Grief to Gratitude

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.

Mother’s Day

by Sherrie Cassel

I’m remarkably calm this Mother’s Day Eve. I know it’s coming. I’ve known. My life is punctuated by special days I can no longer celebrate with my son, and sometimes those days tear me up, and other times, I’m as calm as I am today. I no longer melt down when someone says, “Happy Mother’s Day” to me. I admit, it still smarts a little, but I can get through the day now.

For those of you for whom this is a first or a second or a third, take care of yourself as best as you can. If you have a big family and a gathering is expected, walk away from time to time and let your family know you just need a moment to gather yourself. Those who love you will understand. If you just can’t make yourself go to the family gatherings, honor your broken heart and what it can handle.

We are mothers. We were born to be mothers. We will always be mothers. And when someone asks me if I have any children, I now say boldly, “I have one angel child.” I had no other children; Rikki was my only Boo.

Allow others to hold you up or to leave you alone in your mourning on a day that brings into focus the very real fact that we are mothers and that one of our children is not here to celebrate the most significant days of our lives.

I usually stay home on Mother’s Day – restaurants are crowded, people are celebrating their mothers, and their adult children smile with joy at another year with their mothers, and how grateful they are for that. I still can’t even…so, I stay home and feed my soul in other ways, read, listen to music, write, weep, remember, laugh, clean, sleep, whatever my mind, body, and soul need.

I encourage you to do the same. This day really is all about you.

May you have peace and happy memories this Mother’s Day.

Brilliant!!!

Talkin’ about a revolution; sounds like a whisper. ~Tracy Chapman

That’s how the Light gets in

By Sherrie Cassel

I love watching the Light go on in others’ eyes. There’s a monosecond when a person becomes self-aware, at once exhilarated and exposed; it’s glorious and terrifying. I just finished reading Stephanie Foo’s WHAT MY BONES KNOW; it’s all about healing from C-PTSD (Complex PTSD). Stephanie was raised in an abusive family. Her story is horrifying and was demoralizing; I can relate. But the beautiful thing is, she healed, or is healing, but at a stage in her healing where the Light has gone on. This is a woman who spent years and who was fucked up by her parents, but the one who was remarkable just because she was born, the one who deserved love and nurturing, the one whose fault it was NOT that she was horribly abused and parentified by her parents. I relate.

I emphatically recommend this book to anyone, really, but especially to anyone who has endured a shit ton of physical, emotional, financial, sexual abuse, and/or any of the infinitely many ways abuse can be exacted on us.

I used to have a compulsion to purge my abuse story every time I sat down to write, and the purges were necessary toward my healing because I didn’t have a voice in my family of origin, so I would go inward with my books and I read, still do, all the time. I learned to love language and I excelled in writing all throughout my academic career. I told my story in metaphor for most of my life; it’s been only very recently, since the death of my son, that my story is told in starkness. But I don’t need to purge like before, only when I have an overwhelm of intellectual data that must be expressed through art, through the only artistic talent I have, through my writing.

I often have wished I could paint or sketch or sing, but those are not the gifts I was given, and I’m grateful for all the inspiration those other gifts provide to me evocatively. I’m still working on a piece about Goya’s ~Saturn Devouring His Son~ but it’s too dark and I’m in a good head space right now. I’ll tackle it later – because it is a remarkable painting – and I don’t know anything about the artist’s life so any interpretation I bring to it is completely and utterly subjective. That’s cool though because – I can only tell ~my~ story, just like the Goyas and Helnweins of the world, or the Capotes and the Kafkas, tragedy and comedy – and like in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL – sometimes our stories are a devastating mixture of both.

I used to laugh – a lot – and I’d laugh hard too. I didn’t laugh much as a kid, from what I can remember. C-PTSD has limited the memories I can access because those I have readily available in my brain are already horrifying enough, I can’t imagine how much worse they can be. Foo’s book brought so much up to the surface. She called the healing journey many things, but the term I’ve learned to embrace, she did not use, even though it is the place she’s worked hard to be, is posttraumatic growth. Foo was horribly abused by her mother and both physically abused and parentified by her father. One wonders how someone can make a comeback from the horrors of domestic violence and the vile ways parents can hurt us. I believe it’s more than just plain ol’ grit and the gumption to heal; I believe it’s our – Whom or whatever you would thank, journey on our way to self-actualization and transcendence of all the bullshit that drives those who continue to give it more attention than it deserves meaningless lives with no purpose.

