Grief to Gratitude

Complicated Grief: The Tip of the Iceberg

By Sherrie Cassel

I want to share resources I find beneficial with my readers, and with those who accidentally find my page. I’m taking a little time off before I hit the academic trajectory toward a doctorate. I’m taking time for self-reflection and relaxation; it’s been a long four years! This book, which I’ve shared a picture of, is proving to be one of the most amazing and helpful books I’ve ever read. As a mental health professional, I’m good at what I do. My clients love me. I love them. We have excellent rapport, and they teach me about myself as they share their truths vulnerably and courageously.

With whom do I share my deepest feelings, tears, psychological and emotional challenges, and spiritual confusion? I have my husband who has seen me afraid, my most vulnerable emotional state. Oh, sure, I can puff out my chest and try to appear larger than I am, like a wildcat, or a kitten, which one depends on my self-perception of the day.

We are emotional beings and depending on our emotional stability and healed traumas, we navigate life with oozing, gaping wounds, or with peace and liberation from maladaptive behavioral patterns. Copley says that until we courageously unpack our trauma, we will continue to repeat toxic and maladaptive behaviors in every relationship and in every experience.

There is also disadvantageous behavior in which a person processes his/her/their emotions from a position of emotional scarcity. What this means is that, for example, someone who is unable to be happy for someone else’s joy, there simply are not enough emotional resources to rise above our more base emotions, jealousy, for example; it serves no adaptive purposes, and as a matter of fact, it generally serves only to hurt our relationships.

The reasons I begin with trauma and emotional resources are because scarcity in the latter only perpetuates the effects of the former in our lives. But how does that affect the grief process? Give me a page or two to share from my own grief journey, and to share how my fountain overflows with plenty of resources, unless I’m in a funk, like stuck in a victim mentality. For example, I did not lose my son because I’m a bad person. My son died because of addiction, and there is nothing either fair or unfair about his death.

As a process of natural selection, our time here is temporary, with very few of us knowing when or how it will end. I get it. I understand and I even accept the transitional nature of life into the existential dissolution of human reality, another otherworldly launching pad into perhaps eternity, or perhaps, the sweet oblivion that comes from no more human strife.

I don’t, as often as I used to, ask questions that don’t serve the world or me in any beneficial way. I no longer choose to torture myself with unanswerable questions. I no longer choose frustration over freedom. How did this happen? Losing a child or someone else with whom you have had an intense and close relationship with is grounding.

Prior to my son’s descent into the darkness of addiction, I was an idealist. I ALWAYS looked on the bright side of life to the exclusion of reality. Life can be shitty as well as marvelous. Emotions can cause us to ache or to soar to great heights toward optimism and mad possibilities. I anthropomorphize emotions here because we know emotions don’t cause us to behave one way as opposed to another; it is our reaction elicited by healthy coping skills or poor coping skills. My reaction to the loss of my son was from the stance of a pure victim. Why did God do this to me? Why do I have to suffer like this? When will the pain stop?

If I had been navigating life from a healed and self-aware emotional position, my grief, while still intense, would not have been extended. Again, for my regular readers, four and a half years of emotional paralysis and physical immobility were choices I made for myself out of deep-seated unhealed wounds. I ached from the dissolution of my perfect, Pollyanna world. I always wanted to be a cynic, but I just don’t have it in me.

I guess I still look on the bright side of life.

When Rikki died, I did not have a surplus of emotional resources to handle anyone else’s pain, even my fellow grievers – at first. I looked at the date I started After the Storm and Rikki had been gone only nine months when I reached out and asked for help from others who were on the same path as I found myself; it matters. I gained the emotional strength to move forward with my life, despite the darkest days of it.

Learning about oneself is scary, but it is healing, and self-awareness will be your reward. Many people live their lives knowing not what they do. I remember when I was younger and everything was freak out worthy, and I was frequently in a panic. I couldn’t form close relationships because I was caught up in a victim mentality. I’m older and more healed now. I’m able to breathe through intense moments rationally and calmly…even overwhelms of grief.

For example, yesterday, I had such an overwhelm. After reading Copley’s book and remembering what I encourage my loved ones who are freaking out to do, I pause, take a deep breath, ask myself if there is anything I can do about the situation, breathe again, analyze my emotional resources and regulate my emotional status so I can think clearly enough to find solutions to problems in a way that is only beneficial – to me, certainly, but to others as well.

If you’ve never read The Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, I highly recommend it. The Rabbi lost his fourteen year old son to progeria when the young boy was only fourteen years old. The Rabbi, of course, was wounded to the core, but he did not blame an impersonal, uncaring god. He said the loss of his son and the initial affliction were not God’s fault; they simply were the luck of the draw. I’m paraphrasing, of course.

When the internal pain is unbearable, we reach for externalities to help assuage that pain: alcohol, drugs, food, sex, relationship drama, ad nauseam. There was a playwright, Harold Pinter, who is credited with what is called the Pinter Pause, i.e., a perfectly placed pause pregnant with possibilities. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in a state of nervous energy, there is nothing logical in my frenzied brain, and it is never a good idea to make decisions when you’re frantic.

Take the Pinter Pause; stop for a half-second and consider all the possibilities available to you when you’re of a sound and quiet mind.

I did ask all the questions about how a loving god could have so violently yanked my son from my life, from the world, from his son, from all the people who loved him. I blamed a misperception of god for killing, yes, killing my son. Why did my son not survive and have a victory story? See? Unanswerable questions. Rationally I know why my son died and I know how, but when one is in the throes of acute grief, reason is non-existent.

I wish I had been more healed when I lost my son. Memories from the early days of grief are a giant mass of pain, despair, and hopelessness. Sure, I bartered with the god and the devil from my youth to bring my son back to life. No Pinter Pause, just plain ol’ hysteria and unreality from losing a part of myself.

How do we shake the victim mentality when someone dies who is as close to us as one can possibly be? I know this sounds too simple, but the way you shake suffering is to choose to not engage with it. I miss my son. I have grieved for him and will continue to grieve all the ways he should still be here with us; grief is a natural process. When we lose someone we love, it shakes up the natural order of things. We can’t conceive of their eternal absence. How will the world run without this person? Will I ever stop hurting?

When you’re in the moment, again, dependent upon your emotional reserve, you pick yourself up by the bootstraps and dust yourself off and keep on going, forever changed, forever changing. Or … you collapse under the weight of the loss, and it takes you years to claw your way out of despair. I was in the latter rung of hell for much longer than I needed to be … because I hadn’t healed from other traumas and didn’t have the emotional resources to focus on the powerful force of grief, and it is powerful; it’s physical and it’s profound – and the duration we must stay under before resurfacing from the depths of grief depends on our emotional health; it just does.

