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 I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  But there’s no real protection from painful feelings, and as we’ve been exploring, the act of holding them back is equally painful and draining. It also takes an enormous amount of work—energy that’s far better spent healing rather than resisting. Plus, as the Star Trek wisdom goes, “resistance is futile.” One way or another, the waves of pain will eventually hit you. Managing those waves one at a time is far easier. Grief isn’t just about death, either. The litany of losses we each face in a lifetime is too numerous to count. We endure abuse. Friendships end. We get divorced, lose our jobs and identities. We’ll lose our connection to self and wonder why we’re even here in the first place. We become chronically or gravely ill—even when we do our best not to. We mess up in unimaginable ways because unimaginable things happen to us. The shades of loss are many, and we need to mourn it all—big and small. The point is, no one gets out of life scratch-free or stain resistant. If we’re lucky enough to be alive, good times and bad times are inevitable. Expecting only the good times makes us emotionally unprepared for the ever-changing, uncertain nature of life. And as Carole, my therapist, would say, “It is what it is, and you don’t have to like it.” Fantastic! I don’t. But in our perfection-driven and grief-phobic society, few of us are taught how to respond to loss. Instead, we’re taught how to avoid pain. The thing that makes it such a big, unwieldy emotion is that, similar to anger, grief encapsulates so many other emotions, too (anxiety, guilt, rage, shame—basically a bunch of the “unbecoming” stuff). We don’t avoid grief just because it’s grief; we avoid it because of everything associated with it—the hysterical, the historical, and the downright horrifying. Believe it or not, this avoidance is as natural as the sun rising. We’re biologically wired to behave this way. From an evolutionary perspective, part of our development was to learn which situations to avoid in order to survive—stuff like poisonous berries and venomous snakes, but also emotional pain (danger) and isolation (exile from the community we needed to stay alive). So there’s a part of this behavior that comes from an essential place: survival. Avoidance has another jagged silver lining, beyond primal instincts: burying the source of our suffering in chaos often creates dramatic fires that feel easier to extinguish. That way, we can channel our pain into situational soap operas that, weirdly, also serve us. Think Julianne Moore in the movie Magnolia. She loses her shit on the pharmacist who calls her “lady” when what’s really going on is she’s desperately struggling with her father’s terminal illness (sounds familiar). Distraction or projection as avoidance seemingly gives us a free pass so that we don’t have to go into the deep, dark places and risk acknowledging just how thoroughly and completely our hearts are shattered.

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  The windows looked onto the suburban town where she lived with her husband. Below were their birch trees and the bird feeder he’d built for their son. At night, though, she recalled, “the windows kind of freaked me out. There were too many of them, and they turned into black holes of nothing. I think I must have been feeling something about my father. When he was dying, the hospice people moved him from his bed, which had a beautiful headboard by the way, with this blue silk upholstery, to a cot in front of a window that faced an air shaft.” He was in his early fifties and single; he and her mother had divorced years before. “I was in college, and when I would come back to New York to visit him, I felt like someone was going to come in and snatch him there. I knew he was going to die anyway, but I felt like he was going to die sooner. He seemed so exposed next to that back window. I felt like it was stealing away his virility. It’s funny, because there was another window in his apartment, a set of windows. And I remember nude sunbathers out there. They were on towels on a roof. That must have been east. The light that way was lovely.” With no transition, she said, “It was heartbreaking to lose my attraction for my husband. I couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t want to hurt him. And in a superstitious way, I felt like if I admitted out loud that it wasn’t there anymore, it would never come back. I just prayed that it would. I get the feeling that for women it goes away more quickly than it does for men. I get the feeling that women are more dissatisfied than men are. It’s the norm, but it’s not talked about, and a lot of women struggle with the reality that they’re not attracted to the spouses they’re supposed to be with for the rest of their lives. “We were very passionate in the beginning. But I think there’s this whole misconception about women needing to be emotionally invested. I think it might almost be the opposite, that in the first part of a relationship the attachment is the product of the attraction. Sometimes, in long-term happy relationships, maybe, sex ends up serving the relationship, but at first it’s the relationship that’s serving the attraction. “I don’t know, though. Is that right? We were friends before anything else. It wasn’t like I looked at him and thought, Oh, he’s incredibly hot. It was the way he sounded. It was the way he smelled. It was the whole person. But I definitely found him really attractive.