Pain Demands To Be Felt

Photo by Aliyah Jamous on Unsplash

When I was in high school, the film Forrest Gump was released. For some reason, an excursion was planned – perhaps as an end of year treat – and so my fellow year 11 students and I walked down to the local cinema from school to see the film. We had the whole cinema to ourselves, packed into every seat. For those of you who don’t know, (#spoiler alert) the main character Forrest loses some very important people at different times through the story.

As he lost his friend, I cried. Then his lost his mother, I cried harder. When he lost his love, I was in full bawl. I was crying so hard, the students and the teacher down the other end of my row were looking around, trying to figure out who was shaking the seats. As quietly as I could I was crying but with such force, it was shaking the seats. 

I’ve always been a cry-er.  It happens when I get fully immersed in a story, when I’m invested in the characters and the world of that narrative. At the age of 16 I had hardly dealt with anything too traumatic. I was achieving well at school, had a part-time job, was learning to drive and was usually annoyed by my younger sisters. Pretty standard.  My dad had suffered from heart disease for years but always seemed well enough, at least from a teenager’s perspective.

So, this penchant for an extreme emotional response to tragedy in film and literature was not triggering my own baggage – it was just my personal reaction to the story and the pain of the characters. Forrest Gump didn’t cry as he lost his loved ones – that’s ok, I cried enough for both of us.

Fast forward to my life now.  I have endured a number of tragedies in the last 20 years – more than I think is my fair share, but surely less than some.  I have attended the funerals of friends, students, elderly relatives, my father and more recently my seven-year old son. I have become very familiar with crying, in fact it can still happen on a daily basis. Intensity does differ depending on the day. It can be just the sting of tears that I push back, to a weep or a full cry through to perhaps screaming at the heavens. My tears have tracked so many individual pathways across my face and down my neck. They have collected in my ears and soaked my pillowcase as I lay in bed.

So, the grieving person I am now has the added complication of already being a ‘cry-er’ and prone to overt emotional distress when triggered. In the weeks and months that following Tom’s death, time between crying was short and punctuated by periods of numbness and exhaustion.  I would be distracted for a time by family and friends and attempting small tasks but if too much time had passed between a release of tears, I could feel it well up and build inside me like a pressure cooker. I felt growing anxiety and become overwhelmed until I was able to give in to it and sob for as long as it took.

More and more I see that today’s society is focused on a culture of happiness. In such a world where happiness is the ultimate goal and anything in contrast must be avoided. This means grief can be very uncomfortable for people to witness in its raw, desperate state. It’s hard to watch someone cry. Particularly if it’s a full blown ‘ugly’ cry. But even if it’s a voice that wobbles, cracks and breaks or a welling of tears that aren’t quite ready to fall. It’s hard to watch.

There are some that would prefer that we never see it, share it, never allow ourselves to feel it. Even those that say they are fine with negative emotions will still want to fix it for you. They want to help, but there is no fix for it. And eventually they wish you would put your mask back on. Remember – happiness is the goal.

The other night I found myself with the house to myself which is a rarity these days. My husband was visiting friends and my son Cameron was at his father’s house.  A big decision - What to do with these precious evening hours that I could selfishly dedicate to myself? There’s a push for self-care in the world of grieving. For anyone for that matter – it’s good for your mental health they say. The common associations with self-care might be: drawing a bubble bath with candles, getting a massage or having a beer with mates. All very relaxing and enjoyable options, yes? For my quiet night at home I chose something vastly different.

I had been meaning to watch a movie that I had missed when it first came out. A movie that was guaranteed to get my cry on. Not a film I would ask my husband or anyone else to watch with me. There would be no holding back.  ‘The Fault in our Stars’ is a story about two teenagers living with and dying of cancer. I settled down with a delicious dinner, a bottle of red wine and my box of tissues. That poor box of tissues didn’t know what hell it was in for. I was armed and ready. I was making a deliberate choice to step out and fall into the well. I knew it would hurt. I did it anyway.

It was a beautiful film with moments of light-hearted joy and passion and friendship. It was also heart-wrenching and triggered so many memories and thoughts about my son’s battle with brain cancer. There is an important line which ties the movie together. “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt”.

I started crying early on and had to pause it countless times to give in to some full throttle wailing.   In those breaks, I sometimes found myself wandering around the house in tears, looking at photos of my little boy. One thing in the film might have got me started but my mind raced from here to there about everything that I am still so sad and angry about. I’d go back watch some more, then press pause and go another round of ‘ugly cry’. Watch, cry, repeat.

I found myself prolonging those interruptions to the movie and following whatever strand of grief came into my heart and mind. I purposefully stretched those tangents out to fully experience just how much I miss him. Whether it was calling out to him for forgiveness, chanting that it isn’t fair, asking where he had gone, imagining what sort of man he would have become, or questioning every decision I ever made. I let myself feel every bit of pain and suffering I could. Not sure why I needed to submerge myself in heartbreak but here’s my best guess. 

Firstly, I think deep down I feel that I deserve to hurt. Rational or not. My son suffered, so should I. Leaning into the  pain is the punishment I deserve for letting him down and for every other thing that I still feel guilt for. Secondly, by consciously choosing to visit memories, fears and feeling everything, good and bad – I’m spending time in my relationship with Tom. It sounds weird and a little new-agey but I focus so much of my time focused on other important relationships with my other son Cameron, my husband, family and friends, etc.  Why shouldn’t I spend some dedicated time focused on Tom? Parenting can be hard. Bereaved parenting is even harder. 

I decided to write a book a few months after Thomas passed away called Big Hand, Little Hand. This was another example of spending time with Tom and it was really hard. I am the queen of procrastination and the more important and difficult a task, the more skilled I am at finding distractions. But I made a promise to myself and to Tom and I leaned in. Every writing session I cried, my eyes blurred, and the tears splashed onto the keyboard. I forced myself to remember everything I could so that his memories were safe and stored in this account of his heroism. 

Almost every person I talk to about the book says to me: “It must have been quite cathartic writing the book”. Catharsis is defined as: the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions. A discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition. Let’s just say upfront I find the words ‘purge’ and ‘discharge’ quite offensive and so apologise for including them in my writing. Some words are just gross. Anyway - I digress. Regardless, catharsis is exactly what I have needed along this road of grief. My pain still demands to be felt. 

Writing the book and even writing this blog is cathartic. Art, music, literature and film are all avenues to trigger the release of emotion that builds up and affects your wellbeing. It might look like you are falling apart when it is happening – a wet, red face, swollen eyes, distorted and stretched features, tension through your whole body and let’s not forget the ungodly sounds that are wrenched from your throat… But falling apart is ok.

When you fall apart for a time, you get the chance to put yourself back together. And when you do, you find you are stronger. Like the athletes that rip up their muscles in training and grow stronger muscles each time they repair, you are stronger for each tear you shed. You are lighter as well. The burden has been lifted for a time and you’ve released the pressure valve with each experience of actively, deliberately grieving.  

So, while a bubble bath is a lovely escape for some, with fancy bath salts and time to relax in the quiet – it turns out that one of my best strategies for ‘self-care’ is to let fly the ugly cry. Shatter myself to pieces to caste a stronger, lighter version of me each time I take off my mask of ‘comfortable and acceptable’ happiness. Sometimes I just need to be true to who I am - a bereaved mum who sometimes just needs to cry. Because when you love deeply, you grieve deeply, and the pain demands to be felt.