I can see this now that I’m no longer in acute grief and I wonder … if I’d worked through some of my other shit, I wonder if the acute pain would have decreased in intensity sooner than four and a half years, four and a half years during which I sat frozen in pain. I couldn’t see past my pain and again, I can see it now; there was an iceberg of Freudian pain upon which my most immediate pain writhed. Grief was just the tip of the iceberg, however, and after nine and a half years of grieving my son, my childhood, my idealism, my … and I started allowing healing from a cleared and healing consciousness. I’m not a victim of a punishing god, or of circumstance, and I didn’t lose my son because the Fates called for it; shit happens and when it happens to us, we have two choices, to bail or to buck up. Certainly, take the Pinter Pause; it is in that silence where we grieve deeply, and it is in that space where we are aware of our vulnerability, and it is in that space where we find the courage to move forward with our lives – .

I’ve spent many years in and out of therapy trying to make sense of my wretched childhood, speckled with a few smiles and seasoned with some fine people who tried to rescue me. I’ve spent time in therapy because I had a horrid first marriage and I wanted to know why I stayed when the marriage offered no joy or promise of shared dreams or nurturing one another’s dreams – or dreams! I spent time in therapy when I lost my son. I have no issues touching base with a therapist when things come up, and the book Loving You is Hurting Me, provides ample triggers and opportunities for posttraumatic growth (PTG). See, I can allow myself the delay of freaking out, but that means I’d lose valuable healing time. So, I do what I can to stay in the present moment of a life challenge, grief or a different challenge. If I allow myself to give in to the panic or the paralyzing grief then I can’t move forward in my life, in my relationships, and in my spiritual connection to the Divine.

When we’re stuck in the mire of our grief or other past experiences, sometimes we struggle and fight to get out, and other times we surrender in despair. The thing is, we have choices. Get the therapy so you can handle even the worst possible pain, physical or emotional.

If you have time, read this book; it’s phenomenal. If you experienced trauma at a very young age, if the trauma was repeated, or if you experienced a monumental trauma as an adult, a rape, witnessing a murder, domestic violence, the loss of a child, etc., heal the wounds preceding the current wound; it matters. We have the ability to dress our wounds with love and to expose their depths. We have the ability to recognize our wounds; from all the places they originate. We have the responsibility to ourselves if we want lives of quality, in spite of the many things that have wounded us, to heal ourselves through prosocial and adaptive means, hard, hard work.

Healing continues in my life. My heart no longer races when I think about the past, or the loss of my son, or the state of my country. I just breathe and focus on what is right in front of me. I no longer need to carry all the shit from the past into the present. I can let it go – a little, or a lot – at a time.

Please allow healing to take place in your life. Don’t fight it. Start from the beginning … see where it takes you.

Unmuting the Muse

By Sherrie Cassel

In The Artist’s Way, the author recommends writing three pages a day, or painting, or singing, or going on a meditative walk with yourself. I know for those of us who are really bad at self-care, trying any of these exercises is excruciatingly difficult, and our self-care is neglected to the point of exhaustion and so we have no energy left for our creativity, which we all possess in droves and in different areas.

I try to write every day, but sometimes, I just need a break from the shit in my head swirling all around from angry Americans who choose divisiveness over peace and politics instead of people. I don’t watch the news, and I scroll right past information that is ridiculous, hateful, judgmental, or that lacks compassion for all humanity. I steer clear of the trivial things that are on the table right now in my country.

Life is too short.

I’m so thrilled to be finished with seminary and therapy notes. I will always miss and be grateful for my clients; they made the four hours a day on the freeway worth the drive, and worth the uber-challenging time I spent in the internship. I celebrate my freedom wistfully. I will never forget the clients who helped me to be a better person, to listen better, to grow in my own posttraumatic growth, and I pray to the GOMU that I also assisted them in their own posttraumatic growth.

I’ve learned that no matter where a person comes from, there is hope that she/he/they can grow out of their pain and into the promise of a peaceful and happy life – in any circumstances. If you’ve never seen the movie, HAPPY, I highly recommend it. Poverty is a very real thing. People starving and homeless are very real things. Child abuse and other forms of domestic violence, rape, murder, racism, misogyny, Christian nationalism, and a host of other things that are also very real and present in our world.

If you’re in a position to help someone in a dire situation, do what you can.

I love the story of Job in the Hebrew Bible. Boy, did he have a rough few months, eh? We may have had times when we were beset with problems, loved ones with terminal illnesses, the loss of a loved one, divorce, poverty, ad nauseam. How does one manage her emotions, her stress level, her physiological responses, her ability to connect with others when she is in the throes of a tempest? Not easy; I know.

There are many techniques from many sources, religious and scientific, which can assist us with returning to homeostasis (balance) after a stress-provoking event. I find that lying on my bed and centering myself through deep breathing, and talking to my son, or the GOMU brings me back to the Present Moment, instead of being saturated with the problems/life challenges that present themselves.

I have felt defeated many times in my life, but I’ve never given up. I’m still standing and so are many of you. If you’re challenged by C-PTSD or PTSD, find affordable therapy, pastoral care, a trusted and emotionally-sound person, or the child inside you who is desperate to grow up and make loving connections – with your adult self and with others. We have personal power, maybe not the kind of power and prestige that comes from money and inflated egos, but the kind of power that says, “You cannot take the creativity from my soul.” I love the book MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, and WHAT MY BONES KNOW, and THE SUNFLOWER and books that talk of victory in the face of what can be seen by some of us as insurmountable challenges, but then…

Every once in a while, someone makes it out, sometimes limping to the finish line, and sometimes rising from the ashes into the air from a place of long-term defeat. I know our grandson is very literal. Sometimes we lose, but defeat is not permanent. Neither is victory. But as transitory as victory and defeat are, there are moments of balance and even moments when we soar. I don’t like the slumps any more than anyone else does, but they happen, and we work through them, blood, sweat, and tears.

My suggestion is, especially if you were raised in a shaming, creativity-stifling environment, is read a few victory stories, and see if you can find that same spark in your own consciousness, enough of a spark to set you on a creative journey, one in which you will find yourself in the zone, unable to stop your creation, until it’s been completed.

I’ve been writing since I first learned how. I’d make up stories about perfect places. “The Land of Counterpane” was one of my favorite poems, and I remember my elementary lit teacher telling us that Stevenson was a sickly child who had a rich imagination and created stories from his sick bed. I wasn’t sick, but I was living in a sick environment. I didn’t have a rich imagination at the time, and so I read all about mental illness, addiction, child abuse, sexual assault. I remember one of my teachers telling my mother that I was reading books that were not appropriate for someone my age. I so desperately was trying to make sense of the chaos and dysfunction in my family environment, and my creativity went underground for decades.

