Tonight, I am once again drowning in the swampland of estrangement. This is where you go when you need to grieve alone the loss of relationships that you desperately wanted to flourish at this point in your life.
I have not written publicly about this heart-piercing, soul-crushing, energy-sapping, hell-dwelling place for two reasons. One is I have not had adequate words to apply to the experience and two, I have not wanted to let myself feel all that I know I will feel once I open the tear-welling floodgates that flank the bridge of my running nose. I cannot nuance this experience much more than to say, it sucks.
It is extremely difficult to admit to myself that I have had some family members that could turn their backs on me. It is equally difficult to recognize that I could somehow have done something deemed worthy of being discarded. I have only a vague idea what the charges are against me. I am, no doubt, guilty of many offending actions and attitudes and have many flaws, but I am not at all sure which of them bought me a ticket to this purgatory or how much penance I must do to escape it. I know only that I need to work on my own stuff, try to heal my own wounds and commit to doing what I can do to grow in grace. That keeps me busy, for sure. If, at some point, I hope to come to understand what my actual offenses are, I pray that the work I am doing will allow me to accept responsibility and ask forgiveness for them.
When a lover or a spouse walks away from a relationship, there are people that judge, but there are also people that offer sympathy. After a time of grieving, society allows you, even expects you, to go out and replace what was lost with a new love. You learn from your mistakes. You lick your wounds.You build a new life. You survive.
But what do you do when a different family member divorces you? You cannot just replace that relationship with a new one. What do you do when the parent that raised you takes umbrage with the very core of who you are and says “you are not worthy of my time or affection”? Or your brother says, “You are not welcome in my home because you do not meet my standard.” Or your child tells you, “You will not be allowed to see your grandchildren.” “We cannot have a relationship because I have measured you and you have been found wanting.” How do you live with the fact that the parent who raised you could discard their own child, seemingly with no shame? How do you live with the knowledge that your own child cannot bear to have a relationship with you because you are too flawed? How do you face society when you have to wear a scarlet “F” on your motherhood frock?
COVID 19, the murder of George Floyd, the burning of Minneapolis, the contention of the US presidential election and the mayhem of January 6th created a global tsunami of turmoil the likes of which no one in the world had seen for at least 100 years. The tension that everyone was feeling put us all into a “fight for your life” frame of mind and created division everywhere at once. Families, churches, communities, political parties, governments, countries, and the earth herself seemed to convulse under the weight of tribalism, nationalism, racism, and conspiracy-ism (yes, I made that up). People everywhere began to see only the worst possible motives in whoever they decided to “other”. The assumption of malevolence became the air we all are breathing through our multi-layered, homemade masks.
In Minneapolis, where some in my family lived when George Floyd was killed, we saw protesters and looters, marching down our streets, police and military in flak-jackets, tanks, fires, sirens, gun fire, rubber bullets, Molotov cocktails, and basically, pandemonium, for weeks. We live only a mile from some of the burned out buildings. One of our sons lived on the street where Floyd was killed and finally had to leave because of the violence that was happening in front of him. Buildings near him had desperate messages, spray-painted on the front doors, “DO NOT BURN! CHILDREN LIVE HERE!”
Meanwhile, we could not see each other. We could not attend church or support each other. Our senior parents were forced to live in solitary confinement. Our friends and relatives were deathly ill and no one could help them. We could not celebrate the most basic of events. The way we grieved the death of loved ones was through a t.v. screen, separated in our houses: alone. Everything that is human about us was pushed down, compressed into our reptilian brains. We were all living in our limbic system: fight, flight, freeze, falter.
Some in my family went to the protests. Some were afraid to go because of COVID. Some were just simply afraid to be out on the streets at all. Some were disgusted by the building damage. Some defended the actions as necessary. Some turned against the police. Some felt compassion for those in the police station who had been ordered to stand their ground and barely escaped with their lives when it was burned down. Everyone reacted out of fear.
Hospitals were full. Healthcare workers were overwhelmed. Asians were being indiscriminately attacked, simply for being Asian. Every person in our family was feeling the pressure of everything that society was feeling. There was no part of what we went through globally last year that didn’t directly affect people in my family personally. What happened medically, affected those that are involved in that field. What happened in Minneapolis, devastated and traumatized those that lived here at the time. The election cycle and the Conservative Christian responses to it damaged or destroyed the faith of some. It seemed like society was coming apart at the seams and because our family is a microcosm of society, we did as well.
Of course, there is more to the story than that. There are personalities involved and pride and yes, prejudice. There is generational trauma that has set some of us up to overreact to things and see malevolence where there isn’t any intended. There are assumptions and projections and biases and hurt feelings and ignorance: some of it willful, some even blissful.
Humans cannot hear each other when they are in a fight, flight, or freeze mode. They are just trying not to die. We are all just trying not to die. But I did. I died a thousand deaths as I watched relationships that matter so much to me go up in smoke like the Target store on West Broadway in Minneapolis. The contents were removed by looters and then what was left was torched. I know the feeling. I feel the feeling.
The interesting thing about the process of dying is that at some point you realize you have nothing left to lose. You surrender to the black hole and let yourself disappear into it. At one point last year, I knew that I was going to be swallowed whole by the darkness. I have been there before. I recognized that I needed to get help or give up. I have a history of slipping into the dark grave of unrelenting, unmitigated depression. For similar reasons, nearly twenty years ago I was in the same place and also knew at that time that I had to get help or die. Then, it was intensive outpatient therapy. Last year, it was intensive IV drug therapy. It saved me. I recovered enough to start to live again. Gradually, slowly, gently, I am also starting to love again. Just like the Phoenix that rises out of its own ashes, I rise.
I don’t know if my family or our society can ever heal from what has happened throughout this past year. With no meaningful communication happening and everyone claiming they have the definitive way everyone else is supposed to behave and think, it feels a little hopeless at the moment. But interestingly, my grief brought me to a new place of peace through the process of radical acceptance which google defines as “... the ability to accept situations that are outside of your control without judging them, which in turn reduces the suffering that is caused by them...”. (I could not find an adequate citation for this quote.)
As someone who has deep and unrelenting abandonment issues, I have learned that I can survive feeling abandoned: even by a family member. Even if abandonment was not the actual goal, it is how I experience any relationship withdrawal. Because of early childhood trauma, it will always be my default setting. Although I pray that I will not always have to live this way, at least now I know that I can live, regardless of what family members choose to do.
Society will heal to some extent, but the global trauma we are going through has changed us. It has exposed us for who we are and that is not pretty. It will also inform us of who we need to become if we are to get through this time with anything meaningful still intact. I pray that will be true for my family one day as well. Trauma and its companion, grief, can change us for the good if we let it.
I may collapse in a puddle of tears again tomorrow. I am not through the layers of this grief onion. But as I processed it here, I have re-measured myself and have found that even with all my flaws and sins, I am actually ok. At least ok enough. I can live with that.
