When I Held Up a Mirror, Hate Was Staring Back
The onion is waiting to be peeled. Healing demands we do.
Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash
Grief is the remarkably complex process of adapting to an important loss. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the aftermath of my wife and daughter’s deaths, it’s that there’s always another layer of the onion to peel back. It’s as exhausting as it is enlightening.
What I Thought I’d Resolved
The stark truth about both of their deaths is that I couldn’t save either of them. I was the main man in their lives and I was sworn to protect them. I did everything I knew how to do and they’re both dead. That’s a damn tough pill to swallow. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll be gagging on it for the rest of my life.
Guilt is a familiar bedfellow to anyone who’s lost someone they love. You tell yourself that if only you’d been a better, smarter or more loving person they’d still be alive. It’s an all-too-easy trap that keeps the griever chained to a past they can never change.
I’ve had moments of crushing guilt since Chloe died. How could I not have seen how much her mental health had deteriorated? Why was it so hard for me to listen to my wife when she was telling me there was something very wrong? What made me believe so many of the lies she told me?
At the same time, being a great dad was, and is, the most important thing in the world to me. I know I did the best I could to be there for my kids. I tried my best to create the kind of relationship with them where they would feel safe coming to me if their world felt like it was crashing down.
It didn’t happen with Chloe.
I’ve thought and talked about all that in excruciating detail. I’ve written about it, talked to my wife about it and made it the focus of quite a few sessions with therapists. In the three years since Chloe died, I’ve gotten to a good place and released most of the guilt I was carrying.
Then last weekend happened. The fucking onion must be peeled.
The Message
I have a complicated relationship with my younger brother. I won’t bore you with all the details here but suffice it to say we’re very different people. Until last weekend, he hadn’t mentioned Chloe a single time to me. Literally not one word.
I asked him about it last year. I was curious about what kind of thought process would lead someone not to check in on his brother after his daughter’s death. I sent him a carefully worded message about it. I wrote in a way to minimize the chances of him getting defensive.
He responded with, “If you needed something from me you could have asked.” Ok then.
Then out of the blue, he sent me this message:
I was surprised he messaged me, but I was astonished by my reaction. I felt like a grenade went off in my chest. I’m not an angry or violent person at all and I wanted to put my fist through a fucking wall.
It took everything in me to send him a semi-coherent response. This is where we left it:
I couldn’t calm down for almost four hours. My body was vibrating with tension and explosive with pressure. I wanted to tear my own skin off just to change my fucking state. My wife had to talk me off the ledge and I’m grateful she’s always by my side.
Navel Gazing
At the same time, my eighteen months of Somatic Experiencing therapy has given me the capacity to be much more present with what I’m experiencing — regardless of how uncomfortable it is. In the midst of the extreme discomfort I was experiencing, I was able to be curious about what was happening. I found it fascinating and wanted to explore it further. What was this about?
The first thing that came to mind was that maybe I did still feel guilty. It seemed like a likely culprit considering the substance of his message and the reaction I was having. I’ve always been open to the idea that guilt still lingers under the surface but was reasonably confident that I’d resolved most of it.
I figured it was also anger at my brother. He has the emotional development of a box of hair and here he is, deigning to impart his unearned opinion on what I should or should not be feeling? Fuck you. Where were you for the last three years? Or the many years prior to Chloe’s death?
I also knew that in his own socially awkward way, this was a bid for connection. He was trying to help me.
That made things more complicated. I felt some level of guilt for having no interest at all in turning toward this bid. Rebuffing this offer of “kindness” feels in conflict with my values in some way. I try to be a kind, compassionate and empathetic person. But I had zero confidence that if I had this conversation with him I wouldn’t completely lose my shit on him. I pictured him explaining his screwed up, full-of-holes reasoning and was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from unleashing all the hurtful, judgmental things I think about him. Not trusting my ability to control myself is unsettling.
Lastly, there’s grief that this is what my relationship with my brother has become. We used to be quite close but our lives have gone in very different trajectories. I don’t see any chance of things ever being different. I’m usually able to accept that but this brought any lingering pain right to the surface.
Walking into the Darkness
A few days later I had an appointment with my therapist. I was looking forward to bringing this up with him. As I did, I found myself getting worked up all over again.
He listened to me and when I was done he said, “A reaction like that to someone else is usually about something that’s unresolved in ourselves.” I figured he’d say something like that and I was looking forward to unpacking it with him. As much as one can look forward to discovering more ways he’s screwed up.
Then he said something that was a punch in the gut. “You show me clearly in every single session that you have a tremendous amount of unresolved guilt about Cindy and Chloe’s deaths. I’ve been waiting for the right time to bring it up and this feels like that time.”
Fuck you, onion.
He started telling me about Carl Jung and shadow work. He explained how much of his own work he’d done and how disturbing and terrifying it can be. He also made clear that understanding and integrating is the path to peace, healing and joy.
Let’s go, therapist man. I’m here for it.
He asked me to imagine having that conversation with my brother. He told me to place my brother at a distance in my mind that felt safe to me. I started with him on the couch, across from me in our living room. That was way too close so I banished him to my back door. Too close. How about the back yard? He ended up all the way across the yard in my mind’s eye.
He encouraged me, as he always does, to stay present with what was happening in my body. What happened next started to feel like a mushroom trip. My brother doesn’t look well in real life. In my mind, in that moment, all his features became exaggerated to the point where he looked like a menacing, evil clown.
And somehow, I had the awareness that I was looking at myself.
What happened next shocked me. A volcanic sense of hatred welled up inside me. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. It was dark and vicious to the point where I scared the shit out of myself. My face was contorted in rage. I wanted to strangle my brother — myself. Somehow, I knew he represented me. What the fuck?
We debriefed the experience and I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. I was emotionally and physically spent. I stumbled upstairs and told my wonderful wife that I needed to lock myself in the dark basement by myself for the rest of the night. Thankfully, I was too tired to be disturbed.
The Gift
It’s been a week since that session and our next one is in a week. I’ve felt quite a sense of calm and peace this week. It’s not clear to me how or if it’s related to the work I began last week. What I do find surprising is that I haven’t been able to connect back to that sense of hate at all in the last week. I find it so interesting that there’s something so dark and important within me and my logical mind can’t find it.
As I grow and heal, I’m learning the limits of my logical mind and I’m a more whole person because of it.
When I’ve shared the message from my brother with people, the most common reaction is something like, “What an awful thing to say.” I don’t see it that way at all. He gave me a huge gift, perhaps inadvertently. His message led me to a door that I need to walk through to continue healing. It came to me at the right time and in the right way to allow me to see it clearly.
Three years ago I couldn’t have had that therapy session. I wouldn’t have been able to stay in the room with what came up. The therapy, the writing, the willingness to keep looking has built the capacity to be present with something that dark without running from it.
This is what healing actually looks like. it’s not the absence of pain. Pain will always be a part of our human experience. It’s building enough of ourselves back up so that when the next layer appears, we’re able to square our shoulders, stiffen our spine and face it.
Whatever’s next, I’m here for it. I can do it and so can you.
The onion waiting to be peeled. Healing demands we do.
If you recognized something in this story, there’s a reason.
I’m building a program called Leading Through Loss. It’s structured work for men who are stuck after loss and know something is still in there but can’t find it on their own. Not therapy. Not a group. It’s a map of how you’re protecting yourself and someone to help you read it.
I’m opening it soon. If you want to know when: