Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 12

Learning to Lean on God

While when I reflect on my grief journey following my sister’s death– now just two weeks from happening thirty years ago– it can easily look like that also was the start of my spiritual journey. But by looking further back in the review mirror, I see that the groundwork was already in place when she died.

I will be the first to admit that my relationship with God was never a close one. Mom tried to introduce us to God, as he was important to her, and church, lighting candles, all those things. But I couldn’t relate to it.

It wasn’t until after my first big relationship break up that I needed somewhere “to go” so I went to church. That much Mom had put into place– teaching us that we could lean on God when we needed help even when we were interested accepting her suggestion. Just three years after that break up, Denise died and there was the God thing again.

Many people find themselves angry at God after the death of a loved one. While I understand this, it wasn’t something I ever questioned. Denise had made a choice to end her life. The hardest part for me was figuring out how to find a way forward, knowing I would have to go a long way without her. My view of the world was shattered and I had to recreate it, without that sense of safety from bad things happening to me.

On my first trip to Australia, I was in Sydney with several hours and nothing to do before I was due at the ABC broadcasting building for an interview so I went for a walk. I stumbled on the cathedral and I joke that that was my first pilgrimage. After that trip, each time I left the country, I made it a point (if possible) to attend mass or at least find a Catholic church and light a candle.

In Hong Kong, the spiritual part of my trip was slightly different. My friend Tony (pictured above), from Australia, and I took two trains and a long walk up a hill to visit a Buddhist temple. We had no clue what to do with the incense– wanting to be culturally appropriate– but we also couldn’t find anyone who spoke English so tried to act like we knew what we were doing.

While these are “big” experiences that happened, the crux of a spiritual journey is what happens in our day-to-day life when life isn’t going the way we hoped or planned it would. Grief is much the same, it’s really about those small moments, some people might say they are comments of grace, when we discover something new about ourselves or find joy again in the world.

Learning to lean on God isn’t something that happens overnight; that’s why they call it a spiritual journey. It’s a lot of steps each day, building on each one, and looking out around us with a new perspective.

Evolving Through Lent

I didn’t fully understand the meaning of giving up meat (and something else) during Lent until we traveled to Morocco (this photo was taken in Fez). We happened to be there during Ramadan and I became very aware of the sacrifice that Muslims make during that time of not eating all day. And what it means to their spiritual life.

I had stopped giving up anything for Lent the year after my sister died when I was sitting with the priest at Ball State, where I was a senior, and I made a comment that I needed to figure out what I was giving up for Lent. Fr. Dave said, “You’ve lost enough. Do something nice for yourself.:”

I kept Fr. Dave’s words in the back of my mind since then and in the past ten or so years ago, I changed it to do things that help me evolve as a person which in turn helps me grow closer to God. I often have this sense that I am closest to God when I’m writing and many of the Lenten goals I’ve set have been related to writing. Usually these include spending more time writing and trying to finish manuscripts. In some way, it’s prayer time for me because in the early morning darkness when I run Lilly, I ask God to bring me my writing for the day.

On Friday, I was visiting Fr. Gene, the Norbertine priest with whom I do my spiritual direction, and we were talking about this. “Lent is about change,” he said.

No matter what we choose to do for these forty days and nights we’re traversing the desert with Jesus– after all, there are many paths to God– it should be something that helps us evolve, to be better people, to make life more meaningful.

Wouldn’t those be the same things that would draw us closer to God, too?

The Oval Lessons

After my first book, Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling, was published, a fellow sibling survivor told me she didn’t like all my track/running references because she couldn’t relate to them. She was the only person who said that, but it made me stop and think how many times I talked about how life felt like a series of hurdles in front of me.

But it also sparked thoughts about how much running cross country and track had taught me lessons that would serve me well coping with loss and navigating grief experiences.

It wasn’t just about those hurdles, the challenges we face in life, but learning to keep forging forward when we don’t believe we can run another step (aren’t there days that feel like that for all of us, even without a death loss?) I remember during my first cross country season in seventh grade, learning how to run a mile without stopping and then another mile and another mile. We were taught, when we wanted to stop, to look for an object like a mailbox, a tree, a stop sign, to run to. And then keep running by looking for another object. Slowly, we could run a longer distance by training our minds to keep going.

With such an intense grief experience ahead of me, not just the loss of my younger sister (wasn’t I supposed to outlive her?) but a suicide, too, it was like my brain reached into the files of lessons learned in the past and began to use them to keep me from not just stopping and standing still, but to keep forging forward.

As I was planning this blog in my head, I also began to wonder how many other experiences in our lives have helped us, have taught us, how to cope with something ahead, something unknown. But when it happened, the lessons were there and the skills ready to be accessed and put into use.

The Depths of Grief

This is what grief looked like when Denise died by suicide in 1993. This photo was taken by Pamela Joye on the University of New Mexico campus some years ago for me and when I recently saw it, I realized how much it personifies my grief experience. The path is there, yet I couldn’t see it.

