There was a song I used to sing in my 20s called After the hurricane. It was about rebuilding your life after tragedy. I had no idea then how many times I would experience tragic loss in my life — with jobs, love, friends, you name it.
When I was studying Substance Abuse Counseling, everyone in the college system was required to read a book called 1 Dead in Attic. I don’t have the book with me as I’m writing this on the road, but I was told the author visited the college the semester before I started. The book was fascinating to me because it was written by a journalist chronicling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He wrote about how people would go to closed convenience stores just to get toothpaste and deodorant. If I remember correctly, he said he left an IOU note when he went. He said people put their refrigerators on the front porches because of the rotten food smells inside. He also said people would sit on their porches at night and drink alcohol to cope with the disaster.
The title of the book came from houses in the city being spray painted on the front “1 dead in attic” after each house was inspected and deceased people were found inside. I was told by faculty members in the counseling program that the author was still clearly dealing with the psychological and emotional effects of the event years later.
When I was working as a reporter and editor at a newspaper in North Carolina, we were trained by the National Weather Service to cover hurricanes. We were told that the media focuses on the wrong thing — they focus on the eye of the storm instead of the bands. The flooding from the rain bands kills and causes the damage.
To me, it’s the aftermath of an event and how we handle it that is more important than the event itself. As I wrote in The Princess Guide to Healing a Broken Heart, no one can determine how long your healing process will take. Think about it like this: the bigger the hurricane in your life, the longer the recovery, clean-up and rebuilding process will take. We often rush our recovery to please everyone around us and say we’re fine and over it. But it literally can take years for us to begin feeling like ourselves again after a psychological hurricane hits our lives. That’s alright! Do the internal work, and let the process take as long as it takes. Tell anyone around you to either get a hammer and help you rebuild, or shut up about your healing process.
I was recently staying at a hotel, and they played a song from the 60s called Undun by The Guess Who. The lyrics caught my attention:
She’s come undone. She wanted truth, but all she got was lies, came the time to realize, and it was too late. She’s come undone. She didn’t know what she was headed for, and when I found what she was headed for it was too late. It’s too late. She’s gone too far. She lost the sun. She’s come undone.
Granted, they’re probably singing about substance use since it was written in the 60s, but these lyrics could describe any tragedy — especially relationship loss.
I’ve come to realize that when tragedy strikes, it’s an opportunity to rebuild and reinvent your life. Madonna has often said that she’s had to reinvent herself many times. I think that’s part of this existence. Some of us make it look easy, but it isn’t. The process is hard, uncomfortable and very unsure. It’s like me being in a car that flipped five times in 2005 — you think you know where you’re headed, but you really have no idea of what’s actually happening in that moment or how it will turn out. Do the internal work. Trust the process, and have faith that everything will work out for your good.
As hard as it is to fathom in the moment, let the process run it’s course like a hurricane, tornado or car accident. When you survive to tell the story, you will have the opportunity to rebuild your life in a way that works better for you.
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