish you each the kind of day you need – surrounded by the things that make you feel most at home within yourself.

Namaste

Holding Space for Uncertainty: Hope

By Sherrie Cassel

If I ask you

Point blank,

“Do you believe in an afterlife?”,

please know that I am desperately

searching for my son

in the promised mansions, or

in the swirling energy, his

Holy Spirit dancing with mine?

If I ask you if you believe in heaven,

without hesitation, just know that

Need to know because I

can’t comprehend never seeing

him

again.

If I ask you,

uninhibitedly

“Do you believe in G_d?”,

please, please understand

I must believe in an afterlife,

in a heaven, and in a G_d. I am a desperate

mother who needs these things

to be

true – to keep her sanity.

If I ask you, with sweaty hands and

furrowed brow and in rapid succession

if you believe

“this is not it.” If energy never dies

then neither did he.

This is a truth I can live with,

and still march on … perhaps

into forever – with the one

person I love most.

I suppose I won’t know for

certain, but one thing

I do know, hope didn’t die

when he did.

Momma said there’ll be days like this…

By Sherrie Cassel

So, no news is good news, right? Well, maybe on some days. I haven’t written anything for this page for a spell. My absence has been both good and challenging. Life is to be lived fully when not in crisis, and I’ve been fortunate to have smooth sailing for a bit. Our Christmas was chaotic because of my husband’s accident, but we’re back to normal – whatever that means, right? For me, it means that we are fully functioning, that my husband is healing, that our grandchildren are well, and that my hormones are in “balance” – so I can live a life worthy of the life I’ve been gifted. For how ever long it lasts … (a fragment means incompletion … it means there is still time for correction).

Admittedly, with the exception of a few days of great sorrow, my son’s angelversary on January 22^nd, for example, I’ve had beautiful, sunny (if not chilly in the high desert) days when I’ve been able to play with our grandson, write, and socialize. I may have even found a progressive church where I might “fit in.” We’ll see. I want no membership, no responsibility, other than to help in the kitchen, and service tasks, and the like.

My health is good. I’m happy. I have moments when I miss my son so much, I have to work doubly hard to make it through the day; it’s better when I’m busy. When I’m alone and isolating myself, it only leads to stagnation, and I so need my life to be full and dynamic – despite the greatest loss a parent can endure. So those of you who’ve supported this site for some time know ten yeas have passed since I lost my Rikki. During those ten years I’ve worked my ass off to stay with the living, to enjoy life, to navigate wounds more efficiently, and to thrive…the full spectrum.

My dearest friend has told me that she sees me as all about healing – myself — and helping others to find their own pathways to the greatest healing they could ever even imagine. What a nice thing to say. If you want to know how I’ve done it, how I’ve managed to begin and to continue healing, well, I have stood on the shoulders of giants, of those who precede me in the grief process, and those with whom I have traveled for ten years, and more if one considers the mutual losses my population has endured: the loss of our children to a current plight in American society.

I’ve leaned on and so, I’ve learned from fellow grievers, experts in the field of grief, friends, and strangers on the street how to begin healing, what unguents to put on my wounds, how much sun to expose them to, and learning to not pick at the scab – or it will never heal. Doesn’t matter how well our healing process goes, whether we find transformation or unresolved trauma, there will be emotional scars. I have them. I’m able to cover the wounds until my life no longer resembles a person in deep and incapacitating grief. Trust me; I was there.

Having had a hoppin’ life for the past two years, I’ve been able to slow down, veg to music and binge watch pay channeled series of fascinating new shows with the grandson, have long conversations, non-rushed, with my husband; I’ve been able to have friends come stay with us and visit for days. I mean, I’ve been living it up. I’ve also been reading A LOT in preparation for my doctoral program. See, I’ve learned to stop and breathe for moments at a time when the vestiges of visceral pain, which will always be there, are just too present at inopportune times, I refocus and reframe my overwhelm. I redirect my pain into purpose. What can I do for someone else who is hurting or struggling? Or … I find a space of time when I can fully immerse myself in rising grief – which will always be present – but now navigable.

