Choosing Connection in Times of Suffering
Just before the summer sun faded into a back-to-school breeze, I sat in the midday shade on the patio of my favorite coffee shop. Distracted by passersby, I glanced up from my computer to see two thirteen-ish-year-old boys walking down the street with (presumably) one of their mothers. The mom asked her not-son “How’s life?”
“Life is…” He paused, calculating the right response. His shoulders tensed as his face turned red. Tears welled up behind his glasses and he blurted out, “Life is…not good.” His whole body sighed as the words slipped off his tongue. His friend and the mom held space for his discomfort. He wrung his hands and continued, “Things have been really stressful lately and I am really worried about my sister,” he continued as they walked out of ear shot.
They were gone, but I sat in the sadness and beauty of that moment. I felt his pain and worried deeply for his sister as my witchy senses tuned into her. But I also felt hope. He made a courageous decision not to hide behind our scripted pleasantries and instead expressed how he was really feeling. He even risked crying in front of another teenage boy! In adult conversation we rarely stray from the niceties. Things are good. Things are the same. Things are busy. We maintain the absurd illusion that life is great, that is, until we get the rare occasion of two uninterrupted hours of friendship and connection. And then some bottles of wine later your best friend declares that she wants a divorce…
I, for one, have been well practiced at masking my grief and depression. As early as 7th grade, I devised a strategy to wake up early, dust my face with make-up, curl my hair, and pair brightly colored tops with patterned mini-skirts and platform heels to make sure I presented the best, bubbly version of myself at school. A friend asked me once why I was always so dressed up and I told her it was to “trick my brain from feeling tired all the time.” (I lacked the language of grief and depression in 1999).
I’d continue this way until every few years, I couldn’t contain the hurt anymore and life would burst at the seams. One such occasion, just shy of twenty years later, it was 4am at a bachelorette party. I sat on the dirty floor of a beachy AirBnB surrounded by empty White Claw cans and my oldest friends. We harped on life and love and adulthood. As the booze took over my brain, I couldn’t keep up the bullshit anymore and, like that kid at the coffee shop, I blurted out the truth, “I hate myself. No, really…I hate myself.” The words surprised even me, but they stung because I meant it. I couldn’t stand the latest version of Allison that had been put out into the world—stressed out, self-important, quick-tempered and sad. I resented her. I hated her. I didn’t know how to get rid of her. By this point in the night, everyone was a drunken, sobbing mess asserted our love for one and other as we stuffed our faces with chips and queso. But the next day, we all pretended it didn’t happen. We were sober (ish) and had to fit back into our presentable molds. Time for brunch and Instagram photos. Smile!
In the year that followed my truth weighed heavy on my heart. Conditions waxed and waned, but again come to head until my entire body was weighed down by grief and self-loathing. I had another gathering coming up. This time with my college friends and I sat in my new therapist’s office telling her I was worried I would ruin our girls’ weekend with all my emotions. I didn’t feel up to the task of pretending, but I also rarely got to see these friends and just wanted it to be fun.
My therapist asked, “How would you feel if one of your friends didn’t tell you they were suffering because they didn’t want to ‘ruin the weekend’?” My heart sank. I would feel crushed. I would feel sad that I wasn’t there for them. I would feel like our friendship was just happening at the surface. Like they had shut me out. Then Dr. L. posited that maybe I owed it to my friends to give them a chance to be there for me, even if I didn’t think I owed it to myself. She was right.
I spent the next few days crafting a clumsy speech. How would I casually slide in that I was being treated for depression…again? And could I do it before it became an alcohol-induced meltdown? I agonized over this conversation the whole flight down to Florida. Finally, after dinner on our first night together, I stood up like nervous groomsmen delivering a bad wedding toast. The words I rehearsed escaped me, but I shared a simple sentiment: life has been tough for me lately, but I am I glad have you by my side as I go through it. The end.
My friends held space for me to say more about what I was going through. Among other internal struggles, I had experienced an inordinate amount of death and loss in a short period on of time. I shared that on top of losing a student to suicide and a rapid succession of parent deaths in my school community, a beloved childhood friend had surrendered to his fourteen-year fight with cancer all in a matter of weeks. As I said this, I saw a look of dismay fall over my best friend’s face. I saw her doing the mental math and reaching the conclusion that she’d come to visit me around that time. I saw her realize I hadn’t told her then and instead carried on with a “carefree” weekend. And now, I saw how my silence pained her.