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Raz called them from a back room of my house and invited them to attend Bob’s memorial. They were deeply saddened by the news and asked Raz to give me a hug and assure me of their love. “I talked to both of your parents individually,” Raz said, standing in front of me, holding my hands. “They spoke from their heart, Linda, not their religion.” After embracing me, he pulled away and added, “I think they’ll come.” Raz was right. The day before the service, he met my parents at the airport and drove them to their hotel. Raz told them I lived in a very special setting and that it would be a shame for them not to visit my home while there. Raz was not aware of Mom’s refusal to visit my home years earlier, when I lived in Chicago. [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] Over two hundred people gathered at the clubhouse of the rustic yet elegant private golf club on Mount Tam, five miles as the crow flies from our house. Bob had many fond memories golfing there as a guest of his close friend Bill, who was a member. Bill arranged for us to have the entire clubhouse for our purposes, including the patios, bar, and great room, which had rugged high beams and a river-stone fireplace on the inside wall. The opposite wall was lined with cathedral-height windows, and beyond that emerald fairways curled off into the woods. A podium and microphone were set in front of the fireplace, and chairs were lined up in long rows. Outside, the sun was shy with its heat but not its illumination. The air was crisp, and geraniums and petunias tumbled from planters on the patio. Wild turkey and deer crossed the well-groomed span of Bon Tempe Meadow. The mood of the crowd was tempered by sorrow and the joy of reunion. People who had not seen each other in years were together again; there was the low hum of delight, hugs, “you haven’t changed a bit,” and expressed longing for happier circumstances. As I took my place at the podium, the din of voices fell into silence. I scanned the audience and saw my parents among the forsaken, seated in the second aisle at the start of the row. Dad’s sport coat was unbuttoned, and his hands rested on each thigh. He was biting his lip. Light reflected off his spectacles, but his concerned gaze and prominent jawline were clear. Mom leaned into him, both hands resting on the handbag on her lap. Thin as always, she barely occupied any space; the bigger personalities surrounding her diminished her presence. Knowing little about my life, they could not have been prepared for the size, sophistication, and unconditional warmth of my community.

• From Emotional Beats: How to Easily Convert your Writing into Palpable Feelings (2018)

  Common Physical Reactions to a Death:Tightness in the forehead, throat, or chestDry mouthBreathlessnessNausea and/or a hollow feeling in the stomachWeakness, fatigueSleep disturbances, dreams, and nightmaresAppetite disturbancesDisbelief is often a first reaction upon hearing of a death, especially if the death is sudden. Disbelief manifests as an initial numbness, a surreal sense that this can’t be happening, that the world has stopped making sense.Internal/External Coping : Your characters’ reactions will vary widely. Some will express themselves externally, others internally. This can be a source of misunderstanding – the less emotionally expressive characters accused of coldness or indifference, the more openly expressive characters accused of wallowing in self-pity.Social Immersion/Withdrawal: Some characters will desire immersion within their social network to gain support or stem loneliness and fear. Other characters may avoid interactions, needing time to process and reflect in solitude. Many will fall somewhere in between, appearing fine until the brittle walls of control collapse at a word or gesture.The Rollercoaster: Most people will dip in and out of grief, able to handle it in small doses before backing up and regaining emotional control. Your characters will function and grieve, function and grieve.Reminders: Some characters may avoid reminders of the deceased, finding that places or objects trigger painful feelings. Others may have the opposite reaction—desiring to visit those places and carry keepsakes.Active/Passive: Death generates a sense of helplessness. Some grieving characters may resort to intense activity (cooking, training, working, painting the house, or shopping). This is a coping mechanism that counters the loss of control. Others will feel lethargic, distracted and forgetful. They’ll have trouble focusing or wander in a fog without the will to complete the simplest tasks.Spirituality and Religion: For some characters, death may challenge spiritual or religious beliefs and shake faith to its foundations. For others, spiritual or religious beliefs may be or become the lifeline that sees the character through.Conflicted Relationships: These are relationships shaped by a tangle of positive and negative experiences, wishes, and emotions. Characters are grappling for balance and control, for respect, love, or approval. Death ends all chances for a satisfactory resolution. The feelings left behind are a stew of love, anger, regret, and guilt.Recklessness: Though recklessness may appear as a death wish, it might actually be angry defiance, a wager that death can be beaten at its game. Characters may also put themselves at risk to make up for a failure to protect others or guilt at their own survival.Anxiety, insecurity, and panic: Unlike recklessness, anxiety can be paralyzing. A shattered world can leave a character with a heightened sense of mortality, a fear of surviving on their own, or an aversion to taking risks.Relief: Characters may feel relief after the death, particularly if the deceased suffered. Relief and a sense of liberation may also occur at the end of conflicted relationship, the battle finally over. Guilt frequently accompanies the sense of relief.Guilt: Guilt is very common and often completely illogical.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  When his father passed away, the son shared the experience of death insofar as he could. He withdrew from the family home, lived in a hut, slept on the ground with a clod of earth for a pillow, kept silence, fasted, and so weakened himself that he could rise only with the help of a staff. For three years, the son officiated at the rites of mourning that transformed the father’s ghost into shen, while the deceased gradually made his way toward those forefathers who had also earned personal survival. At the end of the mourning period, his father’s apotheosis was complete, and the son then presided over his cult. For ten days, he prepared for the bin (“hosting”) ritual by making a spiritual retreat, during which he fasted and thought only about the way his father had behaved, smiled, and talked. At the bin ceremony, his own son played the part of the newly deceased and during the ritual felt that his grandfather’s spirit was alive in him. When the bereaved son finally saw his “father” arriving at the banquet, he bowed low and escorted him to his place at the table, knowing that his task was done. He had, as the Record of Rites observed, communed with the “refulgent shen of his ancestor” and gained “a perfect enlightenment.”88

