Transcript: Episode 10
10. Hannah’s Song
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
I hate Thanksgiving. Not really. I'm a fan of gratitude when it's authentic. And I teach my children the traditional foods and how to cook them. And we practice even though it's a disaster. But it's exhausting. And it's for someone else's family because mine is dead. And it's in the middle of the most triggering time of year for me. And has so many layers in just dealing with it, much less enduring it. And it exhausts me. I'm just being honest, at the end of a very long day, following two very long weeks of moving. I woke from nightmares around two in the morning, and so started the turkey, because we might as well, thinking that at least the good thing is that it would be ready by lunchtime. Because my kids—inside kids and outside kids—don't do well with waiting for food. That's not what happened, of course, because it's not at my house or for my family. It's for the husband's family, which is fine and well and good. But they weren't ready until after four, even though I had the turkey ready by 11. That's how it goes on holidays.
When there is space to be gracious for others and everyone is focused on being so very nice, it's hard for me. Not just the being nice. But my cup is empty, as they say, there's nothing to pour from my pitcher. I am looking for my own oxygen mask before I can help others. That's where I'm at after 21 months of quarantine. My whole world has changed in two weeks. I live in a new home that's so large I still get lost in it. My children are back in public school. And I'm trying to arrange photos on the wall behind my bed the way they always are so that something feels familiar, so that I remember that I’m married, so that I can recall the names of my children. I'm still afraid I will forget.
My journals of grief and through the experience of quarantine are closed now, finished and put away for a new season to begin. And that one feels like a blur. Like it almost never happened. And I'm struggling to find who I am, to remember who I was, to figure out who I want to be moving forward. I am alone again, on my own again. And maybe that's as it should be. Maybe that's as it has to be. Just me, here, in the world. I don't mean I'm giving up. And I don't mean I'm letting go of those who tried so hard to be there with me and for me during quarantine. But those virtual days have been stripped from me, and I don't know how to find them again. Even the Community has its meetings now the only time my children are home, because I scheduled them when they were home all the time. And now they're not. Which means I can't come when it was easy before, because now it's not. I feel listless and a bit tangled, like I'm still dreaming and can't quite wake up. Trying to ground myself in a house that is unfamiliar, and orient myself where the calendar runs together and blurs outside of me in ways that make it more slippery than it already was.
This morning, the children were watching the parade on the computer with a jack o'lantern sitting next to the computer. And the parade called for Thanksgiving, and yet it was full of Christmas carols. And I thought, “how am I to know what day it is? And why do I try so hard to figure it out if no one else knows either?” I went through the routine of things after getting the turkey started. Mashing potatoes, mixing green beans and making pies. Only for the children to wake early to the smell of food and come in so excited that glasses broke and drinks were spilled, and I stayed calm even though nothing around me was. I should get credit for that as progress, but I don't think it counts while I'm still resentful of it.
I don't know what's made me so hard and so tired, when all I want is to be soft and gentle, kind and helpful. I’m just worn out. When we finally made it to the in-laws, the husband's parents, to bring them Thanksgiving dinner as both an act of love and an act of mercy, she had fallen in the little time the husband was away, which is why he stays away. So I am married to a man who does not live here, and live in a home I do not know, with children I'm fighting to remember. And everything is slippery, disorienting, they call it, dysregulating, they call it. My body is going through motions like parts of me know what to do and remember where to be and how to get there, but when I lived here before I was not me. So how to drive from here to there. And I cannot remember who I was or how to be that again. How to be her again. How to be me again.
On Sunday we will go back to church for the first time in two years. Because two years ago I was in the Middle East before the pandemic happened. Away. Writing the letter to say goodbye to my therapist. Sending gifts and mementos to my children so that they would remember me. And now she's gone. And I'm here and trying to remember them. When we lived here before, we were still fostering—children coming and going—and I had no idea then what trauma that was, like I understand now that it was. This is where we lived when our youngest was born. When they strapped her to me, and strapped me to the gurney, and put us on a helicopter and flew us to Cincinnati Children's, without anyone asking permission to touch her or me. And yet it happening to save her life. And so it just was, has been, for six long years. Hard years. And now somehow she's breathing after time in the country and her last surgeries of airway reconstruction. And somehow I am here, parenting them, but without the panic that I used to have. I don't have panic attacks anymore. Not yet. But coming out of quarantine feels like a good time for that to start. Not that I want it to. I don't.
But who am I supposed to be and how am I supposed to find her? To navigate this world of school drop off and car pickup lines, of answering emails from teachers and IEP meetings. I have seen more people in the last week than I have seen in two years, and I am overwhelmed. I don't feel the panic that I used to feel but I feel shut down every moment. I feel like I am fighting to stay awake, to stay present, to be alert at all. As if a blanket has been draped over me and I can't quite pull it off.
My therapist is going on maternity leave soon, and I'm trying to find better support while she's away. I found a therapist that's been helpful, and I've appreciated her support. And there's been good that's come out of it. But she's very cognitive based and very EMDR, and I am not in that place.
