Make some pie charts
Elizabeth Kubler Ross is an expert on grief. According to her work, the accepted first stage of grief, generally, is denial. The second phase, as I recall, is anger. I keep waiting for these to happen. It has been many years though, and at this point, while I know I can look up the other three stages, and that some include mourning and sorrow, and guilt, they still, years later, seem irrelevant to my personal and professional situation, because it is all somehow blocked; the whole process feels oddly inaccessible to me because I keep failing to understand the awful cruelty that I never, ever deserved.
In certain circumstances known as traumatic losses, Ms. Ross hypothesizes that the first stage isn't actually denial. Sometimes, we can't even begin to grieve because the trauma or injury isn't comprehensible. There are various circumstances where this could be possible: maybe it was somehow hidden from us what happened; maybe there is not evidence for what was lost; maybe it was not communicated clearly; maybe nobody was sorry or nobody empathized or emotionally validated the loss; maybe someone important to us is unexpectedly missing and there is a hope and reason to not begin grieving; maybe the reason for what happened isn't clear or understood; maybe we're unsure if the loss is permanent; maybe it is enduring a virtual battlefield that is real emotionally in how it is shockingly unfair or cruel. There are many reasons why we might struggle to comprehend a deeply important loss, and struggle to begin grieving--even if it was a huge and substantive loss.
I am in this group of persons struggling to begin grieving, and, emotionally, it feels a bit analogous to being the ball in the pinball machine, having been banged around so unexpectedly and still hurting emotionally. It feels so odd seemingly not having a way to stop the players from hurting me more. Attorneys I hired didn't help me. The court hasn't helped me or been fair. Police haven't helped as I asked. My former workplace violated its policies or conducted them in obviously wrong ways. The abusers were not checked by the authorities or fairly disciplined as I prayed they would be. I don't know what to do that would help myself, I tried nearly everything--contacting authorities, contacting government, contacting the church, seeking healthcare services. I didn't ask to become a specimen of traumatic loss or traumatic brain injury, as if a subject of concussion football research. None of this was supposed to happen to any of us... and, really, especially not to me, because I didn't even play football or ride a motorcycle or join the military!
Ms. Kubler Ross, the grief expert, speculated about whether grieving along the proposed "standard
path--one that seems linear, but includes lots of circling back and incremental progress forward--would be possible, and whether the grief process could commence, when a situation like an incomprehensible loss occurred. I never imagined my "friends and family" would make me her research project, and I'm very disappointed that they chose to do that to me, especially without my consent.
After an extended period of what I personally consider emotional torture and war crimes, I read and paged through various books involving grief and loss. From these, and an emerging personal interest in drawing and painting, I had an idea about processing grief or loss which may help me and others having similar difficulty in grieving. It involves trying to develop a visual representation of our loss.
This idea is not my own. I cannot cite the authors who had similar ideas, because I do not have those references available to me. What I am proposing is somehow different, though, from what they wrote and suggested.
The first idea for developing a visual representation for our loss is to make a pie chart with whatever area of life the loss involved. Could be dreams of our future, could be roles we had in life or hoped to have, could be fantasies, could be how we spent our days, could be missing supportive persons/pets in our lives, could be sexual. The chart can be about absolutely any aspect of life. And, there can be more than one chart. Title the chart(s). I suggest we divvy up the circle(s) into increments (hours, percentages) that are relevant to that aspect of life, and real for us, and then use a marker or crayon or etc. to totally blacken in the areas of the chart that represent our loss. The blacker the better for those sections, so we can see these are the parts of that component of our lives that are now "missing".
This exercise may seem somewhat discouraging, or too "me-focused", but that is not the intention. The intention is to validate the significance and sometimes enormity of our feelings and hurt. The reason life becomes difficult for us is that there are huge changes. Intellectually and emotionally digesting what was lost in a powerful visual way may be necessary for us to comprehend what is now missing from our life, and it gives us a new perspective on the "okayness" of the need to grieve, and/or to feel something less than optimal. Making charts like this for all areas of life that have changed may allow us to accept how significant our need to grieve really is. It is self-validating. The black areas were once really there, and meaningful. And now they aren't there, or aren't there in the same way.