I hope as you heal, your creativity returns, forcing you out of years with no vehicle to voice your experiences. We don’t all need to “tell” our stories in words; words just happen to be my favorite mode of communication. I love Gottfried Helnwein’s work; it’s dark and sobering, like life can be from time to time. How do you handle your darkness, your dark nights of the soul, a really shitty day? Bad shit happens in cycles. No one is exempt, nor is anyone a victim of the Fates, or of a god.

I wish I could offer that one day you’ll come to a place where challenges are few, but if you work hard on developing your self-awareness and your self-love, the world will begin to open up and your connections will be stronger than before, or … you’ll be able to walk away from toxicity, regardless of who it is. Parting is such sweet sorrow, said the Bard, and sometimes it is. I’m thrilled when I can let go of a problematic person, and I’ll admit, sometimes I’m a little too Pollyanna for my own good, and I’ve hung on to people long after they’ve shown themselves to be toxic.

Stephanie Foo, in WHAT MY BONES KNOW, says that walking away from family does NOT feel good, and it doesn’t, but sometimes, for one’s own self-preservation and sanity, it is best to walk away. When ANYTHING takes away from your creativity, or your ability to tell your very compelling and necessary stories, again through the media/um of your choice, it is not healthy.

I wrote about Goya’s SATURN DEVOURING HIS SON, a few weeks ago, and although I know nothing about Goya’s life, I bring my own lens through which to interpret art, literature, human behavior, including my own. He created some startling art work, disturbing, triggering for anyone who has had significant trauma in his/her/their life. But out of our pain, from our darkness, on through to the Light of self-awareness is an art form of creativity waiting for you to tap into it and make beautiful things, both the beautiful and the sobering.

This summer, free from the shackles of my internship, I am taking care of me. I’m taking water aerobics, line dancing classes, a class on juvenile delinquency, and spending time with my family of choice and my family of Ben and Louie. Time doesn’t stand still while we’re busy healing, not through the ups or the downs; the atomic clock keeps ticking and, if we’re lucky, we age a little each day.

I’ve met so many people who have no spark in their lives. Yes, they work their fingers to the bone to put food on the table and to clothe themselves and their children. I was a single mother who raised a son in poverty, was undereducated during those years, and I had lost my spark to write, to use my medium to create beauty. I’ve since replenished my creative reservoir and it now is teeming with life and verve. Don’t let your life pass you by without your artistic contributions. I have friends who crochet, knit, paint, teach, counsel, speak, write, and sing, and they create beauty all the time – sometimes even after a rough patch of isolation from the world, or time for meditative contemplation and introspection.

Life is going to come for us from all angles. Some days will be awesome; some will be really bad, and some will just be no big deal, just a peaceful picnic as you sit on the banks of a slow moving creek, with nothing really going on. Sometimes we can create in a rage — better through art than through aggression. Sometimes we create in that contemplative place. Sometimes we create from the depths of despair, but everyone is an artist in his/her/their own way.

Bring your artist out to be your voice. Be loud and clear. Be bold and courageous. Take all the shit you’ve been through and find the rough stones and polish them to a brilliant sheen and garland your pathway toward creativity with those shiny gems. Follow the path when it feels right and take a different path when it doesn’t.

We’re in charge of our creativity. What do you create? Does creating fulfill your heart? Find a way to rise above wherever you’ve come from, especially if it was a challenging place. Okay, Cameron (author of THE ARTIST’S WAY) said to at least write three-pages a day. Mission accomplished.

Find something that revs up your creativity and pour yourself into where the Muse leads you — silence her no longer. I’m trying to not be sad today. I miss my son more each day. He’s been gone nine and a half years. Unbelievable. I took my pain and turned it into purpose. I ache sometimes to the point that I double over in physical pain, not as frequently as I did right after his death, but I made the choice to go on, to create from my pain, to help others with theirs, and to create a life of quality.

How do you use your pain?

I do hope I’ve inspired you to get out there and create from the deepest parts of who you are. Life is a flash in the pan; don’t wait any longer.

Trippin’

By Sherrie Cassel

Trippin’

By Sherrie Cassel

May 20, 2025, graduation day, a hard-earned day, a lifetime of stories and struggles, and here it was, the big day. I had worked decades to be there among Ph.D. graduates and other Masters graduates. We were a small graduating class at our seminary. There were twenty-two total graduates, but only ten walked in the ceremony. My academic journey has been as colorful and as uber-complicated as my life has been.

My husband asked, “How are you today, Mrs. M.A.?” The truth was I was nervous beyond belief. I’ve never been good at receiving accolades; I didn’t get them as a child, not for eighteen years, and so, I still find it difficult when I’m recognized and praised for my talents, skills, contributions to our world. I’m getting better.

So, with so few graduates, our commencement director, rushed through our one rehearsal for how we were supposed to walk up in front of an overwhelming number of people in the sanctuary. So, we went through too quickly for my nervous self. The order of receipt was M.A.s first, then M.Divs. and lastly, our doctorates. Guess who was called first? I had a sneaking suspicion I’d be called first, of course, I would.

One of my biggest fears about public accolades, i.e., graduation in front of my family and a shit ton of strangers is tripping over my two performance anxiety ridden feet. I knew I’d flub it, trip or start weeping from the momentousness of the culmination of a milestone and decades of hard work, hit and miss ability to stay in school, raising a child, alone, and with no financial support from the biological father. I worked to put food on the table and would take a class here and there. I knew I had it in me to go to school and despite the economic struggles, the emotional struggles, cancer, algebra and statistics were some of the challenges I’ve faced as I’ve climbed the academic ladder, only to learn the acquisition is not a linear journey; it’s all over the place.

So, our master of ceremonies was supposed to take my cowl which was draped over my arm, and he was to place it over my neck and shoulders and then I’d take a picture with the president of the seminary and then walk down some terrifying stairs. Stairs to a trembling person are dangerous. I flubbed the whole presentation, but I didn’t trip! We had a “stage director” leading us as to what to do, and I followed directions after making every mistake I knew I’d make. A self-fulfilling prophecy for sure. But I didn’t trip! My biggest fear. But then I remember how some of our celebrities have fallen flat on their asses on their way to accept their academy awards, and their stage was much larger, caught on camera, videos spread all over the world, and while I’m sure the falls are tres embarrassing, they got up, red faced, and accepted their awards, and it was okay. They survived, and I would too. I was not going to let anything ruin my special day, a day for which I traveled so very far.

So, I flubbed the acceptance, but it was okay; it really was. Decades ago I would have foregone the event because of my performance anxiety. But I didn’t care about how I presented as I accepted my degree; I was graduating – with a master’s degree! So, decades ago, the very fact that I flubbed an award presentation, would have had me wound up tightly in shame, calling myself stupid, clumsy, inept at even accepting an award. Definitely clumsy, but not stupid, and not inept. I was proving it by achieving my degree.