When I consider each of the days that comprises my individual grief process, I simply can’t believe ten years have passed. I feel like it was just yesterday we were cruising around in my car, laughing and singing along to the radio – on a perfect January day in Southern California. When I play the movie of my life … the past ten years, I see the woman doubled over in pain during the day, and curled up in the fetal position at night. I see the woman who begged the God of her limited understanding for even a second of relief from the stabbing pain into my very Soul, and I marvel at how far she’s come, and how far she’s had to work to find her way to Wholeness.

Transformation does happen when we’re ready, when we’ve navigated the darkest parts of our early grief days. I know; there are parts of us that stay in the dark, and it is we who must release them so they can be exposed to the healing sunlight. Not easy, truly, even if you were expecting the death of a loved one, it hurts; it just does. I’ve been so fortunate to cross paths with grievers, some with less time than I have for the loss of their children. They’ve helped me to open my eyes to the transformative power of grief. Of course, we’d give back all the transformation for the return of our babies, but we live in a world that has shoved reality in our faces by the loss of our children, so, we adapt and we adjust to new lives – carrying our grief in our knapsacks of emotional resources, of which grief is one.

How is grief a resource?

I guess, for me, and I don’t believe for a second that all things happen for a reason, but I do believe we make meaning out of the experiences in our lives. The deeper the wound, the more profound is the meaning; I would argue. My son died and there are infinitely many reasons for his drug use which led to his very early death; however, he didn’t die so I could learn something. I object vehemently to anyone who suggests otherwise. For me, the only phenomena that helped me to begin healing were logic, having answers in the present tense, knowledge that has morphed into wisdom and gifted me with the ability to want to work toward the best life I can offer myself, and the ability to hold time and space for deluges of tears or times I need to be alone with my grief and mourn my son’s death in private.

Any methods we employ on our way to wholeness, even those that prove self-destructive, are personal and individual. I’ve tried everything from a shaman to more traditional healers to stop the pain; however, when the pain comes, there’s really no stopping it, only navigation. I can shelve it temporarily until I can get to a safe space or find a safe person from whom I can find comfort.

I’ve always had people in my life, just as I’m sure you have, who are the best of friends, but with whom we have not been able to process our grief because they simply do not know how; I’ve learned to let them off the hook. They simply did not know how to share in my grief either because they had not experienced a grief so great, or because they were overwhelmed by the fear that your loss brings into focus — the reality that death will touch us all. In some ways, and until we begin to stabilize our emotions, I believe we grievers are seen as contagious – while we feel invisible.

As the saying goes, “All things passeth away, and all things are made new” – how ever you interpret this. I’m told I exude joy — . I ‘ve worked hard for it. Sometimes I’ve had to replace a pang of sadness from a memory with a happy thought or lovely memory – immediately, as soon as I feel the pang…because I wasn’t in a place where I could melt down.

Know your audience and find safe spaces in which to mourn and/or commune with your loved ones. I don’t think one has to necessarily be a mystic to commune with the Spirit of your loved one, and I don’t necessarily mean I believe my son is present or that he can hear me. I just don’t know about that, but I know I go out to the National Park and speak to the part of my heart where my son will always reside, and I find healing power in the billion years’ old stone formations and I commune with the desert ravens, the amazing foliage in our beautiful landscape, and I bask in the silence.

Where are the beautiful places in your neck of the woods? I encourage you to go there often, alone if that’s what you need, or with a trusted friend with whom you can be vulnerable, maybe even to weep in his/her arms. We grievers are really the only ones you can walk out of our sorrow and into new lives where we can thrive, and where our whole lives are not consumed by that sorrow.

I strongly urge you to read everything you can get your hands on about grief and the mourning process. I encourage you to view YouTube videos about how others have navigated the process, one that has been prompted by a loss that is similar to your own. For example, my loss involved losing an adult child to heroin and alcohol; your loss may be something a chasm apart from my loss.

Find your grief niche.