There were no thoughts of telling Denise’s story in that time– I’ll explain how that came about in the weeks ahead– it was all about finding a way forward. And that’s what any grief journey should be, about delving into our pain because that’s how we do find our way out of it, our way forward, our way back to finding meaning and everything else that makes life worth living. It’s also how we find love again.

When Denise died in 1993, there was no Google to search for information on what the suicide bereavement journey would look like. The books available were very limited. And there weren’t a whole lot of support groups either. It was much more difficult to connect with people who had similar experiences; we had to rely on each other in our families where each of us told a different story because we had a different relationship with our loved ones who died. And friends who wanted to help us but didn’t know how.

I heard Garth Brooks on the radio not long ago, when I was driving home from my morning swim at the gym pool. It had been a long time since I’d listened to his music and I thought I’d tune up some on a run. For the first time in a long time, I felt myself take a trip back in time to my own initial grief journey after Denise died.

“What She Doing Now” came on and I remembered running through the snow in Muncie, Indiana, where I was a college student at Ball State University when Denise died. It was the next winter, my senior year, and I had to stop. The pain was so great, I just couldn’t move forward anymore in that moment. I don’t know how long I stayed there; somehow I found it inside me to keep going and return home, but that moment sticks out to me of what grief was like. You go forward, the world turns, daybreak comes, sunset comes, it starts all over again. Somehow you keep putting one foot in front of the other.

You don’t stop missing your loved one. You feel guilty laughing for the first time, for experiencing things without them (although you know it makes no sense because they aren’t alive now). Somehow, somewhere, I found that strength. Then sometimes I had to rest, but with rest comes strength again. And with strength comes movement forward, getting stronger each time.

A 30-year journey

Thirty years. In about five more weeks, my sister Denise will have been gone thirty years.

While I had been aware of it on some level, it wasn’t until Friday that it hit me in the head when I attended a luncheon for the local grief center. I had been the keynote speaker for this luncheon twelve or so years ago and I then remembered I had attended one of the first ones they had held, some sixteen years ago. Many of the people I knew who were involved in launching it, then called The Children’s Grief Center, have moved onto other things yet, as it should, the center has grown and I was reminded of how much work we have done locally and internationally to help anyone coping with any sort of loss.

It also reminded me of the many things that have happened in that time and the many things I’ve accomplished. But there was an even bigger recognition in my head– this isn’t about Denise’s death now, it’s about my journey since then.

Thirty years seems like such a big number, one of those significant anniversary numbers, one that we like to celebrate happily. Or a birthday of thirty when is leaving their twenties and going into a new decade, their thirties.

This photo was taken in Los Angeles in 2019 on Mulholland Drive. I still remember it clearly. But my journey didn’t look like this when I started. I couldn’t see all that was ahead, above, or below. I could barely see in front of me.

I’ll be sharing some of these lessons learned in these thirty years over the next weeks. There’s a lot to reflect on from that time and I believe it’s important to share what I’ve learned that might help others. After all, if it helped me to move forward or inspired me in some way, then there must be something in there for someone else.

Seeds of hope, but not for everyone

I felt a surge of happiness last week after a trip to Sam’s Club and I saw the swimming pool supplies had arrived. Then I found cherries. On Friday, I picked up our free seeds from the Albuquerque Library. Spring, I thought, spring is coming.

I wrote last week about the challenge I feel during these winter months, but seeing signs of spring made me feel a bit lighter and more hopeful that warmth and green are ahead.

As I felt brighter though, I know many people find the signs of renewal of spring a challenge. That’s why we typically have more suicides in spring, especially March, than other months of the year. While the holiday season can be a struggle because people tend to gather more and be together more, there aren’t as many suicides as in the spring.

This year will mark thirty years since my sister Denise died by suicide age 17. I can still remember the days after her death and through her funeral in the Midwest– the darkness and the brown, very appropriate for our sadness.

But the day after I returned to college at Ball State and in the days that followed, I remember the sun shining and those very signs of spring that bring me hope. I also remember thinking that for her, those were the signs that made it harder to continue moving forward.

I don’t just grasp my signs of hope in spring, I cling to them. Just remember that what brings you hope, might not be the same for someone else. Give them that space for their pain because sometimes that’s all they need– for someone to acknowledge where they are.

January Survival

To say it’s miserable outside (it’s Monday as I write this) is an understatement. The wind was already blowing when I got up, a precursor to colder than usual temperatures coming to us for the rest of this week.

Despite the fact that I get up and run and run the dogs each morning, plus swim outside five mornings a week (in a toasty pool), I don’t like the cold. I really didn’t want to go to the pool this morning, but I knew I really didn’t have a reason not to do it. Just because the wind is blowing isn’t a good enough reason. Nor is the cold. Ice is another story, but there’s no ice today or probably this week either.