We talked about my previous therapist, which feels exhausting because now it's been two years. I thought she would be here on this side of two years. And she is gone. And the reality of the grief that we endured for two confusing years trying to sort out everything that had happened, trying to understand what was happening, trying to find our way through what was happening, was too much. She wrote an apology letter. My new therapist was livid. I did not respond. But it was all about apologizing for how she handled the pandemic. And what was good about the letter was that it helped me understand how much she does not understand because our problems were long before the pandemic and what happened between us happened before the pandemic and I did not understand that she did not understand. And so it is a fresh wave of grief. But also enough reality to be able to draw the line and say, “okay, just let go. That's not real, what you were thinking. That's not real, what you were told.” And the people she told me to step towards, the ones who would surround me with care, she said, are gone. Never were. And I think that's where the betrayal happened. As if she lied to me, to us, to them. My therapist said that, even if she did nothing maliciously, that harm was still harm. My therapist said not to respond anymore. My therapist said not to try anymore. My therapist said that it was not my fault, just like any other abuse we have endured. And it made me sick to my stomach that that relationship was lumped into other abusive ones. It hurt my heart. But my therapist said that what happened happened because of where she was in life, and how she was handling life, and how she was responding to life, not because of me.
That's hard to believe, though, when it's just the next thing in a long line of so many things. The reality of it all sinking in, though, is the first step of moving forward, because it is the end of waiting. But when we try to move forward and talk to this new therapist about it, she was very focused on how “all of them are you,” she kept saying, “all of it is just you.” Meaning DID, I guess, parts, I guess, that they're just me. But I don't know how they can be me if I am not them. I have come so far to understand in my own healing that we are a part of something else, something that is becoming. That's why we call this the Emerging Self. Because it is a symbol of our hope that we are becoming. But I am very distinctly not them. And I know they are not me. And there is nothing in my experience that can tell me otherwise. I don't want to be Plural, as in stay sick for a lifestyle. This is not my culture. This is my pain. And while I respect everyone's choices in their own lives and honor their experiences for what they are, this is mine. And I want to get better. And I want to have access to all of me. Even if I don't yet always want to access all of me or want them to access me. And so even when I'm trying there's this division, this space between us that that is not all of me.
And while I understand where we're going, I cannot get there if she is not present with me where I am right now. Which means finding another therapist. Not just because she said those things, but because things are going too fast. The pacing is too much because she has been kind but distant. And maybe that's what reminded us of our therapists before; the one who said the right things and held such presence, but they were not real outside the office that is no longer there. And I have no more room for not real anymore. I will not fall for it again. I will not let a therapist use suggestibility or my natural dissociative trance state to manipulate me into what they think looks better. That's not the same as what is better. That's not the same as staying with me. I don't want any more false promises. I don't have the energy to survive them. I'm safe and I am stable and I am well, but I am tired. And the children going back to school means I collapse in on myself finally, for the first time in the silence, when dissociation can wash over me like a drug, like a comfort that has been denied me for two years.
The pandemic changed everything for us. Where minor parts had to play major roles, and major parts were pushed aside. And safe spaces for inside parts to come out were betrayed and denied. I don't know what will woo him back again, what will engage them again, what will put me back together again. But I feel inside out. I feel tired. I don't know how many times I can try again. I don't mean that as a threat. And I'm not therapists shopping just to shop. But I need psychodynamic help because my wound is in relationships. And for now, it's made even the Community inaccessible to me both in functioning and in scheduling. And when attachment is so hard it becomes a struggle to connect, to remember to not slip away. And when trust is so hard it's a terrifying thing to let go, because you don't know who's still has hold of you.
It's Thursday night, we finished Thanksgiving dinner and the husband said “let's play games before we eat pie.” And I said out loud in front of everyone, before I could stop my mouth from talking without permission, “not until you take me home first.” Everyone laughed because they thought it was funny. But I meant it with all my heart. And he knew it because he is good and kind even if he is not here.
And so I've driven home to talk to you on this hard day. And when they are done playing and visiting and doing things that normal healthy people with attachment can do, I will go and pick them up and bring them home and send them off to bed as nicely as I can, guessing what nurturing means from things I've read in books, or seen in movies, or talked about in therapy. Not anything that comes naturally or intuitively or from experience. Because no one gave me that, and my parents are dead, and it's another holiday where I am on my own and alone, even when there are so many who say they care. Because I don't know what to do with that, or how to respond to that. And the few I was practicing with are gone. And the ones I've made virtually through the last few months are struggling too. And so I talk myself out of it and I just lay there on the floor and cry, staring at my phone, where it would be so easy to reach out and connect. And yet, it is so impossible. Because knowing that I could later, when I'm ready, is easier than trying and it being taken away again.
