Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Through the Narrow Gate had been published six weeks earlier. Writing it had been one of the hardest things that I had ever done. It had taken three full drafts to get it right. The first had been very angry; I had poured out all the bitterness and rage that had accumulated over the past ten years, fulminating about the absurdities and cruelties of our training. June, my agent, had looked at the draft, suggested different narrative techniques to vary the tempo, but had then asked a crucial question: “If it was really as bad as that, why did you stay so long?” That had hit home, and I returned to my script and started again. This time, I made myself remember some of the more positive things about the convent years. I recalled the excitement of those first days in the postulantship, when I had been convinced that I had embarked on the road to holiness; the beauty of the liturgy; the kindness of some of my superiors; and the grief that I had felt when it had become clear that I must leave. I realized that the order had itself been undergoing a painful period of transition. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to feel the attraction of the ideal that had propelled me into the convent and kept me there. June had been far more satisfied with this second attempt. A final draft, with some fine-tuning and additions, took only a few weeks, and the manuscript was ready for the publishers. It had been sold at auction just a year after Sally had sat me down at her father’s desk and forced me to make a start.

• From Wild (2012)

  Paul reached for me and squeezed my leg, consoling me. I couldn’t look at him. If I looked at him I would cry. We’d agreed to this together, but I knew that if I turned to him and proposed we forget about divorcing and get back together instead, he would agree. I didn’t turn. Something inside of me whirred like a machine that I had started but could not stop. I put my hand down and placed it on top of Paul’s hand on my leg. Sometimes we wondered together if things would have turned out differently if one thing that was true hadn’t been true. If my mother hadn’t died, for example, would I still have cheated on him? Or if I hadn’t cheated on him, would he have cheated on me? And what if nothing had happened—no mother dying, no cheating on anyone—would we still be getting divorced anyway, having simply married too young? We couldn’t know, but we were open to knowing. As close as we’d been when we were together, we were closer in our unraveling, telling each other everything at last, words that seemed to us might never have been spoken between two human beings before, so deep we went, saying everything that was beautiful and ugly and true. “Now that we’ve been through all this, we should stay together,” I half joked in the tender wake of our last heartrending, soul-baring discussion—the one we’d had to decide at last whether or not to get divorced. We were sitting on the couch in the dark of my apartment, having talked through the afternoon and into the evening, both of us too shattered by the time the sun set to get up and switch on a light. “I hope you can do that someday with someone else,” I said when he didn’t reply, though the very thought of that someone else pierced my heart. “I hope you can too,” he said. I sat in the darkness beside him, wanting to believe that I was capable of finding the kind of love I had with him again, only without wrecking it the next time around. It felt impossible to me. I thought of my mother. Thought of how in the last days of her life so many horrible things had happened. Small, horrible things. My mother’s whimsical, delirious babblings. The blood pooling to blacken the backs of her bedridden arms. The way she begged for something that wasn’t even mercy. For whatever it is that is less than mercy; for what we don’t even have a word for. Those were the worst days, I believed at the time, and yet the moment she died I’d have given anything to have them back. One small, horrible, glorious day after the other. Maybe it would be that way with Paul as well, I thought, sitting beside him on the night we decided to divorce. Maybe once they were over, I’d want these horrible days back too.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Be my rock-brother and I’ll be your stone-wife. Remember that gumball machine outside the Ranch 99 where he skinned fish? Remember how you only wanted the green ones, the ones you said would taste like our planet, and when you got the red one, you cried? Your father fed it more quarters, but the next one was white, then yellow, then pink, then white again. The gumballs stained your palms like a crime scene, and still you asked for green. He went inside the store and exchanged half a day’s wage for more quarters, kept feeding the machine until you got your green, your planet to suck soft, to embalm in spit. This is the man I want you to remember, the one who committed himself to your hunger: his hands cradling quarters, your green mouth glowing go like a stoplight. Don’t tell me when to stop. Here’s the third story, the one you need to believe. There was a god sent to earth, looking for disciples. He walked the forest—not jungle—and told all the animals that he was starving. The snakes volunteered to steal him an egg. The birds left to hunt him a mouse. The fox skulked off to rob a neighboring chicken farm in Arkansas. Only the rabbit offered itself. It leapt straight into the starving man’s cooking fire, inviting teeth to its meat. To commemorate the rabbit, the god hung the rabbit’s bones in the sky. And that is the moon. That’s how we know all sources of light begin as sacrifice. Your father, born year of the rabbit, hated that story. He thought no god was owed flesh or fidelity. But he still expected both of me. The year we were married I asked him to get baptized. Ma says our tribe used to have as many deities as trees, and that having many gods only multiplies your losses, diversifies your debts. The moon was our priest that night. I filled a kiddie pool with water from a park fountain. He said he wanted to be baptized in his own spit. I said no man can fit inside his own mouth. Get in. On the third day, your brother removes the paper from the windows. You decide that being nocturnal is lonely, and when you check the mirror, your eyes aren’t glowing. When your brother rips away the paper, I see you in the light for the first time in days, and your skin is no closer to being bone. When you go outside to feed your yard-holes, I drag you home by your calf. You bite my hand but I stay holding you. You’ll need more than teeth to be free of me. _ The last time I talked to Ba in person was after my wedding. My belly was filling with your brother, but I wouldn’t know for another month.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His sojourn there was embittered by the ravages of the pestilence in Strassburg, which carried away his beloved deacon, Claude Féray (Feraeus), his friends Bedrotus and Capito, one of his boarders, Louis de Richebourg (Claude’s pupil), and the sons of Oecolampadius, Zwingli, and Hedio. He was thrown into a state of extreme anxiety and depression, which he revealed to Farel in a melancholy letter of March 29, 1541.544 "My dear friend Claude, whom I singularly esteemed," he writes, "has been carried off by the plague. Louis (de Richebourg) followed three days afterwards. My house was in a state of sad desolation. My brother (Antoine) had gone with Charles (de Richebourg) to a neighboring village; my wife had betaken herself to my brother’s; and the youngest of Claude’s scholars [probably Malherbe of Normandy] is lying sick in bed. To the bitterness of grief there was added a very anxious concern for those who survived. Day and night my wife is constantly present to my thoughts, in need of advice, seeing that she is deprived of her husband.545 ... These events have produced in me so much sadness that it seems as if they would utterly upset the mind and depress the spirit. You cannot believe the grief which consumes me on account of the death of my dear friend Claude." Then he pays a touching tribute to Féray, who had lived in his house and stuck closer to him than a brother. But the most precious fruit of this sore affliction is his letter of comfort to the distressed father of Louis de Richebourg, which we shall quote in another connection.546 § 90. Calvin and Melanchthon. The correspondence between Calvin (14 letters) and Melanchthon (8 letters), and several letters of Calvin to Farel from Strassburg and Regensburg. Henry, Vol. I. chs. XII. and XVII,—Stähelin, I. 237–254.—Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. ch. XIX. (vol. VII. 18–22, in Cates’ translation). One of the important advantages which his sojourn at Strassburg brought to Calvin and to the evangelical Church was his friendship with Melanchthon. It has a typical significance for the relationship of the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions, and therefore deserves special consideration. They became first acquainted by correspondence through Bucer in October, 1538. Melanchthon brought Calvin at once into a friendly contact with Luther, who read with great pleasure Calvin’s answer to Sadolet (perhaps also his Institutes), and sent his salutations to him at Strassburg.547

