Part 5: I Couldn't Find the Words
This is the fifth and final post in a series about trauma, grief, and recovery from both. If you are new to this series, you can read about my evacuation from the Marshall fire in Dec 2021 and what followed. Click?here ?and?here ?and?here ?and?here ?for the first four parts.?
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On March 5, I returned to Colorado for the first time since relocating to Iowa. I had gone back to give a workshop about releasing emotions to a group of educators. A woman raised her hand at one point, asking about what to do with her grief, especially in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. The devastation of war had traveled across the miles and landed in her heart. She was speaking for everyone in the room.
Grief was all around. Each person had lost something significant over the last two years. Most had lost a sense of normalcy. Health protocols and shifting conditions with COVID were at odds with a regular routine from past school years. Others had lost the illusion of safety. A few had lost loved ones.
The moment was poignant and intimate. As human beings, we learn behaviors of “holding it in” or “sucking it up” as a way to cope with loss. Instead, I could feel the audience exhale and relax into the waters of grief. I told the woman that we can release grief in small doses, that it was okay to let it out. I thanked her for her courage in speaking up.?
During my trip, there were other sights and sounds that caught my attention. I had dinner at a favorite restaurant. Directly across the street stood the twisted metal of shops that had burned down three months prior. On the way to lunch with my sister, we drove past a housing subdivision that had been mostly destroyed, with a few lonely homes standing next to charred fields. Walking on a neighborhood nature trail, I saw rolling hills of blackened ground and singed tree trunks. Several people told me harrowing evacuation stories that made it all the more miraculous that there were so few fatalities.
I arranged to meet a friend who lived in the same subdivision as my brother’s home, where I was staying. We decided to start walking from our respective homes at the same time, meeting somewhere in the middle. I rounded the bend of a street. Further down, I knew of a row of houses that had been destroyed, and I was both anxious and curious. It was dusk and the winter sun was shining in my eyes, preventing me from looking directly down the street.
I prayed I would see my friend before getting to the damaged part of the neighborhood. Instead, I was meant to see and hear all of the despair, as well as the hope.
My friend drove this part of the neighborhood on a regular basis.?What was most disturbing for her were not the houses that were completely gone, but the ones that were partially standing. These were the ones that told the story of lives interrupted, kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms torn open to the sky or to neighbors across the street.
And yet, I also saw the beginning of lives being restored and continuing on:?bulldozers clearing away debris , young athletes on a soccer field, a remote-controlled toy car zipping across a driveway.??
When I returned to Iowa, I was tired…and irritable. At a meeting with three of my closest colleagues, I became angry at their memory lapse while coordinating calendars. On most days, this would be a trivial thing, but on this day, it got underneath my skin. I had no clue as to why I was so upset, until the end of the meeting. In the space between business being finished and signing off the Zoom call, I noticed my grief. I soon filled the silence with deep sobs. I had chosen not to let grief into my heart until that moment, when I recounted to my colleagues what I had seen and heard in Colorado.
Some might describe this as a meltdown. I resisted saying that I had been re-traumatized, because it felt weak. But it was true. This definition of trauma helped me name it:
“Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.”--integratedlistening.com
There were layers of distress and disturbance inside of me. I did feel helpless. I had stuffed down grief. I was not my best self.
In response to my last posting, a reader wrote:?“Thanks for sharing your journey. I’m rooting for you.”
Thank you, dear reader. I’m rooting for you as well. Because we all have been through trauma. Whether it was trauma that impacted billions (e.g., pandemic) or more local to a community (e.g., the derecho in Iowa, or the Marshall fire in Colorado), no one has gone untouched. Whether you have experienced an event first hand or virtually, through videos, photos, and written stories, you have been impacted. The devastation in Ukraine is just the most recent traumatic event to be delivered, straight to your screen of choice.
In a?podcast interview ?with grief expert,?David Kessler , he explains that “all grief does not have trauma, but all trauma has grief.” If that’s the case, we each have a lot of grief that has accumulated in the course of being a human being, on this planet, at this time.?
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Photo by Johannes Plenio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/closeup-photo-of-green-grass-field-1423601/ ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I believe:
A primary motivation for this series is to make trauma and grief visible, and to normalize both. I am no different than you in that regard. I shared my trauma and grief in a public forum, while yours may be hidden or shared with just a few close friends or family.
A friend said that she doesn’t think there’s more trauma now than before, but only that more people are talking about it. I hope that’s true, because acknowledging trauma is on the road to healing.
Let the word, trauma, be spoken. ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Epilogue
Four months after the fire and relocation, I feel like myself again, only better. My energy has returned. I am excited for the future, grounded in the present, and grateful for the past. Iowa feels more like home and Colorado feels more like a familiar place to visit.
I feel alive. Spring is wild and raw in Iowa with days of overcast skies, rain, and wind, followed by glorious sunshine. On the first day of May, it was cold enough to wear my down parka for a walk in the neighborhood.?And yet, the grass is greener than I can remember seeing anywhere else and the ground is spongy. The song birds flit from tree to tree, with feathers in bright blue and cardinal red, chirping their sweet serenades.
Photo by Pixabay:?https://www.pexels.com/photo/3-chicks-on-green-grass-162164/
I feel blessed. My next chapter of work is emerging, as a writer and healer . Trauma disconnected me from my old life in order to start this new one. I have been broken open, for the sake of spiritual awakening.
I feel the love and warmth of rekindled friendships. These past few months, friends from 20, 30, even 40 years ago who I had lost touch with, contacted me. The phone calls and texts and emails started on the day of the evacuation and have continued since.
I feel connected. I visited my mother’s gravesite, just a few days after the first anniversary of her death. It was a pleasant, even joyful moment, as I reminisced about Mom. I could see her beyond the difficulties of the last years of life, to the essence of her spirit. Those who are separated by time and space don’t feel that far away.
I feel adventurous. My husband and I are exploring our new community together, much like the early years of our marriage, when we moved cross-country, first to the East Coast and then to the West. The Midwest, where we both grew up, feels fresh and new again. I can’t wait for the farmer’s markets to open up, to hike local trails, and to take day trips to small towns with big hearted stories.?
I feel hopeful. At Easter, I returned to Colorado a second time. Where there had been blackened ground, I noticed bright green grass, fertilized by the fire’s ash. I wrote in my journal,?“Nature knows how to rejuvenate itself and so do I.”
I have been on a journey of re-birth, moving through a tunnel of trauma and grief. Emerging, I find myself in a place where the dirt is fertile and black, moisture is plentiful and people are hardy. Stuff grows in Iowa. I am growing and for that, I give thanks.
PS. Click here to learn more about my next chapter of work, rooted in the energy of pure love, steeped in the sacred and mystical, and co-creating at a soul level. It's not what I expected to be doing in my sixties, and I am trusting the journey.