I have grieved so much these two years. And it's been so hard. And it's been so dark. And I don't know where I've been while so far away from reality. But it's an adjustment almost more than I can bear, reentering the world. The little ones have gotten their second dose of the vaccine and are doing just fine. And on Monday, all six of them, allegedly, will be back in school. We know our youngest is ready because the triplets went back two weeks ago, and it only took two days for all of us to get sick. Not with COVID. We had it tested several times to be sure. But it was just a regular cold, not COVID, not even strep. Because we've been in quarantine, we've not been sick for two years, any of us. And so a little cold was a shock to the system. And all of us have been miserable while we've been moving. There were times I wanted to record a podcast, but I couldn't even speak because I had no voice from being sick. So today when my voice was back, and the social requirement of dinner was done, I knew I needed to come home and talk to you. To contain myself somehow. To try to put myself back together again. We were all sick for about five days, except for my daughter. It took her 11 days to get better. But she did. And that's a new thing, that she could get a cold and not be in the hospital. And so the doctor has cleared even her to try going back to school. Even if for a short time to see what it's like, to make some friends, to have that experience. And if she can't stay we'll know soon enough. And if she can stay it will be good for her mentally and emotionally and developmentally. And so for the first time in two years, I will be alone all day while the children are safely at school.
And my normal work is expected of me as if I'm not so disoriented that I don't even know how to have the job that I do now. And in about a month they want me in Florida, of all places, to speak for Infinite Mind at the Healing Together conference. And I don't know if it's safe to travel yet. I don't know if it's safe to travel in Florida ever. And I don't know how to be around that many people again. There are things that we thought would be hard on camera before the pandemic ever happened that we had been practicing for and trying to prepare for, to brace ourselves just to have our picture taken, and now we've learned to do the meetings virtually. And we've even made friends, even if we are still learning how to access them, how to utilize them, how to let them be friends.
But I don't know how to do these things in real life, in person. It's so much and it's so overwhelming. And I don't want the panic to start again. I very much enjoyed our two years in quarantine when no one came to our house, when we did not have to go anywhere, even though also it was hard. And I don't just mean the grieving. The children are so happy here, with friends, with access to the woods in the country behind our house, and yet a neighborhood in front of our house, and people to play with, and doing normal childhood things like riding their bikes and playing four square in the driveway, and playing hide and seek in neighbor's yards. But for me it's a lot. I am already relieved in many ways because their busyness and happiness and activity and time at school is such a respite for me. And it's been the first break that I've had. And people think, “Oh, you're going to be so glad to get some time to yourself.” But what I'm discovering so far is that having those moments of downtime tell my brain that “okay, we've made it, we're safe now, so let's download all the crap you've been through in the last two years.” And everything unpauses at once, and everything starts to overwhelm me. And it's so dysregulating and disorienting. And I keep saying that, but I don't know how else to describe it yet.
I know moving here was good and right. But I feel like I'm at a crossroads of maintaining our progress and doing the work to find another new therapist, or to give in to the warm blanket of dissociation and have the change of host and just restart life where we left off in this town, before we knew what DID was. Before I knew where the lost time was going. Before I knew there were hard things to talk about. I don't know if it's a fresh start or a do over. Not that we can undo the past or change our decisions to ever have gone for help in the first place. But it's tempting now to just unknow it all. The thing that keeps me from doing so is you. Letting go of the last six years would be letting go of you. And that's not what I want. But staying and knowing and remembering means awareness of the rest as well. And that’s a lot.
We interviewed a new therapist this week. Specifically because of her psychoanalytic and psychodynamic experience. She says she has experience with trauma. I didn't say anything about DID yet, so I don't know how that will go. But she's warmer than the cognitive one. But still with good boundaries, more than we've had in the past with other therapists, which feels safer. But also, I think what we've learned is that no one is going to replace the previous therapist. No one's going to be her. And the relationship that we had with her, in therapy I mean, doesn't just show up in the first session. It took years to create that space between us. And it isn't done easily again. It feels daunting and exhausting to try. But it also won't happen if we don't try. Because creating space for the rest of me means connecting with others enough to do so. To make that space safe enough. To make that space strong enough. To make me strong enough. Because maybe it is all me, with me a part of me too.
I feel like I've been carrying pieces. Holding them close a long time, these two years, and they've grown heavy and it's time to set them down. They want freedom too. It's time to reckon with all of it. I feel the readiness of it. And I fear falling apart before I can connect with another well enough, strong enough, safe enough, to do that work. I don't even know what it will look like. And I can't even talk about it more now because they're ready for me to pick them up. I've taken too long to talk to you. And my stolen moments that were better than crying on the floor.
I don't know what real life is going to look like moving forward, but I'm grateful to still be alive. And I'm grateful to have found you. And I'm grateful to have this way to contain who I am enough to function as who they see me to be, even when I can't remember that me at all.
[Hannah singing Josh Grobin’s You Raise Me Up, in italics]
When I am down and all my soul so weary. When troubles come and my heart burdened be. Then I am still and wait here in the silence. Until You come and sit awhile with me. You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be. [Piano interlude] You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up, to more than I can be. You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be. You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be. You raise me up to more than I can be.
[Break]
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