Frozen Grief, The Loss of Siblings in Childhood: An Interview with Memoir Author Anne Becker
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Anne Bernard Becker/@AnneBBecker
“Our brothers and sisters are there with us from the dawn of our personal stories to the inevitable dusk.” Susan Scarf Merrell
Those of us with siblings know that we share a common bond through blood, habits and traditions. We may even think of them as younger or older versions of ourselves. The death of a sibling at any age can leave a void in our lives that no one else can fill. Memoir Author Anne Becker suffered the unfathomable, the death of three siblings–two brothers and one sister– in a large Catholic family in the 1950s. Her parents’ firstborn son died before Anne was born but she suffered through the death of two of her siblings. It wasn’t until she was an adolescent that she realized her grief over these losses had been “frozen.” This is the journey she takes us on in her memoir, Ollie,Ollie In Come Free. Her frozen grief gives way to understanding, forgiveness and healing in this most compelling read.
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Welcome, Anne!
Memoir Author Anne Bernard Becker
Frozen Grief: The Loss of Siblings During Childhood
KP: The loss of a sibling during childhood is a very difficult topic to comprehend and read about. I was fascinated by your ability to tell such a heartwrenching story of the impact the loss of two siblings, your brother and sister, had on you.
Two parts to this question: What made you decide to write this story? How did you find your voice?
AB: I decided to write my story after several years of exploring my childhood memories in psychoanalysis, an intensive form of therapy that took me to an extraordinarily deep level of memory and feeling. After I joined a women’s writing circle in 1994, I found not only that this whole intimate wealth of material was ripe for putting down on paper, but that I could actually access the voice of my child and adolescent self in my writing. This amazed and delighted me, because I was able to speak my truth in a raw fashion I knew was trustworthy. I loved the emotional resonance I found in that room full of very conscious women, and continued with their encouragement to pour out the small vignettes that I would later shape into a coherent narrative.
KP: Memoir writers often fear repercussions from family members in revealing their truths. You tell your story with raw honesty. How were you able to summon the courage to reveal your past so openly?
AB: It took me seven years to write the first draft of my memoir, and twelve more years to come to a point where publication felt right. My mother died in 2013, and at that point I moved ahead. I returned to psychotherapy in order to grapple with all the intimate self-revelation my memoir entailed. It was only through this support and much prayer and sense that this was an important story to tell that I was able to move past a profound and wrenching shyness about exposing my secret inner life as a young girl. Because I wrote in a genuine spirit of love, without judgment, and from the child or adolescent’s perspective, I did not expect my book to cause hurt among family members. However, I was a bit naive about this, in retrospect.
KP: Finding the right structure for a memoir can be one of a memoirist’s greatest challenges. You wrote the bulk of the text in your child’s and adolescent’s voices with “interludes” in your adult narrator’s voice. How did you find your structure?
AB: After I wrote much of the child narrative, I sent it out to a few readers to gauge their reactions. They seemed disoriented, and some misinterpreted my story. I realized the young girl’s voice did not provide enough back story to orient and ground the reader, so I began to write the adult narrative over the next couple of years. I hoped these would mitigate the intensity of the child’s inner world for the reader. I continued to play with the sequence throughout many years, right up to the end!
KP: When I see what you are doing with your life now in working with family healing, it makes me think about how there is often a purpose for our pain. You call yourself a “Systemic Constellation Work “ practitioner. Another two-part question: What does this term mean? Did writing this memoir help you to define this path?
AB: Family (or Systemic) Constellation Work explores the impact of ancestral trauma on families. It is a powerful group healing modality in which a client invites individuals to stand in for his/her family members, sometimes across several generations. Through dialogue and movement, we discover sources of hidden pain and blocked energy in the family system, and are able to set in motion a healing of the family’s burden. In these “constellations” I have been profoundly moved by the love that lies curled up within each family’s soul, across generations.
Ollie Ollie In Come Free is a story about grief that was not expressed, affection that could not be shown. In Constellation work, again and again, I am able to bring out that all that has lain hidden and aching within a family. It is redemptive work.
