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Oh Death Where is your Sting? 1 Corinthians 15:55

On Silence

 “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;” John Donne, Sonnet 10

I’ve noticed over the past couple of months lots of my friends saying the phrase “I regret what I said when….” And their explanations into what caused them to have regret, an introverted feeling or an extroverted outburst. Perhaps it’s because my own silence and fear has taught me to listen to what someone isn’t saying. When I look back over my life in the previous years, I regret that I did not speak, that silence overwhelmed my life and was confirmed when I expressed the ideas of my heart, as the best course of action. I was held, locked away in a place of silence. “I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.” Audre Lorde

 “A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.” Margaret Atwood

Silence for me, was darkest in the night. Where I questioned myself, my characters, my grief and faith. Some things you feel you can’t speak about because we’re institutionalised; we know it will be uncomfortable and ugly and others don’t need that inflicting on them. It’s easier for them not to know, than have them respond with silence. When you start looking for silence, authors often describe it as having an ongoing sound. As I’ve started to consider my silence, it was mostly a void so free of noise- a vacuum- something that was used to control and I was intended to withstand. When you start to speak out- society finds it uncomfortable, especially when it is mixed with grief. Friends leave because they can’t find a way to communicate with you, others don’t recognise you outside of your passive existence. Elie Weisel encourages those who have experienced “night” to speak out about their experiences to help those who are still bound in fear “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

“Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, ‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’ And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” Audre Lorde

Oh Death Where is your Sting?

Bitterness or anger does not need to define or overwhelm you. In me, they sometimes rise up with a sense of injustice. And that is ok, it’s human- sometimes we need to sit there and feel it, acknowledge it to grieve. But don’t dwell on it; capture it in your mind and throw it away. Change your mindset, think about something living and active and free, something you can change and make a difference to. Don’t let your Joy be stolen again. Ever. Don’t let your experience of the night ever have space to do that again. I have learned that whatever you do, you must not hate but love with all your heart and that when you do it will overwhelm, overflow and fill spaces you didn’t even know you had.

2020 marks 75 years of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. I recently watched a video with Zigi who was liberated from the camp and came to live in the UK. He said that he often visits schools and the children often ask him “did you ever meet Hitler?” and he always replies “No, but I would love to see Hitler today. I would show him all the things he did not take. I would show him my family, my two daughters, my grandsons and my great great grandson.”

Today, as I look back, I am overwhelmingly grateful for all I have been bought through. I recently read the book of Job, considered to be the oldest source of the old testament. And like Elie Weisel in the concentration camps and as Zigi expresses about the most terrible oppression in Auschwitz; Job too expressed the deepest losses and grief in the face of death and silence. He cries out to God and questions the silence but not God himself. God gives him more than he ever had before and that he “lived another 140 years, living to see his children and grandchildren. Then he died- an old man, a full life.” Job 42: 16-17.

So today, breaking my silence, I am overwhelmed that I have inherited the most beautiful family. I have the most kind-hearted, empowering and generous husband who has taught about love deeper than I ever knew. And we await the arrival of our baby boy. Although I forfeited everything for my freedom; I am considering all the things that cannot be taken from me and I declare that silence and the oppression of the night will never reign in my again. I am overwhelmed by the goodness of God. “There are far, far better things ahead than anything we leave behind.”  C.S. Lewis

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A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed  

The thing about trauma is it’s a deeply lonely place. No one can actually feel what it is that you are feeling at the time and the darkness can feel so consuming. For me it was a place where I couldn’t even look at photos of myself in my past life or play music the way I used to. I couldn’t even spend time in my garden that I had loved and tended and cared for in my other seasons of life. For me, this is what grief looked like. A lonely place, that for me was full of shame: that stripped me of things that once were the ways I had expressed the deepest places of my soul.

“Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.”

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed 

I was recently searching for an empathy card for a friend who is battling sickness and I came across Emily McDowell’s range of empathy cards. Having survived a battle with cancer she decided to create a range of cards so people going through the darkness of grief could feel “seen, understood and loved.” Which is perhaps what we are all truly looking for.

C.S.Lewis defines the experience of grief in the most apt way describing the un-settledness of one’s soul.  The suffering of grief, like illness I suppose- is so isolating because people don’t know what to say or how to say it. Perhaps true empathy comes with maturity, yet some of the most mature people who have been with me my whole life didn’t know how to react to my grief. Some people say nothing and disappear and other people say the wrong thing entirely. As Emily says, ‘It’s a really tough problem; someone we love needs our support more than ever, but we don’t have the right language for it.’ 

Vice president Biden released a video following the death of his son in a battle with cancer “For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again.’

Grief and trauma, for me, left me feeling a dark shame, a burden on other people and ultimately believing there was no worth in my life, and no possible recovery.  This is an uncomfortable thing for loved ones and friends to hear or understand.

Our society is totally uncomfortable with pain and doesn’t have space or time for deep grief. I am wholeheartedly grateful for the precious friends and family who have shared in my sadness and bared witness to my grief. Trauma is already exhausting without defending your grief to those who think you should be over it/ doing better/ moving on. 

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

In this season of life I have learned that some tragedy is so painful you will never be the same after it, you’ll never negotiate a season in the same way you used to and ultimately there is nothing anyone can do to make you feel better. What is most “healing” is when people show you unconditional love in your deepest pain; witnessing your grief without trying to make you feel better.

And on faith,  theodicy (trying to fit an all-powerful, all-knowing, all loving God into a world in which suffering exists) is something which grief drives you to. Many people see different perspectives; some have the idea that God is the author of our suffering, some say “everything happens for a reason”. I think the idea that God created my trauma is insulting to the goodness of God. Simone Weil, political activist and author has my favourite perspective on suffering. As a woman who had known deep suffering and loss and a member of the french resistance in the time of the holocaust, fighting for justice and freedom she came up with the concept of “affliction” or malheur. The idea that there is a “suffering plus” that can cause an affect on body and mind; a physical and mental affliction for the whole of your soul. And what is most comforting about her idea of theodicy is there is an element of “chance” in which affliction should not usually follow my sin but can visit anyone for no possible reason.

The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Recovering from trauma, for me, has been those faithful friends, holding my hand- coaching me through each minute to hour. And being present in my suffering, fully embracing the emotions and experiences of grief, not rushing any one part. And in this, I have found that God is holding my hand, and pressing rather hard and the silence of God has been the loudest and most comforting voice in my healing.

Holly