Category: grief

Wins and Losses

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I lost some sleep last night— it’s not too atypical for me, a gal in her 50s, to be unable to sleep at night because a) I’ve got some losses on my brain I haven’t yet processed and b) while trying to distract myself from those unprocessed losses, I have stumbled into a particularly engaging murder mystery.

The coincidence, though, is that the book revolves around multiple losses! Somehow reading about fictional losses is preferable to thinking about the real ones I’ve witnessed in the past week.

I prefer to celebrate wins — I just finished the third week of the school year, and the wins are stacking up! The majority of my students have been consistently opting in to learning, the weather has been near perfection, our seniors (and some juniors) toured two colleges this past week, and my newest cohort of reading students is off to a great start!

There is so much to celebrate, but wins in every context are invariably set against an undeniable backdrop of loss. For example, in the last three weeks, our school, which routinely has a 90% staff retention rate, has lost one teacher each week. The first week, our newly hired freshman ELA teacher resigned to return to a district where he had previously been employed. The second week, a strong team member who has taught financial literacy to our students with her whole heart, left to pursue an administrative role in another district. And this week, perhaps the hardest hit of all, our long-time algebra and geometry teacher who has some of the strongest relationships in the building, announced that he is making a career move at the end of next week.

In a small school like ours, with just under 300 students, these blows hit hard. We are a family, after all. We all know each other by name. We razz each other in the hallway. We defend each other in the midst of chaos. We cheer each other on. We have each other’s backs.

And the loss is not only a blow to the morale of the staff, it is the latest in a string of losses for our students.

You may be tired of me saying it, but it is the reality I witness each day — many of my students have suffered deep, deep loss. Just this past week, I learned of a junior who lost her mother since school started and a senior whose grandmother died last week. Then Friday, one of my seniors stepped out of class to take a call during which he learned that his brother, who had been in critical condition, had just died! And these are not isolated cases. Each year — each and every year — I have had a student who has lost a parent. It seems each year I have also had a student who has lost a sibling. And last year, I even had a student who lost her own newborn child.

So imagine that you’re in your senior year, that you spent your freshman year in your bedroom peering into a zoom room on a chromebook that you didn’t quite yet know how to navigate, that you lost one or two or three close family members to Covid, that your family had to move one or two or three times within the last two to three years because they a) couldn’t afford the rent, b) got evicted, or c) had some other family trauma that necessitated a move, and then you show up to your senior year and notice that once a week a staff member disappears. How does one respond in the face of loss after loss after loss?

You might be overwhelmed. You might become depressed. Or, you might do whatever you have to do to survive — you might keep people at arm’s length, or you may put up an crusty exterior so that people don’t know you’re hurting.

I’ve seen that. I watched a girl all last fall defiantly walk out of classes, repeatedly (and sometimes aggressively) spar with classmates, and verbally challenge those who might dare to hold her accountable. She was a junior, but I knew her name because I had repeated hallway interactions with her.

“Where are you supposed to be, LaShay?”

“I’m goin’ to the bathroom.”

“Didn’t you just come from the bathroom?”

“Stop talkin to me.”

She was angry, it was obvious. And she was kind of hard to like, if I’m gonna be honest. And, I’ll admit, that when she was removed from the building and forced to do online learning after an incident that threatened the safety of others, I was a bit relieved. She was a high-flyer, constantly in need of redirection from not just me, but all of the members of the leadership and school culture teams.

When she showed up at the back to school fair a few weeks ago, with her younger sister, who had also been sent home due to the same incident, I swallowed hard and thought, Well, here we go. This time, she’s in my class..

Her sister sought me out, gave me a hug, and said, “Mrs. Rathje, we’re back!”

I hugged her, and said, “Great to see you! Is LaShay here?”

“She’s in the gym.”

“Let’s go find her,” I said.

I walked to the gym, found LaShay, walked up to her, smiled, and said, “Welcome back,” with the most genuine smile I could conjur. I was determined to start off on the right foot.

She side-eyed me, and then looked down.

“You’re with me this year, dear. I’m looking forward to it.”

Without answering, she walked away, to go talk to a friend on the other side of the gym.

The first week with LaShay was a little dicey. She showed up to class consistently a little late. She scrolled on her phone when everyone else in the class followed my direction to “stow phones during instruction,” and got a little huffy with me when I joined her for partner work when she refused to join anyone else.

But I persisted. I pointed out that her attendance had been perfect near the end of the second week, “even if you do tend to show up late,” I said.

“I don’t show up late. I’m here on time. I’m doing my best. My mom has cancer, and I’m the oldest. I gotta get myself and all my siblings together, but I get all of us here on time.”

There it was. My opportunity. I remembered a brief interchange from the year before when I learned that her mom was sick, when I asked her why she was crying in the hallway. She wasn’t crying now. She was, indeed, “together” and she and her siblings were consistently in the building.

“LaShay, I’m so sorry to hear that. I do see you in school every day. I was noticing that you are often late to my class, but I didn’t realize that you were the oldest or that your mother was still sick. You probably have a lot of responsibility right now.”

She looked at me and nodded.

“Ok. I can give you some grace, but I’m gonna ask you to do your best to get here by the bell. It’s something we are really working on this year. However, now that I know what’s going on, I will try to be understanding. Please let me know how I can support you.”

“Ok.” she said, and she got back to her work.

I’m gonna call that a win — a big win! — against a backdrop of devastating loss. She lost half a year in the building last year because of a dust up that was likely a response to the trauma of her mom being critically ill. She is losing some of her childhood and her innocence because she has to take on the mantle of responsibility during her mother’s illness. However, she is winning, because she is developing the skills to communicate her reality in a way that will help her get the understanding she needs.

It takes vulnerability to share with a teacher, one who has historically been on your case, that something is not right in your world. She couldn’t count on me responding like I did. She doesn’t know me that well. But she took the chance, and that’s a win.

On Friday afternoon, I got in my car, and drove to a football field in the heart of Detroit to work the gate at our team’s game. La Shay is a cheerleader — on top of everything else right now, she is claiming the opportunity to fully opt in to her senior year. In order to stay on the team, she will have to keep herself together, stay out of trouble, and represent the school well.

During half time, the cheerleaders came over to where I was standing with last year’s principal, who came to the game because even though she no longer works in our building, these are her babies. The girls took turns hugging their former principal, and I took the opportunity to move in closer.

“LaShay, come here,” I said as I waved her over, “Your principal needs to hear that you are killing it this year. That you’ve got perfect attendance and you’re completing your assignments!”

She beamed. The principal hugged her, encouraged her to keep it up, and hugged her again, saying, “I knew you would!”

Another win — and this girl could really use some wins right now.

Loss is the reality of life on the planet — the hits inevitably keep coming, so it’s important to not only process the loss, but to note the wins. I didn’t always do this. Because I was so frantically trying to create perfection, I didn’t leave the space to acknowledge, let alone grieve, loss. Instead, I defiantly moved forward, demanding those around me to join my pursuit of perfection, and because I was looking for perfection, I didn’t celebrate all the wins.. I lost a lot in those days — the tenderness I could have had in some of my most dear relationships, the opportunity to show the people I love the most the grace that they needed in their losses, and the opportunity to celebrate their wins. I wasn’t brave enough (or self-aware enough) at the time to be vulnerable — to communicate my reality in ways that get me the understanding that I needed.

