Healings, rhymes with feelings

Last week's post made me think I should write something about being emotionally healthier, working out the issues that we have with loved ones before they're gone.

It's a worthy goal, but I find it very hard to say anything helpful about it. I kept thinking about different things one could try, and then found myself thinking they wouldn't work.

I believe I mentioned that my own healing regarding my father took about fifty years. Does anyone really want a 50 year timeline for healing? 

Part of my pessimism comes from reading YA and middle reader books.

Most recently, I read The Sea in Winter by Christine Day. 

Maisie loves ballet. All of her hopes and dreams are there, and all of her friends are from her ballet class.

Then a friend encourages her to try a move that she isn't ready for, she gets injured, and everything falls apart.

Her parents are very supportive. They would be willing to listen, but she doesn't want to talk to them about finding new goals and activities, because that would mean giving up. She is embarrassed to tell them that she has been shutting out the one friend, especially as she has less to share with her other friends. 

You can get pretty tired of reporting when all you can really say over and over again is that it still hurts. 

Plus sometimes the super energetic and enthusiastic younger brother that she does love is just too much.

When I initially thought about writing on this topic, I thought about the importance of being able to tell someone if they have hurt you, and them being willing to hear it. It would be important to be able to both give apologies and accept apologies.

There are people who cannot do this. They have their own trauma around it. 

If they don't do anything too terrible, that can be okay. Maybe you can live with it, and them, or maybe you need space.

My father (here he is again) could never admit he was wrong. I remember picking up from him this sense that if people see that you have made a mistake, they will never let you live it down.

That is true of some people, but it is also pretty common that if you are wrong, people are going to know. That means not admitting it is only exacerbating whatever you have going on. (I learned this on my mission, so around twenty-one and twenty-two.)

Noticing things can help, but sometimes it hurts a lot, and we shrink from the pain. 

Sometimes the solution will actually solve the pain, but we cling to the pain.

I believe I have told this story before, but I did once lie to a therapist. It was on the issue of whether I could see that I could be loved. I could not, but I knew if I responded honestly she wouldn't let it go. I did not want to have to fight the issue.

I was around thirty-one then. I did learn that I could be loved not too long after, though it still took over a decade to understand what that meant. 

I am sure there are people that can learn faster. Some have a better foundation, so don't have as far to go.

There were probably times when I was unnecessarily stubborn. That might be a family trait.

What I keep coming back to is having grace for each other, including ourselves.

People need times to be sad and grieve and to be angry. They can even need some time in denial, possibly. We can care while knowing what we can't fix, and not trying to impose impossible timelines for healing.

We can care more about others than our pride.

We can share, and we can back off. 

There are lots of things that we can do gently.

It helps if you are not in a hurry.