For too many years all I knew was rage and revenge. I’m grateful for therapists, so grateful in fact, I went into the helping professions as a spiritual advisor. I lost my son and I needed answers; I demanded answers from the God of my understanding. As you all know, I took my grief all the way to seminary, and I laid my burden down. When Rikki died I had so much old shit I hadn’t worked through which only compounded the supreme grief I was in. I maintain, the more shit we’ve worked through the better equipped we are when tragedy strikes.

I was ragged from the last several years of my son’s life as he wasted away from heroin addiction and alcoholism, as he wasted away from a heart so broken it would not heal in this lifetime. Some of us die very slow deaths. I think zombies are such an amazing metaphor for the walking dead who infect everyone with their virus of perpetual death depicted as hideous and threatening. I know we’ve probably all heard the term ~emotional vampire~? The walking dead, the zombies among us can be so draining, in order to save your life, you must run away from them. They look almost human, and of course they ~are~, but you can’t save them, ever, not ever. They weigh you down with their resistance to change, to be made well. They’d rather eat away at your wellness – and we let them – until we don’t. Zombies and emotional vampires are bred in dysfunctional families – and they are sent out into the world to perpetuate violence by omission or commission.

This is not hyperbole. Domestic violence is real and although I can speak at large on the topic, I’d rather talk about posttraumatic growth, the very gift Foo found in the rubble of her horrors with her parents. I believe, although separated by decades, Foo and I have found this posttraumatic growth that ignited the Light we can now share with the world. She’s a bit more disciplined as a researcher than I am, but we are both gifted with words. She started her healing process much sooner than I did, and it’s taken me every second of my life to heal, and I guess I’ll be healing until I’m released from this body and this place, transcending matter in an explosion of oneness with the God of my understanding. I know how much like woo woo that sounds, and that’s okay. Each of us finds our own numen, the Source of all things, the thing that gets you high on life and drives you to stubbornly find your purpose.

What would a clear pathway toward healing from a dreadful childhood look like to you? What would a day without focusing on a tragedy look like to you? Foo suggests there is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is an unavoidable part of the human condition: emotional and physical. Suffering is the consequence of choosing to focus on that pain to the exclusion of all else, i.e., ruminating to the point of extreme angst. Guilty as charged. I can actually joke about guilt now. As a recovering Catholic/Southern Baptist, guilt is in my DNA, as is shame. I’ve learned to defuse their volatility in my life and find that healthy remorse when I fuck up is not the same animal as guilting myself to the point of a shame so deep it can only lead to self-loathing and a self-fulfilling prophecy toward a purposeless life.
I know. I was a zombie for many years – and I chose only other zombies to surround myself and my son with. My trajectory was — being raised by vampires and being sucked dry as a parent to my parents, I became a zombie through dissociation; it was just easier that way. Do you know what I’m talking about? Am I making any sense to you?

Once the Light goes on it can’t ever be extinguished – not even tragedy, not even losing a child can completely extinguish it. Trust me; I know. The buzz acronym was PTSD for so long that the gifts of developmental growth and empathy, compassion and concern for others, are overshadowed by the dark results of domestic violence, i.e., mental illness, historical trauma, repeated dysfunctional and anti-social cycles. I relate – to ~all~ of it.

I’m grateful for therapy and spiritual counseling. I’m grateful for a husband who loves me enough to have walked my emotional healing journey with me when I asked him to and who leaves me to my own journey when I ask him to do that too. I’m grateful for posttraumatic growth (PTG) … let that acronym replace our former model’s.

You can grow from your pain so you no longer need to suffer with secrets that you’ve carried alone for too long. Come into the Light; come into ~your~ Light.

That is all.

Note to Self

By Sherrie Cassel

Everything I cherish most in this world is in our home tonight. My son’s presence and absence fill the empty space between all that he loved most, the young man asleep on our couch, his son – and me, my son’s mother. My husband is singing a Flying Burrito Brothers’ song. The cats are sleeping and I’m feeling only gratitude for this Moment.

