Last night, I was visited by the wounded ghost of decades past – myself.
My former self, that is. It was my six-year-old daughter who pulled that trigger (tiny teacher that she is), uttering something to me she heard on a cartoon, not yet understanding the nuance of context and the importance of words – when certain ones are meant for objects, and when others, pointed at people like a hunting rifle, become incredibly hurtful because of what we can inevitably project onto them, especially when you are still grieving the past.
For the purpose of this article, it isn’t important what she said, only that she said it and in doing so, pushed the big red “core wound” button, sending me into a fit of tears that could have easily overflowed the very bathtub in which she was just moments before splashing happily.
Once she realized how deeply her words affected me, she began to cry profusely, screaming, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” which promptly switched the dynamic.
Immediately, I made the attempt to quickly pack up my troubles as fast as possible to console her, trying to get my shit together enough to help her tiny six-year-old self, now fueled with remorse and sadness, to calm down, to parent and comfort her, to help her regulate her emotions before I could tend to mine.
So there I was, mother of one, having no one else in the moment to pass off parenting duties to while both of us were emotionally struggling, filled with sadness and openly sobbing.
I’d say single mother here but something about that doesn’t feel quite right, as I do co-parent, but suffice to say, when you’re alone in those difficult moments, may as well be single mothering.
We had a long discussion on kindness and the importance of words – when you can say certain thoughts and when some thoughts need to remain only thoughts or recorded in a journal, and after she had gone to bed, I followed suit, collapsing into sheets because I was spent, having reached my quota for feelings that evening. But, as triggers often do, they presented more thoughts the next morning, when my emotional state had calmed down enough to allow for curiosity. And this particular thought was interesting:
“Do wild animals experience sadness?”
A most random one to materialize on a Tuesday morning at work as I began the usual grind. After a quick google search and a very brief read on a Quora thread of the same question, I made a connection.
I read that “…animals that live in relative safety can afford grief.” The factors affecting whether a wild animal can actually feel sadness, and the extent to which it can, involves many variables such as food chain hierarchy/survivability, social structure, and brain development. Concisely, higher lifeforms with more complex brains can experience a wider range of emotions. For example, an elephant or a dog can feel more sadness than say, a worm. Additionally, animals that live in packs or groups tend to feel safer due to their social interactions and subsequent connection among their members. Likewise, the higher up on the food chain they are, the more capacity they have to feel because they don’t spend as much time in survival mode, existing in constant fear, burning through their energy reserves just to avoid becoming prey.
The connection I made was correlated to this survivability factor, in considering why I have become such an emotional creature the older I’ve gotten. Humans by our very nature are all emotional creatures, capable of feeling intense grief and sadness (and subsequently the opposite – love, passion, etc.), but some express it and others don’t. Some feel it more than others.
The other day I was wondering why I feel so much now, why I cry so much now, why I express so much now, versus when I was younger and the answer is simple: because I evolved beyond survival mode.
My adolescence and young adulthood were permeated by fear. I lived in a state of constant fight-or-flight, of threat. I often dissociated, severing the connection between being and body in the name of safety. My nervous system was continuously dysregulated, and I thought that’s just the way I was – the way I would always be: an excessively nervous creature. I had no idea my nervous system was so dysregulated or what that word even meant; didn’t hear the term until years later when a complete physical and mental breakdown brought me to both the chiropractor and the therapist.
I didn’t know any better back then. I never spoke up about it and I never asked. So I did not have the capacity to experience much else but fear or emotional numbness, which would only let loneliness and sadness through the door but only internally. Never outwardly. Never expressively. That shit was locked up tight.
My lessons in emotional intelligence did not come until much later in life. I could not consider the bigger picture back then because I couldn’t go there. It was too dangerous when my focus was on making it day to day: staving off the oscillating depression and anxiety, battling carnivorous thoughts, blending in. Like a wild animal, I became a master of disguise. I could hide not only my emotions, but I could change my spots to stripes. I could be chameleon, cuttlefish, arctic hare in a snowstorm. Anything that stopped me from becoming prey. My thoughts were like a stock ticker at all times: “Please don’t see me. Please don’t call on me. Please don’t single me out.” That would send my nervous system into overload and so my emotional state was tribal: the group is safest. Do as others do. Mother knows best.
But one cannot live life in survival mode. A fish perhaps, but not a human. We have evolved too much. We know too much.
You can’t escape your life by not living it. You can’t avoid your body by not being in it.
You have to find what makes life worth living, which will erode any limits. Eventually your body will have no choice but to believe it. Sometimes this takes a push-becomes-shove event, when we desperately desire for things to be different, to emerge from our caves and scale our chasms, get curious enough about what lay beyond. And in doing so, we open ourselves up to the wide spectrum of emotions.
I think of it like a hose. When the nervous system exists only in a state of unyielding dysregulation, it is a coiled mess with a thousand kinks. Water – emotion – can’t flow. When I was able to calm down enough to begin experiencing stillness, when my parasympathetic nervous system could finally be turned on to support my evolution, so did the water. And the waterworks.
First it came in the form of words, then eventually tears. Now, I feel many things, and I express even more. I am grateful for the grief because it first offers us relief in the moment, releases those good brain chemicals like oxytocin and endorphins and helps to alleviate stress. Second, it offers us a lesson, if we stop long enough to consider what it could be. When we are removed from survival mode, we can sit with the difficult emotions long enough to discover the higher perspective and the gifts that sadness brings.
Like animals, we have evolved to become yet another intelligent life form populating this beautiful, dichotomous planet. Some days we are gentle, humble elephants. Others we are ravenous, reactive wolves. I think at various stages of life we can tap into characteristics of all types of animal archetypes: clever fox, noble horse, fierce lion. Life will come for us at many angles and at times we may find ourselves in shark-infested waters emotions reverting to survival tactics and want for nothing more than to escape the present moment, the difficult state of being we may find ourselves in. There are times when desire, when more, when wanting is necessary. It pushes you towards change and growth and removes you from unfavorable situations. It catalyzes your evolution. And there are times when wishing, wanting things to be different removes you from the present moment and abandons gratitude. It becomes something of a destructive hindrance. We can only navigate this by becoming conscious, with reflection, with self-awareness. This awareness brings wisdom and only wisdom can tell the difference.
Today it seems even in my grief, perhaps I am the owl, and for that, I am grateful.