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Martyrol. Hieronymianum (ed. Florentini, Luc. 1668, and in Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Opp. Hieron. xi. 434 sqq.); the Martyrol. Romanum (ed. Baron. 1586), the Menolog. Graec. (ed. Urbini, 1727); De Rossi, Roller, and other works on the Roman Catacombs. II. Works. John Foxe (or Fox, d. 1587): Acts and Monuments of the Church (commonly called Book of Martyrs), first pub. at Strasburg 1554, and Basle 1559; first complete ed. fol. London 1563; 9th ed. fol. 1684, 3 vols. fol.; best ed. by G. Townsend, Lond. 1843, 8 vols. 8o.; also many abridged editions. Foxe exhibits the entire history of Christian martyrdom, including the Protestant martyrs of the middle age and the sixteenth century, with polemical reference to the church of Rome as the successor of heathen Rome in the work of blood persecution. "The Ten Roman persecutions" are related in the first volume. Kortholdt: De persecutionibus eccl. primcevae. Kiel, 1629. Gibbon: chap. xvi. Münter: Die Christen im heidnischen Hause vor Constantin. Copenh. 1828. Schumann Von Mansegg (R.C.): Die Verfolgungen der ersten christlichen Kirche. Vienna, 1821. W. Ad. Schmidt: Geschichte der Denk u. Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums. Berl. 1847. Kritzler: Die Heldenzeiten des Christenthums. Vol. i. Der Kampf mit dem Heidthum. Leipz. 1856. Fr. W. Gass: Das christl. Märtyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten. 1859–60 (in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." for 1859, pp. 323–392, and 1860, pp. 315–381). F. Overbeck: Gesetze der röm. Kaiser gegen die Christen, in his Studien zur Gesch. der alten Kirche, I. Chemn. 1875. B. Aubé: Histoire des persécutions de l’église jusqu’ à la fin des Antonins. 2nd ed. Paris 1875 (Crowned by the Académie française). By the same: Histoire des persécutions de l’église, La polémique paÿenne à la fin du II. siècle, 1878. Les Chréstiens dans l’empire romain, de la fin des Antonins au milieu du IIIe siécle (180–249), 1881. L’église et L’état dans la seconde moitié du IIIe siécle, 1886. K. Wieseler: Die Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren, Hist. und chronol. untersucht. Gütersloh, 1878. Gerh. Uhlhorn: Der Kampf des Christenthums mit dem Heidenthum. 3d ed. Stuttgart, 1879. Engl. transl. by Smyth & Ropes, 1879. Theod. Keim: Rom und das Christenthum. Berlin, 1881. E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle. Paris, 1882, pp. 53–69. § 13. General Survey. The persecutions of Christianity during the first three centuries appear like a long tragedy: first, foreboding signs; then a succession of bloody assaults of heathenism upon the religion of the cross; amidst the dark scenes of fiendish hatred and cruelty the bright exhibitions of suffering virtue; now and then a short pause; at last a fearful and desperate struggle of the old pagan empire for life and death, ending in the abiding victory of the Christian religion. Thus this bloody baptism of the church resulted in the birth of a Christian world. It was a repetition and prolongation of the crucifixion, but followed by a resurrection.