KP: Memoir writing can be a daunting process because digging deeply into painful memories can be unpleasant to say the least. What strategies did you use to help yourself keep writing through the pain?
AB: I kept reading my memoir aloud in women’s writing circle, and so I never felt alone with it. Meanwhile I continued to do my inner work, inside and outside of therapy, to take long, contemplative daily walks, to meditate and pray. The writing grew out of all that, and felt organic and utterly essential in my quest to become a freer, more grounded and expanded human being. Often I felt immersed in the pain while writing, but then would move through it and out the other side. I experienced the whole long writing process as a pilgrimage.
KP: What are your memoir takeaways, both for yourself and for your readers?
AB: I have learned that my experience is my own, and that I can only offer it to others as a gift. I can’t alter others’ experiences of the same events, or change the lens they have for their own life-journey. Writing and publishing a personal memoir is hard, humbling, and life-changing. It is probably still too early to speak of long-term effects on myself, my family, or my other readers. I hope the book is transformative for others; it certainly has been for me.
KP: Do you have any memoir writing tips to share?
Keep doing your inner work, so that your memoir will emerge not out of the ego or “smaller self,”but from your most authentic, mature self.
***
Anne, thank you for sharing from your deepest pain. Your memoir, Ollie, Ollie, In Come Free is a gift to all of us for it shows how our lives and our pain can be redeemed if we are brave enough to face our pain, break the cycle and transform this pain into healing for ourselves and others. Your work as a Family Constellation Practitioner is proof of this redemption.
Author Bio:
Anne Bernard Becker grew up in South Bend, Indiana, where her father taught at Notre Dame. Her parents had lost their first child, Vic, in a drowning accident at age two. When Anne was turning three, her older sister Mary-Louise died of immunological issues. While the family continued to grow, Anne’s mother, Mollie Bernard, founded the Stanley Clark School, a still thriving elementary school in South Bend. A few months later, in 1959, the oldest surviving child, Paul, died at age nine of cancer. The family with its seven girls remained lively and engaged, and seemingly unscathed by all the losses.
Anne studied at Indiana University, the Sorbonne, University of Pennsylvania (M.A. in French) and Fordham University (M.A. in Religious Education). In 1978 she took a position as a campus and parish minister in Cincinnati, and married Gerry Becker in 1981. Their first child, Mollie, died at birth. The traumatic impact of this event, along with the near death of their third child, Daniel, launched Anne on a journey of psychoanalysis to explore the hidden lifelong effects of her siblings’ deaths. During this period she suffered four miscarriages, and she and her husband adopted their youngest child, Tony, in 1993.
Since 2001 Anne has worked at a learning center as a reading specialist. She also facilitates workshops that blend her ongoing interest in history, psychology and spirituality to explore the effects of ancestral trauma on family systems. She lives with her husband Gerry in Cincinnati.
Twitter @AnneBBecker
Website: Anne Bernard Becker
Book Synopsis:
The loss of a first child sends chilling tremors of grief through a young family. The two parents bravely try to rebuild, with visions of creating a large, happy Catholic family. Yet the universe lurches and takes the next oldest child, and yet the next, just a few years apart.
Such devastating, random losses are almost unimaginable. It is especially hard to imagine coping with them in an era of emotional sterility. During the 1950’s and 1960’s there were few outward displays of mourning, no understanding of the five stages of grief, no support groups. The Bernards had to deal with their cataclysmic losses in a way that would be acceptable to the other emotionally reticent middle-class families of the time—privately, and silently.
Ollie Ollie In Come Free explores the emotional toll unexpressed grief can have on a young child. In the unfiltered voice of a child and adolescent, author Anne Bernard Becker offers a touching insight into her own buried grief, loneliness, and survivor’s guilt.
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How about you? Have you ever experienced the death of a sibling? Were you able to grieve the loss? Have you written about it?
Anne has graciously offered to give away a paperback copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing .
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
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