My Body Has Been Keeping the Score

Bessel van der Kolk is right. The body does indeed keep the score.

Shortly after Mom died, my shoulder mysteriously stiffened. Two weeks after Dad died, my knees both tightened.

Walking and lifting nearly impossible. Frustrated I attempted to do what I do…push through. There were boxes to pack, a home to be cleared, a timeline to be kept. The harder I tried to move, the more my body reacted until I stopped.

I turned into the quiet…and my body whispered be here now. Be HERE now.

In the pit of deep bereavement, those words felt less like comfort and more like a prison sentence.

The last thing I wanted to do was be here now.

And yet for the last week, that is just what I’ve done.

Slowed. WAY. down.

My caseload lighter. The apartment almost empty. The to-do list shortening…

I’ve let empty spaces remain open.

Barren.

And I’ve been with me.

My cries are sometimes silent and sometimes primal wailing like an animal in agonizing pain. My body yearns to mourn as they do in the Hebrew Bible. Suddenly, it makes sense-tearing my clothes, marking my body with ash…something, anything to visibly answer the ubiquitous question how are you?

A week into slowing down, my knees now bend. My shoulder, though tight, has some ease. My body continues to be my compass in this wilderness of loss.

Tidal Wave of Grief

Do you want Mom to give you a call when she gets out of the shower?

I reply I get a breather at 4–I’ll give her a call then

I log on for two back-to-back teletherapy sessions and Dad proceeds to text twice and call once.

Irritated at the vibrating of my phone beside the computer

Assuming this text is like the usual intrusions like what time are you arriving this weekend

I think boundary boundary boundary and work onward

Descending the stairs, my spouse’s face looks dour

You need to call your Dad

The moment of impact

My Mom died–didn’t she? I ask.

His tearful eyes and bobbing head say yes

and it is the first time I feel the tidal wave of grief

crash into my legs and I collapse

It’s as if I decided to go swimming in the waves in the midst of the storm

and I’m taken out

My beloved catches me as I crumple and pulls my head above water

The Moment of Impact

This memory doesn’t intrude often

Rather it’s the image of the wave

the visceral felt sense of being taken out

I experience it daily–sometimes several times a day

Over the past two months, these giant grief waves are constant

Dad’s in the hospital

Do we have your permission to put Dad on the ventilator?

CRASH

Do we have your permission to put Dad on a central line?

CRASH

My body tense and tight

She now lives bracing for impact

I want her to remember all those years of lifeguarding

how her body knows the innate wisdom of floating

Some moments she surrenders to these waves and floats

And then along comes another

CRASH

Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash

I Weep with the Younger One in Me

Beyond the ongoing chaos and crisis with my Father–who waxes and wanes himself– I sit with the younger, parentified-daughter part of me. 

She believes that if she takes her eyes off of the situation, Dad will die.  Magical thinking that somehow she is the one who holds the family together like glue at the expense of herself. I see this in my sisters, too.  All three of us bracing ourselves–there’s a rush and a whirring.  A desperate anxiousness as if each of the three of us needs to sacrifice our lives for this one life.

As I sit with her, this younger me, we weep together.  We weep at the injustice of the situation we’re in.  At the injustice of a tender-hearted man who developed such thick skin that he fears the very tenderness inside that would save him.  We weep for our father who thinks the answers lie without rather than within.  We weep for the lies the church told us that our job was to follow Jesus to the point of death.  We weep at the ubiquitousness of the story–that our story is commonplace for white, middle-class neo-liberal mainline protestant america.

And something in this whole process of holding, weeping, releasing makes space.  My parentified daughter readying to turn her gaze–and to release the burden that was never hers to carry in the first place.  She’s not ready yet. Yet, she senses angels keep vigil while she prepares.  They wait–and she trusts that as she turns her gaze they will keep her from falling. 

She and I are one and together we are held by grace upon grace.

To Clergy Leading in the Liminal Space Between November and January

Dear Pastors,

I can’t imagine the tension you feel right now. So many of lead congregations that reflect our current society. Please know we are with you and what I think most of us need today is you being vulnerable courageously you…the human you.

If you’ve known me, you know I’ve spent the better part of my career seeking to bring disparate sides together: to bridge the gaps in relationships with self, partners, parents, community, and God. Common Ground could be my middle name. Or at least it was. So I write this with both empathy and my own reckoning and awakening.

Before you begin striving for quick unity in your congregation and in our nation, please take a moment to pause and ponder your intention. I do not mean to suggest that unity is not important. But I believe cotton candy unity could actually separate us further rather than bringing us together.

For some, there is dancing in the streets and relief. A sense that God’s will has prevailed and a highway will be made in this desert. For others, there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. A belief that evil has triumphed with disbelief in this process and complete mistrust in the two people elected. At this moment, we’re not just talking about policy or political statements. We are talking about the very foundations here. Mistrust in the very foundation.

Although common ground remains my deepest desire and long-term vision, I fear our motivation to create unity springs more from anxiety that the call of the Spirit. I also fear that striving for faux unity or faux love may actually further polarize and perpetuate the problem. Perhaps the only thing ‘we’ can agree on is that we are a deeply divided ‘we.’ In fact, perhaps the pronoun ‘we’ needs to be utilized lightly. As much as it pains me to write this sentence, the space between us is seismic.

Before bridging anything, simply honoring and accepting this reality is important. As you lead in the coming weeks, know that I am lamenting and grieving so much right now, and I don’t expect you to fix it or solve. I simply seek being witnessed and affirmed in where I am–to have my grief honored. I am ok to hear your grief. To hear your lament, your heartbreak, your confusion. I can hear you wrestling with God, with God’s will, with the challenge of living and leading in the liminal space of 2020. What I can’t hear is pat answers with theological jargon or buzz words, patronizing “there-there’s” or self-righteous proclamation.

May the Spirit Bless, Guide you and Protect you in the coming weeks,

Megan

Tomatoes

The tomatoes on the windowsill

are just beginning to turn red.

A neighbor picked them–

–plump and green–

and instructed me to wait until they were ripe.

Why they weren’t left on the vine

until their skin thinned into a ruby red hue

I don’t know.

I think my neighbor simply

likes reminiscing about her

friend who planted the vine

but did not live to see the harvest.