Stretching for Enlightenment: Bringing My Story and Yours To Substack

“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” --Eleanor Roosevelt

A reasonable question about which you may be wondering: Why has the woman now revealing herself in front of me picked this title for her Substack posts? My answer: “Born Survivors” reflects one of the important ways I see myself and I am often drawn to others who are also “born survivors,” many of whom may have resolved some of their emotions about what made them that way. I’d be willing to hazard a guess that many men and women find this description to be fitting when examining—either consciously or unconsciously—their own lives.

A second question that pressed on me as I chose what and how to center myself as a writer on this website: how do some of us come to be “born survivors?”

The National Institute of Mental Health tells us that “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD is often caused when an individual experiences any kind of trauma, while Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) occurs when an overwhelming combination plagues us as well; recovery from either is extremely difficult. Only one, or several, of these events can make recovery difficult: the death of a child—especially from suicide; the death of anyone close; active combat in war; sexual harassment or sexual and verbal abuse; serious illness and pain; “Broken Heart Syndrome;” abandonment; divorce; confinement; torture; rape; substance use disorders; problems with the law; natural disasters; racial abuse; chronic pain; growing up in environments that are impoverished either physically or emotionally.¹

A final question: will we succumb to the frigid tide of despair, or will we fight back?

The condition often lasts for years—or even a lifetime—with hidden triggers which assault the individual with persistent memories of the trauma, setting off intense reactions of body, mind, and soul. Symptoms may include nightmares or scouring memories of the events, an avoidance of any situation that brings back those memories, heightened reactions in both body and mind—as well as anxiety, depression, sleeping troubles, panic attacks, or an abstract anger that can then develop into violence. All this, even though the painful experience has long since passed. Different types of psychotherapy, as well as medications to manage symptoms, are now available for treatment.

We may feel ambivalent about tagging ourselves as “born survivors,” which can include those with PTSD or C-PTSD, disorders that we often find difficult to admit to ourselves—and to others. Because we would rather ignore the attendant difficulties, we shove them down below our conscious awareness.

I resolved many years ago that I would never describe myself with words implying that I was born to survive, or that I had PTSD of any kind. Surely I was not a girl or woman who had either acted with bravery and determination to overcome shameful memories, or one to whom such destructive events had even occurred; they were threatening and ugly to others—even those I loved or was close to; perhaps it seemed too self-aggrandizing. Too “me-centric,” and self-absorbed. Too embarrassing and humiliating to tattoo myself with this acronym—which only attests to the fact that certain devastating experiences are stamped on my soul.

Yet, here I am now, writing in public about just that, trembling even as I type. I suspect there may be others who feel the same way I do: does anyone really want to let others in on these secrets? To know that to gain insight into yourself sometimes includes facing PTSD—Complex or otherwise—no matter how desperate you may be to avoid it or how eager you are to change your life.

Nevertheless, the word “survivor” is one that encompasses the way I now see myself. I have had innumerable years of psychotherapy, but it was not until recently that I began to admit how much of my childhood (and adolescence, adulthood and yes, even senior years) have forced me to my knees.

During the decade following the turn of the century, I worked on and eventually published the memoir Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide. I’d made an unconscious choice when selecting that title; it was only later that I would come to recognize that C-PTSD did indeed describe the problems from which I had been suffering for many years. However, it was also true that I had survived—emotionally and physically. The memoir was very candid and followed the trail of suicide that wove throughout my family and its various generations. There had been four such self-inflicted deaths within its small world in only two generations, as well as a fifth suicide attempt that failed.

As the elder daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton, I was raised in the darkness of my mother’s early unavailability, her continual mental illness and instability. Repeated hospitalizations and suicide attempts often took her away from my father, my sister and me in more ways than one.

Much later, in my fifties, I would make three of my own attempts to die; this devastated my two teenage boys in just the way my mother had devastated Dad, Joy and me by abandoning us (and her many friends) so often. It took a long time before I was able to confront the guilt and shame I felt about the pain I had inflicted on my two sons and my husband.

