About OnSurviving

A story and explanation of what you can expect as you explore our community...

I don’t know what people thought when they saw me standing there. At the time, I didn’t have it in me to care, to even think about it. I just couldn’t sit for one more minute in that suffocating car. What to do after I got out? That was lost on me too. I had taken several steps away from the car but then just stood there. I was aware of cars tucked in neatly next to each other, of car after car after truck after car fit together like a metallic quilt splayed out between me and the familiar Safeway. Aware of patches occasionally breaking free and ambling out onto the access road next to me. Aware of people here and there, of strangers or friends I couldn’t compute. Aware but unmoved. I just stood there, arms limp at my sides, shoulders soft, effortless...effort not being possible. I just stood there, eyes vacant, statuesque if not for the tears steadily streaming down my face.

Those minutes, tens of minutes, maybe more – they stick with me, flash in my mind. It’s how those minutes felt that reverberates over time. I sensed the world moving around me, but I was not part of it.

Imagine a small town recently leveled by tornado: splintered boards, twisted metal poles and sheeting, shattered windows in the few still-standing walls of shops on Main Street. Rubble. Stillness. Absence. Elsewhere, people chatter about the news and go on about their business.

In those minutes and many others that stretched out beyond it, I was that town. The sudden, accidental death of my 11-year-old daughter was the tornado. Everyone else was elsewhere.

That was 15 years ago. It feels impossible that I could’ve lived another year, another 11 years, and beyond. Shoot, the 20 years before I first felt her spirit inside me were not great either. Just one year prior, I had tried to call the whole thing off, washed down a bottle of Tylenol with a beer and went to bed. Someone in the emergency room told me it would’ve worked if only I hadn’t been found. My therapist, who had been treating me for PTSD in the year before my daughter died, warned me that most parents, mothers especially, don’t survive the loss of a child. Another bottle of Tylenol was easy enough to get. There were plenty of those little white bottles lined up just inside that Safeway. It would’ve worked before.

I had a reason why not – not a reason to live but a reason to survive, at least until some accident or natural cause would grace me with a way out. It was wrapped up in mythology drilled into me during Sunday School classes my stepmother made my brother and me attend, religion I had rejected a few years in, once they showed a video on how Jewish people would all go to hell. Still, I couldn’t shake the thought that some of their teaching could be true, namely that people who commit suicide go to hell. I couldn’t risk the chance that it was true. I had to see my daughter again – and that wouldn’t be in hell, should such a place exist.

Today, you might find me standing similarly still, but with life in my eyes, delighting in the softly clattering aspen leaves or breathing in the rich green tomato leaf scent that wafts from my backyard on summer afternoons or entranced by the pink universe of Simphiwe Ndzube. People always want to talk about thriving – they might even describe me in that way now. I am not interested in that. I am interested in the incredible strength it has taken for me simply to survive – in a world that would rather I and others like me just get over it, stuff it, get on, be happy, look at the bright side…without offering any clue on how to get there or any recognition of how absurd that all sounds in the midst of such despair.

Such clues are hidden in the shadows of our lives, those of us who have moved mountains to survive.

I know what it’s like to open eyes each morning, wishing it wasn’t so, eventually lifting heavy legs out of bed, placing feet on the floor, and moving forward just because it’s what’s next. I know what it’s like to grasp onto whatever is available to take the next step. I know what it’s like to slog through the day and fight the rising panic whenever the realization comes that this is likely to go on and on and on. I know what it’s like to survive in spite of it all. Putting one foot in front of another in such a state and across so many years – I also know what it’s like to discover one day that those steps have eased, gotten softer and lighter, and that a full life is possible…maybe even peace, maybe even joy. I know what it’s like to find that my in-flight prayers during extreme turbulence shift back to landing safely so I might live the best life possible in the days ahead.

I know what’s it’s like to survive, in the fullest sense of the word: moving from pure, deep, all-consuming despair to engagement with life fueled by genuine hope. People have often commended me for the strength they witnessed in me as I struggled to survive. When I was living deep in despair, that pissed me off because I didn’t feel capable of surviving alone, and I felt desperately alone, even more so each time someone lauded me for my strength. I think I need to talk about that more in a future post, but for now, I want to acknowledge that what people witnessed in me was my struggle to survive. It is the same thing that astounds me each time I listen to others’ stories in AA meetings – “the rooms,” as we often call them. It is the same way I reacted to Noblelee as I experienced her sharing some of her story with me.

OnSurviving, for me, is all about those struggles and the possibilities and hope that may spring from them. It offers a place for Noblelee and me to reflect on our experiences, to deepen our own understanding of how we got to where we are now, from the roots of our struggles to the sources of strength that we were able to tap along the way to the futures we now strive to realize. It is a place for the two of us to connect, express, reflect, learn, heal. It is a place for us to examine what helped us, what didn’t, what could be better.

All of that may show up in different forms – in writing, in images, maybe even through interpretive dance should the spirit move. We will each write (or otherwise express ourselves) on a theme – a dueling pianos-esque approach to a blog – then we will meet to reflect on what was important and meaningful for each of us and explore how our experiences and responses were similar and different.

In doing all of this in such a public way, we offer an opportunity for others to learn and heal along with us. I have no doubt: Noblelee and I are not alone. At this moment, countless others are thinking about the most expedient and least tortuous way to die, countless others are drowning themselves in alcohol and other drugs because it’s the only relief available to allow them to make it through another day, and countless others are searching for and grasping at whatever hope they might find…while others watch helplessly as their loved ones struggle and still others research and discuss public and workplace policies that might help. This project is a place for all of us to get in touch with the deeply human struggle for survival, to honor it, to acknowledge the tremendous strength intrinsic to it, and just maybe, to find a better way forward.