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  The Temple, mind you. God’s dwelling place. Now the chosen people have no land, no king, and no Temple. That’s just another way of saying that God has abandoned them. The exile is Judah’s tragic story, the reference point of the past, that moment that would now color all others and that needed to be processed: How could God let this happen? How could God abandon us? How could God turn his back on a promise that goes back to Abraham? What will happen to us now? Are we no longer the chosen people? The people of Judah did return from Babylonian captivity in 538 BCE, * due to the policy of the conquering Persians of resettling the peoples that the Babylonians had deported. So that’s good news. But the Persian Empire did rule over the land of Judah for the next two hundred years, and during that time the questions shifted a bit: How much longer before we have our own king again? When will things finally get fully back to normal? What do we do in the meantime ? Yes, the Judahites were in a full-blown, centuries-long crisis that would come to lodge itself deeply in the Jewish consciousness. And that crisis would have to be processed, so the Judahites did what anyone would have done under the circumstances—they told their story: This is who we are. This is where we came from. This is what we believe of God. This is where things went wrong. This is our hope for a renewed future. Christians call that story the Old Testament. Don’t we too sooner or later want to tell our story when faced with tragedies and hardships? We need to give our crisis a narrative, something to tell ourselves and others so we can make some sense of the pain and find hope for tomorrow. We may tell our story to a friend over coffee or on a blog. We might journal—or even write a book or two. And the Judahites, in the centuries following the return

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber’s targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the twentieth century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent.102 In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies for his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike? “Dropping cluster bombs from the air is not only less repugnant: it is somehow deemed, by Western people at least, to be morally superior,” says British psychologist Jacqueline Rose. “Why dying with your victim should be seen as a greater sin than saving yourself is unclear.”103 The colonial West had created a two-tier hierarchy that privileged itself at the expense of “the Rest.” The Enlightenment had preached the equality of all human beings, yet Western policy in the developing world had often adopted a double standard so that we failed to treat others as we would wish to be treated. Our focus on the nation seems to have made it hard for us to cultivate the global outlook that we need in our increasingly interrelated world. We must deplore any action that spills innocent blood or sows terror for its own sake. But we must also acknowledge and sincerely mourn the blood that we have shed in the pursuit of our national interests. Otherwise we can hardly defend ourselves against the accusation of maintaining an “arrogant silence” in the face of others’ pain and of creating a world order in which some people’s lives are deemed more valuable than others. 13

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  The gut punch of losing Danny had left us reeling. Ten days hiking in that grand old land of our ancestors, with its rocky coasts and quaint pubs, would do wonders for our spirits, as it had for Mary Kay, Patty, and me twenty years earlier, not long after Nancy died. I thought about the story of how my parents’ wedding was nearly canceled and wondered how close we came to never having been born at all. My mother figured that, with her anxiety and Holmer’s wild mood swings, the two of them probably should not get married and start a family. She knew that raising children would be a lot of responsibility, and she worried that the two of them might not be able to handle it well. Her hesitation seemed more like a premonition to me now. Was it worth it? I asked Holmer. It was a fair question, considering how everything had turned out. Knowing then what he knows now, would he still have gone ahead and married my mother? Should he have? Should this family have come into being in the first place? The minute I blurted it out, I feared the answer. Part of me was hoping that Holmer would jump at the answer to my existential question. Of course I’m glad I married your mother, stupid! I thought he might say. Sure, we’ve had terrible sorrow, but look at all the laughs we’ve had—and still have. I wouldn’t trade those good times for anything. Love is our greatest treasure. The sting of its loss is the price we must pay. But another part of me worried that he might say no, that he would have been better off taking his chances with someone else. The pain of watching his children suffer and die had been too much for him to bear. And for the rest of us, for that matter. Holmer closed his eyes for a minute and smiled wistfully. Then he leaned his head against the window and turned his face toward the black night as the sea roared thousands of feet below us. If he said something, I didn’t hear it. I considered repeating my question but decided against it. Did I really want to know if my father regretted marrying my mother or if he was sorry that my siblings and I had ever been born? It wasn’t going to change what happened. For once in my life, I was relieved not to have the answer, if there was one at all. Some things are best left a mystery. Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long taper of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  be subject to the Roman pontiff.’ One of the great tragedies of human history – and the central tragedy of Christianity – is the break-up of the harmonious world-order which had evolved, in the Dark Ages, on a Christian basis. Men had agreed, or at least had appeared to agree, on an all-enveloping theory of society which not only aligned virtue with law and practice, but allotted to everyone in it precise, Christian-orientated tasks. There need be no arguments or divisions because everyone endorsed the principles on which the system was run. They had to. Membership of the society, and acceptance of its rules, was ensured by baptism, which was compulsory and irrevocable. The unbaptized, that is the Jews, were not members of the society at all; their lives were spared but otherwise they had no rights. Those who, in effect, renounced their baptism by infidelity or heresy, were killed. For the remainder, there was total agreement and total commitment. The points on which men argued were slender, compared to the huge areas of complete acquiescence which embraced almost every aspect of their lives. Yet these slender points of difference were important, and they tended to enlarge themselves. There were flaws in the theory of society, reflected in its imagery. If society was a body, what made up its directing head? Was it Christ, who thus personally directed both arms, one – the secular rulers – wielding the temporal sword, the other – the Church – handling the spiritual one? But if Christ directed, who was his earthly vicar? There was no real agreement on this issue. The popes had been claiming to be vicars of St Peter since very early times. Later, they tended to raise this claim, and call themselves vicars of Christ. But kings, too, and a fortiori emperors, claimed a divine vicariate derived from their coronation; sometimes it was of God the Father, sometimes of Christ; when it was the former, the Christ-vicariate, being in some way inferior, was relegated to the Church. Now none of this should have mattered in the slightest. Since the vicarial direction, in all cases, was coming from the same source – Heaven – and since, presumably, there was no disagreement between the Father and the Son and St Peter, it should have made no difference who was vicar of whom. The direction would be the same, and all would obey. Alas, experience showed that this did not always happen. So Christian theory had an answer to this point. There could be wicked emperors, kings, popes, bishops. They represented the work of the Devil,

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  Rachel, the wife of Jacob in Genesis, is here symbolized as the “national mother,” disconsolate, watching as her children, vulnerable and defenseless, are plundered and pillaged and then taken a thousand miles away to Babylon. Surely, these children are no more . Exile was the trauma of the Old Testament—and we dare not underestimate its impact. Moving to Babylon wasn’t just a setback, an inconvenience. The Israelites believed they owed their existence to God’s irrevocable promise to Abraham of countless descendants and a perpetual kingdom of their own in a land of their own—the land of Canaan (Gen. 12, 15). That promise was confirmed throughout Israel’s story in a series of steps, beginning with the miraculous birth of Abraham’s son Isaac (Gen. 17), Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian slavery and receiving the Law on Mt. Sinai (Exodus, Leviticus), the successful conquest of Canaan (Joshua), and the founding of the monarchy with God’s chosen king, David, on the throne (1–2 Samuel). Through all these stages, the Israelites had their share of rebellions and murmurings against God, and things rarely went as planned. But still, God stuck with them. God had made a promise after all. The first major crisis came when God took the nation of Israel from David’s grandson Rehoboam and divided it into the northern and southern kingdoms (around 930 BCE). The causes were Solomon’s introduction of false worship into Israel (due to the influence of his many foreign wives), and Rehoboam’s very shortsighted and undiplomatic handling of a volatile political moment (see 1 Kings 11–12). The northern kingdom eventually fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, leaving only the rump state of Judah to the south. And so the bulk of the promised land was no longer in Israelite possession, and the chosen people in the north were never heard from again. The ancient promises were beginning to unravel. But at least there remained a remnant, the nation of Judah. But imagine if an invading army took control of the western two-thirds of the continental United States, deported many of its residents to South America, and erased state lines, leaving intact only the states east of the Mississippi River? Sure, we can see an upside (do we really need Texas and two Dakotas?), but the drastic change would be rather traumatic nonetheless and result in a lot of soul searching about what it means to be an American—especially if you believe this is God’s country (which it isn’t, but that’s another book). But the worst was yet to come. In 586 BCE, * after a decade of struggle, the mighty Babylonians under their dreaded king, Nebuchadnezzar, exiled a portion of the southern kingdom after destroying Jerusalem and burning the Temple to the ground.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  now assume the role of emperor-maker. Perhaps ‘maker’ is too strong a word. The Pope was more a sacramental functionary than a determining agent. With the eclipse of Byzantine power in Italy, the papacy had emerged, under Paul I, as the recognized residual legatee of imperial authority in the centre, a position it was to occupy until 1870. But the papacy itself was a prey to violent local faction. When Paul died in 768, a local duke, Toto of Nepi, seized the Lateran and carried out a coup in conjunction with his three brothers, one of whom, Constantine, was proclaimed Pope. The primicerius, Christopher, who resisted the coup, was blinded and mutilated in the square in front of the Lateran, dying a few days later of his injuries. Under threats from Duke Toto, Bishop George of Palestrina, the vice-chamberlain, reluctantly invested Christopher, a layman, with clerical orders. But two rival popes were made in quick succession, and the coup collapsed in a welter of blood and barbarity. One of the brothers was blinded, and their chief clerical supporter blinded and his tongue slit in addition; Constantine was dragged from his palace, placed side-saddle on a horse with