I was told I was an idiot for eighteen years and then treated as if I was dangerously stupid for most of my adult life by my family. I was the ditzy one, the one who’d never be able to take care of myself without a man and then they balked at my choices in men. Okay, I made a few really bad decisions, not stupid, just desperate for someone to love me.

So, my graduation was amazing. Our grandson was there, our son was there, and my most dedicated and devoted husband wept as I received my degree. I’m no longer a big partier, so we went out for a celebratory ice cream cone and then braved the five hour traffic jam from L.A. to Calimesa. Unbelievable. We’re not city folk, and our traffic jams consist of maybe ten cars on our version of Main Street. Our lives have slowed down since my son passed away and since my husband retired from teaching. The most activity I’ve had is seminary and living life with friends and really just enjoying the life I have left because none of us really knows just when our number will be up.

Do what you can to make your dreams come true, very grueling and gritty work, but so doable. I came from a poor family rife with domestic violence and emotional cruelty. I raised my son in poverty. Just so I could stay in school, I braved poverty time and time again. I worked shitty administrative jobs, but I’m grateful for the personal lessons I learned to navigate with grace, and again, grit.

My friend and I were remembering our ex-spouses, and how little they’ve accomplished in their lives, their personal choices. Maybe they didn’t believe in themselves or were just too lazy to do the work to learn as much as they could to get to places where they were living beyond survival and making passionate and compassionate contributions to our world. While my friend and I, both single parents who struggled financially while raising our children worked our asses off to feed, clothe, spend time with our kids, and stay in school to improve our lives. We both chose the helping professions to help people who were raised like we were, to make a dent in healing the effects of eighteen years of abuse, to continue to internalize their pain and use it to hurt themselves, to help them liberate themselves from old and no longer useful coping mechanisms, and to teach them new ones.

No comparison.

We’ve done our due diligence to stay the course and get an education despite the uphill life we lived as we navigated lives with supreme self-esteem deficits and self-loathing. We married beneath us. We dated beneath us. But we learned and we learned and we learned until we started getting the help ~we~ needed and blossomed all the way to university and seminary degrees.

Seminary has been the academic ride of my life. I know if and wherever my son is, he knows how hard I worked to get here. Next stop? My Ph.D. in the Psychology of Religion and Consciousness. I’m on a journey, brothers and sisters. Sorry for the binary language; I’m learning how to incorporate new language in this age of the modification of pronouns, after sixty-two years of using conventional and binary language, especially in my favorite mode of communication, writing.

After my son died, I was so miserable; I had hit the rock bottom of my life. I went searching for answers about what happens in the afterlife. ~Where~ was my son now? What happened to the energy that animated that beautiful person? When will I stop hurting? Will I ever be okay again? Where is God in all this? Why am I in so much pain? Who or what will make it stop?

I had always straddled the fence about religion. Some religions, even some blends of Christianity, are lovely and follow the teachings of great leaders, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Ghandi, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, ad infinitum, or at least until our species lapses into the fate of all species: extinction. But in the interim, our fight should be in helping to liberate our collective consciousness from oppression in and its exponentially growing forms, i.e., racism, misogyny, hatred of the poor, and the many many ways we find to hurt each other.

So, I’ve come a long way, Baby, from a shame-filled life to a poised and confident person, with a master’s degree, on my way to Ph.D. Why? Because I can. Si se puede. Did I find the answers I was looking for in seminary? I started on a life-long spiritual journey that will not end until I do. But I’m no longer frightened of tripping through life, and if I stumble on occasion, it’s not the end of the world; it’s but a moment of embarrassment, and then life goes on, and you wear better shoes next time.

I graduated. I completed one of the most challenging and rewarding programs in my life. I did it. I don’t want to be like King Nebuchadnezzar and scream from the rooftops, “ I ~alone~ did this!” because I had a lot of encouragement and support along the way. I had support every time I wanted to quit, and there were a few times I wanted to, even in seminary. I took a class that discussed the different models of God, and I looked for one of the templates to place my own model of God within. I did not find it, but what I did find was a beautiful entrance to a journey toward the pot of gold, the piece de resistance, the end all be all, the God of my understanding. I found God in the most relational way, and I’m no longer fumbling toward God; I’m boldly walking toward the GOMU, unafraid, compelled to love all people, to have compassion, to strive for understanding, and so, to have the ability to extend my heart in grace toward those who are so fucked up they know not what or why the do things that hurt themselves and others. In my spiritual advising, I encourage my clients to love themselves, even as they trip through life. We all trip from time to time; it’s okay; it really is.

I made all the mistakes on the narthex in front of a whole slew of people, and I survived. I helped the people behind me to not make the same mistakes I did. Sure, I can say, “there are no coincidences.” I didn’t flub my receipt of my degree because my colleagues needed to learn, and I was the sacrificial lamb who would set the example. No, I didn’t learn the dance before we marched down the aisle, sat and waited to be called. Damn, I ~had~ to be first!

Life is funny in fits and starts; it really is. Sometimes we trip and sometimes we soar to great heights.

So, I didn’t learn the routine, and I made a few mistakes. I worked hard and it was okay. I held my diploma in my hand proudly relieved that it was over; it’s been a very long and liberating four years. I’m grateful for so many things. I wish my son had been there to see it. He walked alongside me on graduation day. He traveled with me for thirty-two years. He traveled with me on my academic journey for thirty-years, since he was only a toddler. I’ve done the impossible. I rose from the ashes of a devastating childhood, a horrible marriage, poverty, really desperate attempts at finding love, cancer, and the loss of a son and only child. I have tripped time and time again, just not at graduation.

And for that, I’m eternally grateful for the sense enough to wear sensible shoes.

P.S. I have a master’s degree in religious studies and spiritual counseling. Wow.

(Edited)

Grief and estrangement

By Sherrie Cassel

Dedicated to my biological family: I’m sorry you’re hurting.

I found out yesterday, on Facebook, that my sister died; this is how my family of origin handles things. We’re not functional together; estrangement has been good for me. I did not know for decades that I could break free from toxicity and dysfunction, shake the dust off my feet and move forward, without shame, without guilt, but with true liberation. I’ve received text messages from relatives who have no idea about my family dynamics and are offering me kind condolences — not necessary. My sister and I had been estranged off and on for most of our adult lives. We were mirrors for each other of the far-reaching effects of decades of domestic violence. Each of my siblings and I are mirrors for each other. Sometimes you can’t truly heal until you remove yourself from the toxicity.

My sister is another casualty of domestic violence, and I am sorry she suffered until the very end. If you’re in a relationship where you’re not valued to the point of violence, verbal and/or physical, pray to the God of your understanding that you can find a way out; I know sometimes it’s not possible right away, but there is a beautiful life on the other side of violence; trust me, I know.