But I was sharing now and as it turned out didn’t even need to say that much. I didn’t need to cry or breakdown or process. I just needed to say what was happening in my life; to not feel alone in my suffering. And once my heart felt sufficiently held, the opportunity came for others to share. Each woman spoke up: Panic attacks. Loneliness. Uncertainty. Each of us was suffering in our own way, and each of us was keeping it to ourselves. We made a pact never to let pretense and expectations cloud our relationships again. We agreed to be real. To share the bad as much as we celebrated the good. To be with each other. To be there for each other.
That moment of vulnerability changed everything for me. Since I was a kid, I felt that I needed to carry my pain all on my own. I felt it was my duty not to burden others. To be strong. To be good. This left years of hurt and pain pent up inside me like dark secrets I carried. As I worked so hard to keep these parts of me vaulted from public view, I isolated myself from those I loved the most. They couldn’t know me or love me fully if I kept myself closed off. That simple act of letting my friends in on the secret came with great relief. I finally allowed myself to receive compassion and support from others and from myself. I still had my therapist and my yoga retreats to for the really tough stuff, but there was deep respite in being able to pick up the phone and share a simple sorrow.
After that I started the habit of sharing the bad as much as I celebrated the good. When I finally received an autoimmune diagnosis that I’d sought for a decade, I matter-of-factly shot a text to my group chats: “I received this news. I’m ok right now. I just want you to know so I can talk about it.” And then I did. When my grandmother reached her final days, I was able to say, “Ruthie is dying. It sucks. I’m really sad.” And as I grieved, flowers appeared at my door and check-in texts popped up on my phone. Maybe this doesn’t feel revolutionary to some (or even most people) but for those of us who have been conditioned to be the strong ones, to go it all on our own, this felt like a radical act.
Buddhist Psychologist and meditation teacher, Tara Brach, recently started a talk with a quote from Louis Cozolino, “We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.” Tara often talks about the “trance of unworthiness,” which she says cuts us off from the present moment and from connection with others. When we believe we are not worthy of love or belonging or connection, we isolate ourselves from the very things we need to feel nurtured and whole. While I’d long been a student of Tara Brach by this point in my life, I was seeing again the ways in which trance had crept in. When I kept my pain closed off from my loved ones it came from a belief that I didn’t want to burden others, but more so I believed that they wouldn’t be there for me or that I wasn’t deserving of their compassion. Suddenly in the process of letting my friends in on difficult moments in my life, I was learning to step out of my trance; out of isolation and into a communal sense of nurturing and belonging. I was moving from disconnection to connection.
Post-pandemic we are not strangers to the idea and impact of isolation and disconnection. But back then I realized that despite keeping in constant contact with my friends, I was incredibly disconnected. I am not alone in this phenomenon. According to Sarah Wilson in This One Wild and Precious Life, “[Millennials report feeling] the most ‘connection’ and the greatest loneliness.” In fact, she cites that half of all Americans report feeling lonely including 60% of married people. Even in our closest relationships, we are disconnected and cut off.
In my experience, this disconnection is compounded by the feelings of shame, embarrassment and guilt. We blame ourselves for our circumstances or our inability to get out of them. We are embarrassed to feel down when social media says everyone else is having the time of their lives. We are ashamed to admit that despite our professional success or financial wealth or stable marriages or new babies we are miserable on the inside. And so, we put up the walls of isolation. We enter the trance of unworthiness.
Learning to leave the trance is simple and yet can feel very difficult. Tara teaches the process of RAIN- Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. But this is a constant practice of recognizing our emotions and realizing our deepest desires at any given moment. There is internal work to engage in and the necessary and courageous act of reaching out to others so that we can “restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom.”
And this is where I come back to the hope I felt from that kid at the coffee shop. The ten seconds that I witnessed of him was master class in mindfulness. First, he paused and took a breath. In that split second, he recognized his emotions, and he allowed them to be so. Then he chose the path of connection when he uttered those four words: Life. Is. Not. Good. I have no clue what else he shared or what words were offered to him in response. But twenty minutes later the trio walked past again laughing and smiling. The boy’s demeanor had changed; the anxiety and fear melted off his body. His problems didn’t go away, but in that moment, he could just be a teenager on a late summer’s day. He stepped out of the trance. He chose vulnerability. He chose to be nurtured. And I witnessed the beauty of another human receiving exactly what they needed to feel love and belonging amid a time of pain and suffering.
May we all learn to live from this simple wisdom.