weights attached to his feet, locked up in a monastery, had his eyes put out, and was flung, prostrated, at the feet of one of his rival popes, Stephen III , who told him that all his ordinations were invalid. As a result, a decree was published declaring that ‘under sanction of anathema no layman or person of any other status shall presume to attend a papal election in arms; but the election shall be in the hands of the known priests and leaders of the church and of all the clergy’. The object was to remove the papacy from local politics. In fact the papacy was already drifting, like all else in the West, into the orbit of the Carolingian State. Charlemagne himself came to Rome, for the first time, in 774. Under his powerful shadow, the Pope, Hadrian I, was able to give the city, for the first time under the papacy, a settled internal government. During his pontificate of twenty-three years, the papal estates were reorganized, and dignity and decorum restored to the office. He became a personal friend not only of Alcuin, Charlemagne’s chief adviser, but of the king himself; so that when Hadrian died in 795, Charles ‘wept as if he had lost a deeply-loved son or brother’. But Hadrian was never more than a superior bishop, in Charlemagne’s eyes, to be treated as a state ecclesiastical functionary. And when the papacy again got into difficulties, in 799, when Leo III was kidnapped, and barely escaped blinding, it was natural for Charlemagne to intervene and sit in judgment. So we come back to the famous and ambiguous coronation of Christmas Day, 800, with which we began this part of the book. It was the logical culmination of a number of tendencies – the growth of

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

  One of the most difficult things about returning to the family home was that at every turn I kept meeting my former self—the undamaged, seventeen-year-old Karen, who had been vital and full of hope. In my bedroom, I remembered how I had sat in this very chair and lain on that very bed, full of excitement about the great adventure I was about to begin. When I took down a book from my shelves, I remembered my wonder and delight when I had first read this novel or come across that poem. There were boxes of letters and postcards from friends, full of affection and an easy intimacy that I could no longer imagine. That person had gone; she had indeed died under the funeral pall. I felt bereaved—full of grief as though for a dead friend. This, I knew, was entirely my own fault. My superiors had not intended this to happen to me; they had not meant to push me into this limbo. I had not responded properly to the training. I had been too feeble to go all the way, to let myself truly die. I had kept on hankering for love and affection, and wept because I was too weak to endure these robust austerities. I had attempted something that was beyond my capacities, and been injured by my presumption—like a little girl who, in her impatience to become a ballerina, insists on going en pointe too early, before her feet are properly mature, and hobbles herself forever. Love was beyond me; even friendship was difficult. But at least I had my work. I knew that I was good at academic study. Despite the upheaval of leaving the religious life, I had done very well at Oxford so far and was expected to get a first-class degree. With that under my belt, I could become an academic, engaged in full-time study and teaching the subject I loved. So I returned to Oxford for the summer full of renewed determination to do even better and make this prospect a reality. If I had lost one cloister, I could immure myself in my studies and find another.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Olivia wrapped up the session by saying, “Kaycie, what happened to you was traumatic. I hurt with you over your loss. Telling your story is the beginning to your healing, as is grieving your story. Letting the pain out is significant. Rape affects a woman in so many ways; loss of confidence and self-esteem, shame taking root, depression setting in, loss of what once brought her joy, and shutting down or acting out sexually are all symptoms of a sexual assault. Some women develop self-hatred and blame themselves for what happened. You may have even wondered why you have carried around depression like a low-grade fever, sometimes struggling to just get out of bed in the morning can feel like a feat.” “Kaycie, you will have more to process around what happened, but today was a big start. On a practical note; drink lots of water to flush out the emotional toxins, and make sure you eat some protein. Self-care in the next few days will be important. Love yourself well and give yourself permission to be kind to you. You may have a shame hangover later for letting the secret out. Please tell that shame to leave you alone and to shut up. It took tremendous courage to tell your secret, and I am proud of you. Ask James for what you need. Do you have any questions?” Kaycie nodded. “Yeah, what’s a shame hangover?” Olivia replied, “Well, it’s a term I use to describe how people often feel after they let out a big truth, especially a secret that involves shame. And let’s face it a sexual assault is wrapped in shame. Kaycie, the shame wasn’t yours. The shame actually belongs to the youth pastor who raped you. But when someone uses your body for their own purposes, often shame is transferred and picked up by the victim. We will work on giving it back to him, but that will most likely be a process. Does that make sense?” “Yes, I think so,” Kaycie answered. “I have experienced a shame hangover before, I just never had a term for it. I think the hardest part is knowing how I should talk to myself when I have a shame hangover.” “Great point, Kaycie. With our self-talk we can either validate and give shame a greater hold on our lives, or we have the power to disarm shame. We disarm shame by telling ourselves the truth mixed with loads of grace. So what might it sound like for you to disarm shame with your self-talk?” “Well—I guess I could tell shame it wasn’t my fault, and I have nothing to be ashamed about. I didn’t do anything wrong; he did. It isn’t my shame—it belongs to him.” “Yes,” Olivia affirmed. “How does it feel to voice that, Kaycie?” “Empowering,” Kaycie quickly answered.