But I’m brave enough now — brave enough to seek out a defiant young woman in a school gym and to take the chance at building a relationship with her, because she looks a lot like someone I used to be, and it seems she could use someone to help her learn to celebrate the wins that happen against the backdrop of loss.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

*One of the ways I celebrate student wins (and cushion losses) is by providing a steady stream of snacks, supplies, and prizes in my classroom. Many of you have contributed to my stockpile, and I am thankful for you! You make this work possible!

Post-Covid Learning: One Teacher’s Experience

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

In March of 2020, we sent all of the nation’s children home in the first weeks of the Covid Pandemic. How could we have anticipated the impact of this decision? While some students were home for several weeks, many students, especially students of color in our nation’s urban areas, were home for more than a year. How might this have impacted their social-emotional development, they mental health, or their learning?

We educators have been beginning to unpack the broad impacts of the pandemic on our students over the last two to three school years. Here’s what I’ve seen.

In the fall of 2021, when my students first returned to in-person learning at my Detroit charter school after 18 months of remote instruction — which for many in my community meant no instruction at all — I noticed extremely high anxiety and a limited ability to interact with peers without conflict. Our students needed support to merely exist in the classroom within six feet of their peers. Although everyone was masked, these students had learned that proximity meant danger. It took some time for them be comfortable around one another, particularly because with some regularity, whole groups were sent home to quarantine after one member of their classroom cluster tested positive. It wasn’t until late in that school year that the Covid protocols changed, masks became optional, and our whole community started to relax a little. The heightened anxiety surrounding that school year led some students to stay home intermittently, to switch to virtual learning for yet another year, or to do their best to muddle through day by day. For teachers, this meant that academics, while important, were not the priority. Since Maslow illustrated his hierarchy of needs we’ve recognized that a student needs to feel safe before he can be free to learn. Our focus was on building predictability through routine and on getting our students the social work supports that they needed.

Much of this carried into that second fall — 2022 — where our back to school professional development sessions centered on the brain science behind trauma. We learned about the amygdala’s response to danger — flight, fight, freeze, and appease — and how our routines and instructional strategies can minimize this response and the interruptions it causes to learning. This is relevant in our context not only because our students have experienced the extended communal trauma of the pandemic but because they have also endured the traumas associated with systemic racism such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, violence, and negative experiences with law enforcement. Our social workers and behavioral specialists worked overtime to anticipate difficult situations, to mitigate conflict, and to restore relationships. Again, although academics were moving up on the priority list, they were not at the top.

As we were moving through the virtual year and the return to in-person learning — I, fresh from working at Lindamood-Bell where our whole gig was reading intervention and remediation, noticed that very few, if any, of my of my students were reading and comprehending at grade level. I lifted my concern to our Director of Academics, “We’ve got to get a reading interventionist in here — these students need support.”

I said that during the 2021-2022 school year and found myself in August of 2022 at an intensive training week for the reading program called Adolescent Accelerated Reading Intervention (AARI). I would be piloting this program for one year — last school year. During that academic year, I worked with 18 freshmen over the course of two semesters. Each of them started AARI with an instructional reading level at or below third grade. Over the course of one semester, the students and I worked on decoding (sounding out words, breaking words into syllables, etc), which is not part of AARI, building a mental movie about what we were reading (also not AARI), and using the text to support our thinking and developing metacognitive skills (all AARI). After one semester of work, I only had one student who did not improve at all — and that was likely due to the fact that he was absent almost half of the days that we met. Two students grew one grade level during that semester, most grew two to three grade levels, and a few grew four or more grade levels in one semester. It’s quite a remarkable program.

As a result of this success, and the data I obtained testing students over two semesters, our school adopted a broad tier-two intervention called Read 180 for all of our freshmen for this school year. That means that rather than 18 freshmen getting the intensive remediation that I provided, ALL incoming freshmen would receive an intervention that, delivered via computer, in small groups, and with the aid of an instructor, yields two years of growth in one year. I was very excited to hear that we were getting help for all of our freshmen. I was even more excited when I learned that I would be providing AARI to a select group of sophomores and juniors.

I have spent the last two weeks working one-on-one to evaluate students who scored the lowest among their classmates on the Reading and Language section of the PSAT last Spring. (Perhaps one day I will write a whole post about my feelings regarding standardized testing in general and the SAT/ACT specifically, but not today.) I pulled each of these students to my room, had a conversation with them, administered the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI) and determined their need for AARI. I was gut punched when I realized that two sophomores and one junior in our building scored at the first grade level for reading comprehension. How in the world were they functioning in high school? How could they continue to show up if the content of their classes was that frustrating?

Most of the students I selected for the class tested at the second or third grade level when measuring reading comprehension. When we take into account that many of them did not read much from 2020-2021, and that many of them have been in a trauma response for the past two to three years or more, this is not terribly surprising. What is surprising is the half dozen students I met with who scored much higher. These few lit up when I told them that the PSAT is not an accurate measure of their intellect, that although Covid was devastating and their skills are possibly rusty, they have the capacity to be successful not only in high school but beyond. I looked them in the eyes and assured them that now that I know who they are and what they can do, I will be watching and expecting great things. These few, mostly black males, sat up straighter, looked me in the eyes, said, “Yes, Ma’am,” and “thank you.” One young woman who, despite severe anxiety, demonstrated a keen aptitude for academics said, “I am thankful for you and what you are doing..”

The ones who qualified for my class had an equally amazing response. To a person, they acknowledged that “reading is hard for me.” They said, “I need this class, ” and “thank you for doing this.”

Here’s what they didn’t do. They didn’t say, “I don’t need help with reading.” or “I’m not taking some dumb reading class.” They didn’t refuse to read lists of words or answer questions about the similarities and differences between whales and fish. They didn’t question why I was pulling them from class. They didn’t resist.

No, these students recognize what they have lost. They know they need help. They know support when they see it.

How do I know? Because for the past two weeks, as I have moved through the halls, I have heard these students, and the students I worked with last year. They call out, “Hi, Mrs. Rathje.” They don’t act like they don’t know me. They don’t avoid me. No. They stop by my room, they give me a fist bump as I pass, they throw their arms around me in a hug.

But they do these things not just to me. They love all the teachers in our building because they feel safe here. They see the hard work we have done to create a predictable environment. They notice us responding to their mental health needs. They understand that we see them, we know what they have been through, and we are here for them, cheering them on to success.

On Friday, I was calling all the parents of my new cohort. “Good afternoon, this is Mrs. Rathje from Detroit Leadership Academy.” I explained why I was calling, that we had noticed since Covid that many of our students are below grade level in reading comprehension, and that their student had been identified as one who could benefit from this class. Most parents said, “Ok, thank you,” or “Whatever he needs, I support,” but one mother took my breath away.

“Thank you so much for noticing this. I lost both of my parents during Covid and to be honest, I’ve been deep in grief and didn’t even realize that he was falling behind. Thank you so much for paying attention to him.”