So, how do you grieve the loss of someone from whom you were estranged? Interesting question. This is my first loss of this kind, and a sibling no less. I’m either numb or really okay. I wish things had been different, but I can’t hold on to the past and abandon all the growth I’ve managed throughout the years of our estrangement. Again, I’m sad that my sister had so much sadness and suffering in her life. I’m sorry she never was able to claim her own liberation from the physical and emotional injuries that we endured as children, four among millions of children who suffer from abuse by their parents or other custodial caregivers, i.e., grandparents, etc., and sadly, even in foster care.

I don’t want this to be a missive about hashing shit out with my sister posthumously; we each had our opportunities for true reconciliation, but our relationship, if there ever was one, was irreparably slivered. I just found out by accident, and I woke up my husband and said, “My sister died.” We talked for a bit and then I went about my business. I didn’t freak out. I didn’t melt down. I’m estranged from every member of my immediate family.

I talked to our grandson and his mother and told a few friends who thought I might not be okay because of the loss. I don’t know how you can lose something you’ve never had. I grieve the loss of a united, loyal, and loving family that never was and now can never be. I grieve the loss of another beautiful life lost to domestic violence and not enough self-love to get out, again and again and again.

If you’re estranged from a dysfunctional and toxic family, sometimes it’s for self-preservation to get out. When one of the members in the challenging relationship dies, is it freedom? I let go a long time ago. I wish my family had thought it kind enough to let me know instead of having me find out on social media, by accident, but it is what it is.

Life goes on and so must I.

I will light a candle for my sister and let her go – again.

Children are victims of domestic violence. We live it. We learn it. We repeat it. I’m a strong advocate of therapy. I believe even the worst person can be transformed if he/she/they have the courage enough to face themselves, all the gory imperfections, those created for them and those they’re creating.

I don’t blame my sister for the estrangement; it was the curse of our family from generations of abuse, addiction, self-loathing, and snarling survival skills and toxic coping mechanisms. Who would miss that? Those who are not healed are who.

I don’t have the luxury of going back in time to fix all the ways my predecessors fucked up through violence against others and against themselves. I can only work within the present moment, and at this moment, I really am fine.

Perhaps losing the love of my life, my son, pushed me down to that rock bottom, and as I fought to get back up to heal my once broken soul to the point of not needing to change reality to accommodate delusions of family cohesion, gave me the courage to walk away from things that are not beneficial in my life. I know I can’t change the reality of our shared childhood. My son, my mom, my father, and now my sister are gone to wherever they have found the greatest happiness; I don’t know about that. But that is my hope.

I guess I’ve grieved the idea of a loving family for most of my life. I have a family of choice now. Is it sad that my biological family is so broken? I don’t know. It’s all I’ve ever known. I wish them well. As the Avett Brothers sing, “No hard feelings.”

How you process your emotions during grief over someone from whom you were estranged can be complicated or just an end of an era. You’ll be judged by those who don’t understand the lack of a healthy relationship you may have had with the one who has died and why you really are okay. I’m not depersonalizing my sister; there has never been a healthy attachment. These are the facts.

Your facts may be different. Some may think of me as cold, but grief really is so unique to an individual, and there are so many variables that matter in life and so, they matter in the grief process(es) too.

So, to answer my own question: How does one manage grief over someone with whom he/she/they were estranged? You either you do, or you don’t. Another choice I didn’t know I had – because we had directives in our family – never choices. I’m not there anymore. I choose to move forward and continue working toward justice and assistance for those who came from backgrounds like my siblings and my son did… “and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep” (Frost).

Politics and Poppycock

by Sherrie Cassel

Is it just me, or is the world on fire, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, a VUCA world, a term used in business models? I know popular opinion is that this administration is responsible for the chaos in my own country, the USA, and while the current president’s antics are sometimes entertaining, they are not exclusively responsible for what is happening in dyads and in collectives. Sniping and one up-personship are nothing new.

The idea that I can address social issues beyond grief is monumental .

Steven Pinker in his BETTER ANGELS says that while we use hyperbole to express our distaste, even revulsion, of human behavior and human events, we’re not anywhere near where we were one-hundred years ago. We may move slowly, but we are evolving. That’s one perspective, and there are days when I feel optimistic, even as the flames of discontent and anger are fanned around me. Other days I’m just too busy to involve myself in the current fights, political, familial, or otherwise.

I’m sixty-two, survived domestic violence, poverty, the oppression of my gender, and lost the love of my life, my beautiful son. Those phenomena transform a person; they transformed me. In my heart and in my head, I know what’s important to me, and it’s nothing material, other than the matter that comprises the people I love and the people who love me. I’m not a holy roller, but I do so love the Bible, MY interpretation — born of all the intellectual data I’ve collected over the years as seen through the lens of my culture of origin. I cannot ignore the effects of culture on my global and individual perceptions. Point: I love the book of Ecclesiastes, the most existential book in the Hebrew Bible.

I’ve been reading it very slowly this week and really absorbing the captivating caution to successive generations about what the Author found to be more important than having all one’s wishes and desires provided for: Loving God and enjoying your work. I think of all the years I raced through life, on public transportation, against the clock, to get my son off to nursery school or elementary school, to get to low-paying jobs with lazy or abusive bosses and trying to stay in school to provide a more economically sound life for my son and me.

I’m finally able to LOVE what I do, even at my age, the ripe old age of sixty-two, sixty-three next month! I’m so grateful. But back to our crazy world, political and personal sniping, and just rampant rudeness toward one another. I know the current administration and its supporters would love to have its imaginary delusion put into the DSM-V, “Trump derangement syndrome”… see, what I mean? Entertaining, but not substantive enough for me to truly give a shit. I’ve got bigger fish to fry these days.

I used to love the fight. I have a conditioned causticity modeled by my mother and I used it for decades, lost a lot of amazing people throughout my life because of it. After a lot of therapy and a lot of academic classes, I laid down my switchblade and learned to communicate more effectively, and kindlier. I don’t need to tear someone up to make my point. As a matter of fact, why do I need to frustrate myself trying to get someone to see things my way? Life is so much more marvelous when we can walk away from people and things that hurt us. I know; I’ve walked away from many people I deluded myself into believing we could have healthy relationships, in which denial was not the cornerstone.

I’m free now from familial dysfunction and denial. I’ve walked away from people who are not self-aware to the point of being oblivious to the reasons they behave toxically toward those they say they love, choose game players to be surrounded by, and play games, even into their sixties!

But, I think, even with this administration, we have the power to pause, or at least lessen, the volatility with which people approach disagreements or differences of opinion.

