Connecticut, Grief, and Hope, & What My Clients Have Taught Me

I have a six, almost seven year-old boy.  His eyes are big and brown; his lashes long and luxurious.  He  calls me "mama" in his sweet voice, and each time I hear him say it I feel warmth in my heart.  I look at him now and wonder so many things that I am certain everyone is wondering too; how does one disturb that kind of innocence, ignore it, destroy it?  And the pain the parents in CT are left with seems unbearable.  I have to grieve with them and for them and recognize what kind of risk one takes in loving someone in that way (a risk well worth it).  So, like many others, I find myself searching for something~information, understanding, insight, and most certainly I would like some hope for those in the midst of such unbearable grief and horror.

I hear a lot of stories in the work that I do.  So many things that seem insurmountable, and yet, day after day I see my clients and listen to them tell me their stories.   It's a thing I have said before~that trauma survivors are heroes.   That doesn't mean there is no suffering or grief, that recovery is easy, and I wouldn't be so naive as to say that time heals all wounds.  However, what I continue to learn from them  is that each person, within the context of their own experience, is in those moments of horror, coping with it in some way.  The coping isn't visible-we learn of it later when words can be paired up with events.  Part of the truth I hear from survivors, over and over, is how they survived...what they did on the inside to manage what was happening on the outside.  My little tidbit of hope is that for each and every victim and survivor of a victim there is and was coping.  There is family, there is community, there is an entire nation grieving with them, and there is no doubt of the gravity of their pain.

Essentially, what I hope to remind myself of is that thing I have learned in the work I do; that we do have a capacity to care for ourselves in nuanced ways.  It's difficult to talk about hope without sounding  as though I don't understand or that I am naive.  Perhaps this is my own coping~I can't be certain.  I can, however speak to what I have seen and be thankful to those who have invited me into their lives.  There is some light in having felt the truth of the human spirit's capacity to save itself in the face of the unspeakable.