• From Wild (2012)

  I drove home and fed the horses and hens and got on the phone, the dogs gratefully licking my hands, our cat nudging his way onto my lap. I called everyone who might know where my brother was. He was drinking a lot, some said. Yes, it was true, said others, he’d been hanging out with a girl from St. Cloud named Sue. At midnight the phone rang and I told him that this was it. I wanted to scream at him when he walked in the door a half hour later, to shake him and rage and accuse, but when I saw him, all I could do was hold him and cry. He seemed so old to me that night, and so very young too. For the first time, I saw that he’d become a man and yet also I could see what a little boy he was. My little boy, the one I’d half mothered all of my life, having no choice but to help my mom all those times she’d been away at work. Karen and I were three years apart, but we’d been raised as if we were practically twins, the two of us equally in charge of Leif as kids. “I can’t do this,” he kept repeating through his tears. “I can’t live without Mom. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” “We have to,” I replied, though I couldn’t believe it myself. We lay together in his single bed talking and crying into the wee hours until, side by side, we drifted off to sleep. I woke a few hours later and, before waking Leif, fed the animals and loaded bags full of food we could eat during our vigil at the hospital. By eight o’clock we were on our way to Duluth, my brother driving our mother’s car too fast while U2’s Joshua Tree blasted out of the speakers. We listened intently to the music without talking, the low sun cutting brightly into the snow on the sides of the road. When we reached our mother’s room at the hospital, we saw a sign on her closed door instructing us to check in at the nurse’s station before entering. This was a new thing, but I assumed it was only a procedural matter. A nurse approached us in the hallway as we walked toward the station, and before I spoke she said, “We have ice on her eyes. She wanted to donate her corneas, so we need to keep the ice—” “What?” I said with such intensity that she jumped.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  By severe oppression under Trajan and Hadrian, the prohibition of circumcision, and the desecration of Jerusalem by the idolatry of the pagans, the Jews were provoked to a new and powerful insurrection (A.D. 132–135). A pseudo-Messiah, Bar-Cochba (son of the stars, Num. 24:17), afterwards called Bar-Cosiba (son of falsehood), put himself at the head of the rebels, and caused all the Christians who would not join him to be most cruelly murdered. But the false prophet was defeated by Hadrian’s general in 135, more than half a million of Jews were slaughtered after a desperate resistance, immense numbers sold into slavery, 985 villages and 50 fortresses levelled to the ground, nearly all Palestine laid waste, Jerusalem again destroyed, and a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, erected on its ruins, with an image of Jupiter and a temple of Venus. The coins of Aelia Capitolina bear the images of Jupiter Capitolinus, Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte. Thus the native soil of the venerable religion of the Old Testament was ploughed up, and idolatry planted on it. The Jews were forbidden to visit the holy spot of their former metropolis upon pain of death.18 Only on the anniversary of the destruction were they allowed to behold and bewail it from a distance. The prohibition was continued under Christian emperors to their disgrace. Julian the Apostate, from hatred of the Christians, allowed and encouraged them to rebuild the temple, but in vain. Jerome, who spent the rest of his life in monastic retirement at Bethlehem (d. 419), informs us in pathetic words that in his day old Jewish men and women, "in corporibus et in habitu suo iram a Domini demonstrantes," had to buy from the Roman watch the privilege of weeping and lamenting over the ruins from mount Olivet in sight of the cross, "ut qui quondam emerant sanguinem Christi, emant lacrymas suas, et ne fletus quidem i eis gratuitus sit."19 The same sad privilege the Jews now enjoy under Turkish rule, not only once a year, but every Friday beneath the very walls of the Temple, now replaced by the Mosque of Omar.20 The Talmud.

