Post-traumatic growth? My ears perked up, and I thought, I never heard of that. I decided I wanted to really focus on what I was about to hear, so I slowed my packing and sat down to take in this episode of Kara Loewentheil’s podcast, Uf*ck Your Brain.
Kara featured a guest, a grief coach for widowed moms, Krista St. Germain, who explained a concept I have clearly been living, but never heard of, post-traumatic growth.
Essentially, it is the idea that after a loss, the grieving individual propels themselves forward. So instead of returning to “normal,” for lack of better words, this person is now doing way better than before. For women, however, this can be difficult to do and avoid guilt, especially if the event was a partner’s death.
A great way to visualize it was Krista’s example, where she likened post-traumatic growth to the experience of rebuilding a home after a tornado hits.
She said, “If you’ve been living in a house for a long period of time and a tornado comes and knocks down your house, you’re going to have to rebuild your house, you’re going to have to find somewhere to live. You could try to rebuild that house as closely as possible to the house that you lived in. That wouldn’t be right or wrong or good or bad.
But if you lived there for a while, you probably learned some things about what you liked about that house and what you didn’t like. So if you’re going to build a house, you could also take advantage of that wisdom and experience and update the design and add more windows or add more electrical outlets or whatever. That’s post-traumatic growth. It’s like, can we leverage what we’ve learned from life experiences to create even more of what we want? It doesn’t make us better. It’s not morally superior. It’s just an option.”
After hearing Krista’s explanation of post-traumatic growth, I saw this concept in my life. Suddenly, my brain flashed to instances of each time someone hasn’t seen me since I quit drinking, and then they do. Without a doubt, they see the glow I never had back in the day, so of course, when they see me, they react with, “What’s your secret?”
In general, my response is to smile and reply, “I quit drinking.”
When you stop consuming alcohol after drinking heavily in secret for years, you look better. But in reality, my glow’s source is so much more complex than that.
If I were being brutally honest, my response would be, “My boyfriend died from a drug overdose, and though that shit was one of the most horrific experiences of my life and completely shattered me, it allowed me to pick up the pieces of my life to structure it how I want it to be today, so I definitely look better. Thanks for noticing!”
That’s difficult to say, and it’s painful to write because, of course, as a woman, I’m programmed to put others first, even those no longer on this planet. I mean, how dare I have a glow-up after the death of a partner? Not only that, but I DO hate the loss that happened. It was an absolute tragedy that broke my heart. So, who am I to dare use his death as a reason to better myself? But that’s exactly what I did.
I’ve thought about this repeatedly, and I promise you I cannot think of any other circumstance that would have launched me into doing the work I have done on my personal development as that tragedy did.
My boyfriend’s death knocked me from the tightrope where I delicately walked while balancing my career in one hand and my addiction to alcohol in the other. For years, shame kept everything separate and neatly in place, never allowing me to seek help, or talk about what I was dealing with. Shame allowed me to maintain the status quo of that hellish harmony between my work and my drinking.
His death was the only thing in my life more forceful than the balancing power of shame, so when I fell from that tightrope and landed flat on my back, the only way to get back up was to let go of the alcohol and the job and piece myself together as a brand new person.
I wrote in the local newspaper outing my alcoholism, left my job, moved out of the state, sold my house, and started a new life. I did everything old-school sober folks say not to do in your first year of sobriety and everything my immigrant family culture says not to do concerning discussing addiction and mental health. I didn’t care anymore. I finally allowed myself to make my own rules and evolve as needed. THAT is the source of my glow.
Ever since, I’ve grown exponentially, found new love and work, and I coach others on getting free from their binds to alcohol as well.
I don’t have gratitude for what happened. The losses I experienced don’t make sense, and I won’t make sense of them. But did I find a way to blossom after life dealt me some blows? I sure did, and I’m proud of myself for finding a way to thrive and not just survive. I’m so glad I did not return to my old “normal,” a state of perpetual secret inebriation.
That, my friends, is post-traumatic growth.
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