Find your purpose post-loss; it’s still there, and perhaps your dreams have come into greater focus, but the pain of your loss holds you back from pursuing those dreams. If you’re new at this, trust me, your grief will lessen in intensity even though it will never go away completely. For those of you who are veteran grievers, thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders. I am so grateful for, and sad that you’ve had to be, the example of courage you’ve shared with me and other grievers.

So, I haven’t ghosted the site; I’ve just been fortunate enough to be okay enough to have a busy life, rich relationships, and the ability to immerse myself into research and creativity. I know some days it feels like you will never feel good again. Don’t cheat yourself out of those moments when you do feel good, no matter how much survivor’s guilt you carry. The breaths of fresh air are brief in our early days of grief; lap them up selfishly regardless of their brevity.

I also encourage you to get out in the sun today, or if you’re in an area of crazy blizzards, I encourage you to bundle up with your fluffiest blanket with a good book or engage in a conversation with someone who makes you think existentially, or who can make you laugh.

I know it hurts right now.

But … this too shall pass is a reminder to me that I won’t always be in the dumps – even though I will grieve until I breathe my last. In the interim, in between my first and last breaths, those that came easily, and those that came labored, I will strive to be whole, which means I allow myself to feel the full spectrum of emotions, even when I find I must sob until I catch the breath that will keep me here in the present moment.

I guess like a magician, now you see it, now you don’t is how I grieve. I wear grief like a disappearing tattoo, always with a trace, never fully gone.

Despite how I feel on great days, the grief that is always present is a commemoration for my son’s short, beautiful, and tortured life; some days I just handle my shit better than others.

Today is one of those days.

Namaste.

The Probability of Forever

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

There’s a tear in the fabric of the Universe
where you have slipped through,
inaccessible in a black hole.

The tear mimics the one
in my heart,
deep as the ocean,

in which I cannot
see the bottom.
The water is too murky.

Your life seems
to have passed
in the blink

of an eye.
Where did you go
so quickly?

You were a beam
of light, passing
through,

as temporary as
a snowflake,
melting in the sun.

Will your energy flow through
me now in a particle field
of Love and memories

awakening my synapses,
dulled by your death?
Or will I see you

in a nimbus cloud
shaped like a heart
as clear as my teardrops,

dedicated to you?
I wish time travel was
possible.

I would risk it all and take that
quantum leap to where
you are,

and have that
glad reunion,
with hugs and happiness,

where sadness will
not darken eternity,
an eternity

with you.

Dukkha: Is Suffering Optional?

By Sherrie Cassel

To love someone, especially in Christocentric faith traditions, one must prove her love through suffering. How many love songs and love stories have been written about this very thing, and maybe even your own relationships, and the sagas of your friends and family in which all characters have suffering and drama pretty consistently? This is the kind of family I emerged out of; it took me decades to stop suffering at the hands of others. I had a lot of drama and today I have peace. I think we recreate the behavior of our family of origin family dynamics, good, bad, or indifferent affects — until we realize we don’t have to.

There’s a song by Dramarama called, “Anything”; it’s about a dysfunctional relationship and the negotiation process in such a relationship. In the song, two people are suffering, and yet one of the parties wants to try despite the hell the song portrays. I’d have run in the opposite direction – today, and I never really had “fights” in any relationship but the one with my ex-husband, and we were two dysfunctional very young adults, but – there was drama — and a lot of it. How could there not be?

In Buddhism, suffering is called dukkha, and Buddhist perspective is that suffering is just a part of life, from birth to death, and the sooner we accept this, the sooner we will find liberation here, not in some imaginary utopia, but right here in our current life. Surely, suffering IS a part of life. I suffered a great deal when my son died, for example. We suffered together during our hell of addiction.

Again, suffering is a part of life – but to volitionally put oneself in a relationship whose constant theme is suffering, that’s suffering, certainly, but my advice is get out and find your peace and then other peaceful people will be drawn to you, just as we draw dysfunctional partners and friends to ourselves when we haven’t worked through our shit and made the choice that being happy, whole and at peace is so much better than being oppressed or abused.

