The gift within the pain

I get a lot of healing from my books. I know most other bloggers do not refer to books as much as I do. I guess as a youngster who got left alone a fair bit I looked to books and when I got sober in 1993 I was working in the book trade anyway so I read and read a lot especially on spiritual and psychological subjects and that knowledge helped me a lot to educate myself.

Today after posting my previous post I made lunch and took a little dip into a book I borrowed from the library a short while ago Attitudes of Gratitude : How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your Life by M.J. Ryan. I can only see in retrospect sometimes how I get the grizzles with life, there is a degree of resentment that can bubble away under the surface, and it can feel a little like knives or pin pricks in my chest at times. As the youngest I missed out on a fair bit in a far older family. I felt a lot like an outsider. I was a bit shocked to hear from a very old friend of my older sister who died a few years ago and he said that at 18 I was telling him my entire family needed to be in therapy. This felt a bit like hubris when I heard him repeat it back to me in 2017, I don’t even remember that time much as it was so filled with trauma.

I shared in an earlier post that I was triggered this week watching the episode of This Is Us in which recovering addict Kevin confronts his mother sister and adopted brother while in a rehab therapy session. I shared about it in therapy on Thursday but basically Kevin seemed in many ways to be the odd one out in his family. His twin sister seemed to bond best with her alcoholic dad, Randall the adopted sibling seemed to be the mother’s favourite and there is a scene in which Kevin is blamed for hiding or stealing Randall’s glasses as a child (unfairly) and this really hurts him and sets him at odd with his mother, Rebecca. In the end Kevin finds the glasses which had fallen under Randall’s bed a short while later.

Anyway in the midst of the family therapy session when Kevin tries to share about his sense of being worth less or left out, Randall champions and sides with the mother and then shuts Kevin down by accusing him of being an ‘attention seeker’ which is laughable really and seemed like something my 8 year older sister would say who always bonded best with Mum. The mother gets into such a tizz and finally screams at Kevin how Randall was the ‘easier’ chid not always pushing her away… oh God this resonated. Why wouldn’t you push away someone who invalidated struggle to respond, understand or bond with you?

Luckily at the end of this episode everything resolves, Randall sees his mistake and apologises and all three share a joke about how he is the favourite child! Good resolution, the grievance came out was shared, refuted and then integrated and each person got to realise their own perception came from their own limited point of view. I would have hoped for such a happy result in my family but it never came. The sibling I bonded with left me at 3 and got struck down when she was 26 and I was 18.

It was interesting to see in the show which I know is only a fictional representation how Kevin starts to distance himself more and more and become more of a critic and observer of his family after this. In this episode he sits outside on the porch reading comics in the pouring rain when Mum comes out to try and engage him and draw him inside, I think this is takes place before the glasses are found. Kevin stays in his ‘isolation’ and later that night he wakes in the middle of the night (and this is when he finds the glasses) and finds both his siblings absent from the room, Kate and Randall he finds are snuggled up with the two parents in their bed. In scene which kinda broke my heart open Kevin takes a cushion from the chair and puts it on the floor covering himself with a blanket and Mum, Rebecca wakes to go and snuggle up with him on the floor. I wont go writing right now as I am crying so hard writing this.

This started as post about trying to find the gift within the pain. I don’t know where its going to right now. The pain over not being held or noticed or finding a place to fit in is very strong right now. Is it any wonder addicts turn to booze or drugs to get that hug or comfort when it just seems to be so very very absent in the material and personal world? Sometimes I don’t know if this wound will ever really heal in me. I keep looking for the gift in the pain but its pretty hard to find today. My life was tough, it was painful, I try hard to look for the silver lining. I keep getting up and living. I reach out when I can I suffer through the long silences when I try to call my sis. I wonder why certain friends don’t return calls. I question my anger with Scott wo is trying his best to meet me but things are being blocked. I question my own need to ‘get away’ rather than front up to the tough stuffl.

Well maybe it is in this, this is what I read today in my book.

“My son died 5 years ago, he was four and a half,’ writes a contributor to Slowing Down in a Speeded Up World. “One of the gifts his death bought was an excuse to stop the rush. For the first year I allowed grief to wash over me whenever I needed to, and I let myself to be open to the healing that surrounds us in this incredible world. I had time for a hug and to talk with my friends. I had vast amounts of time to cherish four and a half years of memories. Nowadays it isn’t unusual for me to stop in my tracks when a rainbow arches over the bay outside my bedroom window, or a tiny feather drifts down to me from the sky, or a child’s laugh at McDonalds brings tears to my eyes. I realise how lucky I am, not to have lost my son but to have had him for as long as I did. I’m lucky to have known the importance of certain moments that catch your soul and may never come again.

Gratefulness or great fullness as Brother David Stendal Rast calls it, “is the full response of the human heart to the gratuitousness of all that is.” He and Matthew Fox remind us that that truly every single thing we have has been given to us, not necessarily because we deserve it, but for no known reason, and that same thing is true for every living thing. We are connected to one another, to sky and water, and tree and snake, by virtue of being here together as part of the wheel of life. None of us did anything to deserve this gift of life, nor is anything required of us in return.

I am including this excerpt in my post. I do get these breakthroughs of gratitude sometimes but sometimes I must admit I do only see the glass half full. I understand where Kevin’s feeling of not belonging and being so distant or unloved came from. I wounder could he (and even I) be grateful for the gift of being ‘on the outside’ for the truth is that in some situations I do feel that I belong but so often these take place when alone in nature having similar experiences to the woman quoted in M.J. Ryan’s book above.

Its hard when we see at times people seeming to get so easily things that we struggle to achieve but maybe in the end they are not meant for us. In any case if you stuck with my post this far thanks for reading. I am trying to work something out in it obviously and I will post it even though I am not really sure if it all ties together.