http://www.timjlawrence.com/blog/201...n-for-a-reason
A great article to read, if you have been through grief and trauma or not. Especially if you are trying to sit with someone in grief or trauma. It brings up some things for me, how I get angry when people tell me I should be a different way in the world (not so hard and tough) when they don't have the same experience.
I am working right now so won't go to the article yet, but just wanted to say I appreciate the way you are and am glad you are you, the way you are!
Wow. That was perfect. My cousin lost her husband in a car accident 3 months ago. People are telling her to "get over it and move on". I'm sharing this with her.
Float On: My "Happy Place" is on my little kayak in the coves of Table Rock Lake.
How could anyone be so rude, Float On? That's unreal!!
I read this article yesterday on Facebook and I thought it was excellent.
Interesting article. I read a similar article yesterday by a woman who shared similar sentiments: she had lost a daughter shortly after birth, and people tried to make her feel better by telling her that her daughter's in heaven now. The writer is an atheist and she pointed out how unhelpful, and, in fact, how hurtful it was when people said that.
I almost posted that article, but given we've just raked poor UltraAngler over the coals in my other thread on atheism, I chose not to share it here. But it was a similar sentiment: things that some people feel will assuage grief do exactly the opposite.
I personally believe in all that Viktor Frankl has written about the place that the search for meaning has in a human life, and I think those well-meaning platitudes are based on trying to help someone find meaning--find some sense in the nonsensical. Just recently a dear friend of the family lost a 26 year old nephew who had great promise to an accidental heroin overdose--does my friend want to hear that there's a reason for that? The "reason" is, he stuck a needle in his arm not knowing he was delivering himself a lethal dose of drug. That's the tragic truth.
What about the woman hiking on her honeymoon and stepping where she shouldn't have and plummeting down a cliff. Too often life seems random and existential. And for the bereft, the grief of a moment is the grief of an eternity, so I agree with the writer that no one person can put a band-aid on tragedy. All you can do if you are trying to be helpful to someone experiencing it is to be there and listen.
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
www.silententry.wordpress.com
It is terrible, and I totally believe that people do that. At least I have not heard that to my friends who have lost a child or a spouse in an untimely way (anything other than old age). I would take someone out for that, cannot fathom.
The point for me is even if we do grow and develop parts of ourselves based on trauma we don't have to, and some people never do. It does not make trauma 'worth it'. I LOVE the short story Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen. I have the book from college still. It is a story about an old woman and how she is based on what she had to do to survive over her life. One grand daughter understands, very sweet but reminds me we do not have to have a moment where everything is magically healed.
My issue is having been in an emotionally abusive marriage, I don't play nice in some situations. Part of the huge triggers that happened at work last year in fact. But if you were in some situations you might want me there to see through every layer of BS instead of someone 'nice'.
I think that my life -- probably most peoples' lives -- are something we salvage. Bad stuff happens. We somehow carry on, which part of the article mentioned.
It is a good article. I like how it critically examined that phrase "Everything happens for a reason."
That is too often something people just accept without question -- without outrage!
Thank you Rodeo!!Originally Posted by rodeosweetheart
This article was good at pointing out out behavior we can all agree is bad. Mouthing platitudes in the face of tragedy likely does not help the victims all of the times, but sometimes it might. Murmuring that a dead child is now an angel in heaven probably represents a picture of comfort to some people if not the chief mourner in the case above.
Deaths and other tragedies are high emotion, uncharted waters in a social group,because no one really knows how the mourners are felling, what particular brand of suffering they take on.
So the safe , and really only logical thing to SAY is an expression of sorrow and regret about the tragedy.
But it is interesting to contemplate what causes people to act like dunderheads in these situations. Is it a new societal thing? I doubt it. Or maybe it reflects a mix in this country of different cultures. The Baby. In
heaven idea would have been, at one time, the idea of everyone in a particular social group.
There is a scene in the film The Ledge (great movie, btw) where something like this is discussed. Anyone else seen The Ledge?
Anyway, my sis is studying be a nurse. She is very, very agnostic -- very science-minded. And I think that when she enters into nursing she is going to have to deal with talk of children who passed away being angels and other such things consciously and methodically. A "mechanical bedside manner" might be an accurate phrase.
When someone on her Facebook mentions a deceased loved one being "an angel now" my sis says, dismissively and decidedly: "That is not real."
As for me, when something tragic happens to someone and comfort is warranted I try my best to comfort them within the parameters of my own values.
When a friend's grandpa died I relayed to him these stories his grandpa told me -- life lessons stories and what I learned from them. This was moving to my friend. I think it made him feel like his grandpa's sphere of influence was larger. And it made him more at ease with his grandpa's life ending.
My mom's friend's dad died a couple years back. At the funeral she came up to me and said, in tears: "He is in a better place now."
I just said, "Yes, he is" and gave her a hug.
Her better place was the heaven of her imagination. To me the better place was simply the totally unconscious state we call death.
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