The Cocoon Was Hollow: Grieving the Absolute Loss of Self

 

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                                                                      -Lao Tzu

 

Once the decision was made to cut ourselves free from the religious life we had been woven into, Rick and I began the very delicate process of extrication.

 

Actually, it wasn’t that hard for Rick.  He shed his mormon identity like an ill-fitting suit that he had worn out.  He had put it on just six years before, after becoming a fully formed adult.  He wore the coat well, but taking it off was not too hard.  A temperature adjustment.   A loosening of the tie, unclipping the “Brother Poulin” name tag, he went back to being Rick.  He kicked off his dress shoes and pulled out his Birkenstocks, and found his old self waiting to welcome him back.

 

It was me that needed unwinding… the binding thoughts and ideas that had me tightly ensconced were thick and sinewy.  At first, I believed that if I just worked at it, the fibers that had cocooned me would release a new and completely different, freed creature.  The proverbial butterfly.  But as time wore on, I began to wonder if there was a self, underneath it all.  The discard pile grew, and with it I lost my shape.  After years and years of unraveling, I am left with a huge pile of string, a hopeless tangled mass, and no sense of who I am.

 

Such work, to unravel one’s self.

I have been sifting through my pile, overcome with grief.  For the form and structure of my self.  For the loss of what I knew.  For the comfort of having a home.  For the rejection of my cast.  For the familiarity of words and rules and rituals.  For the loss of the tethers that gave definition to my family.

I did not know how to recreate myself from this rubble, and yet inside it, were all my pieces.

 

I have cried more tears in the last year than I have in my entire life.  The grief when I first began this process was a rupture, and the tears spilled out in angry waves.  Now, the grief is residual, it shimmers at the surface, ready to spill over at the slightest ripple.  I cling to the necessity of the tears.  The washing out of the vessel.  The cleanse, as I ready myself to once again try to find a new woman in the old pile.

 

And then, as I was drying my tears the other day, something happened.  I looked up.

 

It is only now, eight years into the undoing and the fingering of my scraps that I have found something that looks…hopeful.

In the very raw process of unraveling, there is a powerful sense of isolation and loneliness. I was selfishly consumed by my deconstruction and loss, and it made me blind to my surroundings.  Not out of spite, but out of grief, the world outside of my own undoing became a vague and blurry mess.  The only pieces of reality and the only choices before me seemed to be born out of the pile of scraps I had created in shedding my entire identity.

The hope came when I looked away from the tangled nonsense I had been stewing in…  and I noticed.  Instead of a presence of separateness that I had been feeling in my loss of structure, I saw others.  They look like me.  Some are crying, too.  Everywhere, people are discovering their empty cocoon, and the task of recreation.  And my story is not so special.  We are all standing in our pile,  trying to rebuild.  I saw my uprooted, raw  feelings reflecting back at me.  And I saw their beauty.   The work of creating something grand and strong, sifting through the rubble to find the shiny pieces… these people were doing it.  All of them.  I felt my unformed self crack open, and love rushed out.  For all the people, for their loss and mine are the same.

 

And maybe, that is the Truth.

 

We are all in various stages of this moment… unwinding and rebuilding and whittling away. Anyone willing to break free from the shell that we begin in, to find renewal and movement and light, is going through this too.   It has taken me a long time to blink away my grief and look around at the wealth of experience we are all standing in.  The survivors of broken childhoods.  The immigrant rebuilding in a foreign place.  The lover, holding a shattered heart.  The parent, reshuffling life after a death.  The woman, peeling away her shame.  We are all chipping away the armor, to reveal the truest version of our Self.

 

The truly freeing part?  I am realizing that we are not limited to our own broken shells.   That pile is our past.  The things that have already been. The shape that has already formed and been undone.  We are not limited to this material, to rebirth ourselves.  There is only so much we can find within, before we must look for the beautiful pieces that others have to offer us.

 

The world is wide, and open, and full of breath-taking pieces that will feel like home when we find them… they are meant for us to discover.  We find unity in the recognition that we are all busy with different versions of the same task.  And then, we are less afraid to see the beautiful offerings of others… and perhaps the value of our own discarded pieces.

So,  I will pick from my pile the material I want to keep, and then step away… to search out the new treasure that will define the woman I want to become.
Her shape is only for me.

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Photo credit:  Gardner Edmunds

 

I Spent Years Begging My Child to Scream… What I Found In Her Silence

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The silent cry.

 

The open-mouthed, white lipped, frozen cry of a child.

 

It begins as a breathy, indignant screech, a shocked outcry that is sharp and quick, followed by silence.  This is the cry that sends any parent running, heart pounding, to scoop up their hurting child and assess the damage.… we look them over, and hold them tight, waiting for the scream to come, when the tightness in their lungs relaxes just enough to release the pain in an ear-piercing shriek.