I love the scene in JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR when Neeley belts out to his disciples, “Put away your sword.” I still have one, but I surround myself with people who I don’t need to constantly defend myself against.

This is a rough time for my country, with so much fear, unhappiness, and government ineptitude which perpetuates all sorts of social ills: racism, poverty, misogyny, trans- and homophobia, ad nauseam.

And yet … America persists. So far.

I’m feeling optimistic today, probably because I’m wrapping up four years of seminary and will have more time to research, write, spend time with my husband, grandson, and family of choice. I’m feeling free because I don’t hold on to the fear that one person can singlehandedly take down democracy. If I’m wrong, I’ll handle it, just like I’ve handled everything else in my life: with prosocial strategy and elegance. Well, not always prosocially, but definitely with my own blend of adaptive elegance. I learned to dance in fire.

I had a professor who I came to really dislike when I was an undergrad. She had her own dysfunction that she transmitted to the world, but she is the one who told me, in a rare moment of authenticity, that I could put down my switchblade. The world needs more builders and fewer demolitionists.

If you’re afraid of current politics and there’s nothing you can do about it, surround yourself with people of like-mindedness and like-heartedness. Yes, we do absolutely live in a VUCA world, but models are made to be expanded upon, and even archived.

I used to be a “mean people” – but life, loss, education, and a keen sense of self-awareness and spirituality have transformed me into a global citizen who works toward balance, diplomacy, temperance, and love … in everything.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with a population I fell in love with, hard-working and full of passion for their lives to be joyful and for them to be whole. I’ve had the opportunity to work in a world I’m not the slightest bit familiar with, but one whose members have reached deep inside my heart and transformed it, made it more pliable, less afraid to be vulnerable with it. The loss of my son has been the single most transformative experience in my life. Again, losing the one person in your life who motivated you to love with your whole self, damaged though it may be, brings the things that are most important into focus.

I wish I had time to help mobilize a revolution in the world, but I can only do it one person, one group, and one day at a time. I think politics has always been ugly and today is no exception. Games little boys play, and some women too. In pettiness we may just achieve ~equality~.

I haven’t watched the news in a very long time. I’ve been too busy having a life, to stress over things I can do nothing about. I’m not burying my head in the sand; it’s self-preservation. Spring will soon pass into blistering and beautiful heat in my desert, and another season will pass into the next one.

The Author said in Ecclesiastes 5:18:

“[…] To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—this is indeed a gift from God. God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past.” NLT

I don’t think this means as Bukowski often said, “Don’t try” to make your life better, but if there is something you can do nothing about, keep busy doing things you love to do, things that get you into that flow.

I listen to my husband rant and rave everyday about the state of politics in our country. I get it, but the whole world is struggling, some more than others, but I can only do what is in my immediate ability to implement change. I fought for peace for decades, and now, I finally have it, and I’m not willing to give it up to a poorly elected official. With the state of politics today, I leave the politicians to their sand boxes where they can fling shovelfuls of sand into the others’ faces. No progress, just political snipes and anal-retentive stubbornness to be right.

Today, the sun is hiding behind clouds, our grandson is asleep in our room, my husband is doing laundry, and I’m writing. I don’t want to use what energy I have to fight battles that are not mine to fight. I applaud those who can manage a fight with civility, intelligence and rational thinking, but today, we see verbal shit slinging and I admit, sometimes I laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the snipes, but truly, the constant bombardment of moronic behavior from both sides can be exhausting. Verbal barbs from the stunted minds of grown ass men and grown ass women who act like 12-year-olds.

Nope.

No hard feelings

by Sherrie Cassel

Anger is poisonous; it wrecks relationships irreparably, and if not irreparably, then shaky forever after. I know. My son and I. His wife and I. My sister and brothers and I, and a string of former lovers who might have turned into relationships had my anger toward men not been so prevalent in my psychological schema.

I think after Rikki died, I was faced with my many, many mistakes, ways I fucked up with men, friends, and mostly, how I fucked up with Rikki. Even though he gravitated toward the broken, those who were even more broken than we were, I get the need for communal understanding, either dyadic or in a group, gangs, for example, or two broken people with broken coping skills falling in love until their childhoods come hurtling to the present — with a vengeance.

I know. I married the first boy I dated in high school. He was broken. I was broken, but we found each other. Broken people find each other. We see each other. We get each other. But the tools that were necessary in our broken families, don’t work in the rest of the world, and because it’s all we know, we recreate our childhood chaos again and again and again, or until we have the wherewithal to extricate ourselves from the bad situations we live in.

Physician, heal thyself.

It’s okay to be angry with our loved one who has died. Sometimes children are angry that a parent has died and left them. I’m angry from time to time with my son who really couldn’t get well. I get it now. But I still find myself angry, like when my grandson misses out on father-son conversations that really can only take place with the safety enough to be vulnerable with someone who really knows you. I’m angry with my son today. Being angry doesn’t mean you stop loving your son, daughter, husband, mother, etc., it means you’re human and you allow yourself to run the entire spectrum of emotions. I love my son, and yet, I’m angry, the child side of me, the one my son left behind. Why did he not love me enough to stay?

Sometimes we are unrealistic about our grief process. My mother elevated my abusive father to sainthood. She pretended the domestic violence didn’t happen in our family, and nearly two years after her death, I’m allowing myself to purge the illusion and admit to myself and to the world that things were far from ideal in my family and there are days I finally allow myself to be mad as hell at my mother, and especially my father who beat every one of us and snarled verbal abuses at us, but Mom’s not off the hook either, and being able to be angry with them has been the most healing experience of my post-humous relationship with my parents.

I love their broken-ass selves. I love my broken-ass self; it’s taken me decades to be able to say that. See, as angry as I am from time to time with others, I’m in no position to judge another person. I use my intuition and critical thinking skills to determine if a person is safe and emotionally sound enough to be in relationship with, and if he/she/they are not then I take the next indicated step (12-Step) and move forward. To be angry with someone because he or she cannot be what you’d like them to be is a waste of time. If someone was a mess in life, he/she/they is/are only lily white now because we’ve elevated them to absolution of their sins against us. I’m not lily white – oh, in a plethora of ways. I will never be in a position to judge another because I am not lily white.

In my Trauma and Grace class, I found grace for my parents despite the fact they were abusive. I have found grace for a great number of people, but I choose to excise them from my life and grieve the loss for a time, hold on to the good memories, and then again, take the next indicated step and set myself free from anger, toward the living and toward the dead…a little at a time, in fits and starts, and sometimes it takes decades, or even an entire lifetime. We’ve all heard of deathbed reconciliations, tearful and saccharine.