The suicide of my first-born, Alexander, on September 1, 2022 sucked poison from the roots of my previous traumas, and thus kickstarted the genesis of this post, which encompasses new thoughts and conclusions about my life. When Zan died, I was about to move into a new decade of my life, close to turning seventy. The unspeakable loss of his presence damaged my mind and my body. I began to suffer as I never had before: functional seizures; debilitating vertigo and incapacitating dizziness; fourteen falls down the stairs of our home, (falls which became the source of traumatic brain injury); and then a final slow decline into a world of neurologists.

My subsequent diagnosis of degenerative dementia described all too well the way my brain was freezing up and refusing to operate. I lost my ability to find or speak the right words regularly (aphasia being especially torturous for a writer). I became unable to find my way around my home, often ending up in closets when I was looking for the bathroom. I sometimes got lost in my car and shortly had to stop driving. I could no longer follow a recipe or wield a knife, although I had been a passionate cook. I grew confused when my husband tried to explain something to me that would have been basic to anyone else. My computer and phone became daily mysteries, as I couldn’t even manage to send a text or an email anymore. I lost objects of all sorts over and over—too frequently for it to be considered just the encroachment of age.

An Apple watch and an I-Phone that had functions on them like “Find Mine” and “Emergency” and “You’ve Had A Hard Fall” became imperative; I wore the phone around my neck using a cross body strap at all times. In a final move of desperation I went to the neuropsychologist my neurologist recommended and had the four hour written test that would produce my diagnosis. Once again, buried by grief and terror, I wanted to die.

I had just turned sixty-nine and Alexander had only been forty years old when he killed himself; his death set off a mental trigger inside me, as his suicide harkened back to my mother’s suicide in 1974, (just as she was about to hit her forty-fifth birthday). The sudden loss knocked repeatedly at my front door. My life resonating with shock and trauma, I didn’t have very many people with whom to share. It was too threatening for most friends—sometimes even those who had been close. I became submerged in silence.

It wasn’t surprising that I stopped writing for two years. Only today do I once again sit down in front of my computer, knowing that, at last, I am ready to return to the world I have loved since I began writing short stories and poems in 1965. As a shy, twelve year old, I worked side by side with my mother on both her poems and mine during long afternoons in her study.

I keep reminding myself that I am the author of nine published and respected books. In December of 1974, while I was a senior at Harvard, I had become my mother’s literary executor—a complicated endeavor that has been a major part of my life for half a century now. It has fulfilled me more than any other aspect of my life except motherhood and my own writing. I live with my second husband and our two exceptional Dalmatians, Cody and Mac, in Maryland, on the banks of the beautiful Rhode River. Every day I strive to recover from the difficulties I’ve experienced during my seventy-one years on this earth, finding joy in manipulating and celebrating the written word.

With a sigh of relief, I can now admit that all this living I have done in my seventy plus years constitutes a true emotional journey I no longer deny . I no longer deny that I am a “born survivor;”, but am grateful instead. Every night in the darkness that descends at bedtime, I offer a silent prayer to no one in particular that I may continue to acknowledge that insight. No longer ashamed to say that I have been strong of character since I was young girl, I seek out others like me and when I discover someone with similar qualities, it comforts me. I am learning that I am not alone, after all.

I will write here about myself—and also about you—and not just about the darker side of life. What is going on in the world outside the window of my study and the mess on my desk? What is going on in yours? I aim for personal, candid and thoughtful contemplations of whatever I am inspired by at any given moment—ordinary life, the fulfillment of love and writing, the intricate dance with family, sexual abuse, or even suicide—and sometimes those pieces which are humorous, about our beloved furry friends.

I hope that working on a new memoir, as well as writing here, will help me to continue to reach out and grab my words once again. They will come “from my kitchen to yours,” as my mother often dubbed her blazing poetry’s path. Her poems were personal enough to affect her readers emotionally and with a punch to the gut. I think that for me, perhaps, this process might be better described as writing “essays” that come “from my desk to yours” or even—if it is not too corny—“from my heart to yours.”

I hope you will find some kind of fresh insight here. I hope you will be moved, perhaps even to act on something important to you. I hope I will make you think harder and stretch for enlightenment. I hope you may even identify, smile and laugh. That’s an overload of hope, and a lot to accomplish. Nevertheless I continue to stand here, determined. My bow and arrow are still aiming at the sun.

1. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_adults.asp