—
TRIGGER WARNING: Childhood sexual molestation and teen suicide
—
Last night, about 3 a.m., I woke and found myself reflecting on the gunshot suicide of a teenaged girl. As a therapist, I help people deal with awful experiences. The father and daughter had both been in to see me for grief counseling.
In the middle of the night, as my thoughts opened to this family, I knew that I could feel my worry about them, imagining their pain, awakening my own. Thoughts began to gain momentum as my body responded to thoughts and feelings of suffering.
As I considered the ability to trust life again, I understood that for me to resume sleep I would have to do just what I knew that family had to do. I would have to release thoughts and feelings from the past and be fully trusting of this safe embrace which I call life.
So I brought my awareness to my body, my breath, the ongoing movement of life into and out of this physical form referred to as “I”. It’s possible with enough meditative practice to watch feelings and thoughts as they arise and provoke each other. As I did this, allowing and watching my thoughts and feelings the memory of that teenager’s suicide returned. Breathing into the images and emotions, accepting them expanded memory of my mother’s father, who also took his life. Feeling the connection between my mother’s loss of her father, and this family’s loss of their child, a sense of choice in life rose up.
Helplessness lessened and became anxiety, hopelessness resolved to sad acceptance. In the bed, in the dark I no longer feared and resisted either of these experiences for my mother or the family.
I have spent many hours of thought, meditation and conversation about my mother’s loss of her father and how hard that was for her. She was six years old when it happened, and she was of course, shocked, grieving, and confused by her father’s sudden death, much the same as the family of the teenager in my practice.
I lay with my eyes closed in the dark, aware of my breath moving in and out in a rhythm of its own, removed from these deaths, aware of my own immediate, ongoing existence, I returned to live in the moment.
Life’s commitment to being, by beginning and ending, is very clear in observing the breath. I did that and gradually the pain and horror of the grieving family, of my tortured mother began to disappear. My body relaxed and sleep began to take over, until n a distinct, strong movement within my heart and stomach I felt fear growing again, as intrusive thoughts and feelings I hadn’t had for a long time returned. They were deeper and stronger than what I felt for the grieving family or my mother.
I felt my cousin’s naked body against mine, pushing against me as he moved up and down doing something I didn’t like or understand. I was 8, he was 15. I was dealing with something bigger and stronger, something I had no understanding of how to stop or make it go away.
Now all these years later, beyond that first encounter, in a flash I saw the pieces fall together. The teenager’s suicide, family’s helplessness and loss, my own mother’s loss and my inability to change what happened. In choosing to accept the loss of the teen’s family, my mother’s life of pain, I resumed awareness of the endless connection to love. This is how life and healing work. Once love touches a pain with acceptance, other unhealed experiences appear, seeking restoration to love.
My cousin was my hero. I didn’t like what he was doing and had no one to protect me. We were alone in the night his parents’ protection miles away in their room down the hall.
Again I was frozen, afraid, confused…….I didn’t know yet how to protect myself. The healing of that younger boy in me had resumed again in this night, and lying in bed I felt desperately alone as I had then. Back then I finally summoned the courage to push my way out of his grip and moved downstairs where I thought I would be safe He followed and pleaded with me not to tell, to come back to his room and he wouldn’t touch me anymore.
I understood that this recent suicide, my mother’s loss of her father, and the sexual experiences my cousin initiated were all part of a life I was still living and that I had a choice in how I experience them. So I rose in the night, with my awareness on my breath, body, and thoughts right here and now.
Decades as a therapist have taught me there are countless tools available to shape experience. Bringing experiences into the world requires shaping them with our perceptions, intentions, behaviors. So I touch the fear of the eight-year-old me, in need of love, and consciously hold him lovingly, safely. At the same time, I am 8 years old, finally held and protected, safe now and assured of a presence as predictable as my breath.
—
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join like-minded individuals in The Good Men Project Premium Community.
◊♦◊
◊♦◊
Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
◊♦◊
◊♦◊
Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.
♦◊♦
We have pioneered the largest worldwide conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century. Your support of our work is inspiring and invaluable.
—
Photo credit: Getty Images