Creating Healing Connection Vulnerability
[Music]
sometimes you have to sit in the mud
at times alone and at times together
i’m going to recite part of an essay a
grieving teen wrote
while the content is unique to this kid
the feelings are not
the alarm sounded at 7 30 am sharp
and my mother and i got up eager for the
days beginning
while getting ready to take a shower the
doorbell rang
and my mother went downstairs with my
aunt and uncle to see who was calling at
such an early hour
silence overtook the house then shrieks
and cries that sent shivers down my
spine
slowly i crept down the hall i heard sob
after sob
what was happening i was dazed
people huddled around each other my
stomach tightened
my father held my mother my brother rick
grasped my father why were they here
my aunt and uncle sat in the corner
tears ran down their eyes
yet they were silent their silence
rampaged in my heart
jeffrey was gone her poor baby her poor
helpless baby
he was a liar i knew my father was a
liar
he said it was true he was sorry
but he couldn’t find his baby he
disappeared
his brother just vanished my heart ached
how could it be true it was true
he said it was true i wished it weren’t
it hurt it really hurt i just wanted to
scream and hit my father
and he told until he told me the truth
i stopped crying i stopped shouting
my body stopped shaking i swallowed a
huge bubble
it encompassed my entire being my
breathing slowed
my body went numb i entered the world
that would now become my own
so this is an excerpt taken from my
college essay
that i wrote when i was a senior in high
school
it was in response to the quote hope is
the will to struggle against obstacles
even when they appear insuperable
this is what i remember about my brother
jeff’s death
my body holds those memories forever
imprinted in my heart
even though my cognitive memories from
that time in my life are very few
funny i can’t remember what i did
yesterday
but i remember every detail of that
tragic day
i was 13 when jeff died i was told that
i needed to be strong for my parents
but i didn’t know how i was an introvert
by nature
i put a lot of pressure on myself to do
well in school and
not make trouble at home like most
bereaved kids
i didn’t want to make anyone around me
family or friends
uncomfortable with my grief or add to
theirs especially my parents
i felt like my grief wasn’t as important
because i was just a kid
my poor parents had lost their son my
brother lost his best friend
sure jeff loved me but i was just the
little sister
my grief was nothing compared to theirs
that was how my story played in my head
obviously unconsciously i tried to stuff
down those feelings
but like all feelings when they get
bigger than us
they control us rather than us them
my family and friends often make fun of
me because i once tried explaining that
a coach for my son’s
team got really angry and got himself
kicked out of the game
because his feelings got bigger than him
and my friend kate started laughing and
said
you mean he lost his yep
our feelings are really powerful and
that impacts our behavior
because i took on the role of good girl
in my family who seemingly kept it all
together
i worked really hard to close off my
pain and confusion
and i tried to safely tuck it away alone
you see that’s the key word alone
as human beings we’re not wired to live
or experience life alone
we’re wired to live in relation to
others there’s a tremendous amount of
research
social behavioral and neurobiological
studies
that supports the importance of human
connection to facilitate well-being
so it’s no surprise that it leaked out
my pain leaked out
and it’s no surprise that it happened in
my teens and early twenties
bulimia and depression it needed to come
out
those were dark years for me but
thankfully my close friends recognized
it
and a dear friend had the strength and
courage to stand outside my door
and say that either i had to go tell my
mom or she would
that was the beginning of my next
chapter
years of therapy and creating a new
narrative
opening myself to vulnerability by
sharing myself more openly
something very powerful happened in one
session
i realized that my family i
was still whole just different
after becoming a social worker i spent
the next 20 years building programs that
foster resiliency
empower kids and families to sit in the
mud together
to know that while each of their
experiences are unique
even if they both experience the same
death of a parent or sibling
their grief is their own because their
relationship was their own
and at the same time being with others
who truly get it
allows them to feel less alone and
normalizes their feelings
together they can challenge their
natural and developmentally appropriate
beliefs
of feeling like the only one in the
world who gets it
i believe that the sense of being alone
in your pain whatever that pain stems
from
is one’s greatest health risk factor
emotionally and physically
i think the way to preventatively combat
vulnerability
is through human connections
vulnerability is often perceived as a
bad
thing i believe that it’s necessary to
thrive
through shared vulnerability we connect
and when we connect
we’re not alone jeff’s place is
committed to being a voice for the
prevalence and need for similar
prevention programs