• From Wild (2012)

  “We’re going to Packer Lake Lodge if you want a ride,” the woman said after she rolled down the window. My heart sank, though I thanked her and got into the back seat. I’d read about Packer Lake Lodge in my guidebook days before. I could have taken a side trail to it a day out of Sierra City, but I’d decided to pass it by when I opted to stay on the PCT. As we drove, I could feel my northward progress reversing itself—all the miles I’d toiled to gain, lost in less than an hour—and yet to be in that car was a kind of heaven. I cleared a patch in the foggy window and watched the trees blaze past. Our top speed was perhaps twenty miles an hour as we crept around bends in the road, but it still felt to me as if we were moving unaccountably fast, the land made general rather than particular, no longer including me but standing quietly off to the side. I thought about the fox. I wondered if he’d returned to the fallen tree and wondered about me. I remembered the moment after he’d disappeared into the woods and I’d called out for my mother. It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and the unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The gun that didn’t have a bullet in its chamber. And the mother. Always the mother. The one who would never come to me. 10 RANGE OF LIGHTThe mere sight of Packer Lake Lodge felt like a blow. It was a restaurant. With food. And I might as well have been a German shepherd. I could smell it as soon as I got out of the car. I thanked the couple who’d given me a ride and walked toward the little building anyway, leaving Monster on the porch before I went inside. The place was crowded with tourists, most of them people who’d rented one of the rustic cabins that surrounded the restaurant. They didn’t seem to notice the way I stared at their plates as I made my way to the counter, stacks of pancakes skirted by bacon, eggs in exquisitely scrambled heaps, or—most painful of all—cheeseburgers buried by jagged mounds of French fries. I was devastated by the sight of them. “What have you heard about the snow levels up north of here?” I asked the woman who worked the cash register. I could tell that she was the boss by the way her eyes followed the waitress as she moved about the room with a coffeepot in hand. I’d never met this woman, but I’d worked for her a thousand times. It occurred to me that I could ask her for a job for the summer and quit the PCT.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Moreover, we may not reckon him to have perished in the flower of his age, who had grown ripe in the sight of the Lord. For I consider all to have arrived at maturity who are summoned away by death; unless, perhaps, one would contend with Him, as if He can snatch away any one before his time. This, indeed, holds true of every one; but in regard to Louis, it is yet more certain on another and more peculiar ground. For he had arrived at that age, when, by true evidences, he could prove himself a member of the body of Christ: having put forth this fruit, he was taken from us and transplanted. Yes, instead of this transient and vanishing shadow of life, he has regained the real immortality of being. "Nor can you consider yourself to have lost him, whom you will recover in the blessed resurrection in the kingdom of God. For they had both so lived and so died, that I cannot doubt but they are now with the Lord. Let us, therefore, press forward toward this goal which they have reached. There can be no doubt but that Christ will bind together both them and us in the same inseparable society, in that incomparable participation of His own glory. Beware, therefore, that you do not lament your son as lost, whom you acknowledge to be preserved by the Lord, that he may remain yours forever, who, at the pleasure of His own will, lent him to you only for a season .... "Neither do I insist upon your laying aside all grief. Nor, in the school of Christ, do we learn any such philosophy as requires us to put off that common humanity with which God has endowed us, that, being men, we should be tamed into stones.604 These considerations reach only so far as this, that you do set bounds, and, as it were, temper even your most reasonable sadness, that, having shed those tears which were due to nature and to fatherly affection, you by no means give way to senseless wailing. Nor do I by any means interfere because I am distrustful of your prudence, firmness, or high-mindedness; but only lest I might here be wanting, and come short in my duty to you. "Moreover, I have requested Melanchthon and Bucer that they would also add their letters to mine, because I entertained the hope that it would not be unacceptable that they too should afford some evidence of their good-will toward you. "Adieu, most distinguished sir, and my much-respected in the Lord. May Christ the Lord keep you and your family, and direct you all with His own Spirit, until you may arrive where Louis and Claude have gone before." CHAPTER XII.CALVIN’S SECOND SOJOURN AND LABORS AT GENEVA. 1541–1564.The sources on this and the following chapters in § 81, p. 347. § 93. The State of Geneva after the expulsion of the Reformers.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They walked together, and the world smiled to see it! They embraced on the street, and strangers were glad! While all the time I lived pale as a worm, cast out from pleasure, from comfort and ease.I rose from the bath, all heedless of the spilling water, and took up the photograph again; but this time I crushed it. I gave a cry, I paced the floor: but it was not with wretchedness that I paced, it was as if to try out new limbs, to feel my whole self shift and snap and tingle with life. I hauled open the window of my room, and leaned out into the dark - into the never-quite-dark of the London night, with its sounds and its scents that, for so long, I had been shut from. I thought, I will go out into the world again; I will go back into the city - they have kept me from it long enough!But oh! how terrible it was, making my way into the streets next morning - how busy I found them, how dirty and crowded and dazzling and loud! I had lived for a year and a half in London, and called it my own. But when I walked in it before, it was with Kitty or Walter; often, indeed, we had not walked at all, but taken carriages and cabs. Now, for all that I had borrowed a hat and a jacket of Mary’s to make me seemly, I felt as though I might as well be stumbling through Clerkenwell in no clothes at all. Part of it was my nervous fear that I would turn a corner and see a face I knew, a face to remind me of my old life, or - worst of all - Kitty’s face, tilted and smiling as she walked on Walter’s arm. This fear made me falter and flinch, and so I was jostled worse than ever, and had curses thrown at me. The curses seemed as sharp as nettle-stings, and set me trembling.Then again, I was stared at and called after - and twice or thrice seized and stroked and pinched - by men. This, too, had not happened in my old life; perhaps, indeed, if I had had a baby or a bundle on me now, and was walking purposefully or with my gaze fixed low, they might have let me pass untroubled. But, as I have said, I walked fitfully, blinking at the traffic about me; and such a girl, I suppose, is a kind of invitation to sport and dalliance ...The stares and the strokings affected me like the curses: they made me shake. I returned to Mrs Best’s and turned the key in my door; then I lay upon my rancid mattress and shivered and wept. I had thought myself brilliant with new life and promise, but the streets that I thought would welcome me had only cast me back into my former misery.

