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 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.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Can I ride my horse?” my mother asked the real doctor. She sat with her hands folded tightly together and her ankles hooked one to the other. Shackled to herself. In reply, he took a pencil, stood it upright on the edge of the sink, and tapped it hard on the surface. “This is your spine after radiation,” he said. “One jolt and your bones could crumble like a dry cracker.” We went to the women’s restroom. Each of us locked in separate stalls, weeping. We didn’t exchange a word. Not because we felt so alone in our grief, but because we were so together in it, as if we were one body instead of two. I could feel my mother’s weight leaning against the door, her hands slapping slowly against it, causing the entire frame of the bathroom stalls to shake. Later we came out to wash our hands and faces, watching each other in the bright mirror. We were sent to the pharmacy to wait. I sat between my mother and Eddie in my green pantsuit, the green bow miraculously still in my hair. There was a big bald boy in an old man’s lap. There was a woman who had an arm that swung wildly from the elbow. She held it stiffly with the other hand, trying to calm it. She waited. We waited. There was a beautiful dark-haired woman who sat in a wheelchair. She wore a purple hat and a handful of diamond rings. We could not take our eyes off her. She spoke in Spanish to the people gathered around her, her family and perhaps her husband. “Do you think she has cancer?” my mother whispered loudly to me. Eddie sat on my other side, but I could not look at him. If I looked at him we would both crumble like dry crackers. I thought about my older sister, Karen, and my younger brother, Leif. About my husband, Paul, and about my mother’s parents and sister, who lived a thousand miles away. What they would say when they knew. How they would cry. My prayer was different now: A year, a year, a year. Those two words beat like a heart in my chest. That’s how long my mother would live. “What are you thinking about?” I asked her. There was a song coming over the waiting room speakers. A song without words, but my mother knew the words anyway and instead of answering my question she sang them softly to me. “Paper roses, paper roses, oh how real those roses seemed to be,” she sang. She put her hand on mine and said, “I used to listen to that song when I was young. It’s funny to think of that. To think about listening to the same song now. I would’ve never known.” My mother’s name was called then: her prescriptions were ready. “Go get them for me,” she said. “Tell them who you are. Tell them you’re my daughter.”

• From Bold Move

  This experience was really painful for me, and it took me months to be able to sit early in the mornings and work through this reflection and feel the pain. At first it was just raw pain and tears, like the fire that my patient Miriam referenced. Some mornings I would allow myself to cry, and some mornings I would just be angry. But slowly the intensity came down and I could really start to look behind that pain and ask myself: What value of mine would I have to not care about for this pain not to exist? I kept asking myself, Why is this still hurting so much? And I finally arrived at my answer: trust . Trust is one of my core values, and one that is really challenging for me. As an adult I understand that I was never able to trust my father. He was simply too unreliable. Of course, my wonderful mom was always there, so that has long been my model for trust. But I had also seen early in life how she couldn’t trust my father either, so trust has always felt like a precious stone that I only share with those who are closest to me. This is not uncommon for individuals who have had traumatic experiences, especially early on in life.18 So the experience with Robert hurt so much because I felt I could no longer trust him, and all the memories that are associated with this time in my life are related to a violation of trust in some form or another. So for me to have been able to say, “To hell with Robert; he’s out of line!” without any pain, I would have needed to not care about trust, and that just isn’t me. I need to trust those around me to feel safe in the world so I can function, and that is why this experience hurt so much. After identifying the value behind my pain, I was able to start healing and find a way to really consider what I would do today if I hit a similar crossroad. For some of you reading, if you were to be in my situation with Robert, trust might not have been what impacted you the most. It could have been another value, like integrity, truth, or fairness. The value that was compromised is unique to me and my views of the world, but the underlying principle is universal to all of us. For example, if you really care about growth but find yourself in a job where you are constantly underperforming or being asked to do things that you feel underutilize or stymy you, you will likely feel stress in your work life. Similarly, if you care about justice but find yourself in situations where there is constant injustice, you can expect to feel strong emotions.

• From Wild (2012)

  The last couple of days of her life, my mother was not so much high as down under. She was on a morphine drip by then, a clear bag of liquid flowing slowly down a tube that was taped to her wrist. When she woke, she’d say, “Oh, oh.” Or she’d let out a sad gulp of air. She’d look at me, and there would be a flash of love. Other times she’d roll back into sleep as if I were not there. Sometimes when my mother woke she did not know where she was. She demanded an enchilada and then some applesauce. She believed that all the animals she’d ever loved were in the room with her—and there had been a lot. She’d say, “That horse darn near stepped on me,” and look around for it accusingly, or her hands would move to stroke an invisible cat that lay at her hip. During this time I wanted my mother to say to me that I had been the best daughter in the world. I did not want to want this, but I did, inexplicably, as if I had a great fever that could be cooled only by those words. I went so far as to ask her directly, “Have I been the best daughter in the world?” She said yes, I had, of course. But this was not enough. I wanted those words to knit together in my mother’s mind and for them to be delivered, fresh, to me. I was ravenous for love. [image file=image_rsrc2VM.jpg] My mother died fast but not all of a sudden. A slow-burning fire when flames disappear to smoke and then smoke to air. She didn’t have time to get skinny. She was altered but still fleshy when she died, the body of a woman among the living. She had her hair too, brown and brittle and frayed from being in bed for weeks. From the room where she died I could see the great Lake Superior out her window. The biggest lake in the world, and the coldest too. To see it, I had to work. I pressed my face sideways, hard, against the glass, and I’d catch a slice of it going on forever into the horizon. “A room with a view!” my mother exclaimed, though she was too weak to rise and see the lake herself. And then more quietly she said: “All of my life I’ve waited for a room with a view.” She wanted to die sitting up, so I took all the pillows I could get my hands on and made a backrest for her. I wanted to take her from the hospital and prop her in a field of yarrow to die. I covered her with a quilt that I had brought from home, one she’d sewn herself out of pieces of our old clothing. “Get that out of here,” she growled savagely, and then kicked her legs like a swimmer to make it go away.