I had to be outside.

I don’t like January. Or February. Or March for that matter, but at least it’s usually warming up by then. I don’t like these months because they typically mean we’re bundled up inside. I don’t believe it’s cabin fever I get so much as I need to be outside, to be reminded of what’s bigger than me, to see the stars, the moon, and the planets, that always seem more visible in these months. And to see the changing seasons.

You might say I need that change of scenery and the cold air to remind me that I’m alive.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean I won’t complain about it, but I’ll do it anyway. Life is too short to stay inside. I know if I don’t go I’ll regret staying home, but if I stay home, I’ll regret not going.

How did we end up in this direction?

48,183.

That’s how many people died by suicide in 2021, the latest year for which we have data.

And if that weren’t enough to disgust someone, what irks me the most is knowing that circa 2005 when I was in the early thick of my suicide prevention work, we lost somewhere around 32,000 people to suicide. In New Mexico in those years, the number hovered around 365 because we used to say in workshops that it was approximately one a day. By 2020, that number had swelled to something like 516.

It’s been a sad, steady rise that shouldn’t be happening, especially given all the effort we have put into suicide prevention.

Sunday I did my first talk in quite some time on suicide (in person, too!). Pre-pandemic, most of my work had been focused on grief and I can’t remember too many times where it was solely suicide prevention related. That meant I found myself reflecting on the nearly 30 years (how have so many years gone by?) since my sister Denise died by suicide and the work I have done worldwide in that time.

One could say we’re more open about suicide, about mental health issues, that we do put more funding into help for people and for prevention. Maybe the stigma is less, but that also means people aren’t as afraid to kill themselves because there isn’t such a stigma. They seem to remain afraid to seek help, but perhaps not as afraid to end their lives. They don’t see a stigma for their family now so much as they feel relief that the perceived notion that they are a burden would cease to exist with their death.

And yet we still don’t have enough hospital beds for people, to give them the time to find the right medication, before being sent back into a world they fear. I have watched countless programs start up here in New Mexico– getting gobs of funding– and doing nothing in the end but fizzling out.

We now have an easy number to remember, 988, to reach out for help, yet how many people know about it?

We need to train people and then inoculate them of sorts so their skills asking a person if they are suicidal don’t diminish. We need to help everyone know where they can reach out to if they are worried about someone.

And in just a few short months we’ll be heading into March, the month where typicalyl the most people end their lives. While most of us find great joy in spring, for a depressed person, new life is hard to swallow.

Aren’t we ever going to learn?

Where do you go to meet God?

Somewhere in my shelves of books is one written by a nun about prayer. I don't remember the specifics, only that in the book she suggests coming up with imagery about where you meet Jesus. It’s a way of strengthening one’s prayer life by adding imagery to it. I remember that she had suggested on the shores of a lake.

While I don’t recall exactly how the conversation came about, it was a priest who had suggested to me that I imagine surfing with Jesus. At the time, I was still able to surf and this became an important part of how I formed my prayer life. I easily saw myself sitting on the beach with Jesus, our boards beside each of us, as we talked, having already been out on the ocean.

But recently I also began to realize how much I associate God with water. I am admittedly not much of a bible reader so I’m not going to count the references, I part of me wonders if there are more references to water than desert in the bible (and if I’m wrong, I don’t care– I like my idea better!).

I meet God in the gym pool five mornings a week where I swim my laps and contemplate my writing for the day. I meet God at the ocean when I’m there and need my inspiration replenished. And I meet God at my own swimming pool when I’m frustrated or irritated by whatever life might be throwing at me.

Something to think about in this new year– where do you go to meet God? Maybe by knowing that, you can find the peace and solace your inner world might be lacking. I know that’s helped me and the more I acknowledge it, the more I use it.

A New Calendar Year

We all know that I’m all about making change and moving forward– not that I always like it or want it, but I try to embrace it and understand it when I feel resistant to it. While I’m not a fan of full-blown new year’s resolutions because most people try to do too much at once, I do believe in making tweaks and changes that are sustainable for our lives (and those with whom we share our lives!).

I believe there is an opportunity when we open a new calendar, coming off the indulgent craziness of the holidays, ready to simplify and bring new organization to our lives. For me, it’s also about how I’m going to survive the next several months of cold torture. The more I can think about doing to keep my mind busy until the weather starts to warm back up again, the better.

January is usually a quiet month, a time not just to reflect (we’ve all had those down moments during the holiday to think about changes we want to make– especially after too many outings and too many cookies). And with the end of the calendar looming, we also tend to look forward to other changes (maybe moving the furniture around) when the holiday decor has been put away).

As I said, change doesn’t have to be big. Often, the smallest changes can ultimately result in the biggest shifts in our lives. What are those small things you can tackle, that feel manageable, but also will give you hope for this new year? Break things down into smaller steps, know that you can do this, that now is as good a time as any. Life is too short to stay where you are.