The Gift of Guilt

"I'll never get over my guilt," is a sentence I hear often from parents who have suffered the traumatic loss of a child (and all losses of children are traumatic - even if they are grown up when we lose them).

If we stay in this place of ruminating over our regrets and guilt, we are spared a bit from the acknowledgement of all our loss. Maybe it is easier to talk about our feelings of guilt than it is to live with the reality of all the things that will not happen now that they are gone.

It is all HARD. Guilt is crushing; mourning is like having heart surgery without anesthesia - every damn day.

But here's the thing - guilt is not really a gift unless it is true, legitimate wrongdoing - if that is true, then we know how to proceed: ask for forgiveness and make amends. However, it is usually not the whole story. Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for what we perceive we can (or should) control. Secondly, it is expensive. Unremitting, unresolved feelings of guilt steals the present moment. It takes us away from the living.

Guilt, the lying little bugger, tells us that it serves as a living tribute to the loss. But guilt really just keeps stealing from the living. Guilt asks us to keep dying for our dead - and that sounds noble, even preferable to our grief over another's passing.

But what if there is another way? What if we acknowledge the specifics of what we cannot undo that was 'wrong' and refuse the offering of a generalized guilty feeling with no legitimate claim to reality? We acknowledge our legitimate wrongdoing and seek forgiveness, make amends. If we find that some of the beliefs that we have held about our guilt are simply not true, then we must move forward. We live. We live to honor the lost. We live well for those among us, our other children, our family that is still present for us to love well.

These are not easy things nor are they appropriate first responses for someone new to grief. But if we find that our grief is interfering with our love for others - maybe it is time to re-evaluate the ways we have thought about our loss. Maybe we need a grief counselor or a grief group to help us reframe our habitual way of thinking about our suffering.

Maybe we need some support for healing.

Lovingkindness Embodied

“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

Brene Brown

After my Uncle’s storm blew over, he looked spent and took his leave. Everyone offered a farewell in muted shock. There are plenty of people we might expect to blow their top in my family - this guy wasn’t one of them.

For whatever reason, and I suppose to no one’s surprise, I couldn’t let this go. I trailed behind him and leaned into the driver’s side door, my elbows and forearms screaming as they touched the hot metal of his Buick. He rolled down his window. I leaned in close.

“Uncle James, you do not seem to know this, but my mother loves you to pieces and you just devastated her. She admires you. She thinks you are the best Christian man she has ever known in her entire life and I have no reason to doubt her assessment. I don’t have any idea what happened in the past, but I am sure you have suffered more than she has over the years as a result of the decisions previous generations have made. My mom doesn’t have men in her life that she can call ‘good’. You’re it. Please fix this.”

I never saw him again. But I did learn that he fixed it with my mom. It didn’t take much because my mom was a primed pump ready to pour out her love on this older brother who was treated at best like a welcomed guest in her childhood home. My mother, a little acorn who, in my opinion, was not particularly well nourished herself and often lived in inhospitable conditions for growing lovingkindness, was a mighty oak tree of hesed.

Me? Not so much. I harbored resentment toward him. I am still cautious around folks claiming the label “good Christian.” But I have to give James credit; he made a wrong right. So although it was hurtful and messy, it turns out that my Uncle James was indeed a man capable of lovingkindness.

“Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.”

Brene Brown

An Introduction to Step 10

It is difficult to be a saint in the midst of one’s family.

Anatole France

I once worked on a team one time with a leader who was in long term recovery. He often popped his head into my office to make amends or ask, “Are we good?” I was young and foolish and pre-recovery so I chalked it up to being a touchy-feely kind of guy who was a tiny bit too sensitive.

Years later, with fresh eyes and a completely different perspective, I happened to run into him at a conference. Our career paths had diverged years ago but I had never gotten past my curiosity about his profound and rare commitment to keeping his side of the street squeaky clean. After the usual chit chat that comes with catching up on a decade of history, I asked, “Hey, I’m working a recovery program and it has given me a different way of seeing our previous working relationship. I’m curious. Did you make amends and check-ins part of your work life because you were in recovery or was that just your leadership style?”

He laughed and replied. “Definitely NOT my style. It was all about Step Ten. I never wanted to find myself in a position of having to ‘catch up’ with my inventory, sharing and amends making like I did with my first round of 12-step work!”

“So,” I inquired, “Is it the same today in your work environment?” Without hesitation he called over one of his colleagues, introduced us and said, “Hey, Jimmy, Teresa wants to know if I interrupt your work to make amends or ask, ‘Are we good?’ ”

Jimmy chuckled. “All the damn time. The guy is constantly checking in. I finally told him to bug off and that’s when he told me that this was part of his program. So I put up with it for his sake.” He winked and walked off. Clearly Jimmy was crazy about this boss with the program that regularly encouraged humility ESPECIALLY when you are the boss. Later in the evening, Jimmy and I compared notes. The boss makes amends about remarkably similar things with Jimmy as he did with me. He isn’t great with details and so his team needs to pay extra close attention. Sometimes important details slip through the cracks. He’s still a big dreamer but responds well to follow up questions and even the occasional reality check. In other words, the guy is only human but he makes it easy on his team by admitting to his foibles and caring about how his behavior affects others.

The beauty of Step Ten is that when we work it, life is more peaceful - for ourselves and those who love us. Does it require diligence? Yes. Is it sometimes uncomfortable? Sure. But it is helpful too. It cuts down on misunderstandings, resentments and all manner of problems that relationships endure whether or not we talk about them and take responsibility for our part in causing them!

Yikes!

The Big Book of AA says, “The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Unless one’s family expresses a desire to live upon spiritual principles we think we ought not to urge them. We should not talk incessantly to them about spiritual matters. They will change in time. Our behavior will convince them more than our words. We must remember that ten or twenty years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone.”

Not all amends go well. Here is an example of an amends gone bad:

“ ‘Joey, I know I treated you and your sisters badly when you were kids,’ he began. “One of the things I’ve learned through Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have to admit that you’ve hurt people and let them know how sorry you are. I know that I did some bad things back then, and I apologize. Son, I’m sorry for anything I may have done to harm you.’ Then he stuck out his hand. I did not have it in me to forgive him, as absolution was not my line of trade, but I shook his hand anyway, if only because this creepy vignette made me uncomfortable and I wanted it to be over. Clemency was not included in my limited roster of emotions, but because he seemed to be making an effort to turn his life around, I did not express my true feelings at the time. Still, the whole thing rankled. I didn’t like the way my father phrased his apology; it sounded like he was working from a script. I knew, of course, that the self-abnegation-by-numbers routine was a stunt suggested to people like my father by Alcoholics Anonymous. You have done many bad things and now realized that you were powerless before the fearsome suzerainty of demon alcohol, but you were man enough to fess up to your mistakes. You said a few words, you stuck out your hand - meekly, if you were any good at this sort of thing - your apology was accepted, and then everything was even-steven….Nothing my father had done in all the years I’d known him infuriated me more than this fleabag apology.”

Joe Queenan, Closing Time

What went wrong? What principles did Joey’s dad violate? How can we learn from this experience?

Maybe...

People don’t like it when you change. Even if that change is making your life better, they don’t like it because a little piece of them dies.

Ricky Gervais

I suppose Gervais could be right. But I see it a bit differently. Change is hard to recognize; it takes time to trust it.

If you have amends to make, do them as best you can whether people like it or not. But do so with the utmost respect for the difficulty they may face in hearing it.

It is hard and we are ill-equipped to deal with past harms that wrecked us. Be gentle and gracious to all.