These students are not behind in reading because they are dumb or poor or Black. They are behind in reading because they have been through a lot, their learning has been interrupted, and they need some support to get back on track.

I can’t wait to get started with them and to cheer them on as they learn and grow this year.

I’m a sucker for a story of restoration, especially when I have a front row seat.

I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:13

*For data surrounding the impact of Covid on learning, check out the documents linked below:

Harvard School of Education, May 2023

Center for School and Student Progress, July 2023

NWEA Study, Chalkbeat, July 2023

**If you know an educator in the Detroit area that cares about educational equity, please connect them with me. Because of the nature of our work, we are always looking for partners, teachers, coaches, and other encouragers.

of Death and Resurrection

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

Nadia* came to my desk the other day. The other students were working on an assignment, and she had a question about something she had missed a few days prior.

“I wasn’t here the day we did this,” she said.

“Yes, I remember. You missed a few days. Is everything OK?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered, “first my grandma died and we had all the arrangements for that, then my uncle died.”

“Oh my goodness! I am so sorry! That is a lot of loss all at once. I am impressed that you are working to get caught up. How can I support you?”

It’s not uncommon for us to hear about these kinds of losses. I myself lost a much-loved uncle last month, and many of us lost loved ones during Covid. However, it always shocks me when I learn of the amount of death my students have faced in their young lives.

Bianca* was sitting near my desk this week working on a college application. She was hoping it wouldn’t require a social security number because her mother had been reluctant to share hers with her when we had been getting FSA IDs, the first step in completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) .

“If it’s required, I’m just gonna call my mom and tell her I have to have it,” she said.

.”Does your mom want you to go to college?” I asked.

She shook her head no.

“Hmm. What would she like you to do?”

“She wants me to keep doing hair.”

“That’s right, you do hair. Is that what she does, too?”

“No, she doesn’t work, because my dad was a firefighter who died, so she is taken care of.”

“Oh my!” I said. “When did that happen?”

She held up three fingers and said, “Three years ago.”

“I am so sorry! I had no idea.”

And while we were chatting, her mom texted her the number, and Bianca completed her application.

Working with high school seniors, I see that kind of subtle movement all the time. One week a parent refuses to let their child have her SSN, then suddenly, nonchalantly, she sends it in a text two weeks later. Parents are ready to release when they are ready to release and not a moment sooner.

And it makes sense when you know that the mother and the daughter have already experienced devastating loss.

I’ve been listening to Anderson Cooper’s new podcast, All There Is, which is his examination of his own grief through conversations with others who have also experienced loss. Cooper lost his father to heart disease at age 10, his brother to suicide when he was 21, and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, just a few years ago. As he navigates the packing up of his mother’s things, he is struck by all the unprocessed grief from the previous losses and how raw the hurt still is.

As I’m listening, I hear his voice crack as he recalls a detail, and my throat tightens, My eyes well up and my chest feels heavy. I have not experienced much physical death among my immediate family and friends, but I have definitely experienced loss — the loss of my parents’ marriage when I was seven, the loss of some dreams for our family that were taken away, some by circumstance, some by error, and some by violence, and the loss of my health and career before I was even 50.

We all experience loss. We all experience death.

Cooper posits, and I agree, that we don’t make enough space for discussions of our losses and the hurts that we carry with us. Instead, we try to pack them up, put them away, and function in a way that seems “normal” when we will never feel “normal” again.

In one of his interviews, Cooper speaks with Stephen Colbert, who lost his father and two brothers in an airplane crash when he was 10. Colbert says it was the worst thing that happened in his life, but he has grown to be grateful for it — not the deaths, of course, but the opening it created in him that has allowed him to see the devastations in the lives of others and the ability to have compassion for them.

I resonate with that. For many years I have said that while my parents’ divorce was — for a long time — the biggest blow to my life, it grew in me an understanding of brokenness that prepared me to marry a man who had been divorced. Having stepparents prepared me to be a stepparent. Having experienced trauma and devastation in our own family has opened a chasm in my heart that has space for the brokenness I see in my students and my friends.

Because I have written about loss, and because my husband and I have explored our losses in depth with our therapists, with each other, and most extensively with a small group of friends who we meet with every week, we were prepared last spring and again this fall, to share our story with a small group of others like us who are in the midst of devastation and who are looking for shreds of hope. We believe, like Anderson Cooper, that we don’t talk about our losses — especially not in polite company, and even less in the church. Especially if those losses involve estrangement, divorce, sexual assault, alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, or crime.

So when we stand in front of a group of church folk (last spring) or church workers (this fall) and tell our story, we do it as educators. We model — this is how you can be vulnerable and tell your story. We provide safety — you are in a room full of others who also have a story. We give space — take a chance, and share a piece of your story with someone next to you.

And they do.

And the tears flow.

Strangers touch hands and are no longer strangers.

It looks like resurrection.

Theologian and writer Jeff Chu asked in his opening talk at the 2022 Evolving Faith Conference** last weekend, “What does resurrection matter except to those have tasted death?”

What does new life matter, until you thought that life was gone forever?

When you have sobbed on your pillow knowing your family will never be whole again and then you see a connection, you receive an invitation, you embrace someone who has felt the rending of the flesh as deeply as you have and somehow what was dead seems to breathe new life,

Resurrection isn’t witnessed in isolation, is it? I find I see it most in community — in the sharing of stories, of tears, of understanding. I see it in friendships that walk through the valley of the shadow of death together long enough to get to the other side.

This fall I’ve had a student in my class, Monique*. Her attendance has been intermittent — she’s pregnant. When she comes, I greet her without judgment because I don’t know her story.; I only know that she has one. For the past week or more her seat has been empty. She didn’t appear to be full-term, so I didn’t expect that she had had the baby. I expected her to walk back in any morning, just as she had been doing all fall. But yesterday, I was standing in the office when her sister, a recent graduate, walked in. We chatted, and she mentioned that Monique had had the baby, but that the baby “didn’t make it”.

What happens to a seventeen year old heart when it has carried a life, moved through labor, and then experienced such a devastating loss?

I have no idea, but I am hoping to hear Monique’s story, and I am longing for her to experience resurrection.

[He] comforts us in all our trouble so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

2 Corinthians 1:4

*All student names have been changed, of course.

**Although the Evolving Faith conference is over, you can still register and watch the entire event, which was virtual and recorded.

The Comfort of Connection

~ Kristin ~ 4 Comments
Click the arrow to listen

I think we can all agree that 2020 was a rough year what with the pandemic, quarantine, isolation, cancelled plans, loss of loved ones, and all. To be honest, 2021 was not a huge improvement. Sure, we got our vaccines and many of us went back to the office and started socializing again, but really, it was an extension of 2020, with more mask wearing, continued social distancing, the Delta variant, etc. So, when 2022 started with Omicron and further shut downs, many of us shrugged and said, “yeah, it is what is, I guess this is life now.” We’ve grown accustomed to one disappointment, one cancellation, one blow after another.

So, we took it in stride when our 13 year old golden retriever started sharply declining in January and continued on that trend through the end of February when we tearfully said goodbye. It was one more loss, one more sadness, in a season of continuous disappointment.