My husband and I laugh at our arguments five minutes after we’ve had one, and the arguments are about chores, ideological differences. We’re on the same page politically, but I’ve been sporadically religious during my sixty-three years, so I consider myself a sporadic theist, and he is devoutly atheist. But as when I was nineteen, I tolerated infidelity, boredom, angst, rage, and extreme dissatisfaction in my first marriage. I suffered. My son suffered.

I suffered until a friend told me the truth. No one likes to hear truth when they’re afraid or stubborn, or unaware they are unhappy, dissatisfied; or they’re not sure they “are” being abused. I know sometimes you may feel hopeless in the dramas in your life that keep playing out – over and over again. I assure you, once you begin therapy, educating yourself by reading every book you can find on how to find peace, wholeness, and the divine in your very own life — life will open up for you in great leaps and bounds.

Losing my son will forever be the heartbreak of my life; it leveled me for a few years. If I allow myself to lapse into the type of mourning I did in the early years after he died, I’d suffer. I choose not to. I choose not to suffer. I had no control over my emotions in the early months and years after he died. Every single thing reminded me of him. I call reminders triggers, because sometimes they fire out like a bullet with precision and pain, and then I have to remove the bullet, clean out the wound, bandage it and wait for it to heal. Grief is suffering because that’s life and natural stage in our lifespan. Suffering, dukkha, is the natural course of events. People die; the manner really is circumstantial. A life ends, and people loved the decedent, and her absence will be an adjustment period for her loved ones – and the separation between presence and absence is deeply felt – there will be a mourning period for however long one needs to mourn.

The mourning process is difficult, sometimes complicatedly so. Mourning is suffering; grief is the awareness of loss and the desire to stop suffering; the acquisition of this self-awareness does, in fact, in my experience ease the suffering. I know, for example, that my son suffered in his life. I know he chose a coping mechanism that would ultimately kill him. I know, intimately, about the experience of the hell of his addiction. I have answers. I’m not asking “Why?” anymore. I’m also no longer suffering.

Suffering at some point can be dismantled and replaced with emotional and spiritual liberation. My heart hurts for those who suffer without self-awareness; healing is a very long process – lifelong I would argue. Little children have no voice and have no choice about suffering at the hands of abusive primary caretakers, i.e., parents, etc. I commiserate, and I am fortunate and humbled to work with populations in which people have suffered and are currently suffering, but who remain hopeful.

In abusive relationships between two consenting adults, you gotta just leave, bruh, man, woman, or za. I know it’s underreported, but men also experience spousal abuse. Suffering can be relinquished for peace and tranquility – absent of drama, abuse, and suffering. Life will happen and suffering will occur without assistance, and then – we’re left with how to manage life after the implosion of a dysfunctional relationship. Sometimes suffering and shouting and violence are all we know when we leave dysfunctional families; and so – wash, rinse, and repeat.

Love does not mean taking shit and being silent about it. Sheryl Crow also sings a song called, “No One Said it Would Be Easy”. I know there are adjustment periods when two people begin to live together, and sometimes it can be a tough transition, but suffering should not be the norm. One should walk away from people who consistently hurt you. My transition, after not living with someone for over twenty years, might have been a trainwreck if I hadn’t spent a substantial amount of time in therapy, getting emotionally well, after being one of those children who suffered at the hands of adults.

I know some of you may think you are without hope, but you’re not, and “counting “suffering” all joy” for love will only perpetuate choices we make about how we choose a mate. As a self-aware person, suffering is optional – after a substantial grief process; the end of a relationship, even abusive ones, leaves a hole – that we must fill up with purpose which will bring you a peace you may only dream about at present. I have a friend who is very proud of himself for how he left an abusive relationship he had tolerated until he just couldn’t take it anymore. He did leave and he lived on the streets for a bit. He said he would rather do that than take one more minute of abuse. His life is going well. He stopped the madness in a repeat performance of the relationships in his family of origin. One day a lightbulb appeared over his head and self-awareness was born. He had the revelation he deserved better than he had been receiving in his marriage, and he left, no matter the difficulties he had to brave for liberation.