The Avett Brothers have a song called, “No Hard Feelings” – it’s about the way I want to go out, peacefully. I have no hard feelings for anyone – anymore, not even my ex-husband, the biological father who bailed on my son, okay, maybe a few hard feelings, but truly, I enjoy my peaceful life too much to hold on too tightly to my anger.

If there is a heaven, I know my son is there. I know my abusive parents are there, and I know one day I’ll be there, if …

I was angry today, and I was angsty. I miss the laughter despite the turbulence in our relationship. We loved and we fought. I know he knew how much his mother loved him the night he died. Damn it! He died in withdrawals; by the time I got him to the hospital he was already dying. Yeah, I get a little angry with him from time to time, but my love for him overrides my irrational anger, my selfish anger, the kind of anger that makes it all about me.

It’s not all about me.

Anger is one of the stages in the Kubler-Ross model of grief. We know grief is not linear and it’s not even cyclical; there is no rhyme or reason for triggers, what they will be and how we will handle them. I was devastated when my son died so young. He was thirty-two.

My anger has subsided, and I am free to only love my son and continue in compassion because of his brokenness that led all the way to his death. He turned his anger inward; turning it outward is not much better.

Fearless Moral Inventory

by Sherrie Cassel

I know my son was in a tremendous amount of pain when he died, emotional, physical, and spiritual. His marriage had ended, and he was wounded to the marrow of his soul. His problematic childhood didn’t help either. He chose alcohol, LSD, meth, marijuana, and finally heroin to stop the pain, but none of those helped. There is some pain no drug can touch. I lost my son to his pain and his tortured brain, his inability to self-regulate, and to every person who had ever hurt him. I carry so much sadness for the pain my son was in, pain that turned him toward the very things that would kill him. My heart is forever broken, and even as I heal day by day, my heart will always be tender, to its core – and Rikki is branded into it, inseparable from me, connected by the umbilicus of a shared soul. I know the common perception is that a soulmate is a romantic partner, but not true. Rikki knew me better than any one human being ever has. He was my son, my friend, my brother, my soulmate.

Our relationship was intense…but we laughed a lot too. I have a picture of us on my office wall where Rikki is laughing gleefully and I’m laughing with him. Sometime the picture makes me laugh and sometimes it makes me weep. I miss him so much. I strategically keep myself busy, have kept myself busy since Rikki died. Oh, I mourned too. I wept. I sobbed. I hyperventilated. I hated. I loved. I hurt. I felt nothing. I was angry at the God of my understanding. I wanted someone to blame. I navigated the horrible cycle of grief, over and over again, until I realized I get to choose what phase I’m in at any given time.

Today, I’m in the light of acceptance, always bittersweetly tinged with resignation. He’s gone AND, I must carry on. If I didn’t have Rikki’s son with us who needs us so much maybe I would have abandoned my dreams and just withered away from the sheer heaviness of losing a child. Maybe. Giving up has never been a weakness of mine; I certainly have others! I don’t know what made my son give up on himself. I screamed and sobbed and begged him to get help, and he did, a few times. He even went to rehab and was learning to like who he was; he was beautiful, tortured, but absolutely a quality human being, and smart, oh my God, so smart.

His son is lying on our couch covered in a fluffy blanket. He looks so much like his dad. I’m hoping our love and devotion will help him to heal from losing his father and for having a very challenging childhood.

My tenure in seminary has ended and I walk across that stage on Tuesday. In my bipolar brain, I already feel the let down from the anticipation of boredom and stagnation after being on the fast track for four years; the prior four and a half years were a bust in complicated grief and emotional paralysis. Everything just hurt too badly. I encourage you, when you regain your physical energy, to find something to pour it into, a hobby, a charity, an art project, a book, a poem, a new job, go back to school, etc. Find something that makes your heart sing. I didn’t do that right away; I’m not sure in the nine and a half years that I’ve been in mourning for my son, I know anyone who emotionally was “ready” to return to life immediately. Many of us had no choice but to return to work for purposes of economic survival, whether or not we were ready.

In the nine and a half years we’ve had AFTER THE STORM, we have lost two to grief madness. I encourage you to seek professional help, pastoral care, shamanic healing, whatever you can do to be a balm to your broken heart until it begins to heal.

I was spinning in my office chair this morning, as I often do, listening to Van Morrison singing “Into the Mystic” – and it always makes me think of my son, and I hear the sound of crashing waves, and I see his blue lips from the cold water as he refuses to come on to the shore, complete and utter joy on his little face. I got to have that beautiful human being for thirty-two years, beautifully broken, but so fucking amazing.

Life is neither fair nor unfair. We’re born and we die and in between are many experiences that shape us into those with a high tolerance or a low tolerance for pain and frustration. Rikki reached critical mass and imploded.

I accept my responsibility in my son’s choice to use, to use something that would numb the pain – until it no longer worked and nothing else did either. I drank myself into oblivion in my thirties when I was working through some shit. I was lucky I got therapy and started to realize I could heal without substances. Rikki wasn’t interested in therapy until it was court-ordered. We went through hell with my son. We were frantic. We were desperate. I lost it a few times when he was alive; I’ve lost it many more since he’s been gone. I don’t melt down as often, as a matter of fact, I think the last meltdown I had was January 22, 2025, the nine year angelversary. I worked. I worked. I worked. I drove home, fell asleep in my clothes, and didn’t wake up until the day was over. We each have our coping mechanisms.

I tried so hard to race through the grief process, hoping against hope that the other side would be a place where I no longer hurt. Fantasy. Rikki’s death opened my broken heart open so wide that like Mother Teresa said, “the whole world fell in.” I have a deeper sense of who I am. I have greater empathy for those who struggle – across the board. I have more grace toward others, who are equally as imperfect as I am. I don’t know if four and a half years of complicated grief was too long, or too much time “wasted”. I know that as I revisit the years leading up to my graduation from seminary, there was a nearly five year span when no growth took place. I was safe in a cocoon – just me and my pain, cells dividing into the butterfly until there was no room for the new creation and the pain. I had to let go of it; it was choking the life out of me; it was killing me.

Whether it’s a konk on the head under the Bodhi tree, or some other vehicle of transformation, be ready for it. Yes, we ache to the very marrow of our souls, deep and indescribable. But when you’re ready to rejoin the living, we’re here waiting to welcome you.

I’m feeling wistful for my son today. We had comedy and tragedy in our life together. I wish he could have found another way to tend to his wounds. He didn’t, and now I’m a spiritual advisor to others who are hurting – even as I tend to my personal wounds through healthier coping skills.

Trust me, I see the irony.

