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I asked my father what an aftershock was. He said they are tremors in the earth that follow an earthquake. They are the earth’s delayed reaction to stress.
Grieving, I learned, was a process of story construction. I needed to construct a story so I could reconstruct my world. There were decisions to make about what to put in and what to leave out.
The idea of roots setting a person free is counterintuitive, but deracination from the past, from land, from family, from mothers, makes for an unstable present. We must have, or we will always search for, a place to bury our bones.
The consequences of a disruption or deprivation of maternal nurturing can result in serious and irreversible mental health consequences ranging from despair and detachment to an inability to follow rules, form lasting relationships, or feel guilt.
For years, from my fear, I distracted myself by reading studies about orphans. Those studies provided strange comfort. Emotions were reduced to cold science. I reduced myself into them. It was a different kind of denial. Through the studies, I learned that children raised in orphanages often reach out their arms to be picked up, but as soon as they get what they seem to want, they kick and push and wriggle away. Then, once they have escaped, they throw themselves on the floor in utter despair and demand to be picked up again. The first time I read about that phenomenon, I laughed out loud. The
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My mind has a seismometer inside it. Its job is translation and calibration. And also to signal distress: Mayday, Mayday, save our souls. My souls are many and so, I believe, are yours. Some of them are quiet, watchful. Some are ravenous beasts. We need them all. They live behind our flesh. They rumble with one another and with the outside world. Our souls fight for survival.