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  Hey, Holmie, I told him, making sure he was awake. His eyes opened and locked into mine. She’s gone, I said, nodding. That’s it? he asked, scrambling out of the covers. That’s it? Then he threw his arms around me and sobbed. Oh, God, he said. What are we going to do now? What are we going to do? We waited until morning to let Jake and Billy know. But we could not find Danny. He wasn’t answering his phone. The Chicago Bears were playing their first game of the season that day, and someone thought Danny might be heading to Soldier Field. Maybe we can rent one of those airplane signs and fly it over, Billy said, then launched into a James Cagney voice. Hey, Danny: Ma’s dead. When Danny finally surfaced, he took the news the same way he did when he heard that Nancy died. No tears. No hugs. He just nodded, his eyes blinking as he walked away. That’s not right, I thought. Danny loved my mother. What the hell is wrong with you? I asked him. A lot, as it turned out. Much more than we ever feared. 11 The Prodigal Son Returns [image file=Image00016.jpg] On the patio at our house on Greenwood Avenue. Wilmette, Illinois, 1984. We had no clue at the time, but, as our mother lay dying of cancer, Danny was getting into more trouble. A grand jury was about to investigate him. He would be arrested for harassment again. Danny was still running YardBirds, the lawn care company he started in high school. Despite notoriety from the ugly hate mail incident, he managed to keep most of his customers and added plenty of new ones. By now, he had a few crews of men working for him, a curious mix of old high school pals and men who migrated from Mexico. But his business was struggling. Danny may have been a fun guy to go to the bars with, but his skills as a boss were sorely lacking. He was woefully disorganized and got flustered easily. He had big dreams but little patience for the intricacies of his business. If customers were late paying their bills, Danny would call to berate them. If they missed two payments, he threatened to take them to small claims court, even if the bill was for as little as eleven dollars. After one customer fired him, Danny had his crew show up on the job anyway and then sent another bill. That fall, one of his former customers reported to the police that Danny was harassing her multiple times a day on the telephone. Police in Kenilworth, well familiar with Danny from the Weiss Tire case, considered him to be a jerk and a troublemaker. They got a subpoena for his phone records and found that he called the woman fifty times in a twenty-four-hour period, including one call that came in at 4:30 a.m.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  EUSEBIUS. For so in truth it was, that when the Romans came and were taking the city, many multitudes of the Jewish people perished in the mouth of the sword; as it follows, And they shall fall by the edge of the sword. But still more were cut off by famine. And these things happened at first indeed under Titus and Vespasian, but after them in the time of Hadrian the Roman general, when the land of their birth was forbidden to the Jews. Hence it follows, And they shall be led away captive into all nations. For the Jews filled the whole land, reaching even to the ends of the earth, and when their land was inhabited by strangers, they alone could not enter it; as it follows, And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. BEDE. Which indeed the Apostle makes mention of when he says, Blindness in part is happened to Israel, and so all Israel shall be saved. (Rom. 11:25.) Which when it shall have gained the promised salvation, hopes not rashly to return to the land of its fathers.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I held the cardboard and felt its scissor-cut edge. And for the first time I understood the shape of my grief. I could feel exactly how big it was. It was the strangest feeling, like holding something the size of a mountain in my arms. You have to be patient, he had said. If you want to see something very much, you just have to be patient and wait. There was no patience in my waiting, but time had passed all the same, and worked its careful magic. And now, holding the card in my hands and feeling its edges, all the grief had turned into something different. It was simply love. I tucked the card back into the bookshelf. ‘Love you too, Dad,’ I whispered. 29 Enter spring Mandy opens her door, takes one look at my face, and mirrors it with a horrified expression of her own. ‘What’s happened, Helen?’ ‘Mabel!’ I say weakly. ‘Did you lose her?’ ‘No!’ shaking my head. ‘She’s in the car.’ And then three requests: ‘Mandy, can you help? I cut my thumb. Can I use your phone? I need a cigarette.’ Bless her for ever. I collapse into a kitchen chair. My knees hurt. Brambles? I have no idea. My thumb is still bleeding. Mandy hands me iodine wash, fixes the tear with steri-strips and bandages, makes me a coffee, pushes a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers across the table. Then she waits while I call the College where I should, right now, be teaching, and stammer out apologies. Then I tell my sorry story. I’d seen signs over the last week or so. The season was turning. A bluebottle in the garden; torpid purple crocuses on the lawn. Dots of cherry blossom falling outside the walls of St John’s. And one evening last week, a host of blackbirds carrolling into the deepening sky from perches all over the city’s gable ends and Gothic spires. Spring was coming. And usually I’d rejoice at the curious bluish tint to the air and the lengthening days. But spring will mean no more Mabel. She’ll be moulting in an aviary. I shan’t see her for months. My heart hurts thinking of it. So I wasn’t thinking of it; I’d ignored the flowers and the flies. And that was part of the problem. For something was stirring in Mabel’s accipitrine heart, and perhaps it was spring. I had an hour to fly her today. I’d some freelance teaching in town that afternoon, and I knew I was cutting it fine. So I decided to head back to the old field where the rabbits are. We’ll catch a rabbit, I thought, then I’ll drop her back at the house, pick up the teaching material, and run down the road to teach it. What could possibly go wrong?

