Sitting Shiva
When our children are in pain, or our spouses or partners, for a recovering codependent like me, I first believe the lie that I can and must fix it. As codependents, we prefer to get in front of others’ pain instead of sitting with them in it.
This has never been more true than watching my eight year old daughter, Stella, meet Anxiety. I was an anxious child. I understood and had the deepest empathy for the battle she was fighting. I know the capacity of this darkness and where it can lead. All I want is for Anxiety to leave her alone. I do not want her to be plagued by this shitty companion.
One afternoon in sixth grade I found myself pacing around my kitchen home alone. Anxiety was there. And Anger. And Sadness too. We had a small island in the middle of the kitchen and I kept circling around and around and around, stopping at the end of the counter and opening the glass drawers where my mom kept dried beans and split peas. We would run our hands through them and it was so soothing. I needed soothing.
I could feel Something going terribly wrong inside of me. Like maybe there were two thin veils: the one that leads to God and behind the other a different dimension with access to another depth of darkness. I started thinking about taking out a knife and cutting my wrist. This polaroid of self-destruction was like a magnet to my brain. No matter which way I turned, the image was there. I opened a drawer and slid two knives onto the counter. I let my eyes wander up and down their cold, straight edges. Eyes darting, heart racing, slippery voices whispering at me, “you can end this pain now and go onto a better place.”
Then another voice, “We need help.”
Some sort of life preservation was beating in my chest and I picked up the phone. This was before cell phones. You could not text someone. You had to know WHERE A PERSON WAS and call their LANDLINE.
I dialed my dad’s office. No answer. I took a risk and called a new friend from school, the petite redhead from sixth-period PE, Katherine. I do not have conscious recollection of the time I spent waiting for Katherine. But as time always does, it went on. When she arrived, she was calm and still. We sat close to one another on the red leather couch while I told her my story. I could not tell you one thing Katherine said to me that day. She was just a child herself. She did not have any words of healing, but her mere presence, sitting shiva with her hurting friend saved me that day. Together and With.
In all my life, this is one of the bravest thing I’ve ever done. Reaching out in vulnerability when you are in pain or crisis to a person who your Spirit tells you is safe is one of life’s most daunting and courageous acts.
A dark cloud followed me around after that. I could not unring this bell and depression set in. Katherine and I got away with this being a secret. I got to hide my pain. I wore the mask of regular, normal, fine. This is the beginning of the schemes of whatever the hell is on the dark side of that veil. Never yelling, never demanding. Always whispering to the darkest and most vulnerable part of your heart, “Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone. They won’t understand.”
The highlight of my summer - Camp Huawni - our church’s summer youth camp rolled around with my secret still intact. Until one day Sadness and Anxiety and Loneliness ganged up on me and I ran off into a field, curled up into a ball and wept. There was no one to call, no one to tell. I was alone with this pain on a campground with a few hundred kids. Not Together. Not With.
This is one of the tragedies of adolescence for many teenagers and for some, the reality follows you into adulthood: you are constantly surrounded by “friends,” not a lot of minutes of your life are spent in solitude and yet, you are covered up in loneliness.
I don’t recall the reality of time passing, but it did, until I realized I was being carried. I had been picked up from the ground and was being carried back to camp by my brother’s best friend, Jeffrey. My brother, Chad, was two years ahead of me in school. He and Jeffrey were extraordinarily tall, skinny, lanky boys who were always my heroes. They were great at sports, totally adorable, popular, funny and slightly cocky in their Z Cavaricci jeans and Timberland boots. I idolized them both. Jeffrey passed me from his long arms into my brothers strong hold. He carried me back to the cafeteria to see my mom.
Shame covered me as I shared my truth with her, this one who loved me so. What could possibly make me feel this way? My own mother’s heart breaks to think of what she must have felt as I exhaled my darkness into her world. We walked together for a while quietly letting the reality of it sink in. Our pastor, Stephen came and asked if we could talk. My legs dangled off the back of a dusty pickup truck as Stephen sat by my side, his gentle Spirit comforting like goldilocks laying her head to rest on the bed that was just right.
Once home, my parents tried to understand and assuage my fears. They asked the hardest question - had someone done something inappropriate to me. I assured everyone there had been no physical trauma, which in a way, made me feel worse, shameful. What was so wrong with me to feel this way? And they got me a counselor - Dave.
Dave’s office became my safe place. I could be dark and sad. I did not have to be on or up. Dark and sad was okay at Dave’s. This was the beginning of my realization that I saw other people’s problems and challenges as the REAL ones and mine as the fake ones, mine as the ones that only a complainer would bitch about and only a weak person would be overcome by. Shame would easily convince me of my insignificance and flimsiness. We began working through my lifelong battle with depression, anxiety, codependency and perfectionism.
But this early introduction to Anxiety pointed me towards my inner life and sent me on a journey as a Learner and a Believer. My pain became a touch point, a reminder of unfulfilled longings, which sent me searching for my true self. And grounded me at a very young age in practices of recovery. I learned how to externalize Anxiety and call her out as the real bitch that she is. I beat back against her with gentleness to myself. I kept notecards by my bed to write down her thoughts if she woke me up in the middle of the night. Seeing them on paper gave me options. I could decide whether or not what she thought was valid or total bull shit. I began dismantling perfectionism which would set me up to reject religious legalism. I would not come to understand the magnitude of this gift until well into my adulthood. My depression helped me see others in light of their capacity for healing. Not killing myself began my journey towards finding my Self.
So even though I know that Suffering produces Perseverance and Perseverance invites Hope, as a parent I was still pleading with God for some sort of ease from the tension for my sweet Stella James. Anne Lamott says there are only three prayers: help, thanks and wow. So I cried out, “Dear God, help!” And like Kate did for me that day, I devoted time to sitting Shiva with my girl. Shiva is a common Jewish tradition of sitting with the family of a person who has died. Visitors bring meals and sit quietly in the home of a mourner. Silence is a companion to Shiva; we wait for the mourner to speak before speaking. Our presence is the point.
I join Stella for lunch. We are quiet together. She might share a note about the day, a detail of one of her treasured new books. We only have thirty minutes to rub the salve of our togetherness on the wound of our pending separation. She has made it four hours, she must only make it two and a half more. Tears are shed. Goodbyes are said. And I am gone again.
Back to the truck where I pray, “Dear God, help.” This was my Shiva with Stella. Thirty quiet minutes over peanut butter and jelly and a cake pop in the center of a cold and crowded cafeteria.