Beauty and Terror

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Below is the draft of a piece on gratitude that I was composing, complete with the working title “Fuck Gratitude”. The point forms were to be the general outline. There have been many interrobang moments for me around gratitude, when advice meant to help me actually harmed me. I have recently had an experience that I was instantly afraid would undo me, but these seemingly negative reflections have had a positive effect on me. I am able to feel gratitude now. That was not always the case. 

August 30, 2024

Fuck Gratitude – Even though I am grateful for it…

I’ve often thought that both psychologists and their clients would benefit from a book made up of stories and reflections written by people who have gone through long term therapy. The thought distortions I was having really impaired my ability to participate in the therapeutic process. The best advice and kindest suggestion can feel like physical harm is being done to you when you feel so defective that you think you don’t deserve to live. I have some doubts around some of the neurochemistry that I believe is used to come up with therapeutic strategies.

• Feeling so grateful today, because I am in a better place with my mental health.
• Remembering being advised to write gratitude lists, because people with higher levels of gratitude have better mental health.
• Writing lists and lists every night of things that I was grateful for felt like writing a list of things I SHOULD be grateful for, but wasn’t able to FEEL grateful for, led to intense shame. “If you were a better person, you would feel grateful for all the wonderful things in your life. Here is a list of them.” The gratitude  list becomes a visual representation of all the people you feel you are failing, the privilege you are failing to appreciate, etc…
• Makes me wonder if the idea of “do this thing (behaviour) and it will change your thinking (cognitive)” approach to therapy known as CBT might be really prone to backfiring when the thought distortions can lead your brain to misinterpret the action and end up causing more harm. 
• I could have written gratitude lists until I died, they would not have changed my brain chemistry for the better. They only hurt me. 
• Medication, pain relief, and a return to the job that I love (even if it is only part time) were the things that made me eventually feel gratitude. 

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Well. It’s Thanksgiving. The time for gratitude. Giving thanks for what we have in this life. I started a post about how I think the gratitude police have it WRONG back in August, and I kept it as an intro to this post. 

I’m thankful. Don’t get me wrong. But I attended a funeral for a six year old yesterday and it has me pretty discombobulated. 

The six year old who died was one of my grade one students. I am gutted. Beyond devastated. I only knew him for a month, but if you are a teacher, you know  how the first month goes. You get to know each other, write and draw about the things that are important to you. You share feelings about your life and family and your wonderings about the world. You bond. You love. You form a sense of community as a class that is foundational to the success of the entire school year. 

As a teacher, you are expected to be “in loco parentis” for the children in your class. You are responsible for them as a parent would be. I take this element of teaching seriously, because when a six year old is away from home, they need to feel like someone has their back. That someone is their classroom teacher. Although they go out to other classes like music or drama or gym, if you are their classroom teacher you are the main person responsible for their little hearts when they are away from their parents.

As a teacher, you bring your parenting from home to the classroom. We all bring our baggage and experience with us everywhere we go. I do believe this makes us human. The most dehumanising moments of my life were those in which I had to compartmentalise to the extent that I was not able to bring all of myself to any given situation. 

Which brings me to dealing with the death of a six year old. My own child was seven the first time it told me it wanted to die. It is nineteen now, and the past two years have included a diagnosis of OCD with the primary feature being an obsession with self-harm and suicide. I have sat bedside for my own child numerous times, not knowing whether or not I would get to bring it home. Not just as a result of mental health struggles, but also because of complex health issues that almost resulted in death numerous times. 

My baby was born with about a foot of its colon paralyzed. Hirschsprung’s disease. The first three days of its life were a slow death. By day three, it was turning navy blue and the nurses were still telling me that I was just a “nervous new mom” until they finally did some tests and came running in to tell me “THERE IS SOMETHING TERRIBLY WRONG WITH YOUR BABY!” Yeah. No shit sherlock. 

Not bringing your baby home from the hospital in which you gave birth is a special kind of hell that you can never be prepared for. I won’t tell the whole story here, but there have been so many times that I thought I was sitting at my child’s death bed. I had a secret plan for if it ever happened; I rehearsed it over and over in my mind as a form of self-protection because I knew that if my child ever died, I would be surrounded by people and wouldn’t have the chance to end my life. I rehearsed and rehearsed, mentally, the ending of my life, because I didn’t think I could ever go on if my child was taken from me and it felt inevitable that this would happen. It was a particular sensation in my gut that I was determined to stab with a huge blade. I felt that stab in my gut when I found out that my six year old student had died unexpectedly of pneumonia. 

Danger. As soon as I found out, I felt I was in danger. I felt guilty, like this child would not have died if he were in anyone else’s grade one class. Too similar to the thoughts I used to have that my child would never have suffered if it had been born to another parent. I felt that me being it’s mom had cursed it. The first time I knew that this thinking was out of hand was when I started writing an apology letter to my child when it was nine which I quickly realized was a suicide note. I wanted it to know that if I were out of the picture, it would have a better life. 

These days are behind me, thank goodness, but they are also never very far away. The self-blame that appears when a child in my care comes to harm is insidious and unrelenting. I have to be ever vigilant, because  if I do not acknowledge it when it arises, it could quickly take over. 

So, what does this all have to do with gratitude and Thanksgiving? I am thankful that my own child is still with me, regardless of the struggles and trauma it has endured. I am thankful that I no longer want to die. 

I am thankful that I had time with my six year old student. He reminded me a lot of my own child, quite hyper and curious and full of wonder and delight. Happier outdoors than indoors. Already reading at the beginning of grade one. Very happy while bug catching and gardening. Guiding children as they learn through the wonder of their imagination and curiosity is my purpose in life. I came to teaching in my thirties, and I will never leave the profession, no matter how disregarded we are by the provincial government that sometimes feels like it is trying to end us. I am where I am meant to be. This is something to be deeply grateful for, even if it means revisiting past traumas and feeling unworthy of the task. 

I now have 21 six year olds in my class. I gave them the news of the death of their peer and they had so many questions. Fears. More questions. Tears. And still more questions to which I do not have the answers. I am grateful that I am still here to be an example of imperfection, curiosity, and wonder, both for the students in my class and for my own adult child. I very nearly was not. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.” (Frederick Buechner) I am thankful to be here for both.