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “My husband was caught fondling one of our grandchildren. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. We have lost a relationship with two of our other children because their children said grandpa did the same to them. My husband had a really bad childhood. His mom died when he was young and his dad became ill and had to be hospitalized until he died when my husband was thirteen years old. From that time forward, he was on his own. “I didn’t grow up with much myself. My dad was a drunk and lost several businesses his well-to-do family gave him during the depression. Finally, they just gave up on him and he became the black sheep of the family. I grew up going to church, and I just thought if my husband and I went to church every week and prayed then everything would be okay. I still think it will be, but the judge who put my husband on probation said he had to participate in a court-mandated group—said I also had to attend a group, so here I am.” Stunned, the women didn’t know what to say. Finally, Holly asked, “Betty, do you really believe going to church is going to be enough to heal your grandchildren and children from what has happened?” Betty shrugged her shoulders and didn’t answer. Another woman, Emily, had tears in her eyes, so Olivia asked if she would like to share with the group what she was experiencing. Her childlike eyes searched the women’s faces in the group to see if she was safe to share her secret. “I was sexually abused by my grandfather.” A tear slid down her cheek, and then another and another. The two women on either side of her instinctively reached out to soothe her. Olivia encouraged them to ask before they touched her. She nodded her approval and one of the ladies put her hand on her shoulder and the other lady next to her gently held her hand. Her tears continued, as her petite body shook from the sobbing. When her tears were mostly spent, Kaycie offered, “I’m so sorry, Emily. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. That was a horrible thing for your grandfather to do to you, and I hurt with you. Thank you for telling us. I can only speak for myself, but I want to be here for you so you aren’t alone anymore.” The other women nodded in agreement. Olivia returned her focus to Betty and asked her how it felt to see the pain sexual abuse from a grandfather had caused Emily. “Does it help you understand your own grandchildren better?”

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Olivia focused much of her growth on grieving her losses and on doing the separation piece of work with her dad. She needed to self-differentiate. Self-differentiation is the ability to separate your emotional and intellectual functioning from other people. It is the ability to separate thinking from feeling. A self-differentiated person is able to make deliberate decisions as well as take personal responsibility for choices made, whether good or bad. People with low self-differentiation are more likely to become fused with the predominant emotions of significant others. Olivia could relate. Her dad had a powerful personality, and she became fused with him emotionally at a very early age. Self-differentiation is also the internal ability to have a secure and solid sense of self in relation to significant others. It is the ability to preserve a degree of self in the face of pressure for togetherness. Differentiation of self is the process of finding balance, harmony, and interdependence in relationships. In marriage, a healthily differentiated spouse can recognize personal feelings of anxiety, but they can calm and soothe their own angry and fearful feelings and ask for what they need, rather than being reactionary or blaming their spouse for unhappy emotions. He or she takes responsibility for personal values, beliefs, and thoughts, while negotiating conflict and closeness with his or her spouse. Destructive and reactive patterns are acknowledged and worked on by practicing new behaviors—creating new habits. This self-knowledge does not rely on others for acceptance or validation because validation is centered on and found in Christ. When validation is centered in Christ rather than others, God is the source of acceptance and security. I’m not saying we don’t ask other people to meet needs and provide us with acceptance, comfort, validation, and love. What I am saying is our part (our responsibility) is to partner with God to become a kind and loving parent to ourselves. To do this, we must practice letting His love in. The result? Our relationships will be based on love and desire, instead of need and desperation. MOVING FORWARD Here are a few thoughts for you to ponder before moving to the next chapter: 1.​Have you taken the time to educate yourself about sexual addiction? Some call it the plague of the twenty-first century. 2.​Are you taking responsibility for other people’s issues? Who do you need to hand back a burden you have been carrying or trying to fix? 3.​Do you find yourself trying to please others? Cover for them? Make excuses for them? 4.​Have you committed fully to your own personal healing journey? 5.​What holds you back? SIX Doing Life Together

