Finding the Gems

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning This is my story. It reflects my search for meaning, psychologically and spiritually; that my journey to selfhood benefitted from my analytical inclination, professional training, and clinical experience, is unquestionable; that I use myself as the vehicle for healing in my therapeutic relationships with patients, is also unquestionable. To some degree, my instructor was correct: a measure of my compassion for the suffering of others was developed in the horror chamber of my childhood. The search for meaning in my life has been of utmost importance. Finding the meaning in my experiences, in my traumas and my losses, may be the reason I am a more whole person than I had any right to expect and it may be the single most important reason why I am who I am today. Cultivating an appreciation for the wisdom, the hidden spiritual gems, in each of my losses, freed me to find the joy in living. Finding the joy in my journey transformed my life from an unending slog through misery into a wonderful adventure. Each of us will experience pain, perhaps suffering, and possibly trauma in the course of our lifetime. It is what we do with these experiences, the meaning we attribute to them, the lessons learned, and how we apply those lessons that have the power to determine the quality of our life and whether not we will look back on our life with joy and satisfaction when it ends. Life is filled with losses and traumas, both big and small. We have a choice: will we be squashed by life or will we find the joy in living every day? Regardless of what life brings us, or what we bring to our own life, if we can find the meaning in our experiences, the wisdom buried deep within, we have the opportunity to transform the muddy, algae-covered, jagged river rocks of trauma and loss into precious spiritual gems. At the age of forty-five, I felt I had little to show for my years. That was grossly inaccurate, but how I felt nonetheless. The one thing I had plenty of was regret. God-awful, painful regrets tumbled down around me, as the full magnitude of my losses became abundantly clear. Clarity is not always a good thing; sometimes denial can be a good friend. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I couldn’t muster a thimbleful of denial to save myself a few gut-wrenching moments. All I could do was cry. I wanted to be wise and filled with deep understanding and appreciation for the course of my life and the lessons learned. I wanted to be able to say, “I had to be where I had to be, in order to be where I am now.” I wanted to be able to say, “God knows best” and then to remember only the good times. But, I couldn’t. I could not declare, “Do-overs!” and, suddenly be eighteen years old again and beginning my adult life. I could not overlook the years spent in unproductive relationships with the wrong persons. There was not one moment or decision I could undo. All I could do was cry salty tears of regret; tears rendered bitter by the sacrifices I made during those years. All I had was the unyielding pain of regrets I wasn’t supposed to have. After all, hadn’t I resolved to live my life in such a way as to not have any regrets? Hadn’t I made conscious and life-affirming choices? Hadn’t I lived my dream, and wasn’t it a life filled with good friends and spiritual growth? Hadn’t I met my spiritual teacher and my spiritual mother? Hadn’t I taken a ten-year-old girl into my heart as my own and grown a healthy mother-daughter relationship, despite not having had one myself? Certainly there was a higher purpose in all of this, yes? It couldn’t just be a total loss, right? Surely there was something of value in my adult romances and friendships, but if there was, I couldn’t see it. Granted, it was difficult to see clearly through the tears, but, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Why did it take decades of life, two rounds of therapy totaling almost six years, and thousands and thousands of hours (and dollars!) of painful introspection for me to see with clarity? Why couldn’t I see the turning points, the pivotal moments, and the critical junctures of my life at the time they were occurring? Why only in hindsight? Why, and this is a bitter irony, did I have to become a therapist helping others to see their lives clearly, before I could be my truest self, and see my own life, so very clearly? The answer to those questions is very simple and very complicated: the past.