Here I sit on a Sunday morning, drinking my coffee and reading a book – Any Ordinary Day. Blindsides, resilience and what happens after the worst day of your life by Leigh Sales.
I’m feeling intense happiness – it’s not hot (finally – we’ve had the hottest summer on record) and I can feel a touch of cooler air on my skin. The butcher birds and magpies are celebrating the day. That’s all it takes to make me happy.
And it’s just that – finding happiness in the smallest of things; that happiness is not a goal – I’ve just read a discussion of this subject in Leigh Sales’ book and it has struck enough of a chord for me to write about the subject (yet again).
I’m really enjoying Any Ordinary Day. Leigh Sales is a highly respected journalist with the ABC, yet what we’ve got here is not ‘journalistic’ at all. It’s a book written in a very open, honest and personal voice. Being a journalist myself, however, I’m really liking the peek into her personal thoughts about her work.
But more than that, it’s a book that looks at people who have suffered the most extraodinary traumatic events in their life, and how they have come out at the other end. Leigh Sales interviewed people we’ve all seen on our televisions, wondering how on earth they emotionally and psychologically survive, how they get through their days – Walter Mikac (Port Arthur massacre), Stuart Diver (Thredbo landslide), Louisa Hope (Lindt Cafe) are just three of them. She talked to professionals who helped these people – policemen, counsellors, a coroner.
Sales studied academic journal articles on trauma, grief, adaptation, and survival for background knowledge. She discusses statistics (‘that could have been me’), magical thinking and the way the brain tries to cope with ‘why’, public sentiments on very public tragedies, victims being in the eye of a media storm, and having to find a ‘new normal’ after traumatic events.
Posttraumatic growth
It’s the chapter titled ‘A New Normal’ that gets into the subject of how people grow from these traumatic, aptly-named ‘life changing’ events that has prompted me write. (I’ve taken a bit of time to circle back to this!) The part I’m particularly interested in is Leigh Sales’ interview with Hannah Richell, whose husband Matt died surfing at Bronte in 2014, and her subsequent look at ‘posttraumatic growth’.
It’s this passage:
“I understand now that happiness isn’t some goal that we’re working towards,” (Hannah) says.
“It’s that we just had a cup of tea and a nice pastry,” (Leigh Sales) says.
“Exactly. It’s just appreciating the small moments. Sitting with you, having this conversation, is really lovely. So it’s finding happiness in the day to day … I just find peace and beauty in the smallest moments now.”
Leigh Sales
Apparently, the “positive changes that Hannah experienced in her outlook on life amidst her grief” has a name – posttraumatic growth.
Sales researched studies on posttraumatic growth… studies that look at why some people experience positive growth after trauma and some don’t. How traumatic the trigger has to be to create growth. Does counselling help? Gender, personality, and past life experiences have a part to play in whether you’re likely to grow from the experience or not.
Whatever the event that triggers posttraumatic growth, it has to be cataclysmic, not just a ‘brush’ with death – Sales gives the example of breaking your arm from being in a car accident. No, that’s not a big enough scare to trigger posttraumatic growth.
Leigh Sales
To spur growth, it must be seismic; it must shake you to your core and cause you to fundamentally rethink everything you believe.
Having cancer does just that. Sales looked at studies on breast cancer patients.
Those who experienced the most growth were the ones who had actively thought about their diagnosis, ruminated on its meaning for their lives and discussed it with others.
Leigh Sales
Writing about the major traumatic experience can help, studies show. I agree – I fully believe in journalling (but them, I’m naturally a writer). And, for me at least, it must be done with pen and paper – handwriting slows down the process enough for my brain to be reflective.
There is also evidence that active contemplation correlates with growth, particularly writing or speaking about the trauma. In some cases, the emotions experienced are so strong that it’s hard for the brain to process what occurred unless the victim actively wrestles to make meaning of it. Putting their feelings into words forces the person to clarify those feelings.
Leigh Sales
Breast cancer changed my world view
Interestingly, studies show that younger breast cancer patients are more likely to experience posttraumatic growth than older. I was diagnosed at age 44; in breast cancer terms, that is young. While the stress is no less real for older patients, younger patients have different issues. It’s more unusual to be diagnosed at a younger age. It’s usually a more threatening cancer, as well. Patients may lose their fertility – some women might not have had children and now won’t have the option. Although I had already had my son and had no plans for other children, losing fertility was a surprise distress for me.
My son was only five years old when I was diagnosed. I was (and still am) a single mum. That was my biggest distress – the possibility this would kill me and I would leave my son without his mummy.
And relationships. Whew. I haven’t had one since I was diagnosed and went through treatment and nor am I likely to. Body image is one of the reasons for that. Who would want me with one and a half breasts? Who wants to look at that scar? What a turn off.
Also, at the same time as going through my own cancer battle, my younger sister was rediagnosed with a brain tumour, and this time there was nothing they could do for her, beyond chemotherapy to try and extend her life. We actually did the same Look Good, Feel Better course together, and started chemo on the same week – me intravenously, her in tablet form. We did Relay for Life together. Ironically, she led the Survivor’s Walk, having only recently learned there was no hope.
Knowing this was happening to her, knowing she was going to die and being terrified of losing her, brought it’s own unique issues, besides the obvious. She was going to die from her cancer, I only “might” die from mine. A family member made the comment to me, “what have YOU got to worried about?”. I felt they thought my battle, my experiences, were trivial compared to my sister’s. There was a definite, “shut up and get on with it” component, a dismissive attitude. It was hurtful, and I felt adrift and on my own.
And then, when my sister died, I felt survivor guilt. I thought, if my parents had to choose which of us died, they’d chose me. Illogical, I know, but survivor guilt is real.
I’m definitely a different person to the one I was pre-cancer, and I am so very thankful for that. I’m a better person – a LONG, long way from perfect, but better. I think the lesson about happiness was one of the big ones, and definitely one that has stuck.
Understanding happiness
It’s a shame it takes some major life trauma to teach us about happiness. You can try and tell people that great happiness and peace can be found in the day to day, in the smallest things, until you’re blue in the face, but it’s untellable, somehow. It’s not something you can tell someone, and have them say, “oh! I see!”.
Some people stay resolutely unhappy, believing they’ll be “happy when”. Some people actually identify themselves with their miserableness, are relentless in their negativity, and resist anything to help themselves become happy. Some people are in the middle of an intense grief and can’t currently see that there is happiness to be found, and that’s understandable. But those small every day happinesses can co-exist alongside grief and trauma. I remember sitting outside in the sun in the winter I was going through chemo, a beanie on my bald head and a cup of tea in my cold hands, finding bliss in watching jimmy lizards sunning themselves on the brick wall.
And of course, some people have clinical depression, but that’s a completely separate subject entirely. Although, I have had clinical depression many times myself, and I now believe that going through posttraumatic growth that altered my life view has made a vast difference to my tendency to depression. I also credit my counsellor, and her introducing me to mindulness and Buddhist meditation, with a huge role in that.
I wish I could blow fairy dust in people’s faces and have them awaken to see the happiness in any ordinary day and any ordinary moment, but I can’t. All I can do is practise metta and hope it has some effect.
May all beings be happy.