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

  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. I had told the headmistress about the book, of course, and promised that I would confine my writing to the school holidays and weekends, so that it did not detract from my schoolwork. She had smiled and wished me luck. I see now that she probably expected the book to creep humbly into the back of the book-stores, gain a couple of kind notices in some obscure religious journals, and die an early death. That did not happen. June had sold the serial rights to a tabloid newspaper, which had also run a big interview with me, complete with photographs, in the Sunday edition. There were more profiles and photographs in some of the women’s magazines, and I had appeared on several radio and television programs. The children were agog, arriving in school each day brandishing copies of the Express and looking at me with new eyes. I was no longer just a boring teacher who nagged them about their punctuation, but had suddenly acquired celebrity status and had a kinky past. Of course, it was only a nine days’ wonder, and by the time I received my quietus from the school, the excitement had long subsided. The head had never remonstrated with me about the fuss, but she did not need to. A grim air of disapproval and reserve had made her position quite clear. This kind of notoriety was not what she expected from her staff. I myself had doubts about the wisdom of this publicity. Writing Through the Narrow Gate had been an act of restoration and self-discovery. It had redeemed the time I had spent in the religious life and set it in proper perspective. As I had unearthed more and more layers of the experience, I had felt that I was reclaiming my past.

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

  But this long exposure to the crusading ethos had another effect on me that was just as long-lasting. It broke my heart. The sheer horror of what I was now forced to study day after day, month after month, and—as it turned out—year after year breached the barricades I had erected to block out strong feeling. This material was so distressing that I could not approach it in the slick, cerebral spirit that had characterized my television work hitherto. As with Saint Paul, I began to feel emotionally involved. The story of the Crusades was a hideous chronicle of human suffering, fanaticism, and cruelty. I read of massacres in which the blood had flowed up to the knees of the Crusaders’ horses; of Jews herded into their synagogues and burned alive; and of women and children raped and slaughtered. An Anglican bishop recently rebuked me during a radio discussion for my condemnation of crusading. It had simply been Europe “flexing its muscles” and “getting a little carried away.” I was unable to reply, because I found this one of the most shocking remarks I had ever heard. These crimes were committed deliberately and in cold blood. The Crusaders enjoyed hating their victims. When an eyewitness described the conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099, in which some forty thousand Jews and Muslims were massacred in two days, he crowed in delight that this was a “glorious” day and the most important historical event since the crucifixion of Jesus. Living with this sorry tale of murderous bigotry was very different from living with Saint Paul. There was nothing inspiring about it. Instead, I was forced to confront the darkness of the human heart: we were beings who positively loved to hate our own kind. My heart was beginning to thaw. For the first time in years, I was able to feel the pain of other human beings. Why had this happened now? One reason was certainly my improved health. Now that the drugs were effectively stabilizing my faulty brain rhythms, I no longer saw everything from a great distance or through a hazy screen. I felt as though I had been plugged in, like an electrical appliance, and suddenly come to life. To paraphrase my friend Saint Paul, instead of experiencing reality as through a glass darkly, I could now see it face-to-face. This meant that nothing now interposed itself between the material I was studying and my emotional and intellectual reflexes. It was also true that, working as I was in Israel, I was out of my usual environment, and could no longer operate on automatic pilot. Removed from the reflexive skepticism of Channel 4, I could not simply dismiss the Crusaders as “bonkers.”