• From Bold Move

  She says that I’m not a true partner, someone she can rely on. And after eight years, she says she’s had enough. I don’t think I can change her mind, but I need to figure out how to behave differently, because I know that while I only have my family’s best interests at heart, they don’t see it that way, and that kills me.” For Ricardo, this decision between success at work and dependability for his family had been particularly painful because he often found himself choosing success at work and compromising his family life. When Ricardo’s wife finally asked for the divorce, he was crushed because in his heart he deeply loved her and fully understood why she was upset. In fact, he shared her frustrations with his own behavior! He wanted to change but didn’t know how to stop avoiding by doing what he had always done. I often find myself stuck just like Ricardo, and perhaps some of you reading this feel the same. Every day I wake up and say to myself, I will exercise this morning! Then, before I know it, Diego is up, gives me a hug and a gorgeous smile, and asks: “Mamãe, vamos brincar? ” (“Mom, let’s play?”) At this point, my heart melts and all I want is to spend every second of the rest of my life with him and any and all hope of spending my morning on a stair-climber or picking up a barbell goes out the window. I prioritize him at that moment (and all such moments), and it feels good . . . momentarily! But it also has an unpleasant whiff of avoidance to it because this choice always has me stuck in place, doing what I usually do, with forty pounds to lose and feeling physically tired and achy, none of which will get easier to fix as time goes on. Luckily, we don’t have to wait until a breaking point to identify areas of our lives where values are colliding. These areas are usually ripe with avoidance. So, take a moment to complete the reflection below and uncover where in your life you might be hitting a crossroad. Is Remaining Always Avoidance?When I am teaching the idea that sometimes we stay in situations as a form of avoidance, one question I often get from trainees is: Are you telling me that the person stuck in a domestic violence situation is avoiding? Domestic violence is a serious and multifaceted situation. I know this not only as an expert who has treated many trauma survivors over the past two decades, but also from witnessing my mom go through it for years. When it comes to situations that can be life and death, there is only one certainty: safety comes first. So, if you are reading this book and find yourself in this situation, I strongly urge you to find a provider or a close friend and to ensure you care for your safety above all else.

• From Wild (2012)

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I ran to my mother’s room, my brother right behind me. When I opened the door, Eddie stood and came for us with his arms outstretched, but I swerved away and dove for my mom. Her arms lay waxen at her sides, yellow and white and black and blue, the needles and tubes removed. Her eyes were covered by two surgical gloves packed with ice, their fat fingers lolling clownishly across her face. When I grabbed her, the gloves slid off. Bouncing onto the bed, then onto the floor. I howled and howled and howled, rooting my face into her body like an animal. She’d been dead an hour. Her limbs had cooled, but her belly was still an island of warm. I pressed my face into the warmth and howled some more. I dreamed of her incessantly. In the dreams I was always with her when she died. It was me who would kill her. Again and again and again. She commanded me to do it, and each time I would get down on my knees and cry, begging her not to make me, but she would not relent, and each time, like a good daughter, I ultimately complied. I tied her to a tree in our front yard and poured gasoline over her head, then lit her on fire. I made her run down the dirt road that passed by the house we’d built and then ran her over with my truck. I dragged her body, caught on a jagged piece of metal underneath, until it came loose, and then I put my truck in reverse and ran her over again. I took a miniature baseball bat and beat her to death with it, slow and hard and sad. I forced her into a hole I’d dug and kicked dirt and stones on top of her and buried her alive. These dreams were not surreal. They took place in plain, ordinary light. They were the documentary films of my subconscious and felt as real to me as life. My truck was really my truck; our front yard was our actual front yard; the miniature baseball bat sat in our closet among the umbrellas. I didn’t wake from these dreams crying. I woke shrieking. Paul grabbed me and held me until I was quiet. He wetted a washcloth with cool water and put it over my face. But those wet washcloths couldn’t wash the dreams of my mother away. Nothing did. Nothing would. Nothing could ever bring my mother back or make it okay that she was gone. Nothing would put me beside her the moment she died. It broke me up. It cut me off. It tumbled me end over end.