We grieved as though we’d been training for it. We sat in our tears for an entire weekend — luxuriating in loss.

The grieving was healing, I must say, weird as that sounds. Our collective tears were an acknowledgement of the heartache of losing a well-loved pet, but they were perhaps also a deep exhale after holding so much accumulated loss.

And that wasn’t the end of it. We had a couple days to catch our breath, and then, our stove, too, up and died. It had served its owners well for almost 30 years, and it was done. So, we went from grief to responsibility — the hunt for a new appliance that would be economical and reliable. We did our due diligence in the midst of a supply chain backup never mind that we were still slogging through grief and transition 

[Aren’t we all right now slogging through grief and transition?]

So, stove shopping we were doing when a family member reached out asking for the kind of support that requires a quickly purchased flight, an acquisition of pets, and a cross-country drive in a snowstorm. Being so asked, when once we might not have been asked, we did what love empowers us to do: the one became two — one showing up in the flesh, the other managing logistics at home and completing the stove purchase solo.

It’s rich, this life. When you show up, you share tears. You see, you hold, you carry, and something changes.

And so began March, another season of adapting, adjusting, and accommodating cats in a house that had grown familiar with one very special dog.

They were growing on us — the cats — when another family member called needing the kind of support that facilitates a cross-country move with a quick landing at the nest to manage some old business and catch a breath.

And, again, as we made space, there was more seeing, more holding, more carrying, more changing..

All this, of course, in the first three months of 2022 after the “unprecedented” experience of 2020 and 2021. And we find ourselves both filled and depleted. We are buoyed, and we are sunk low.

So, I wasn’t planning on going to the retreat that I have enjoyed most every year since I returned to Michigan — a gathering of more than 100 wives of pastors who have become sisters and friends. I didn’t have the gas in the tank to register, to pack, to coordinate, to plan. But, two days before it was scheduled to begin, I saw something on social media, and I realized what I would be missing if I did not go.

I made a few calls, clicked a few buttons, rearranged some details, packed, and drove North. I wasn’t in the door one minute when two friends called out, “we saved you a seat!” From one to the next I received hugs of welcome, of love, of acceptance, of belonging. I settled in as the singing began and then realized what the topic for the conference was — Very Ordinary Grace — Life in Relationship. For the next few hours, I sat in a room full of women, sharing our experiences of ordinary life. We shed tears of heartache. We confessed our mistakes. We celebrated God’s grace that continuously finds us in our mess and offers forgiveness, healing, and restoration.

I reconnected with friends who I hadn’t seen in months or years, and we offered one another our hugs, our attention, and our care. After two years of isolation, social distancing, and cancelled plans, we were leaning in, embracing, listening, connecting.

Isn’t that what we have been longing for — connection? Aren’t our relationships the richest parts of our lives? Standing with my husband and two daughters around our beloved dog as he goes to his last sleep, weeping tears of love, gratitude, and loss? Answering a FaceTime call from a tearful, fearful family member and assuring them that we will indeed meet their need. Sitting across a table from a loved one, acknowledging their deep hurt, challenging an old pattern, and watching, miraculously as something shifts.

On the heels of two years of isolation and disappointment, three months of losing and gaining [new hope in relationships, two cats, and the stove that was installed just last week], I gathered with a group of women to pause and acknowledge the miraculous God who has sustained us through the unprecedented, empowered us to do the ordinary, and miraculously blessed us in our relationships.

On Sunday morning, I sat in my hotel bed with Brene’ Brown’s Atlas of the Heart and opened to where I had left off –chapter 9, “Places We Go When We Search for Connection.” I had just spent the previous day in the book of Ephesians, examining the messy ways that we connect with those around us and the grace of God to show up in the midst of that mess. I could barely take in Brene’s words because I was stunned by the realization of how God had once again divinely stepped into the circumstances of my life — my messy, messy life — and had provided the grace for us to show up for others when we ourselves were depleted, how He had worked miraculous healing in the midst of our brokenness, and how He had then provided a place among women I trust so that I could pause and realize that He has surrounded me with love, acceptance, and grace. He has shown me once again that I belong.

And it was just the balm I needed, just the peek of sunlight that was able to brighten up a gloomy April weekend after two difficult years. Maybe it’s what we all need in the wake of this long hard season– some connection, some acceptance, some belonging, some grace.

Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another.”

Ephesians 4:32

Goodbye to a good, good boy

~ Kristin ~ 2 Comments

He began as a promise.

When we left Michigan in 2004 to move to St. Louis so that my husband could begin his seminary studies, we left our golden retriever Mikey with my brother. She couldn’t live in the on-campus housing we were moving to; she couldn’t come with, so we said goodbye.

We comforted our sobbing children with a promise, “We’ll still get to see her.”

However, not long into our time in St. Louis, Mikey was hit by a car, and we lost her.

So, another promise: “When we finish seminary, we will adopt another golden.”

My husband finished seminary in 2008. We bought a house and moved in, traveled to Michigan for his ordination, took a family vacation, then returned to Missouri, and started looking for a dog. We contacted a golden retriever rescue in the greater St. Louis area and said we were looking for a puppy, preferably a female. They had a female, one of a litter of three, did we want to see them all?

Ok, sure.

When we arrived at the house where the puppies were being fostered, we found wall to wall goldens — in my memory there were about nine! The little blond girl we had come to see was rather rambunctious. She ran around the yard and bossed her brothers, one of whom was blond, the other red. We weren’t sure we were looking for her kind of energy. Instead, we were drawn to two others — an older golden named Bruno who plunked all 80+ pounds of himself on our son’s lap, licked his face and made him laugh and the little red brother who sat at our feet, looking up as though to say, “do you see what I’m dealing with here?’ We visited with the pack of goldens for about half an hour, and when we left, though we hated saying goodbye to Bruno, we knew the red boy would be ours.

A few days later, we picked up our little guy, who was just 4 months old at the time. They had been calling him Irish because he’d been born in March and had a red coat. He was crate trained and house trained, yet he allowed us to cradle him like a baby. We adored him from day one — he was instantly part of the family. It took us a few days, some poster board, and a ranked-choice voting system to settle on the same Chester Murphy.

Ches has been with us ever since. For close to 14 years, he cuddled with us on the couch, barked at the neighbors, ran with us, bore witness to our reality, and embodied unconditional love.

He saw our love for one another and for him, but he also witnessed a struggling family that not too many saw — one that had a lot to learn. In his early years, when he saw miscommunications, hurtful comments, silence, isolation, anger, yelling, sadness, tears, he stood right in the middle of it — watching, unafraid, moving in close.

He seemed to know who needed the most attention at any given moment. When one was assaulted and couldn’t tell the others, he climbed in her bed each night and kept her safe. When another got sick, he moved to her bed and kept watch. When one felt unlovable, he pressed his body in close. When one needed companionship, he willingly joined as they walked or ran for miles and miles. If one had been gone for a season, he met them upon return, tail wagging, ready to run and play. He was consistently loyal, loving, and accepting.

For almost 14 long years.