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

  Then we hope that the fragmented thoughts or demons or whatever is rattling around inside their heads get cleared out by morning. Side note: It’s even harder to shut down a kid at night than to shut down your word processor and forty-seven documents. I’m straying from the topic. Complaining about parenting is therapeutic, though, so thank you for listening. You can send me your bill. Prayer is a bit like resetting your soul. And just as with computers and small children, how exactly it helps can seem like a bit of a mystery. God’s ways are higher than our ways, after all. I know that when I pray, it settles and focuses my mind. It clears out some of those fragmented things—thoughts, projects, hurt, sin, emotions, challenges, plans—that rattle around in my soul. It definitely helps expel a few inner demons. Spending a few minutes in prayer refreshes us on the inside. It gives us a clean start and a new beginning. Prayer helps us process the things we have on our hearts and in our brains. In a sense, prayer is like going through those unsaved documents, deciding whether to save them or delete them or finish them, then closing them down and clearing up some headspace. There is a lot of pain, confusion, and trauma in life, but the Holy Spirit helps us work through those things. He gives us understanding into what matters and what doesn’t, what can be discarded and what we should hold on to. DEAR GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS? Being able to process our pain, doubts, and trauma in God’s presence is part of an emotionally healthy spiritual walk. It’s also something that God-followers have done for thousands of years. Just look at the book of Psalms. David was an incredible example of someone who knew how to take things to God in prayer. When you read his psalms, you often see a progression that looks something like this: Pain: complaint, suffering, sorrowProcessing: struggling with the contradictionsPrayer: turning to God for helpProclamation: affirming faith and trust in GodPeace: settled, calm, and expectantIn other words, his prayers—just like ours—were dynamic. He learned and grew as he prayed. You don’t pray from a place of perfection. Your prayers are not carefully crafted, emotionless, self-controlled speeches to God. They come from the heart. If they don’t, they aren’t really prayer. You pray from a place of need, trust, humility, and even desperation. And as you pray through your circumstances, you find something happening on the inside. You change. You learn. You grow. And eventually, you reset. You sort through the fragmented thoughts that were holding you back. You work through the emotions that were taking so much of your focus. You find yourself once again full of faith and courage. This five-point progression isn’t a formula to follow, but rather an illustration of the dynamic nature of prayer. Let’s look at Psalm 22 as an example. 1.

• From The Art of Memoir

  Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can’t. The child gives, because the body can and the mind of the violator cannot. I thought I had died. Her sense of culpability mirrored my own, and my conviction that she was innocent helped me start to think I might be too. “Mr. Freeman had surely done something very wrong, but I was convinced that I had helped him to do it.” (When the rapist was freed early and found kicked to death behind the slaughterhouse, I felt a sick sense of justice.) Yet when Angelou’s in college and sleeps with a boy, there’s zero description. Kathryn Harrison’s college beau is likewise never described in any intimate way—nor her sexual reactions. Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood comes closest to the subject, but she has more erotic feelings when she buys a book: “I was tremendously excited by this act. It was the first expensive book I had ever bought with my own money.” Compare this to her impressions of the married man she drinks and makes out with in a hotel. I grew a little tired of his kisses, which did not excite me, perhaps because they were always the same. . . . I was only precocious mentally and lived in deadly fear of losing my virtue, not for moral reasons, but from the dread of being thought “easy.” Later, when in How I Grew she loses her virginity, she’s also completely without desire as she makes out with her guy in a parked car: I was wildly excited but not sexually excited. At the time, though, I was unaware of there being a difference between mental arousal and specific arousal of the genital organs. This led to many misunderstandings. . . . In fact, he became very educational, encouraging me to sit up and examine his stiffened organ, which to me looked quite repellent, all flushed and purplish. . . . Of the actual penetration, I remember nothing. It was as if I had been given chloroform.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He hesitated ; I kicked at his ankle with my foot until he stepped away.‘You are not yourself, Nan -’‘Get out!’‘I am afraid to leave you -’‘Get out!’He flinched. ‘I shall go beyond the door - no further.’ Then he looked at Kitty, and when she nodded he left, closing the door behind him very gently.There was a silence, broken only by the sound of my ragged breathing, and Kitty’s gentle weeping: just so had I seen my sister weep, three days before. Nothing that Kitty ever did was good! she had said. I placed my cheek upon the counterpane where it covered Kitty’s thighs, and closed my eyes.‘You made me think he was your friend,’ I said. ‘And then you made me think he didn’t care for you, because of us.’‘I didn’t know what else to do. He was only my friend; and then, and then-’‘To think of you and him - for all that time -’‘It wasn’t what you think, before last night.’‘I don’t believe you.’‘Oh Nan, it’s true, I swear! Before last night - how could there have been anything? - before last night, there was only talk and - kisses.’Before last night ... Before last night I had been glad, beloved, content, secure: before last night I had known myself so full of love and desire I thought I should die of it! At Kitty’s words I saw that the pain of my love was not a tenth, not a hundredth, not a thousandth part of the pain I should suffer, at her hands, now.I opened my eyes. Kitty herself looked ill and frightened. I said, ‘And the - kisses: when did they start?’ But even as I asked it, I guessed the answer: ‘That night, at Deacon’s ...’She hesitated - then nodded; and I saw it all again, and understood it all: the awkwardness, the silences, the letters. I had pitied Walter - pitied him! When all the time it had been I who was the fool; when all the time they had been meeting, whispering together, caressing ...The thought was a torment to me. Walter was our friend - mine, as well as hers. I knew he loved her, but - he seemed so old, so uncle-ish, still. Could she ever, really, have brought herself to want to lie with him? It was as if I had caught her in bed with my own father!I began, once more, to weep. ‘How could you?’ I said through my tears: I sounded like a stage husband in some penny gaff. ‘How could you?’ Beneath the blankets I felt her squirm.‘I didn’t like to do it!’ she said miserably. ‘At times I could hardly bear it -’‘I thought you loved me! You said that you loved me!’‘I do love you!