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  Here are a few ways that you can incorporate a grieving ritual into your life: • Wear something that represents the loss (a necklace, a ring, etc.). • Get a tattoo that symbolizes the relationship. • Have a place that you visit that brings back important memories relating to the loss. • Put up a picture that reminds you of the relationship, either in a frame, on your phone, or on your computer screen. • Carry something with you that makes you feel more connected to the person. • Write a letter to the person or experience that you’ve lost. • Light a candle while you reflect or meditate on what’s now missing. • Listen to a song that reminds you of what’s changed. A NEW WAVE TO RIDE:Is there someone in your life who is grieving and you would like to support? Is there someone you could let into your life to support you? How can you honor the losses you’ve experienced with more intentionality? WHEN YOU’RE AFRAID OF THE WAVE THAT’S COMINGGrief is inevitable. Part of what gives so many of us anxiety about grief is that we don’t always know when or from where it’s coming. This unpredictability is what shakes us to our core. And because we doubt our ability to cope, we worry that we’re just one wave away from utter collapse. I’ve seen so many clients struggle with this form of anticipatory anxiety—they’re petrified of losing something they hold dear—so much so that sometimes they never want to get in the water to begin with. Why get a pet when you know it will die? Why fall in love when you know that relationship will someday end? Why try for a baby when so many things could go wrong? The potential for heartbreak can be enough that we practically stop our hearts from beating altogether. We stop living our fullest lives because we’re so afraid of the crack that could shatter our glass. This anticipatory anxiety can quickly lead to separation anxiety. People often think this looks like the four-year-old clinging to their mom’s pants when they’re getting dropped off at preschool, but let me tell you, I’ve seen many grown adults metaphorically clinging to the pants of their loved ones. In fact, about 6.6 percent of the adult population experience separation anxiety disorder, with 77.5 percent reporting that the initial onset came on during adulthood.189 So as much as we may think that it’s just little kids who have a hard time saying goodbye to Mommy when it’s time to go to school, there’s actually a lot of us—especially those of us who are prone to anxiety—who struggle with saying goodbye (or the possibility that we would have to say goodbye). It’s understandable that we fear the day when we will no longer have our loved ones beside us. We’re hardwired to be deeply connected social creatures. Not having our beloved with us is a thought that dismantles many of us.

• From The Trembling of the Veil (1922)

  How often, in answer to my repeated intreaties that you would give my Daughter a regular detail of the Misfortunes and Adventures of your Life, have you said “No, my freind never will I comply with your request till I may be no longer in Danger of again experiencing such dreadful ones.” Surely that time is now at hand. You are this day 55. If a woman may ever be said to be in safety from the determined Perseverance of disagreeable Lovers and the cruel Persecutions of obstinate Fathers, surely it must be at such a time of Life. Isabel LETTER 2nd LAURA to ISABEL Altho’ I cannot agree with you in supposing that I shall never again be exposed to Misfortunes as unmerited as those I have already experienced, yet to avoid the imputation of Obstinacy or ill-nature, I will gratify the curiosity of your daughter; and may the fortitude with which I have suffered the many afflictions of my past Life, prove to her a useful lesson for the support of those which may befall her in her own. Laura LETTER 3rd LAURA to MARIANNE As the Daughter of my most intimate freind I think you entitled to that knowledge of my unhappy story, which your Mother has so often solicited me to give you. My Father was a native of Ireland and an inhabitant of Wales; my Mother was the natural Daughter of a Scotch Peer by an italian Opera-girl—I was born in Spain and received my Education at a Convent in France. When I had reached my eighteenth Year I was recalled by my Parents to my paternal roof in Wales. Our mansion was situated in one of the most romantic parts of the Vale of Uske. Tho’ my Charms are now considerably softened and somewhat impaired by the Misfortunes I have undergone, I was once beautiful. But lovely as I was the Graces of my Person were the least of my Perfections. Of every accomplishment accustomary to my sex, I was Mistress. When in the Convent, my progress had always exceeded my instructions, my Acquirements had been wonderfull for my age, and I had shortly surpassed my Masters. In my Mind, every Virtue that could adorn it was centered; it was the Rendez-vous of every good Quality and of every noble sentiment. A sensibility too tremblingly alive to every affliction of my Freinds, my Acquaintance and particularly to every affliction of my own, was my only fault, if a fault it could be called. Alas! how altered now! Tho’ indeed my own Misfortunes do not make less impression on me than they ever did, yet now I never feel for those of an other. My accomplishments too, begin to fade—I can neither sing so well nor Dance so gracefully as I once did—and I have entirely forgot the Minuet Dela Cour. Adeiu. Laura. LETTER 4th LAURA to MARIANNE