 

My little girl never, ever screamed.

 

The pain from her injury would be frozen on her face when I gathered her up… she would turn red, then purple, the scream shimmered in her eyes, visceral and bright.

 

I tried to get her to breathe.  To release her scream.

 

I would press her tightly to my body, squeezing desperately, wanting to wring it from her.

 

I would curl her up in my lap, and kiss her frozen face a hundred times in a moment, wanting to wash it out of her.

 

I would hold her face in my two hands, and blow in her face, wanting my own released breath on her skin to emancipate her pain.

 

I would look right into her eyes where I could see it trapped, and beg.

“Breathe, baby, breathe.  You are o.k.  Please, breathe. Breathe.”

 

She didn’t.

 

The scream wouldn’t come, and she would pass out.  The loss of consciousness would make her fall momentarily limp, and what should have been the howling scream of a hurt child whooshed out of her in a complacent sigh.

 

And then she would have a seizure.

 

Her whole body would stiffen impossibly tight, her hands would ball up into  white knuckled fists, and her wrists would curl in on themselves.  There was no scream in her eyes… the light in them vanished.

 

Her eyes were the worst part.  For a moment, she was gone.

 

Doctors all assured us that this just happened to some kids.  The seizure was a result of the lack of oxygen, but did not damage her brain.  There was nothing we could do.

 

For six years, we waited for her to scream.

 

Of course, she was our child that ate danger and speed for breakfast.  She ran everywhere at a wild, 60 degree angle. She had the uncanny ability to consistently find a shard of glass, a razor blade, a broken balloon, hiding in the playground mulch.   She climbed to the tippy top of anything stationary.  We caught her swinging from the chandelier.  Literally.  She has no fear.

 

It was a dangerous time for her. When she got hurt, without that release, the exhalation of anguish, there would not be a breath of renewal. She would lose consciousness and fall if we did not find her fast enough.

Today I am left with the terror I felt as a parent, watching her fall down the  stairs just before I was able to grab her shirt, or the countless times I managed to catch her mid-tumble before she hit the last step.  The crazy leaps off the front porch and down the driveway in one giant lunge to catch her before she face planted into the sidewalk, or off the top of the slide at the park.

 

She has outgrown it.  Finally.  She had her last seizure about a year and a half ago.

 

But  every time I watched the light go out of her eyes, it burned an indelible impression in my memory.  It left a mark.

 

I remember begging her to scream.  Wanting to hear her wail.  The need for release is intrinsic, innate.  I think of her frozen face, unable to give in to the hurt, and I see myself.  Maybe it was the years of holding my little girl as she suffered the consequences of being unable to exhale. …. for I can see it now in my own face when I look in the mirror, and in the tightened faces of others.

 

We need to let it go, before we can breathe in again.

 

My sweet child, stiff in my arms, was a constant lesson in the real consequences of repression… of stifling your voice.  Being authentic about who you are…allowing true self-expression… these are real human needs, not fluffy, frivolous dreams.  There is always a consequence for repressing and silencing who you are.  Holding inside the thunderous release of expression does not make it disappear, and the release of that energy will find a different pathway.

 

The trouble is, it works.  The breath holding, the refusal to release.  We do it, and the alternative reactions feel more controlled and private.

 

So we do it.  We hold it back, we keep it inside, try not to be seen.  We hide.

 

She never screamed and wailed hysterically like other children.  It was quiet and private and gentle-looking to anyone who was not cradling her, watching her eyes go dead,  holding her stiff hands.

 

But she taught me that sometimes the quiet is much scarier than the scream.  And the dangers of refusing to exhale are much more present than in the moments that we allow ourselves to be heard and seen.

 

We get used to hiding, and holding it in.  We think that if we do it quietly, and no one notices our hurts, we are…. Brave?  Meek?  Faithful?  Strong?  Gentle?  Peaceful?

 

I don’t think so. Not anymore.   Being seen.  Being heard.  Speaking up.  Releasing.  Letting Go.  Getting real.  These are the healing ways we reach for peace.  And we find our Self, free.

 

Sometimes, out of habit, it is hard to recognize the things we are still not exhaling.  But the signs are there.  They were with my daughter, too.  I see them in me… in everyone as we are all reaching for a cleansing breath.

 

The days when I realize I have been holding my breath, tight and shallow in my throat.  The moments I notice the little half-moon impressions in my palms because I have been holding my hands in fists of tension.  The curling of my toes in my shoes.  The lack of awareness in my lower half, being so wound up in my thoughts that I lose my grounding.  And the absence of joy makes my eyes look dull with exhaustion.

 

When we notice these symptoms,  it is time to locate the tension within.  Find the hurt, the fear, the unmet need, the truth…

What is it within that you fear being expressed?….

 

… and exhale.