Recently, I was invited to an art exercise to work through traumas and dramas of the birthing process. I was reluctant. I felt like it was a waste of time. When I got there, the meditation-style pencil meanderings leading to random sketching and then coloring seemed kind of silly and trivial. Several of those in the class drew lovely art, brightly colored and vivid, only meaning something to the person who painted. It was supposed to be all about the delivery process and healing therefrom. At first, the aimlessness of the process of the art seemed silly, trivial. We were to select colors in reaction to each of the negative emotions in a list. It all stayed on the outside of my head and heart.
Then, one of the songs, Evanescence's "My Immortal," cracked me wide open because it's one of the two songs that automatically send me into a pain spiral. That song and Josh Groban's "A Breath Away" automatically drag me back to the dark days after my four-month-old baby rolled into a pillow and suffocated. Back to the days a DCSF agent and her sheriff crony trashed our house and tried to frame us for negligent homicide. Back to the days of terror and pain, when the two children I had were threatened by those who purported to protect them. Back to the days of miscarriage after miscarriage when hopes for a rainbow baby faded into darkness. When Christmas songs about babies and birth and angels ended in tears. Back to the days when anyone joking about or lightly sharing their ultrasounds triggered thoughts of pain and yet more loss.
That's when my art process that day went from trivial to dark, stark, and painful. I meant it to be lovely, displayable. Instead, black bubbles were shot through with seeping blood red, infectious greens, and tragic blues. There was no light or joy in this painting. When they passed around a color chart to help us translate, I didn't need that much help to realize it was a tribute to 14-year-old unhealed pain. A few of us shared our pain. The other two families who shared had pain much fresher, pains of loss but also the joys of holding babies that brought trials. My heart bled for them. It was good to talk out my pain. My friend who dragged me there insisted I still very much need therapy. It hadn't been quite so obvious to me as it became that day. Usually, I'm fine. I can trudge through my life and be the strong one for everyone else. But it's clear that it's more of a cover for pain that is still very real and present.
I teach a class online. I don't create the curriculum. One of the assignments seems trivial to most. It's to write your own obituary. It doesn't seem like a big deal to the vast majority of students But to her, in her culture, in the place she's in, with her past traumas, it stirred up her heart and became an impassible boundary. She advocated for herself and told me what a hardship this was. And I could only empathize. I've been there, in a place where people throw around images, words, songs, and such without thought, these things can act as a trigger, can feel like a gut punch to those of us who have been through trauma. I hear that because after a year of death after death, my husband's father's, my brother's, and my baby's, funerals became unbearable torture. Things that seem like little to nothing to most can knock the wind out one's sails.
What, to most, seems trivial can end up being a trigger to memories of the trauma beneath what seems like a healthy, happy surface. The best thing we can do is be understanding when others need to work through their trauma. To avoid judging when someone else's mourning process looks different than ours. To listen to others when they need to share about their pain. And above all, to avoid trivializing others' pain.