• From Bold Move

  So, I taught this trick to Filomena and Ted, and they were able to implement it successfully. Unfortunately, by the time we started to implement the opposite action plan for Filomena, her relationship with Ted was already fraying and, before long, Ted broke up with her. Filomena mentioned to me that she felt as if the damage to the relationship had been done and no matter how much she tried, Ted still felt wary around her. Filomena was devastated at first, often crying in my office and saying things like, “If I had just known this stuff earlier, I could have saved the relationship.” We talked a lot about the fact that our brains always want to make sense of things and come up with one conclusion or another to minimize dissonance, so it made sense that she wanted to blame herself. And she wasn’t wrong: I agreed with her that not knowing her avoidance pattern certainly made the relationship challenging. Yet I often remind my clients who find themselves in the midst of romantic turmoil that it really takes two to tango, and in this case, Ted inevitably had a role in the breakup as well. Filomena continued to work on opposite action when her fear of abandonment would arrive, including with her parents. And so it was with some delight that I recently received an email from Filomena, in which she wrote that she is now happily married with a newborn. From what she shared with me, her dating life was challenging for a while, but she was finally able to break her own avoidance pattern and came out the other side truly happy and (finally) comfortable in a romantic relationship. Oliver’s Opposite Action PlanAs for fiery Oliver, most of his reactions were triggered by feelings of anger, and he would go from zero to sixty in seconds before exploding. When it comes to anger, DBT teaches a clear plan of opposite action involving a few different methods. One method is the simplest: you can just avoid the person you are angry with until the anger passes. In other words, as soon as Oliver felt anger toward Martha for making a mistake at work, his opposite action would be to stay away from her—instead of engaging in a pointless and hurtful verbal attack—until he was no longer in amygdala hijack. Sometimes this is too hard for the client, and instead they could take a time-out, where they substitute “go shriek at so-and-so” with “take a walk around the block.” Whatever it is, I would recommend that you have a plan in place before you find yourself on the brink of exploding into anger.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  But, not in the same way. I knew it never would be, I didn’t mind. The fact is, she had a man-friend, who wished to marry her. But she wouldn’t do it, she believed in the free union. Nance, she was the strongest-minded woman I ever knew!’She sounded, I thought, insufferable; but I had not missed that was. I swallowed, and Florence gazed once at me, then looked again at the fire.‘A few months after I first met her,’ she went on, ‘I began to see that she was not - quite well. One day she turned up here with a suitcase. She was to have a baby, had lost her rooms because of it, and the man - who turned out hopeless, after all - was too ashamed to take her. She had nowhere... Of course, we took her in. Ralph didn’t mind, he loved her almost as much as I did. We planned to live together, and raise the baby as our own. I was glad - I was glad! - that the man had thrown her over, that the landlady had cast her out...’She gave a grimace, then scraped with a nail at a piece of ash that had come floating from the fire and had fallen on her skirt. ‘Those were, I think, the happiest months of all my life. Having Lilian here, it was like — I cannot say what it was like. It was dazzling; I was dazzled with happiness. She changed the house - really changed it, I mean, not just its spirit. She had us strip the walls, and paint them. She made that rug.’ She nodded to the gaudy rug before the fire - the one I had thought woven, in a blither moment, by some sightless Scottish shepherd - and I quickly took my feet from it. ‘It didn’t matter that we weren’t lovers; we were so close - closer than sisters. We slept upstairs, together. We read together. She taught me things. That picture, of Eleanor Marx’ - she nodded to the little photograph — ‘that was hers. Eleanor Marx was her great heroine, I used to say she favoured her; I don’t have a photograph of Lily. That book, of Whitman‘s, that was hers too. The passage you read out, it always makes me think of me and her. She said that we were comrades - if women may be comrades.’ Her lips had grown dry, and she passed her tongue across them. ‘If women may be comrades,’ she said again, ‘I was hers...’She grew silent.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  And he’d closed off with “Love from your best Daddy.” That made my eyes tear up, the best Daddy part, like a whole slew of others were lined up to daddy in my direction. Plus another thing niggled at me: I wasn’t entirely sure Daddy knew about Hector. It had gotten harder to write stuff without mentioning him. Maybe we were supposed to fake in letters that Mother was moping around lonesome like one of those countrysong divorcées. I had the good sense, of course, not to write about old bowlegged Ray rubbing on Mother’s nude back. But between not mentioning Hector and not knowing whether to sound cheerful or like I was suffering without Daddy, writing him got harder. I spent a lot of time staring around the Christian Science Reading Room. Or I’d try to chew my tooth pattern into the yellow paint of my pencil so the marks lay exactly even all the way down. Sometimes a whole morning slid out from under me in that musty room with not a “t” crossed nor an “i” dotted on my Big Chief tablet. That Father’s Day Lecia and I crossed from the stable to the pay phone booth at the Esso, which was hot as blue blazes from taking in early sun. Unfolding the glass door let loose a blast of hot air like an oven. The silver floor was crusty, littered with wasps and moths that must have just dropped mid-flight from heat and lack of oxygen. I stood in the doorway so as not to smush them on my shoe bottoms. But Lecia just crunched right over them to the coin slot and dropped in her dime. The black receiver got held an inch or so off her cheek, to keep from scalding her, I guess. She told the operator to dial a collect call to Woodlawn 2-2800. After it rang about a zillion times with no answer, the operator broke the connection. On her next try, the switchboard lady at the Gulf wouldn’t accept charges or put her through to Daddy’s unit. Lecia said in her most quavery voice that it was a medical emergency, then she called the woman a nasty-assed bitch and slammed the phone down so hard it bounced right out of its little silver catch and spun from the cable, whapping the phonebooth glass. Lecia busted into tears after that. She buckled up like something broke inside her, sliding to the bottom of the phone booth without even checking the coin return for change. We wound up making two Father’s Day cards from blue construction paper. We put “Dad” in cursive on front of both using sky-blue glitter and Elmer’s glue. I went with a flag motif on mine, adding red stripes in crayon. The silver stars I drew went a dull, gunmetal gray instead of looking sparkly like the Crayola itself did. Staring at the end product rankled me.