i spent the last 10 years developing the
inventory of youth adaptation to loss
a strength-based resiliency-focused
outcome measure
to understand the feelings and social
supports experienced by bereaved youth
to develop an evidence base for
bereavement interventions
our hope is that the inventory will
highlight the need
to better address the overall well-being
of grieving youth
and to impact public policy change so
that prevention programs like jeff’s
place
are sustainable one out of 15 kids in
massachusetts will experience the death
of a parent or sibling before the age of
nationally one in 14 kids or 5.2 million
will experience that death based on the
2020
childhood bereavement estimation model
results
by age 25 that number more than doubled
to
13.2 million these kids are at risk for
negative health outcomes
including traumatic grief substance
abuse
lower self-esteem dropping out of school
and making unhealthy choices
and at a higher risk for mental health
disorders such as depression and anxiety
childhood bereavement is a major health
issue that matters
and it impacts all of us there are a lot
of grieving kids
and adults too who need support
and coping strategies to recognize the
grief
and growth factors related to loss
grief theory has evolved from early
psychodynamic and attachment theorists
who focused on grief in terms of
pathology within the individual
to more contemporary theories such as
the conceptual frameworks we ascribed to
at jeff’s place
strobe and shu introduced the dual
process model of adaptive coping with
bereavement
as a way to understand the differences
between what they term two stressors
loss oriented such as focusing on the
deceased and death events
and restoration oriented such as
learning new skills to adapt to the loss
their underlying belief is that
oscillation between both
is needed for healthy adaptation in
coping with bereavement
dpm marked a huge theoretical shift in
bereavement theory
by moving away from solely thinking
about the lost experience
and incorporating restoration-oriented
thoughts and activities
as part of the grief process while the
popular stage theory presented by dr
elizabeth kubler-ross
has become the pop culture way of
knowing about the grief process in the
united states
contemporary theorists predominantly
recognize
that grief is not linear or task
restricted
but rather healthy grieving is seen as
internalizing the loss and maintaining a
connection
i’ll be at a different one while the
death of my brother shaped every aspect
of my personal and professional
trajectory
it’s never defined me it took me many
decades to recognize
that we all have stories of pain none of
us are free from loss
we all experience the myriad of human
emotions
the joys fears heartache and hope
true change i believe comes from looking
within
and connecting with our innermost selves
as well as risking
our insecurities and trusting others to
accompany us
trust empowers us to be vulnerable and
connect
both with ourselves and with others
this fosters gratitude and i believe
transformation
i know sounds easy right i’m sorry to
tell you
it’s not one and done we sometimes have
this belief
that if we want change or something
badly enough
we’ll somehow just get it and if we get
it once
we’ll always get it believe me i’ve
tried this for example
last spring i gave up caffeine i was so
proud of myself
but more than satisfying my ego i
actually felt better
my stomach aches were gone i had more
energy than ever before
and i slept well for the first time in
ages
one night recently i didn’t sleep well
so i had tea in the afternoon
it tasted so good can i tell you i was
shocked the next day
that i had slept fitfully and i woke up
feeling exhausted and dragged much of
the day
now i’m fully aware that my body and
mind
don’t mix well with caffeine yet i made
the choice to drink the tea
the key is choice
and being mindful that i we are always
in choice
our belief systems create our life
narratives which in turn
shape our actions only if we choose to
alter the story
can we do so authentically and in a
lasting way
it’s freaking hard every
single day this is a lifelong practice
but the good news is that the more you
practice
the more habit forming it becomes these
programs that i’ve had the privilege to
help build
are simply models of how we can thrive
when we sit in the mud together
sometimes we need to sit reflectively in
the mud by ourselves
sometimes together but we need to sit in
the mud
we need to feel its thickness the weight
of it as we trudge through it
and we need to get dirty who can sit in
the mud with you
if you don’t have anyone i promise you
there are others who will sit with you
use your community resources find a
group or a therapist
or ask your doctor or a healthcare
professional your clergy
a colleague or a friend sitting in the
mud
sucks and at the same time
it’s the greatest gift i continue to
give myself that i never seem to fully
master
my relationship with grief healing and
vulnerability
has evolved since jeff’s death and it’s
brought meaningful connections
personally and professionally all of
these experiences
have enabled me to clarify my vision
that we
create healing through connection and
vulnerability
thank you for inviting me to share some
of my story
please come sit in the mud
you