People suffer in all sorts of ways – they suffer in outwardly-appearing big and obvious ways and they suffer in inward, quiet ways. The outward ways are the ones that gain the sympathy, the meal trains, the cards, the flowers, the offerings of support and “we love you’s”. Yes, the person has suffered a big tragedy, something that is recognized as “painful” and “bad” and that person is in obvious need of support. I won’t argue with that one bit. I’m right there with everybody offering support, when I can.

The inward sufferings, though, those are the ones that confound me. Those are the ones that I cannot reckon with or understand. Those are the ones that hurt is an altogether different way. For those types of tragedies or sufferings, people shun you. They shy away. Those are the unspoken, ugly pains that make people uncomfortable. People don’t bring meals. People don’t offer support or encouragement – sometimes you even get iced out by your friends. Sometimes you stop hearing from your support network. Sometimes you are so ashamed of these things that you don’t even allow yourself to share them. Because when you have, people leave. These aren’t the tragedies of car accidents, cancer, heart attacks. These are the tragedies of being abused by your husband, of having to leave a bad marriage to protect yourself and your kids, of having to leave your family to protect your kids from mistreatment. These are the tragedies of having depressed family members, sometimes even suicidal family members. These are the tragedies of the undiagnosable, but ever so real, pain. These lead to nights you lie awake and wonder how (or sometimes why) you will survive the next year. And yet your mailbox is empty. Posting about these things on social media leaves people so uncomfortable that they don’t know what to say. The problem is ongoing. The support just isn’t there.

I went through the hardest years of my life mostly alone. Raising three daughters, going through a divorce, losing my family, having my niece taken away from me, being accused of terrible things (none of which were true), struggling to support my children both financially and emotionally. I turned to alcohol to escape from the overwhelming weight of it all. I turned to alcohol, and in so doing, I hurt my children even more. But I didn’t know what to do. I had just moved, I had no friends close by. The few friends I had nearby were uncomfortable with the divorce and didn’t want to hang out anymore. The “family” that I had picked up their pace of insulting and shunning us, leading to an accusation of harming my niece and banning us from seeing her. Right in the middle of some of the hardest times of our lives, my “family” made things harder. No, they wouldn’t talk about it. No, they wouldn’t talk about it. No, they wouldn’t go to counseling. Counseling was what I needed. They were fine. So they said, Were they? I know I wasn’t. I was in counseling. I had to make some very tough and painful choices.

All the while, I got no meals – I struggled to feed my children.

All the while, I got no cards of support – I was shunned at family reunions and asked not to come.

All the while, I got no phone calls – people didn’t know what to say.

I survived it. I am still surviving it. I suffered the death of a family, but a death made more painful knowing that it was a choice. I chose to protect my children and, in so doing, I got rocks thrown at me by people who didn’t understand. I stood firm, mostly. When I wasn’t crying. When I wasn’t drinking. When I wasn’t wishing my life away.

I have landed on the other side of that vast gulch and I have grown. But, in my deepest heart, I’m sad for that woman. I’m sad for the person who had to do all of that alone. I’m sad for the woman that just couldn’t connect with people when times were the roughest. I’m certain that the fault was mine as much as it was anybody’s. I didn’t know how to connect. I didn’t know how to need just enough but not too much. I didn’t trust anybody after the deception and deceit of my “family.” The stones were still being thrown and sometimes they still are.

I see it now as a learning opportunity. I see it now as something God needed me to experience so that I could turn around and lead others through it also. It was a horrible experience, but I grew stronger. And now, I turn and reach out my hand for those that also need. For those that feel rocks being thrown at them. For those that are just trying to crawl out of the well, but their hands are getting stomped on. I will do my best to offer them a hand out of that well. Or, at a minimum, keep people back from the edge of the well, so that when they are ready to emerge on their own, the way will be clear for them.