#13: We are not islands.
Releasing the myths of avoidance and isolation.
Dear reader, I have a confession.
Last week’s post cracked me open… After beating me down.
Like wrestlers (minus the tiny uniforms and odd headgear) my editor Leona and I went toe-to-toe with that post from the first draft on Sunday night until the final version late Thursday. We changed directions, added, deleted, dug deep, and finally crossed the finish line. User error with a new microphone and some plain old boneheaded-ness had me re-recording the voiceover five times.
It was the post about death that would not die.
Our weekly Friday meeting felt like a post-mortem. Why the heck was that so hard??
Because we are both dedicated to The Luminist’s mission (and stubborn as mules), we had lots of ideas. Maybe it was because:
We were building a part of The Luminist’s foundation and we had to wrestle a big rock into place.
We found a node in the bigger grief conversation. It was hard to know how & where to limit the scope.
It could have gone a million directions, we spent half the week just trying to pick which rabbit hole to explore.
Our commitment to reframing every stumbling block as a valuable lesson paid off. We waved goodbye through Zoom, satisfied.
But as Friday afternoon turned into Friday evening and as crazy-productive-work-mind gave way to curious-soft-heart-space — generally a relief — I began sliding down a slippery slope…
Admittedly a familiar slippery slope, but that brought little comfort.
First came vulnerability. While digging deep for the post, I had also dredged up memories of those early textless days without Mike, the ache of the blackhole, the feelings of hopelessness. Loneliness quickly followed. The portion of the hole that will never be filled still hurts. And the person who knew me best is not here to put his hand on my back and tell me it will all be ok.
Next came frustration. “I don’t know what the hell I am doing!” I thought. “What am I even writing about? Where is the cohesion? When will I get to speak about this stuff and reach a wider audience? Am I even making an impact — or any sense — here?”
Damn. Not even the grief writer can stand in a storm and pretend she isn’t soaked, freezing, and wondering how the hell to get out of here.
Cracking open to my own humanity.
After a long weekend crying, commiserating, and finally laughing with two irreplaceable friends (shoutout to CeCe and Julie!), I’m feeling more human.
Not “more human” as in “more in control” or “more put together.” I’m still feeling fragile, raw, and humbled. But I’m also feeling more connected to my humanity, more compassionate towards my uncontrollable ups and downs, more appreciative of the fact that I don’t have to — and am not built to — go it alone.
If only old Sue could see me now!
For the first five decades of my life, feeling negative feelings was something I assiduously avoided (I can’t believe I made it that long). I wouldn’t even play sad songs on the radio for fear of catching someone else’s unwanted sadness! And if I was the one feeling sad, I just avoided friends entirely until I got it “under control.” Way better than letting them see me weak and teary-eyed (the horror!!)
Mike’s death pretty much broke me of my emotional avoidance and isolation… trying to “control” those emotions was like trying to dam the English Channel. It just wasn’t going to happen. But that was six years ago. Even I forget...
So I took the three-hour drive to CeCe’s with some reluctance. I cycled through several crying spells along the way… then pretended that I felt better. See, no vulnerability needed! No black clouds entering stage left!
When I arrived at CeCe’s I deployed my craftiest avoidance technique, honed from years of practice: make the other person talk about themselves! Though CeCe could definitely tell something was off (I think I was being pretty awkward), she obliged my erratic questions about unrelated aspects of her life. She just let me spin my wheels. Her gentle voice, warm kitchen, and heartfelt responses seeped into my subconscious, soothing my stress response…
Suddenly, I realized I was tired of my own bullshit. Now more than anything I wanted to let my guard down and connect. To be seen by my dear friend. To pour out all my woes to her and melt into a blubbery mess.
Wow, was I close to falling into the old trap — the one where I let my “negative” emotions isolate me rather than connect me.
The outdated (incorrect, widely-accepted) story goes: negatives can only take away from the positives. So I didn’t want to bring my negative emotions to my friend and ruin her day. I wanted to move through the pain as quickly as possible, coming in contact with as few people as possible, and emerging on the other side shiny and smiling, ready to be a force for good in the world. And until then… I was better off keeping my mouth (and heart) shut.
CeCe’s patient attention was the jumpstart I needed to pattern-interrupt my archaic, ineffective ways.
How easy it is to forget that it’s a choice to let our pain pull us away… or pull us closer.
Smashing the paradigm.
The next day as I was driving back home, CeCe sent me this song:
When the world is ready to fall on your little shoulders/ And when you're feeling lonely and small/ You need somebody there to hold you/ So don't you ever be ashamed, when you're only lonely/ Ah, you can call out my name... when you're only lonely.
- “When You’re Only Lonely” by J.D. Souther
“Only lonely.” Let that sink in for a minute. Souther isn’t minimizing the feeling of loneliness. He’s explicitly recognizing the facts that:
we all feel lonely one time or another;
it’s not a crime or shame;
it can be soothed with just a bit of human connection;
it’s not a burden, because the people who love you want to support you.
I sobbed tears of relief listening to Souther and CeCe croon together (she sent me a recording of her singing along!)
Grief is a brutal emotion to carry around. No one can “fix” it. So it’s easy to feel like the best thing we can do is try to protect everyone else from our raincloud. And if in the meantime we figure out how to avoid or ignore the raincloud ourselves, even better!
But it doesn’t work that way!!
Denying painful emotions not only separates us from others, it separates us from ourselves. I have tears in my eyes more often than I’d like to admit… but I still wouldn’t trade a single one away. Not one.
After this weekend, with the help of CeCe and Julie (our conversation about carrying pain is a story for another post), I feel more myself, more open-hearted, more delighted by the life I’m living than I have in weeks.
Because I’m not putting a lid on any part of myself or my experience. I am letting all of life flow through me — the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m not sure exactly why this is… but I’ve discovered it to be unequivocally true. Even when we are only trying to bottle up the “bad stuff” like pain and grief, we end up blocking some of the “good stuff” like love and awe too.
I needed this breakdown. I needed the reminder of how human I am. I needed the reconnection to my soft center, to the part of me that is capable of absurd amounts of pain, along with absurd amounts of love.
And when I forget this lesson again — sometime soon I’m sure — hopefully I’ll be just a bit faster to allow my heart to do what it’s built to do. Feel. Then heal.
Learning to let the pain stay as long as it needs to stay.
The Luminist was born out of the pain. The silver linings and life-bettering lessons of the pain for sure, but also the deep desire — deep need? — for the pain to mean something, to become something, to generate something.
Maybe it’s a coping mechanism… But in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s a pretty good one. Because it helps me be with my pain rather than trying to run it off like an outlaw in a spaghetti western. It helps me accept, if not welcome, my pain because I know this self-acceptance works alchemy in my heart. And finally, it helps me express my pain, knowing that it is a bridge creating connection to the long-buried pain in others’ hearts.
Which is why I promise to:
Show up here, week after week, even when it’s really really hard, like last week.
Figure out how to transmit all this pain-alchemized-into-connection-fostering-love to you in its full, messy, disjointed glory.
Continue to offer myself, my heart, and my heartbreak as beacons for the aliveness I have stumbled upon — and want to share with literally EVERYONE.
Living a vibrant life does not equal being happy-happy-happy all the time. It does mean being present for all the emotions, the highs and the lows.
As Brené Brown says, slightly more poetically:
“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
In vulnerability,
Sue