Some challenges in life will take every ounce of strength you possess, but energy can be replenished. I know in grad school I worked with a population whose members came from worse backgrounds than I did, and I encouraged them to know that life will present challenges, hardcore challenges, and to navigate them during the height of their chaos requires some of the hardest work we will ever do.

I love the verse in the Christian Bible where Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not.” However you navigate your Christocentric religion or non-“traditional” religion – whatever informs your goodness, kindness, compassion, doesn’t need to have an object of worship. But – to my point, the position of the Christian Bible says that God is love, and then Paul/James come to peddle his/their “count it all joy” bullshit, and all hell breaks loose in relationships. Submit your wife; don’t spare the rod with your children. Suffer because it shows me you love me. Suffer for me. Those are the messages that got my blood roiling this morning…and then I wrote about it, and now I can let it go, and try to stay in the place of love for all people. If I’m going to follow the example of a supernatural entity, the entity must be one that engenders love and charity, progress by altruism.

No more prolonged suffering in dysfunctional relationships. There can be liberation from suffering.

My friend told me this morning that in the Twelve-Step program there is a saying, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” We will have our hearts broken. We will lose loved ones forever (dependent upon your assessment of an afterlife). Disappointments abound in this awful/wonderful life.

There is so much suffering in the world presently – for infinitely many reasons. My thinking is that we have a whole mess of dysfunctional relationships in which both or one of the parties feels trapped, unhappy, or is being abused. In that respect, abuse is causing you to suffer. In the Holocaust people suffered horribly. Suffering was not optional at the time of the brutal savagery. There are times, of course, when suffering is our present experience – sometimes at the hands of others, and sometimes we suffer by own behavior and choices we make.

Dukkha…not being able to forgive yourself causes suffering. If you’ve never read David Kessler’s book Finding Meaning, I emphatically recommend it, and When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. Once we become aware that we deserve the best, and that we don’t deserve the drama of other dysfunctional people, we can begin to heal and to liberate ourselves from the trauma of dramatic and emotional and physical abuse in relationships that cause us to suffer.

I don’t know if suffering is optional. I know I suffered a great deal in my first marriage, mostly with chronic dissatisfaction and his infidelity. How did I set myself free? His infidelity became the opportunity for me to create a happy life, in essence, to escape the hopelessness I felt in an oppressive life.

Are you currently suffering? Does it feel like you will never rise above the tragedies in your life? You can. You must. Does the song “Anything” remind you of your current relationship, or if you’re currently single, does the song remind of you past patterns of relationships you’ve had?

As far as grief goes, we also grieve bullshit relationships in which we might have suffered a great deal. The grieving process is a must. I know once I became self-aware enough to figure out I deserved better in my life, the world began to open up for me. Was I frightened? You betcha. How does one surrender self-destructive coping mechanisms? How does one find a healthy partner, even if that partner is oneself? Like I tell my clients, hard work, hard work, hard work is how one makes her dreams come true.

Grief is a process that must be worked. Did I grieve my first dysfunctional marriage? Perhaps in the beginning as a 21-year-old, but as the decades have passed, I’ve grown through personal trauma. I’ve released fucked up people back to their own dysfunction. I’ve also married an emotionally sound person who thrives on peace as much as I do. We don’t negotiate our differences manipulatively. Love shouldn’t hurt. Love should never gaslight.

There was book written and I believe it’s been revamped by Lynette Triere, called Learning to Leave, which is not only comforting, but it is also practical. I return to my original point, suffering in relationships should be eliminated from your life, even if you are like my friend, without a place of your own, are adrift in a sea of unfamiliarity, or couch surf for a while. If you have children, read Lynette’s book and start planning your escape. I encourage you to get therapy and/or pastoral counseling for spiritual sustenance. Even atheists need some kind of anchor, even if it is a human one.

