A Privileged Life

It’s Easter weekend and that has got me thinking. Every holiday, whether Christian, Jewish, Hallmark or other, in English tends to be prefaced by the salutation “Happy …”.

When I say that I have led a privileged life, it is because, prior to December 1st, 2021, I had never not enjoyed a “happy Easter”, “happy/merry Christmas”, “happy mother’s day” or happy -insert your holiday here-, with the sole exception of one Halloween in 1990. I was privileged enough to never have to second guess wishing others a happy holiday because I had never experienced anything but happy holidays. That privilege was taken away from me when Charlie died.

Colloquially speaking, this sucks for me. In the midst of all this “suckiness”, however, is a proverbial silver lining. I will never again assume that a holiday is happy for everyone. I am more careful in addressing others at times of year traditionally thought to be universally “happy”. This is not a happy Easter for my family., any more than it is for many others.

Today, I truly understand that holidays can be the least happy of days for anyone who has experienced loss, trauma, or otherwise negative events in recent, or even not so recent, times. In other words, my empathy meter has been filled.

Yesterday I was reading an academic article about therapeutic treatment of suicide survivors (those left behind after a loved one’s death by suicide). The statement that stayed with me was this,

The recognition of what has been called Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) in survivors after traumatic experiences (Tedeschi and Calhoun, 2008; Calhoun and Tedeschi, 2014) is a new and burgeoning field of inquiry. PTG can be manifested in a changed outlook on life (i.e., an altered assumptive world), greater resilience in the face of stress, and the development of increased prosocial feelings and behavior such as compassion, non-judgmentalness, and hope. Recent research on PTG in suicide loss survivors has suggested that some people show evidence of PTG after suicide (Moore et al., 2015; Genest et al., 2017; Drapeau et al., 2019) (Jordan, 2020).

This statement encapsulated what I have felt for the past few months. Even as my pain has haunted me, I have realized that it has also given me a much greater understanding of the complexity and intensity of trauma and increased empathy for others who have experienced hard emotions. Where I used to be able to watch a news story about a bereaved sibling with an intellectually distanced appreciation for what they must be feeling, today I actually feel the depth of their pain. I relate to it viscerally.

One of the ways in which I have noticed this different perspective has been through watching the news stories over the past 50 days in Ukraine. It has been totally different to my experience of watching war stories in the past. Today I cry because I know the pain that those parents and siblings feel after losing their beloved family members. I feel it in a way I couldn’t possibly understand before. This is the gift that Charlie gave me and one I plan to hold tightly and recognize as making me a better human being. I will never be able to let go of my pain; the least I can do is to let it guide me in helping others to live through theirs. I hope that what I am experiencing is what is Post-Traumatic Growth or “PTG” and that I can continue to build upon that for all my days to come.

May this Easter be happy and, if not happy, restful and restorative for all.

Work Cited

Jordan, JR (2020) Lessons Learned: Forty Years of Clinical Work With Suicide Loss Survivors. Front. Psychol. 11:766. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00766