If you have followed this blog, you know that Chester has been a star from the start, mainly because, I have continued learning from him. When, we packed up and left St. Louis, Chester was teaching me how to feel about it. Since we’ve been back here in Michigan, he’s been by my side, showing me how to rest, reminding me of the importance of routine, and just recently, showing me his resilience when he was injured in a fall.

These last several weeks, he’s been showing us how to care for him. We’ve had to slow down, cancel some plans, adjust our routines, and even rearrange our space so that we could provide what he’s needed in his final days. And when it became obvious that these were indeed the most final of the final days, we gathered his people and watched as he showed us how to say goodbye, lying among us, letting us hold him, encouraging us to cry together, to sit together, to acknowledge, even out loud, all that he’s been through with us.

And now, the house is empty, although I swear, I just heard his toenails clicking on the hardwood floor. I keep looking for him, thinking it’s time to go outside, time to get a treat, time to cuddle up. When I realize, again, that he’s gone, my eyes fill, my throat aches, and I reach for the tissues.

I’m going to be sad for a while — really, really sad. We’ve lost a member of the family who loved us all so well, and we’ll never be the same. He taught us a lot, up to the very end.

Chester, you were a good, good boy.

God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:25

An Emotional Legacy

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I grew up not knowing how to manage or speak about my emotions.

It’s no one’s fault really.

My parents grew up without much permission to feel their emotions, much less talk about them. It was a symptom of the times, I guess. Their parents, my grandparents, had been born circa World War I and had come of age during the Depression. Their lives were marked by national trauma, but certainly they were not given the space to express their feelings, let alone get therapy or any kind of professional support.

In fact, their parents, my great grandparents, or their parents before them, had experienced trauma of their own, having immigrated from Germany, some by way of Russia, to the US. Imagine what that must’ve been like — traveling by ship across the ocean, not knowing what you would find on the other side! My grandparents were raised by folks who had what it took to take huge risks but who likely didn’t put words to their feelings — the courage they must’ve had, the fear, the excitement, and the exhilaration. And they didn’t likely have the time or wherewithal to explore the devastation they experienced once they were settling and growing their families during the uncertainty of World War I and the Depression, so my grandparents learned from their parents how to survive, how to do without, how to make do; they did not learn how to explore their emotions. They likely tucked them deep inside.

They carried residual trauma and latent emotions into their marriages where they had baby after baby and worked their keisters off to provide house and home and a better life than they had had. They put a meal on the table and clothes on their children’s backs, and for that, those children ought to be grateful. End of story.

My parents, the ones who ought to be grateful, were born circa World War II, another national trauma. My grandmother, my mom’s mom, once showed me the ration books she had kept that allowed her just so much coffee, sugar, and stockings while she was raising small children, wearing a dress and heels, mind you, and keeping her house just so. Having stuffed her own childhood traumas deep inside, she was ill-equipped to provide much empathy or compassion to her own children. Her husband, one of eleven children raised by sugar beet farmers, became a successful salesman who brought home the bacon and often last-minute dinner guests. Little Grandma, as we called her, was responsible for being always ready with a picture-perfect house, an exquisite meal, and well-behaved children. If those children had feelings, they’d better check them at the door. My mother tells stories of high expectations and little tolerance for not rising to meet them.

My dad was one of six children. His father worked for the same company my maternal grandfather worked for. My grandmother stayed home, making homemade lye soap, and attending to the needs of all those open mouths and hands. She, too, had lived through her own childhood traumas, though she never spoke of them. Her clinical depression was so severe that she had endured shock treatments. When I knew her, she was mostly silent, mostly bedridden, with a quiet smile covering God only knows what buried emotions. My dad was the youngest of those six. He tells stories of playing in the neighborhood, of having a paper route, of going off to the Marines, but not too much about his interactions with his parents or siblings. He has been, most of my life, successful, content, and optimistic. I’ve seen little evidence of negative emotions or hurt.

Nevertheless, I suspect that my mom and dad, raised by parents with few emotional tools, endured their own childhood traumas, although they wouldn’t call them that, and likely would deny even now that anything they experienced was “all that bad.”

They married young, of course, and had a houseful of kids. They worked hard to provide for their needs as their parents had done for them and to create a home and family. Alas, generations of trauma were coming home to roost. Ill-equipped to process their latent emotions along with the growing demands of four small children, they managed in their own ways and ultimately divorced.

I was in elementary school when they split, and life as I perceived it — nuclear family, ranch-style house down the street from my school, neighbors I’d know all my life — was disassembled. This was, of course, the largest disruption of my life. We didn’t really talk about it as a family, at least not in my memory. No one knew how. How could they?

Here’s the thing though, whether we talk about it or not, trauma has an impact. We have emotional and physical responses whether we can articulate them or not. I can’t speak for my siblings, but I know I felt all kinds of things. I was stunned with disbelief. I remember telling a classmate “My parents will never get a divorce” just weeks before I found out that they were, in fact, divorcing. I had to figure out what my new reality meant. I remember a conversation with my older sister where I told her that I didn’t have a dad any more. She assured me that I would “always have a dad.”

I had all kinds of feelings for years and years. I could flip from extremely happy to extremely angry in seconds. I could spend whole days brooding. I cried easily, laughed loudly, loved fiercely, and got devastatingly hurt, but I didn’t know what to do with all those emotions.

The message I got from my family and friends was that I needed to quiet down, quit crying so much, and get over it, but no matter how hard I tried, those feelings weren’t going anywhere.

I tried a few coping strategies — drinking, anorexia, and academic overachievement — but those only temporarily numbed the feelings which I would eventually have to take out, examine, and process many years later.

Unfortunately for my children, some of that unpacking is happening now, after they are gone living their lives, trying to find words and expression for their own emotions and their own childhood traumas.

I’m sure I’m not alone — growing up with limited emotional vocabulary to process myriad emotional experiences — but it doesn’t have to be this way. We can, in the midst of our own international crisis find the language and the space to loosen up generations of tamped-down trauma, drag it out into the open, examine it carefully, and give it — finally — some language.

Why would we want to do this? Why would we want to dredge up old hurts, expose old wounds, and revisit decades-old losses? Because in seeing, in speaking, in acknowledging the devastation, there is healing, connection, restoration, and hope.

How do I know? I’ve been on this journey for a while now, and I have found myself coming into wholeness, of being able to feel deeply from a whole menu of emotions — joy, sadness, anger, happiness, sorrow, disappointment, and the like. I’ve been learning Emotions 101 in my fifties, and then recently, a friend suggested I read Brene’ Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, and only two chapters in, I know I’m moving into an advanced course. I’m pulling experiences out of my rucksack again and I’m seeing more complexity, finding deeper understanding, and moving through another wave of grief and recovery.

It’s hard. I’ve been triggered this past couple of weeks. I’ve had some painful flashbacks. I’ve connected some dots that I hadn’t even noticed before. I’ve found myself aching.

But, look, generations have not had the ability to look at individual or collective pain — they’ve not been able to fully grieve. They’ve merely shoved their hurts aside and ‘gotten on’. And we’re the worse for it, aren’t we?

Isn’t it time we tried a different way? Can’t we imagine a richer life for those who come along after us? Wouldn’t it be lovely to start a new legacy?