Picture is of Rikki and my mom

Desert Perspective

By Sherrie Cassel

Funny what we remember. Sometimes we remember things to the minutest detail and other times we miss the elephant in the room, no matter how many times we ram into its tusks. I’m listening to the Eagles, “Take it Easy”, and about the band’s time in Winslow, AZ. I’m not aware of the band members’ escapades that made some women want to stone the singer, but I think about times my husband and I go away for a few days of fun and naughtiness and some of the places we’ve landed in on our way to whatever paradise we feel like navigating in our Rubicon. We love the desert together. I love the beach alone, and that’s okay, her sound and the mist from her exhalations heal me and that is a solitary space and a sacred activity. Physician, heal thyself.

We were on our way somewhere and we had booked a cheap motel in Blythe, bleak and bleh Blythe. We got there around nine o’clock p.m., tired and hangry. There was a fog that covered the road and nothing was open. We made our way to our dingy motel in that dingy town and forced ourselves asleep early so tomorrow would get there quickly. Funny, how we play games with ourselves. Twenty-four hours is twenty-four hours. We awakened early the next day and I had said a silent prayer that Blythe would look less bleak in the light of day; it didn’t.

We got the hell out of dodge and headed off to one of our adventures. I wish I could remember which one. In November, the end of 2025, my husband and I will be together twenty years. We “hooked up” later in life. I was forty-four and my husband was fifty. Our twenty years together have been both comic and tragic. One year we lost five people in less than eight months; that was a little rough, and to the mythical god I shout, fist in air, “There was absolutely no reason for that!”

And there really wasn’t. There was no greater lesson I was supposed to glean from the abuse I endured at the hands of my father, mother, and siblings. There was no great epiphany to be had in the first marriage, a disaster, and a waste of time. And, above all, my son did not die to serve a greater purpose to help others who struggle with heartbreak and heroin. These things all happen, and we get to choose how we will move forward when our world falls apart or there’s a financial crisis, the death of a child, ad nauseam.

We were in Blythe in midsummer; that was our first mistake. Blythe is not a touristy hot spot. Obviously, it left an indelible mark on me. I’m able to find beauty in the most dismal places. We live in the desert. Some of our friends come up for the day and marvel at the desert’s beautiful landscape and bask in its tranquility, and others? They see rocks and loathe the heat. Beauty is a matter of perspective and Blythe was a pit stop, a place to gas up the car and then drive through the car wash and head out. To be honest, there was beauty shrouded in fog, barely enough streetlights to see through the windows of a dying town.

I heard its cannabis industry is booming though.

There’s a little dusty town in the Anza Borrego desert in southern California, Plaster City. Yep, you guessed it, gypsum, the main ingredient in plaster is mined there. I looked up the population of the area and Plaster City’s own website said it was a “populated” area, but difficult to peg just how many people live there at any given time because of the inhospitable heat in the summer; most people live there seasonally. If Blythe was bleak, Plaster City was a place where people go to hide or die. There really is nothing there.

We spent a lot of time in the Anza Borrego Desert when my husband volunteered for an organization that left water out for anyone who needed it, often even unprepared border patrol agents. We’d cruise through the Carrizo Badlands, enjoy the heat, the vultures, the tarantulas, cautiously marvel at the dangerously beautiful rattlesnake, and socialize with the natives; unbelievably, there are actual natives in Ocotillo, natives and former CEO divorced men looking to be off the grid, far from the ol’ battle ax and avoiding child support. The desert, despite its summer heat, again, is a great place to hide.

We heard stories from the people who landed there and stayed. People are so magnificent and some are unbelievable storytellers – and whether you paint it or print it, TELL YOUR STORIES!

I had always meant to have my mother write down her stories, most of which I knew because I was her confidante from a very young age, but I wanted her stories for my siblings, all from whom I am estranged, so, now, it’s a moot point. So, tell your stories, for your kids, for the population to whom your story will most resonate. Put it out there. Be brave. Be vulnerable.

How long do we hide out in the deserts of our own lives when there is an oasis of self-discovery that’s waiting for us on the other side of our dark secrets and dysfunction? I saw a dance performance at CSUSM at least a decade or so ago in which the performers were crawling across the desert on their way to America, in search of a life of promise. Crossing the desert in blistering heat is hard work, so is healing from our wounds, so is claiming our true selves, the self that is dying to be seen and brought to life. He/she/they are there just waiting for you to see that elephant in the room. Oh my God, it’s right in front of you! You just need to open your eyes and be courageous enough to cross that place whose heat makes people move to a cooler climate, only to return to a place they must flee three months out of the year.

I love spring; in the desert, it lasts only very briefly after a long southern California winter. But I love the short time of renewal and then back to it, work and play in the summer heat; it’s a dry heat that is navigable, no humidity, perfect for stillness and contemplation. I haven’t been able to enjoy my desert much over the past four years of seminary, but I finish on Tuesday of next week, and I will take some time off to enjoy the best my state has to offer, beaches, mountains, deserts, forests, and people I adore in all those places.

We’re planning a trip to Texas this summer to see my family from both sides of my parentage. I remember from summers past the humidity, the mosquitoes, the lightning bugs, crickets, and the size of Texas’ burgers, and the joy we had chilling with our family — rife with family secrets that have been ignored for generations.

I remember going through New Mexico and Arizona, and my father romanticizing the desert, and I’m sure that’s why I have found a home in the desert. Even children of abusive parents want a love-connection, any connection with their parents. I rarely think of my parents anymore. I rarely think of my siblings. We were never really a family, just a giant receptacle of darkness and maladaptive coping skills. Sometimes we have to shake the dust from our dysfunctional families off our shoes and move into a brave new world.

Stephanie Foo in her WHAT MY BONES KNOW, walked away from her unbelievably cruel parents, even though she said it hurt to do so; it really doesn’t feel good — at first, but the more times you do it, the better you get at walking away from toxicity, even from your own family.

Whatever obstacles persist in your life, people, places, things, if you’re serious about unloading things that hurt you, you have to yank it like a bad tooth, no anesthesia; the wound will heal, and we’re responsible for our own healing. Waiting for apologies you’ll never get is time wasted, and we really never have “enough” time – for ourselves or with our loved ones.

If you’re in a bleak and bleh Blythe, Ocotillo, or Plaster City, and not able to escape your prison of poverty or immobility, find something spiritual to hinge yourself to; create beauty from your pain. Read everything you can to feed your mind with things you’ll blend with your own thoughts compelling you toward creativity — in your art, and especially, in your life.

All things being impermanent, things will change, so too will our circumstances, and so too will we. In the deserts of your perception, beautiful or dusty, you can grow in grace and in wonder. Some of us need empirical data, evidence-based practices, and I’ve seen post-traumatic growth time and time again in people’s lives, including my own. We can grow past that elephant who has been ignored for too long already.

I also like the analogy about the blind men feeling a part of the elephant but not “seeing” the whole. Open your eyes and make that crawl toward that oasis of self-discovery and set yourself free. You’re so close.