It's okay that we have feelings about that. It is NORMAL to have feelings about that. If we were a CEO in a meeting about revenue, and huge chunks were suddenly blacked out, none of us would be surprised that the new situation might require significant intervention, leadership, and/or change, or at least wisdom to understand the nature of the change and loss and what was needed to endure it. The goal is to comprehend the aspects of life that are impacted in a visual and seen way. It hopefully gets us out of a nebulous stuck feeling or feeling ashamed about why we are experiencing such difficulty moving forward. This is why, even though it may seem too "me-focused" to make charts about how our own lives changed in a loss situation involving someone else, the reality is, that loss IS about us and how we choose to move forward with that loss. We must have the emotional intelligence to know that a) we are human, b) feelings are part of our humanity, c) we need to deal with our feelings and the loss when we choose how to behave, and d) our behavior during this time, and moving forward, is our choice.
In traumatic losses, it is said that our brains process, again and again, the details of what happened. People agreeing to listen to us may find this so frustrating. They might be asking, why is she saying the same things over and over? Or, why can't he move forward? The brain does this intentionally, it ruminates on the details, and it is HEALTHY for it to do so. There was a massive loss and it hurt us emotionally. It is not safe to continue in an unsafe environment. The brain keeps replaying the circumstances to try to understand, in order to HEALTHILY avoid more hurt in the future. The logic is: If we avoid those circumstances, or understand the reasons it happened, maybe we can feel safer and avoid being hurt in the future. It can be so frustrating for supportive people in our lives--the rumination, but perhaps sharing these charts with trusted persons could help them to understand why the loss is difficult to get beyond. It gives us, the emotionally injured, permission for self-care. We can see and comprehend the impact of the loss. Sometimes seeing it is really powerful. In a way, even if the loss itself cannot be comprehended, at least we can visually comprehend our response and emotional reaction to that loss. And that is progress.
Grief is the struggle of how we begin to live differently with those missing areas (the black parts of the pie chart). And we will; the first part is pulling out this chart and feeling whatever we need to feel when we see those missing pieces. Schedule some time in your day to do that if you need to; maybe giving yourself that time, planning for it, helps. Hopefully the seeing helps evoke the feeling. Maybe put that chart in a protective plastic sleeve and use a wet-dry marker to write all the feelings on top of that, getting it all out. Pray, breathe, exercise, think of some positive solutions, and then consider the day when those feelings and the emotional pain are finally lessened, and gently wipe the tough words away. Gradually, maybe the hard words and feelings are less intense. Maybe they change from disbelief to some sort of semblance to Ms. Ross's suggested path... denial, anger, guilt, sorrow, etc. Maybe eventually we can give ourselves permission to consider the opportunities, (if any), that arise from our new circumstances.
Maybe, ultimately, recovery is a journey on how to dream again in this new and changed reality. Yes, we can dream and hope, even with those emotionally or physically "missing pieces". At least I think and hope so. I'm obviously on this emotional journey myself and don't have all the answers. But I have some ideas about ways to move forward. Sometimes I feel like God gives me ideas that help others more than they help me, and I'm not sure about what that is. Maybe, if I'm honest, I'm really terrified of making those charts--terrified to see that the American public supported some "other" instead of me. God, that really sucks; it is really, truly horribly unfair.
I think it begins with being deeply honest about where we are right now. For those of us who are religious, I think God is okay with us being real--and sometimes also with swearing. God can handle it, us, our reality. It is not optimal, of course, but neither is enduring abuse by "sweet little jewish women" or church theatre majors, or military generals who look handsome in uniforms, all of them hiding war crimes behind their fashion and style and smiles and possibly their facade of bravado. (Wouldn't someone who was actually brave and honorable stop the abusers from ever beginning their abuse?) And I think seeing it, the abuse, for what it really is, and being real about it, sometimes helps. For me a huge part of it involved my dad. Probably most people have no idea how horrible it is to have a dad who allows you to be pimped, intellectually, emotionally, sexually (or otherwise). And I'm glad for you. That is a huge wound, as if I had no value to my own dad, and mom, for that matter. And that is why I don't respect them at all anymore. They aren't worth it, and haven't earned it.
Here's one of my charts. The Professor and Wife categories are now totally blacked out, and the rest of the categories are substantially changed due to the way my life has been deceitfully impacted by others. The roles I once had are not the same. I don't want to be a professor around a community of jerk people who abuse for their personal gain, and I don't want to be part of their abusive way of life. I am not a game. I am not fantasy football. I am not Charlie Brown, and you are not Lucy, always grinning while moving the football (is there a nastier cartoon bitch?).