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Psalm 147:3

Open Wound, an allegory*

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment
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*allegory, a symbolic fictional narrative that conveys a meaning not explicitly set forth in the narrative

Her wound was open. She sat, sobbing.

It wasn’t the first time. Although it had scabbed over time and again since the injury was first sustained, it could be torn open with the slightest impact, even now, decades later.

She’d been a child when the initial blow had been dealt and her still-young flesh had first been split open. The pain had been stunning — it had shoved her back, and she had sat, a child, weeping on the floor, holding her chest, trying to stop the hemorrhaging.

After she had tired from much sobbing and flailing about, it had subsided — the pain, the bleeding — receding to a dull but ever present ache.

Since then, she had carried it around with her, this bruised and tender flesh,

It was the kind of injury that never fully heals, the experts had said. Even when sustained during the growing years, the body — the heart — could not regenerate enough cells to fully heal the damage that had been done.

The injury would remain, opening up from time to time. Then, new cells would form to stop the bleeding, to cover over the gaping wound. She’d use caution, covering the tender area with a protective layer, shielding it from subsequent blows, learning to avoid danger, developing a keen defensive awareness.

She’d be so careful, so vigilant, that she could even believe the spirit-altering injury might actually be healing. The pain would subside, and she would become hopeful that she would never again shed tears, never again ache, never again sob with the pain or even the memory of the pain.

But then, from out of nowhere — but often from somewhere familiar — a pointed blade would find its way through her armor, past layers of clothing, beneath the dressings, to pierce the flesh. Just like that, the wound would be torn open and she would crumble again, down, down, down, weeping, sobbing, holding her heart, and begging for the pain to stop,

In the early years, not long after the wound had first been dealt, she would, in pain, lash out — swinging and flailing at those closest, begging them to join her in the misery. Over the years, however, she learned this strategy was ineffective — it did not diminish her own hurt, but rather multiplied it. Instead of joining her in her pain, the others turned away, kept their distance, isolating her, piling guilt and regret on top of pain, and leaving those she loved with their own wounds to tend.

Later, as she aged, when certainly, she thought, this decades-old injury had to be fully healed, she could still be brought low by a stray arrow, an unintended blow that nevertheless grazed the tender flesh, re-opening the wound.

It was open now. The middle-aged heart had been hit, and it was laid bare.

Seeping.

Throbbing.

Reminding her of the many years of pain, many years of tears, many years of swallowing feelings past a tightened aching throat.

She lay supine, futilely wiping away an unstoppable deluge of tears, fighting against the years of pain — still not wanting to feel it — still not wanting to admit I’m hit! I’m hurt! I’m bleeding! I’m suffering!

Those standing over her, observing her as she lie bleeding, sobbing, say her wound, her perpetually open wound, informs her compassion, gives her language to comfort others with the comfort she herself has received, but that is little consolation when the tenuous flesh has been recently sliced, when the blood is dripping on the floor, when she is doubled over, trying desperately to silence her own cries.

Nevertheless she hears.

She admits they are right.

Her pain does give her compassion for others.

She sighs in resignation, then does what she has always done.

She rises.

She sits up, dabbing at the now-congealing blood,

taking a sip of cool water,

applying fresh dressings,

washing her face,

combing her hair.

Then, as she examines herself in the mirror, she hears a still small voice, “Do not be afraid; do not discouraged, for I am with you wherever you go.”

“I know,” she says, nodding, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, “I know.”

And she, carrying the open wound with her, steps back into the land of the living.

A time to embrace

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

It was a weird year to join a school staff. With Covid, all of our back-to-school meetings were virtual. We could see one another’s faces and occasionally hear one another’s voices, but we did not share physical space for those two weeks. Instead, each of us was safely distant from the others, working from our homes.

I wasn’t the only new hire, but I couldn’t be sure, just from looking at my Zoom screen, which staff members were veterans and which ones were rookies. The situation was complicated by the fact that two school staffs had come together for the 2020-2021 school year after one had closed, so even the teachers who had been on staff for three or five or ten years, might have been looking at new faces and wondering where they fit in.

And maybe that dynamic, the fact that none of us felt terribly grounded, created a situation in which no one felt superior; no one felt “new”. Or perhaps we all felt “new” in a way, since we were all learning how to do school online — learning how to use digital platforms for instruction, for behavioral incentives, for managing student work. I can’t know how everyone else was feeling, but from the beginning, I had a sense that we were all in this together. We were all uniting to meet the needs of our students during a pandemic — one that had decimated the community of Detroit in which our school is situated and where all of our students live.

From the beginning of the school year, our focus was to provide high quality instruction in a manner that was safe for our students and for our staff. We took every measure — providing our students with chromebooks and hot spots so that they could safely learn from home, upping the requirements for our all-star custodial staff who sanitized bathrooms and doorknobs on the hour, and allowing staff with health concerns to work from home. If a positive case of Covid was detected, everyone was sent home for two weeks while the building went through a deep clean and while everyone who had even remotely close exposure could get tested and watch for symptoms.

We were so careful, in fact — wearing masks in the building, staying six feet apart, sanitizing surfaces, and holding all meetings via Zoom — that even when a positive case occurred within the building, it was not spread. We were even offered weekly Covid testing every Monday, so when asymptomatic cases were diagnosed, the whole building could go home before any spread could take place.

Our leadership took every precaution to make sure our students and staff remained safe and healthy.

So what a shock it was, as we were all enjoying our summer break, knowing that we finished the year with minimal Covid impact, to receive a message from our principal that one of our coworkers, a well-loved teacher, just forty-four years old, had died very shortly after a cancer diagnosis.

It felt like a punch to the gut. I was stunned. How could this woman, who had volunteered to plan all the senior events (during a pandemic!) so that “our babies” would have a senior pinning, a prom, and an in-person graduation, have died? I had just been on zoom with her a few weeks earlier, discussing teaching strategies and sharing resources. She’d asked early in the year if I would mind talking with her from time to time as she was striving to be the best she could be for our students.

In the group chat where the news of her death had been shared, my colleagues instantly began sharing with one another how they were shocked and devastated. None of us could believe that just as we were planning to be physically with one another in the fall, this woman who leaned into every Zoom room, face fully on the screen, smiling and attentive, would not be with us.

Shortly after we learned of her passing, our principal sent out another note. We would have a candlelight vigil and balloon launch the following week to allow students and staff to grieve. I had heard of this practice just earlier in the year. Two of my former students from St. Louis and one of this year’s seniors all were killed by gun violence within weeks of one another between Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Each of them had been remembered in this way.

Our principal’s note said to bring pink balloons (our colleague’s favorite color) and to come to the school. On that evening, my husband and I cut a family trip short so that we could be there. We pulled up to the building and found the principal and one of the custodians setting up. As we got closer, both of them moved toward us. After a whole school year of giving one another a wide berth, my principal and I instinctively hugged. I turned to the custodian, and we held one another.

It was no longer safe to remain distant.

As each staff member arrived, the hugging continued. Friends who had stepped around one another all year long, were offering comfort in the only way that would do — touch.

And tears.