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Pain: complaint, suffering, sorrow David starts by expressing his pain and feelings of abandonment: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. verses 1–2 You might recognize that first line. Jesus quoted it on the cross. Actually, much of this psalm parallels Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and all four gospels refer back to it when describing His crucifixion. Both David and Jesus expressed their pain honestly. They didn’t try to put on some spiritual mask, pretending things were okay. They cried out. They expressed their emotions. The best prayers are real prayers. They aren’t eloquent, but they are heartfelt. They aren’t polished, but they are transparent. They aren’t theological masterpieces, but they touch the heart of God. Dear God, like, really? Dear God, are you serious? Dear God, where in the world are you? Dear God, I’m done. I’m at the end of my rope. God isn’t scandalized by that level of honesty. He won’t get His feelings hurt over it. That is exactly how the psalmist prayed, time after time. God already knows our hearts, so why not be transparent with Him? We can tell Him that we feel alone, betrayed, abandoned, afraid, angry, disappointed, confused, or hurt. Maybe you’ve been told that is disrespectful, but God calls it honest. 2. Processing: struggling with the contradictions David doesn’t stay in that dark place, though. He processes his feelings by turning to God. He starts by saying this: Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. verses 3–5 What is David doing? He is remembering God’s works in the past. He is reminding himself that God has always been faithful, and He won’t stop now. Part of processing our pain is to ground our present circumstances in the bigger picture. Pain has a way of shouting so urgently that we think the entire sky is falling. But maybe it’s just a small piece of it. Or an acorn. The only way to know is to spend some time reflecting on who God is, what He has done for us, how great He is, and where we fit in His plan. After that moment of light, though, things grow dark again. David poetically laments how powerless he feels. It’s like the clouds of doubt cleared for a moment, then closed in on him again.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  THE CONCEPTION OF GOD l8l tion that all who aresaved at all will enjoy an equal bliss. Purgatory was a great balancer and equalizer.) Finally, Christianity has taught that God allots suffering with wise and loving intent, tempering it according to our strength, relieving it in response to our prayer, and using it to chasten our pride, towin us from earthliness to himself, and to prepare us for heaven. This interpretation does notassert the justice of every suffering, taken by itself, but doesmaintainits loving intention. All these are powerful and comforting considerations. But they areshaken by the bulk of the unjust suffering in sight of the modern mind. These Christian ideas are largely true as long as welook at a normal village com- munity and its individuals and families. But they are jarred by mass disasters. The optimism of the age of rationalism wasshaken by the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, when 30,000 people were killed together, just and unjust. TheWar has deeply affected the religious assurance of our own time, and will lessen itstill more when the ex- citement is over and theaftermath of innocent suffering becomes clear. But that impression of undeserved mass misery which the war has brought home tothe thought- less, has long been weighing on allwho understood the socialconditions ofour civilization. The sufferings of a single righteous mancould deeply move the psalmists or the poet of Job. To-day entire social classes sit inthe ashes and challenge the justice of the God who has af- flictedthem by fathering the present social system. The moral and religious problem of suffering has entered on a new stage with the awakening of the social conscious- ness and the spread of social knowledge.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Grief is its own form of prayer. It might have words, it might not. It might be expressed toward God, or it might simply be the overflow of a broken heart. God cares about our grief. He sees it and hears it, and He weeps with us. David wrote, “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). God doesn’t wait for an invitation to draw close. Like a parent hearing the cry of a hurt child, He comes to us in our time of need. That is good because prayer can be difficult in times of grief. We might feel like God himself is to blame for our suffering, that He let us down instead of saving us. We can be so overwhelmed that we are hardly able to put words together. We often come to know God best in grief. The distractions and superficial things fade away, and we are left with the knowledge that God is real, and He is with us, and He cares. Nothing else makes sense, and we can’t even explain what we know about God. All we know is that His presence and peace fill our hearts, fill the room, fill our day. If you are going through something difficult and don’t feel like praying, that’s okay. Don’t put yourself under pressure to act spiritual or pretend to have faith. Your grief is a prayer, and your sorrow is a cry to God. Just let Him love you. Let Him bring you peace and comfort. It’s what He does best. PRAYER IS REST A third way that prayer puts us into the mystery of God is by bringing us to a place of rest. That might seem odd at first because “not knowing” seems like it should produce unease and anxiety, not rest. When we embrace the mystery of God, though, we discover the rest that comes from simply letting Him be God. Have you ever watched a movie with someone who can’t handle not knowing what is about to happen? Maybe it’s one of those movies where the screenwriter purposefully makes things confusing, and the loose ends don’t get tied up until the end. But your friend can’t appreciate that artistic choice, so they pepper you with questions throughout the movie. As if you know any better than they do about what is going on. Finally, you snarl semi-seriously, “Just be quiet and enjoy the movie. It’ll make sense later, I promise.”