You will suffer through the mourning time after the loss of a loved one. Work through it. Read everything you can on your challenge. Talk with a trust friend. Journal. Write poetry. Paint your pain and release yourself from suffering that you no longer need in your life to feel alive.

Trust me, liberation from suffering is in our hands. I had no place to go after my ex-husband’s infidelity. I never received child support and we lived at the poverty level for decades as I worked my ass off and tried to stay in school to improve our lives. I escaped a lifetime of dissatisfaction. I escaped the kind of volatility that comes from frustration, frustration to change my circumstances.

Today, I offer you hope that no matter where you are, please don’t give up hope. Hope really does float and we really can soar. We have the potential for a lifetime of peace – interspersed with occasional suffering that we must work through, but trauma in relationships should not last decades.

Please read the two resources I’ve mentioned here in this post. Please see Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk on abuse and its effects through the lifespan. Listen to “Anything” by Dramarama, and see if it rings true for you. Maybe you think this is the way relationships are conducted and it’s the only thing you know. Suffering in relationships is not conducive to a good life, and you are so richly deserving of a good life.

Believe this. Work hard. Keep that spark alive. Draw in the kind of people who will love you without pain, and … set yourself free.

Portrait of an Old Woman as a Young Artist

By Sherrie Cassel

“But I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” ~Bob Dylan~

In the phenomena of living things oxymorons are plentiful. The word oxymoron originated in Greece. The word means, basically, double-sided, two-edged, one side sharp, and the other side dull. Perhaps indicative of the ability to choose between two types of behavior when confronted with life-altering experiences, for one’s reputation, or for one’s very life.

I don’t want to go too far off the beaten path, per normal, but I do want to throw in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of psychosocial development and say that within each concentric circle of the model there remains a need for survival, some methods used for achieving survival are more base than others.

But do we really have only two choices? Maybe. I’m going with adaptive and prosocial behavior vs. maladaptive and antisocial behavior. I don’t think you have to have a doctorate to make prosocial decisions and then act appropriately. I also don’t think a doctorate affords one emotional stability either.

I’m going with the double-edged sword, one side so thin it could ever so thinly slice through the epidermis without so much as a nick in the dermis with steely precision, and the other side, dull, as if to say, “I want to offer you two choices for resolution, but I don’t really want to engage in battle.”

Which of these methods is your M.O.? As I’ve learned to soldier on and sometimes skip gaily through life since the death of my son, and since therapy and decades of healing, there are not only two sides to every social event, and in fact, if there are multiverses, I bounce in between them in every interaction with an “other”. Is that woo woo? I know there are some phenomena which will remain unexplained, unanswerable, and perhaps even a mystery our species will continue to chase until our own extinction. Sunny thoughts, huh?

I both love and love a little less the aging process. My husband absolutely sees no reason for it. I shudder, right now, at the alternative. I’m so not ready to launch into eternity yet. I have too much to do. I got a late start, but I’m rarin’ to go – even in my sixties. I feel alive, vibrant, and full of energizing creativity. I have a friend who creates beautiful artwork in several media. I have one medium: words.

I no longer need the steely, sharp-witted and caustic side of my rapier. I am not foolish enough to think I don’t ever need to protect myself; however, I prefer harmony, inasmuch as I can evoke it in my life and inasmuch as I can share it with others.

Healing from all sorts of personal, emotional, and spiritual injuries takes time and courage – and absolute dedication to the process, no matter how much it hurts. The cliché, “The only way out of the pain is through it,” should not be relegated to the bottom shelf of pithy sayings that got you through early stages of your healing process; trust me, someone else will benefit from your experience. I shout from the rooftops, TELL YOUR STORY.

If it had not been for those who grieved the loss of their children before me, I would have had no models to emulate, and I do so have the heart of a professor. I want to impart the knowledge that is lifechanging. I want to impart the knowledge that has been shared with me. We each interpret our grief through different lenses, at different levels of clarity, as our hoped for lives come into focus. I’m no longer dreaming. I’m fulfilling my dreams, even as I grieve, even as I hold space for my marriage to my amazing husband, share a home with our grandson, enjoy my friends and family of choice. See, we must live because as death constantly surprises us with its brevity, we have no clue when our number’s up. Cheery, I know.