There is, clearly, much to grieve, because, although these persons didn't care about me (obviously), I cared about them, and I was totally unaware that they intended to (and did) use me for their gain. And that is totally disgusting. I think they wanted to insinuate I was a pig in space, like William Wilburforce, if we substitute the Wilbur from Charlotte's Web into the Space Force, but, for me, I think it is clear who the actual emotional "pigs" are in this situation. (None of this is meant to actually put any person or animal in space or it's allegorical representation on earth--I find that notion exceptionally cruel).
If I'm deeply honest, the gray shading in the mom, daughter, friend, and sister categories are optimistic. It's hard to be really honest with myself about this. What has happened to me really hurts emotionally. I can't find the right words to express it. The number of betrayals... every person I know well up to this day has betrayed me in some way. I think about the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. This guy went nuts and rerouted his entire life to seek revenge over ONE betrayal. That helps me to see how brave and honorably I've behaved, to hope for and seek justice and discipline for the offenders in the ways that seem right and legal and available to me, and to refuse to try to reroute my life toward vengeance, yet to seek and request discipline for the offenders by and through those willing to impose it in a right way.
Of course there is much to mourn, but it's been so hard to allow those hurts to escape. I think about the concept of surface tension, and it feels like an almost infinite, inescapable surface tension over a roiling sorrow, like a droplet with very low vapor pressure. All this has made me understand why some young people who were emotionally hurting had supposedly turned to a practice known as cutting themselves--to allow the hurt out, to feel on the body what is felt in emotional hurt, to make the pain consistent with the emotional reality, but this is not healthy. If that is you, seek professional help, because that is not safe or alright. There are better and safer ways to respond that are healthier than us choosing to become our own enemy. Then we have to overcome not only the hurts imposed upon us by cruel jerks, but our own hurts to ourselves. Please don't do that--you deserve to be your own hero. These kinds of bad choices only make our situation and our recovery to emotional and physical wellness more difficult.
Although I believe sorrow is a gift in times of difficulty--that all our feelings are gifts--some, like sorrow and anger and fear, are rarely, if ever, desired. Finding ways to use our feelings to inform us about our emotional and physical circumstances is a key aspect of emotional intelligence. And yes, emotional intelligence is a real thing. That does not mean we allow our emotions to rule us, it means that, as healthy adults, we have the awareness to recognize what our emotions are telling us about our emotional and physical reality, so that we can consider how to behave and how to live. These charts may help us to access emotions that were somehow stuck or buried, so we can feel, and we can consider how to behave and how to live while we cope with the emotional injury or loss.
A woman I once considered a dear friend, Marie-Pierre Laborie, once told me in a call that she was "too emotionally hurt" to continue our friendship. I had done absolutely nothing to hurt her, it was all her fault. It was the greatest lie she ever spoke, claiming to be too emotionally hurt to continue a friendship with me. Worse, she spoke that to me, knowing or hoping that would become my reality, the emotional injury. What a horrible jerk of a person, right? I'm so glad I will never, ever be connected to or in the persona of Marie-Pierre Laborie! Even if she swapped things that might fool a DNA analyzer, I will never have her persona or soul. What a fool I was to consider her a friend, she was simply a great fake, an amazing pretender, for more than 20 years. She claimed someone asked her to "teach me some lessons", and, I think she made that up also. I think SHE decided to interfere in my life in very hurtful and cruel ways. She even told me she loved me, causing me to immediately asked--you mean friend love, right, because I am not a man nor am I a lesbian. I think at that time she was trying to pretend I was her pet or child. Once she was somehow tied to my German Deutsche Bank account, they said at the bank when I opened the account that they needed a German permanent resident listed for some reason when I opened the account. I think I'd like to litigate against that guy at the bank who said that to me, because I never wanted Marie-Pierre Laborie involved in my financial life, or as my teacher or parent or child or manager or whatever she has faked being in relation to me.
Despite all the cruelty, I'm glad to be me--Nikki Robitaille Brown--and to be the only person in the whole universe who is me. Others have insinuated I should take up some other person's life, as if they set aside their lives to try to be me and their identities were open for me to "use"--but I didn't offer them my life, and I still don't. Why would they think I might want to step into their lives? Why would I ever want to do that? Nobody else knows what this has been to live. These people seem to know absolutely nothing about emotional wellness and authenticity or how terrible it would feel to become like the people who abused me, or to use their identities for any reason. Yuck.
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