Grief and Graduation Blues

By Sherrie Cassel

Grief is funny; it ebbs and flows in and out of our awareness. Today I’m starkly aware I’m a woman, a parent, who has lost a child, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Some days I feel the separation – just like the moment he was yanked from my body. Indescribable pain; indescribable joy. There are moments when I’m creepily aware of the loss, my greatest. There is nothing much going on. I’m tying up some loose ends as I complete my master’s program and internship. I have administrative tasks and farewells to navigate – and I walk bravely into the future, at sixty-two years old feeling like I’m just getting started.

I had a recent health scare, a serious one, and I dodged a bullet this time – but my husband, a few close friends and I held our breaths while ultrasound, CT scans and lab results trickled in. Time ekes out painstakingly when you’re awaiting test results. Genetics and neglecting one’s triune-self equal poor health outcomes, and I’ve had a few cancer scares in my sixty-two years already. Each negative result brings with it a momentary resolution to work and play harder, to live with gusto … in these twilight years, she said tongue-in-cheek.

Again, I’m just revving up.

We had rain in our desert yesterday and the scent of the moistened earth and creosote waft in the crisp air, the last gasp of spring before our beautiful and blistering heat. I will traipse freely this summer, my time my own … my very own. I’m aware of the seasons of grief changing as I mark another milestone, one for which I have given my all. Another milestone. Another day I do not have my son to celebrate our milestone together, here, in the present, not in the Spirit I must settle for. I want him here.

Our grandson is with us; he’ll be sixteen in two months. Unbelievable. His father would be forty-two. I place my hand on my heart as it skips a beat in deference to my son. I acknowledge his absence, and I wonder – as I often do – if he knows how much he is missed. Love – I pour it into his son, my marriage, my friendships, the people I’m blessed to work with, my art, my healing, my Self.

Today it hurts that it’s enough my son and I shared genetic existence, familial existence, spiritual existence – and that I continue to move forward toward dreams I continue to dream when for four years dreams were inconceivable. Rikki and I were tight, and we were broken, each in our own cocoon of dysfunction. I’m raw today. I feel compelled toward contrition. I’m sorry I was so broken and wasn’t able to give you the absolute best you deserved, Boo Bear. I’m sorry for every time I ever failed you.

I’m sorry I wasn’t perfect; you deserved perfection, but that’s not the way the world works, Kiddo. I see the guts and the glory we muddled through – together and sometimes alone. And I feel our shared tears in my gut. I also feel our howling laughter deep in the viscera of my soul. I feel empty. I feel the hole in my reality…at once a deep and a surface wound. The scab hangs precariously close to being yanked, like my son, like you, Rikki, being yanked from my body, four decades ago, and here I am still grabbing my phantom belly to feel your heartbeat … I miss you. I feel it today so much.

You should be here in this victory with me.

I will buck even as I beam with pride.

I will look for your face out in the crowd, my giant manchild with a round-faced smile, loving the mosaic who raised him. I will look at the faces who are there, loving me, being proud of me, but YOU, my beautiful son will not be there…and I’m ashamed because suddenly Spirit is not enough, and the pain nearly knocks the wind out of me.

I can’t go home…ever the stone desiring no moss. I don’t belong there anymore. You’re not there and the rest of us have become economic nomads, there’s no place… home is where the heart is and mine has always been with you…will always be with you…but it is also here, with them.

Yeah, grief is funny; it renders everything forever bittersweet. Rikki traveled with me for thirty-two years, his entire life. We waltzed and we warred. We loved and we hated. We hurt and we healed. I was in college for all of Rikki’s life. He deserves this degree too. When I walk across the stage I take him with me, in my flesh, in my blood, in my bones. His son will be there, the next generation. I will never let him forget you, Rikki.

My grief is mixed with gratitude – always. I ache for each moment we no longer have together. I mourn the minutes I now must celebrate without you. I’m grateful for the moments we had together. I’m grateful for the times I got it right and for the grace we found for each other.

Nine and a half years have passed since you died…and I have resurrected with a vengeance. I will not go gentle into that good night. But it will always be a battle; pearls will always be formed in the grit and grime of grief.

And, yes, even though I’m happy … it hurts to not have you here.