Carpe freakin’ diem. Eat, drink and be merry. Live your best life, and don’t wait until your ship comes in; we could be wasting an amazing life on waiting for something we think is best, and then … tragedy strikes and some things couldn’t wait, relationships that will never be experienced again satisfactorily, and we must settle for missed opportunities.

I couldn’t wait for a publisher to get gaga over my book, so I self-published. I never expected a best-seller; I’m too humble, but I do hope the words of mine and my son’s story resonates with someone all the way toward healing the deep wound that gapes in the early days of loss, in the lifelong process of grief.

So, as I approach my 64^th birthday with glee and anticipation, I will do my best to promote my work. I have seven months before my program begins, and I choose to present this old lady’s work with the verve of an idealistic twenty-year-old.

My husband feels like an anachronism. This sentiment is one among infinitely many one may choose to feel as he ages. What compels me to soldier on despite the most painful loss a parent can endure? Quite frankly, and as simple a thought as strawberry shortcake on a cool evening at the end of a sweltering summer day, the answer to that question is: Love; it just is. I wish I’d known that the end goal in life is not to make gobs of money and acquire gold only to store it in warehouses where it is of no benefit to anyone but ourselves. I wish I’d known that at the summation of one’s life, a satisfied mind is the goal.

My supervisor during my internship asked me what I wanted out of life. I told him, unequivocally, I want peace. I want to help others to achieve peace too. He asked me, “What if people don’t want peace?” I hope that’s not true. I longed for peace for fifty years before I began to get and love a taste for it.

I’m a late bloomer in academia and in achieving happiness. My friend and reverend told me a story about something someone told her as she was working on herself and making great strides. Her friend asked her to imagine how much further along she would be if she’d been loved, encouraged, and recognized during her formative years. Ouch.

Fear is a dam holding back all the emotions that need clearing or feeling. Burn some sage. Have a shaman come over and do an energy clearing. See a shrink and pour your heart and soul out and HEAL. I don’t want to waste a single minute suffering the vagaries of life.

I’ve been writing since I first learned how to hold a crayon. I had no voice as a child, and for much of my time as a struggling single mother of a beautiful little boy. Neither of my parents had the emotional resources to offer encouragement or recognition of their children’s innate talents.

I went through almost all of my secondary education without a voice, until I had an English teacher who encouraged wild creativity. I was enthralled with language and worked hard toward precision language about phenomena that explained human behavior, everyone’s behavior but mine. I had no idea who I was, what I looked like, what I thought apart from my abusive parents, or where I wanted to go. I had no idea there was a trajectory toward joy. After Rikki died, I lost my way, and I forgot I had a voice. I didn’t have something that has never failed me: words. How does one adequately express a pain so deep that there really are no words? I wish I could paint and I would use dark colors, purple for the bruising in my soul, black for the depth of emptiness where my son’s presence used to be, a swath of grey, my son’s favorite color, with broad brush strokes reaching outward from the center of my canvas returning to and being recharged by the Sun. I wish I could create in a medium that won’t fail me like words have where grief is concerned.

Some people describe their understanding of the Divine as ineffable, indefinable, inexpressible, and all encompassing. I feel the same way about grief. The blog I have is filled with grieving parents who are at various stages of healing, and their metaphors are at once hurtful and healing.

My purposes weave in and out of my words here today. I’m a healer simply because I am healing and as I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants who have found their peace through the grief process, I feel as if I’m called to take others by the hand and guide them to the multiverse where anything is possible. I’m not talking about the American (Materialist) Dream; I’m talking about the kind of peace that you can summon anytime. Breathe through the tempests. Peace is a gift we give to ourselves, and if enough of us can find that inner-peace, just imagine how peaceful our world could be.

We’re all growing toward our visions of ourselves. I pray yours is colorful and bright, with veins of the darker colors that shaped you into a person who would aspire to peace.

I wish you peace.