• From Wild (2012)

  When I said all the things I had to say, we both fell onto the floor and sobbed. The next day, Paul moved out. Slowly we told our friends that we were splitting up. We hoped we could work it out, we said. We were not necessarily going to get divorced. First, they were in disbelief—we’d seemed so happy, they all said. Next, they were mad—not at us, but at me. One of my dearest friends took the photograph of me she kept in a frame, ripped it in half, and mailed it to me. Another made out with Paul. When I was hurt and jealous about this, I was told by another friend that this was exactly what I deserved: a taste of my own medicine. I couldn’t rightfully disagree, but still my heart was broken. I lay alone on our futon feeling myself almost levitate from pain. Three months into our separation, we were still in a torturous limbo. I wanted neither to get back together with Paul nor to get divorced. I wanted to be two people so I could do both. Paul was dating a smattering of women, but I was suddenly celibate. Now that I’d smashed up my marriage over sex, sex was the furthest thing from my mind. “You need to get the hell out of Minneapolis,” said my friend Lisa during one of our late-night heartbreak conversations. “Come visit me in Portland,” she said. Within the week, I quit my waitressing job, loaded up my truck, and drove west, traveling the same route I’d take exactly one year later on my way to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. By the time I reached Montana, I knew I’d done the right thing—the wide green land visible for miles outside my windshield, the sky going on even farther. The city of Portland flickered beyond, out of sight. It would be my luscious escape, if only for a brief time. There, I’d leave my troubles behind, I thought. Instead, I only found more.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  never give the whole picture. They come and go, they rise and fall, they make a lot of noise and then fade into the background. There is a reason the book of Psalms is so emotionally charged. It’s an ancient record of the heartfelt cries of people just like us. They turned their pain and anxiety into prayers, poetry, and songs. Their words resonate with us today, across the barriers of language, culture, and time, because their experiences are intensely human. They are our experiences too. Many of the psalms were written by David, a famous warrior, king, and musician in the Bible. One time, before David was king, he was living with a band of several hundred followers in the wilderness. While he and his men were away from the camp, marauders swooped in, kidnapped their families, and stole their livestock and goods. When David and his men returned, they were shattered. The Bible says, “David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4). It gets worse. David’s men were so upset that, in their grief, they turned on David. Verse 6 says, “David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters.” Then we immediately read this amazing phrase: “But David found strength in the LORD his God.” David turned to prayer. Along with a priest named Abiathar, David asked God if he should go after the enemy army. God replied: “Pursue them. . . . You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue” (verse 8). That was all David needed. He returned to the crowd of devastated, angry men and told them the plan: They were going to get their families back. And they did. They recovered every last family member and all the livestock and goods that had been stolen. How did David go from being “greatly distressed” to leading a daring rescue operation? Prayer.