“I Could Have Written That.”

The programs in which I teach people how to write poetry to ease emotional trauma all seem to share something in common. When the participants write their own poem, they often confess a deep and lasting sadness: about being betrayed, about suffering childhood abuse, about spousal disrespect. They seem to be mourners, muddling through life the best they can. But not very happy about it. 

In one of the weekend retreats I guide, a woman returned from a writing period excited to share the poem she had drafted. She read to the circle of twenty other participants a moving poem about how her husband of thirty-two years had betrayed her.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room until another woman’s hand shot up and she exclaimed, “I could have written that.”

And then a second woman raised her hand and said, “I could have written that.”

Their’s is a kind of bereavement that isn't recognized or acknowledged as grief by the victim or by our society as a whole.

Have you ever, for example, sent a sympathy card to a friend who’s in a marriage where she isn’t respected, or to a friend who’s been deprived of a happy childhood because of abuse?

Likely not, because these emotional traumas aren’t considered a loss to be grieved – as a death is.

Instead, such a loss is treated as – for all intents and purposes – insignificant. At most, we express sympathy and urge the victim to move on.

This leaves the victim isolated and doubting the legitimacy of their own pain. 

As author Freya Bromley writes, “I don’t believe there is such a thing as moving on. We only move through and carry it with us.” 

I agree. The truth is, when a loved one dies, when a spouse betrays, when a family member refuses to have anything to do with us, we are forever changed.

Nora Ephron, who wrote "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally," writes this in her book, Heartburn, about her husband’s adultery: 

 “A whole chunk of your life turns out to have been completely different from what you thought it was. It becomes impossible to look back at anything that’s happened without wondering what was really going on.” 

Most people have never considered the emotional trauma they're carrying as grief. But they are, in fact, mourners. Simply naming such an experience as grief is itself an intervention that can deliver emotional or psychological relief. 

Betrayal by someone we trusted most, suffering the traumatic memories of childhood abuse, unceasing spousal disrespect – they put us in a state of bereavement over the loss of our wholeness as a human being worthy of respect.

The word "bereavement" comes from Old English, which translates to being “robbed or violently stripped of something valuable."

The word captures the abrupt and unwanted nature of grief, reflecting how a significant loss can feel like a sudden denial of a foundational part of our life. Torn apart.

Simply hearing this language can go a long way toward reducing the self-blame these mourners often attach to their feeling.

As Henri Nouwen told us in his 1972 book, The Wounded Healer, healing our emotional wounds doesn't demand we share dramatic personal pain. But we should be willing to see our suffering as percolating up from the depth of the human condition that all people share. 

(Photo by Alina Chernovolova)