Tears dripped from our eyes as forty-four candles were lit and balloons were shared. Markers were passed so that we could write tributes on the balloons. One teacher, who also happens to be a police chaplain, offered Scripture, emotional support, a space for sharing memories, and prayer. He told the dozen or more students who had gathered on a weeknight in the middle of summer that whatever they were feeling was ok, that the staff was grieving, too, that we were all shocked. None of us had known she was sick, he said; she hadn’t known long herself. He offered support through our social worker, our counseling resources, and himself. “We are a family,” he said, “and family supports one another through difficult times such as this.”

Our colleague’s mother moved to the middle of our circled bodies and shared that her daughter had loved our students, had talked about them all the time. Even from her hospital bed, she regretted that she was missing prom. We all nodded, knowing this was true, knowing that her heart had been fully with our kids.

As one, we counted to three and released our balloons into the sky. The cluster of bodies on the ground gazed upward, silently, for many long moments, watching the pink balloons lift into the clouds.

And then we lingered. Staff and students spoke to one another, shared memories, and stood closely in the silence. Gradually we began to chat: how is your summer? what have you been up to?

A baby was passed from his mother to students to staff. As though he knew our hearts were hurting, he lay his head our shoulders then lifted his gaze to smile us, instinctively bringing joy to the mourning.

One by one, the gathered began to dissipate, moving to cars, waving goodbyes, holding eye contact a little longer than we might’ve before, promising to see each other soon, knowing that we were connected a little more now than we had been a few hours earlier.

I don’t know how next year will play out. It holds promise for more proximity, more gathering, more sharing, and I hope we get that. It was appropriate to keep our distance for a while to protect one another, but it seems the best way to care for one another now is to come back together.

[There is] a time to refrain from embracing, and a time to embrace.

Ecclesiastes 3: 5 (Order reversed by me.)

Coronavirus Diary #29: Flip the Funk

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t written a new blog post in over a month now. It’s not that I haven’t been writing; I have. Each morning, I scrawl three pages in a spiral notebook before I do anything else. I dump the raw ramblings of my mind uncensored on the page in an attempt to clear my mind, see what I’m thinking about, and discover any insights.

Many blog posts have grown out of my morning pages. My chaotic run-on sentences give birth to ideas that I carry to my laptop, explore freely, then rearrange, revise, edit, and publish. I love the process, and I’ve learned so much about myself through writing this way over the last several years. As I’ve written through my health challenges, my grief, my healing, and my celebrations, I have learned to articulate what matters, what hurts, what I love, and what I’d love to change. For almost seven years, I’ve found something to say almost every week. In the beginning, I found something to say almost every single day.

But lately I haven’t had anything I’ve wanted to commit to a public page — nothing I’ve wanted to share, even though I’ve had plenty of thoughts about the pandemic, the almost daily tragic gun violence, the Derek Chauvin trial, education, standardized testing, the beauty of spring, and the joy of Easter. I’ve had plenty of thoughts, but I haven’t been able or willing to pull them into any cohesive package. I haven’t been able to find a theme among the fragments, and I’ve been struggling a little to hold on to hope.

It’s still in my grasp — hope, that is — but I’m having to put a lot of energy into swatting away distractive thoughts while still keeping my fingers wrapped around it.

I started my therapy session last week saying, “I’m struggling, and I don’t exactly know why. I’ve got an undercurrent of negativity — a mixture of worry, regret, and old business– I know it’s there, trying to harass me, but I haven’t wanted to give it my attention. I’m so tired of processing all the time.”

I really want to be happy and hopeful, I explained, and I have every reason to be. Winter has flown away, making way for warmer weather and the breaking forth of new life. Despite Covid-19 and the ever-changing restrictions, I have made it three quarters of the way through my first school year back “in” the classroom after several years away. I have a loving marriage in which both of us continue to heal, grow, and remain committed to each other. We’ve come back from so much hurt and devastation, and we find ourselves enjoying time together, even as we start the second year of Covid restrictions.

I know all of this, and I am thankful, but the harassing thoughts persist — throwing up past failures, parading worries, and waving banners of self-doubt. They’ve quieted a bit in the last few days since I called them out in therapy; they’ve gone back to their corners to sulk, making space for me to see the green buds emerging on the trees in the yard, last year’s lettuce sprouting from the soil, and the rhubarb doubling in size inside of a week.

My therapist asked, “Can you think of what has triggered these thoughts?” and I started by listing the obvious — months and months in front of a computer screen — an introvert surprisingly starving for meaningful physical human contact, the current surge of Covid cases in Michigan specifically focused in the regions where I live and work, and continuing social distance and mask wearing for who knows how long.

I mean, we’ve made progress. Along with 20% of the general population of the United States, I’m fully vaccinated. My husband will be, too, probably by the time you read this. Our parents are all vaccinated and so are several of our kids. I recently returned from a couple of days with my mother after a long time away, and we have plans to see our granddaughters and their parents in just a couple of weeks. Our (vaccinated) son joins us for dinner every few weeks in our home, and we are hopeful to visit our daughters this summer. These things give me hope — and I hold them in my hand, caressing them, willing them to grow into reality.

But last Sunday, we spent our second Easter on our couches, watching the livestream of our church’s worship service. We put on new T-shirts to mark the occasion. After the service was over, we chatted with another couple in a Zoom room then climbed into the car to go to church for in-person communion. When we arrived, several people were standing outside the building, dressed in their Easter finest, having attended the service in-person. Since they were outside, many of them were not wearing masks, and perhaps feeling the joy of doing something resembling ‘normal’, they weren’t keeping six feet of distance from each other either. They were smiling and laughing, chatting like it was just another Sunday. We walked up in our new T-shirts and masks, and as everyone greeted us, I felt myself retreat into my interior, step to the perimeter of the cluster of bodies, and quickly make my way past them. It was overwhelming to be so close to so many bodies, even though we were outside, even though I had on a mask, even though these are people who I know and love.

Will we ever feel normal again?

My therapist assures me I’m not the only one feeling this way. She says that everyone she sees has been struggling a bit more since the one year mark — one year since we had the first case in the US, one year since we started social distancing, one year since we marked our first 10,000 fatalities, one year since we last saw someone we loved.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m joining in the communal grieving, and that grieving has caused remnants of my own grieving to bubble up, and since I have not wanted to give it my attention, I have just been feeling the funk, like I was when I wrote Coronavirus Diary #3 near the beginning of the pandemic when I already felt like we’d been “sheltering at home for a million days”. Who could’ve imagined that we’d still be living restricted lives one year later.

I’m over it. You’re probably over it, too. And, if you’ve read this far, you may be hoping that I’ve got some profound thing to say that will flip your funk. Maybe you’re waiting for me to tell you what I did to make it all better.

Near the end of my session, my therapist said, as I was dabbing at my eyes, “We’ve got to turn this around.” I looked at her face on my laptop screen, doubting her ability to magically wave a wand and make me feel better. And what she said surprised me. She didn’t suggest I take a deep dive to examine all the feelings that were bubbling up. She didn’t tell me to dump out my backpack and examine my hurts and losses one by one. Instead, she said, “I’m not one whose ever going to suggest we deny our feelings, but sometimes we need to give ourselves a break from them. Sometimes we need to give ourselves something positive to think about. Get outside, go for a walk, do something you enjoy.”

