Do we always have to find the silver lining?
my gut response to a middle of the night question
I saw this post the other day while scrolling on Instagram that said something along the lines of “Why do I always have to find the silver lining of things? Why can’t I just say that this bad thing happened to me and it was awful and heartbreaking and I am forever altered?”
I was thinking about this last night as I got in bed and I felt a twinge of pain in my right foot. I broke my foot two summers ago and it still occasionally throbs, always reminding me of the time I slipped on a crack in my driveway, holding a 14 month old Georgia in my arms and resulting in a clean crack right through my fifth metatarsal. It reminds me of one of the many unfortunate events of the last few years, a time when I kept thinking, ‘how can this keep getting harder?’ It also reminds me that my foot might never be the same. It reminds me that I might never be the same.
I’ve thought about this a lot in recent years. This thought, “I might never be the same.”I contemplate constantly how different I feel from many of my former selves, how forever altered I feel from the pandemic, all of the loss of that time, the friends and family who passed away, my mom’s stroke, becoming a mother, the hard knocks of my career. I’ve had a challenging relationship with this idea as well as with this new self of mine. I’ve been reluctant and resistant to accepting that these new versions of ourself are essential to our evolution and aging. I think I like myself better now in a lot of ways and yet I still find myself longing for what I view as the more naive, more free, more untethered, more unburdened, less heartbroken, effortlessly joyful version of myself of my younger years.
When I examine this, I can’t help but think of Joan Didion’s quote that I often see shared. The one from Slouching Towards Bethlehem that says, “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.” It’s often just that one line that is shared but it’s part of a much larger paragraph where she explains what she sees as the importance of “keeping on nodding terms” with these former selves because they all come back at certain points. Keeping familiar with them, documenting them and remembering them through writing: “It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I supposed that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.”
Although I understand the sentiment that we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves, I would push back, with all due respect. I do think your notebook could help me and mine you. I do think we could help each other to keep those channels open. I wonder if later in life, Ms. Didion would agree with this as well, after all, I don’t think she could deny how this passage of hers, along with all of her writing, has helped countless readers. Her book The Year of Magical Thinking has become a Bible on grief for many of us. Sharing helps others feel less alone, gaining insight into how others have coped, fell apart, rebuilt, grieved, found joy again. But can we do this sharing, exploring and documenting without always finding the silver lining? Can we just say, this sucked and there’s no good that has come out of it?
I don’t think I can. Even when it makes me angry, I seem to always come around to the silver lining. I don’t know if that’s coping, habit or survival but it continues to happen. Even when I don’t want it to. I used to get angry when I would talk about my mom’s stroke and well intentioned friends would say, “At least she’s still here.” It felt like they were saying that I somehow wasn’t entitled to as much grief as I was feeling because at least she didn’t die. But there were many moments when I was looking at my mom, her head stuck to one side, drool coming out of her mouth, severely disabled, mute, seemingly severely brain damaged, not knowing if this is what she would be like for the rest of her life, that I wondered, would it have been less pain for her to have just died? I know there have been many times she has wished she hadn’t survived. Can we measure or attempt to compare how much grief would have been with complete loss of life vs all of the loss and hardship we’ve all experienced through her stroke and recovery? I don’t think we can. I now genuinely am very thankful she didn’t die, I do now find comfort in the thought, ‘at least she’s still here,’ when I dwell too long on the heartache of it all. But sometimes that silver lining still makes me want to scream.
And yet, I still do it. All the time. I think of all the positives that have come out of my mom’s stroke, the ways that my immediate family of my mom, dad, brother and I are closer now than we’ve been in years. The way I’ve gained strength and independence from needing to show up in the way I did, especially as I prepared to become a mother myself. The way I would say my marriage gained strength in being on our own for so much of early parenthood and dealing with family tragedy and caretaking. There are undeniable silver linings. Even with something less life threatening, more of a massive pain in the ass than a heartbreaking tragedy like my broken foot, I quickly could count the positives that came out of it: learning to ask for help with my friends, learning how happy and willing they were to do it, learning that that support is there, if you just ask for it. The relationship that developed with our friend Cissy who flew out to help us and who we’ve then asked to come nanny for us at different times and probably never would have thought to do that otherwise. The memory of riding around on a motorized buggy in the grocery store, dragging my crutches, and then abandoning ship once the battery died in the middle of the vegetable aisle as Cissy followed, carrying Georgia, both of us hysterically laughing. Learning how deep some people’s generosity and kindness can go. And learning how much I want to prioritize being that for others as well.
I still catch myself attached to wanting the easy, happy, optimal outcomes. How great life could be if it all always worked out exactly as I hoped and dreamed. But I think I increasingly know and understand, whether I want to accept it or not, that that’s not where the learning happens. That that’s not where the growth begins.
Maybe that’s why I’m less interested in talking to people about the good times, seeing people flying high… you know when they’re posting on social media about how blessed they are and they can’t believe this is their life right now. I’m genuinely happy for those moments for others and myself as well, but to me, that’s not where the grit is. It’s not where the depth is. I want to know what they went through to get there. I want to know about the lowest, darkest time. The time that forever altered them. The time that was a death of sorts to their current self and a birth to a new one. Maybe a more burdened, heartbroken, less free, more tethered self but ultimately a more whole self. The time that felt like there was no silver lining to be had. And yet, maybe, because we are wired for survival, we can’t deny the silver linings that appear.
“It’s cool to want more
To hold on to all that I’ve worked for
But the lessons lie in the in between
The heart is the keeper of time
The mind holds the dream”
- The chorus from The Shadow of a Star, a new song of mine, written in communion with my dear friends: Lauren Balthrop, Miss Tess and Kristina Murray
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. - Rainer Marie Rilke
As always, thank you for being here. These essay are written quickly, without edits, from the heart. I deeply appreciate the exchange that happens here and am excited to keep doing this. Your subscriptions only encourage me.
I have been assaulted by challenges with technology lately as well the typical challenges of 21st century life. Your thought on grief brought to mind two books, On Death and Dying by Kubler-Ross and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Anger is a very important part of grief and legitimate. Losing part of our lives is cutting us to the bone. I know. I have had my share. Searching for a continued purpose and a way to cope is the growth side of the coin. Another book that has popped back up from the memory bank is Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. All of societal interactions seem to be pushed towards a technological beehive of confusion. I too long for the days of simplicity. I could ride my bike anywhere in my, at the time, small town. On occasion encounter nary a car. Cash was the ruling currency, now you cannot use cash to pay for the luggage charge at the airport. Want to or not, we are forced to adapt and change. As I age, I am 74, I find this all more than I want to deal with. I have friends that are losing their faculties, hence the world becomes even more of a challenge. This adulting business is not all it was billed to be. These are not the Golden Years, more like the Corrosive Years. We get tired of thinking and being forced to chase the wind because of something or someone doing something the should not be doing.