Living in California means I have relatively easy access to renowned beaches. I say “relatively” because although the beaches are close when you count the miles, L.A. traffic makes the trip a bit more of a trek. I don’t lounge on the sandy shores often, but in the past month I’ve gone twice.
Besides sharks, one of the most dangerous ocean phenomena is a rip tide. Signs along the beach warn of rip tides and educate swimmers on survival tactics. I know rip tides are a real threat; when I was in college, one of my classmates (whom I did not know personally but I was acquainted with a couple of his close friends) was swept away by a rip tide in the Caribbean while standing in knee-deep water. I don’t know the full story, but he was never seen again.
A counselor recently made an observation to me about the way I’ve been dealing with my pain and loss that reminded me of being caught in a rip tide. She essentially said I have been sitting complacently in my suffering instead of deliberately moving through it. While she acknowledged that some times in my life will be harder than others — for example, the month of May — she warned against letting my suffering overcome me.
“We can’t let the pain, or the wound, define us,” she said.
Define me? At first I missed her point. Of course I’ve let my pain define me. I’ve written over and over about my identity as a birthmother and how hard it is to accept.
But I think she was making a subtle distinction. Suffering for the sake of suffering is futile and means nothing in the end, while using that suffering, that pain, that wound, to serve others and be better myself is the proper way to find peace within it.
As I later absorbed her words, I thought of John Walsh, the “America’s Most Wanted” TV show host and creator. Walsh became a victim’s rights advocate following the abduction and murder of his 6-year-old son, Adam, in 1981. He used his pain to help others; his tragedy transformed his life and he found purpose in spite of his suffering.
When I’m caught in my suffering, I feel like I’m drowning in a rip tide. The current is brutal. Like a swimmer caught in an undertow, I feel disoriented, compelled to move with the water, and unable to come up for air. A rip tide cannot just be “waited out” as a summer thunderstorm might be. The captive must swim.
To escape a rip tide, swimmers must orient their efforts parallel to the shore, and perpendicular to the current. I imagine that succeeding takes determination and lots and lots of strength. Even then, the swimmer could be far off shore once out of the rip tide, and must either hope for rescue or swim back to the beach. Or maybe the swimmer doesn’t succeed at all.
Like suffering, sloshing around in a rip tide is lonely. No one is going to jump in after you; you have to save yourself. This is the hardest truth for me when I think about my pain. Sometimes I wish someone could save me; it would be so much easier. Then I wouldn’t have to make the decision to swim, because I wouldn’t need to swim at all. Can’t someone just throw me a life preserver and get me out of here?
The counselor’s words stung, but she was right. In a previous post, I even wrote “I am definitely suffering,” as if I were throwing my hands in the air and succumbing to the tide. When I wrote that, I realized I had let my suffering carry me into the ocean of hatred and far away from the shores of peace. Yet I continue finding myself stranded in the same rip tide.
As a birthmother, I think it can be easy for me to say, “Look what’s happened to me. Isn’t it awful? You know I’ll never get over it, right?” Yes, this is awful and I will never get over it. But saying that it “happened” to me is like waiting in the rip tide for a rescue, not swimming or even treading water, while my lungs burn to breathe. I have to remind myself, no one is coming.
Sure, people on the shore are shouting for me. The lifeguard may be paddling his surfboard parallel to the tide to fish me out if I emerge safely. But as the waves crash over my head, I only have one decision to make: sink or swim.
To swim out of my suffering, I know I have to let things go. I can’t shake the whole bottle every time a painful memory or feeling surfaces. And I can’t expect a white knight to come to my aid. I can only swim one stroke at a time, away from the tide that carried me so far from shore.