Seriously? That’s how I was going to shake this funk? Go for a walk? Shoot, I’ve been going for a walk every day of this pandemic — rain, shine, or even snow. That’s all I needed to do, was to not wallow, not succumb to the negativity that my harassing thoughts were throwing at me, but get outside, dig in the dirt, go for a walk, read a book?

I can do that.

Turns out that my therapist’s ability to offer me grace — a break, some space, an out — was just what I needed to flip out of the funk and into a more functional state. I don’t need to force myself to look at the stuff that I’ve looked at, examined, and analyzed ad nauseam — not all the time and not right now. Instead, I can offer myself some grace, to step outside, examine my rhubarb, search for the peonies that are poking their fingers through the soil and getting ready to burst forth with bouquets of hope.

And hope does not put us to shame.”

Romans 5:5

Spiraling and Strolling: Moving through Grief

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment
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Sometimes thoughts of the past can leave me sleepless. All of life has not been picture perfect, and images of brokenness can lead to pain that prevents sleep. For this reason, I often try to avoid lingering on the past, but the other night I intentionally strolled down Memory Lane for a little while. I looked at some old photos and replayed some old film. This is a new strategy for me.

For the past several years, moments of memory have come in unexpected flashes. I can be watching a television sitcom, for example, and see a mother and daughter share a glance or break into laughter. It seems like a benign — even fun — exchange, but it sparks a memory, and I am transported back 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years to a scene where, in a moment of frustration, I snapped at one of my children when I could’ve smiled or even laughed. Later, after the television has been turned off and the lights are out, instead of sleeping, I flail amid images of that moment and others like it swirling on a screen in my mind. Rather than a stroll down Memory Lane, it feels like a free fall between black walls covered in video screens replaying moments of regret, disappointment, and failure.

Once I am in this free fall, I can go for hours. I might see myself driving a carload of kids, for example — my shoulders tensed, trying to get them where they need to go, mentally working out return trips, meals, clothing, and bills. I can feel the stress of responsibility, of course, but mostly I feel sadness and regret — realizing now how brief the moments with our children were and wanting to get some of those moments back for a re-do.

Maybe this sounds familiar. Perhaps all of us mentally cycle through memories, wishing we could go back and redo some of the moments that fill us with regret.

In families like ours that have been impacted by trauma, this experience may be even more intense. Flashes of memory may feel like mini-traumas. In my case, the flashes from the past I see often induce not only regret but also shame for my role in what did and didn’t happen.

Since I’ve made a commitment to only tell my own story, I will stay cloudy on the details, but I have shared before in this blog that our family has been touched by crime, violence, and a season of extreme overwork wherein the stress level in our household could become volatile. While I take responsibility, rightfully, for some of that stress, my brain sometimes gets confused and tries to convince me that I am responsible for all of the trauma, too. It tries to show me moments just before and just after traumatic events and to accuse me of what I could’ve done to make things different. It shows me how I might’ve prevented pain or how I should have been more active in comforting, and it continually points an accusing finger at me, showing me piece after piece of evidence where I failed as a mother, as a wife, and as a friend.

I am transported, for example, to a moment on our front porch where I asked a question but didn’t notice a detail, where I heard a response that I shouldn’t have believed. I tell myself I should have looked more closely, should’ve questioned more. I should’ve seen; I should’ve heard.

Then, I see another image, a midnight drive through the neighborhood to calm a crying teen; I see myself feeling tired, wanting to help, but not knowing what to do. I tell myself I should’ve listened more carefully, should’ve driven further, should’ve called off work the next day.

And from there, I fall to the next image…

When I am free falling through that accusatory slide show, I call it spiraling. I spin through images of moments when I wish I would’ve known more, acted differently, or seen the situation for what it really was. If only I could go back and do it differently, but I can’t, so I continue to spiral from one failed moment to the next.

Recently, as I felt I was nearing the end of a several day stretch of night-time spiraling, having had little sleep, and wanting the cycle to end, my husband, in casual conversation, brought up a topic that I thought might set me back into free fall. I said, “I don’t know if I want to talk about that. I’ve already been spiraling for several days, and I’m really ready to stop.” He was quiet for moment, and then he said, “I think it’s all part of the grieving process.”

I was silent.

It’s part of the grieving process? Going back through all these images and feeling all this regret, this ache, this shame? For the past several years, I’ve been trying to avoid spiraling, if possible, and to endure it when necessary, but if it’s part of the grieving process, I wondered, do I need to lean in and sit with it? Isn’t that what you do with grief? Sit with it?

When something dies — a loved one, a pet, a dream, a hope — it hurts, and the hurt does not go quickly away. No, it takes all kinds of mental and physical work for our minds and bodies to accept loss. We try to deny that it really happened, and we get angry that it did. We yell until we can yell no more, then eventually we cry and sob and groan as we acknowledge the loss to be real.

And, you know, we’ve got to give ourselves space for this. Loss is real — it happens — devastating, bone-crushing loss comes into our lives and we sometimes can’t bear to look at the reality of it all — but when we are ready, we must. We must look at devastation with our eyes wide open. We must see the totality of the pain and allow ourselves and all those impacted the space to grieve — to really, fully grieve.

I’ve been avoiding that full-on look; it’s been too painful to take it all in at once. However, my brain won’t let me rest until I lean in and take a closer look.

The other night, I was lying awake casually spiraling — I was too tired to be frantic, so I wearily submitted to the images that were swirling on the screen of my mind. I lay there and took it in — the accusation, the shame, the regret, and then I finally gave in to sleep.

The next morning, after my alarm jolted me awake, I wondered if it was time to shift to a different way of looking. Was it possible to instead of merely seeing the failures and sinking into shame that I might view the images through eyes of compassion — not only for the members of my family but also for myself?

When I find myself on the front porch, for example, can I acknowledge that I was home, that I was watching, that I was aware, even if I didn’t see the full picture? Can I give myself the grace to say that I was present? Can I acknowledge that to the teen, my questions were terrifying and lies were the only safe response?

When I find myself driving through the neighborhood at midnight, can I thank myself for getting out of bed, for loading a teen in a car, and for driving back and forth to allow the time for tears, even if I didn’t know what they were for? Can I have compassion on the young one who was feeling so much wrenching pain and applaud the strength it took to finally allow me to see the depth of it, even if sharing the cause of such deep hurt was still impossible?

Am I ready to make the shift from spiraling to strolling? Am I willing to slow down and look, really look, at the images? to see not just what’s in the foreground, but to see the background, the edges, and what was happening just outside the frame?

Am I ready to accept grief’s invitation to stroll down Memory Lane, to look at both the wreckage and the beauty, to see the moments of love and tenderness that sit right beside the devastation. Am I willing to see not only my failures but also the moments where I may have done the only right thing I knew to do at the time? Am I willing to believe that two competing realities can exist at the same time?

I think I’m ready to try; I think it’s the next step through this grief.

I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

Jeremiah 31:13