Becoming a SuperStar

Out of all the magical fairy stories my aunt made up for us as children there never existed, not even once, a magical fairy that shook a wand and made a broken heart heal, or grief disappear.  I suppose the story that would lead up to that, though, would be one too sad for children.

Alas, there is no magic wand…no fairy to cast her spell. Grief is something we must wade through wearing cement-filled boots while trying not to drown in the quicksand that threatens to pull us under.

I will never forget driving to her house that day, but I have no recollection of how I drove myself home. It’s strange the things you remember…the things you forget. I walked straight up the stairs to my bedroom and collapsed onto my bed where I laid in the dark. The constant chant of, “Why”, over and over coming from my lips, in tandem with painful sobbing were the only sounds in my room.

I had heard of people dying from broken hearts, and it made me wonder if it was a kindness of God, or if the person willed their heart to just stop beating. As I lay there in the dark, angry at God, I did everything but dare Him.

Instead of death, I felt a gentle hand cup the side of my cheek and I instantly fell asleep. I will remember that moment forever, as I was the only one in that room and my arms were wrapped around me as I lay curled in the fetal position.

After hours of torture, having shed every tear my body could release, my soul continued to bear witness to the death of the person I had been before.

In the immediate days that followed I was tasked with taking care of her final arrangements

I had never been to a funeral home as the person planning the arrangements for a deceased loved one and as I sat in the elegant dimly lit conference room waiting for the funeral director, I took it all in. The room was comfortably warm, a lone window in the center of one wall draped in heavy fabric, another wall held glass display shelves with rows of beautiful urns. One urn in particular caught my eye. It was an emerald shade of green, one of her favorite colors. I stood up and walked to the display case for a closer look. It was even lovelier up close with veins of gold running throughout the vivid green. I would have spent my last dime to buy her that urn…but I knew it wasn’t what she wanted.

On our last summer afternoon together, a mere nine months prior, we spent the day at her favorite spot at the local river. She oddly made me promise to have her cremated and her ashes spread right where we were standing in the middle of the river as the water swirled around our calves. In that moment the sun was shining on her face, and she was happy. As the last thing that I could do for her…I would keep that promise.

The kind funeral director would make no urn sale with me that day. Instead, I gave him the necessary documents with required sibling signatures which would grant me her death certificate. I also had my final good-bye alone with her, I hadn’t quite figured out if that was self-inflicted torture, or a blessing. Today, as I write this, I feel it was a blessing.

I have found there is no right or wrong way to process grief in these early days of loss, there is no logic to any of it. In fact those who came at me with logic were banished. The more I felt a timeline was being imposed upon my grief the deeper it became a part of me…the tighter my grip became on it.

I would go onto develop a mental health disorder known as “Complicated Grief”. Complicated grief is very much like the initial stages of grief, except healing never begins, the grief intensifies, often occurring when a close loved-one dies in a traumatic or violent way, such as by suicide or homicide.

 Instead of grief being a wound that begins to heal and scab over I was mentally bleeding out. Tack on Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) and I couldn’t stand being in my own skin. Nightmares came at night and crept into the middle of the day, thoughts came together and then flew apart.

What kept me grounded were my children…my love for them both had me clinging to Jesus, and what had me clinging to Jesus is the love He has always had for me. I don’t think I could trust or count on anyone else. I needed something bigger to believe in. My faith has served me well.

It took seven years for true healing to finally take place… healing that reached deep to the root of my pain and began to spread. I went to several different therapists during those seven years, each worth their weight in gold, each being exactly who I needed at each phase of my journey. I was also incredibly blessed to have a wonderful psychologist on my team, I absolutely needed medication for PTSD and the depression and anxiety symptoms that go hand in hand. My psychologist has referred to me as a superstar on many occasions because I refused to give up on myself, because I kept fighting for my mental health with every damn thing I had… He’s been with me through hell and back, and I bawled like a baby when he chose to retire from private practice.  

An offering of hope for your healing:

Often in our darkest time we lose hope in humanity, we look around and it seems that only proof of more garbage exists than good. Please look for something bigger than yourself to believe in. For me it was and still is Jesus. I found a beautiful home church that fed my soul and deepened my relationship with Christ. I also became a helper and threw myself into helping people in pain because focusing on others took me out of my own suffering if only for a moment. What can you get behind?

 XOXO,

Shellie

P.S. Check out PsychologyToday.Com to find a therapist near you.

My Search for Hope in the Ashes of Heartbreak

May 16

Written By Shellie Pullar

My story begins with her.  She was my person, my lighthouse of maternal love and support during my early upbringing and formative teen through adult years.

Her name was Mary, and she was my mother's elder sister. My aunt at 12 years old, became the mother figure to her four younger siblings after my grandmother tragically took her own life following an extreme and undiagnosed case of postpartum depression.

 Aunt Mary was nearing her 17th birthday when I was born, and she helped my 14-year-old mother raise me, and later my sister. Heroically she graduated from high school with honors and was awarded for her talents with the clarinet. She was also a pivotal influence in making certain that each of her younger siblings also graduated high school, apart from my mother who stayed home to care for me and her youngest brother. Mary loved to play both the flute and the clarinet and was a very talented watercolor artist.

 When I became pregnant at the age of 19, she is who I ran to. She didn’t judge me; she didn’t shame me. She shared options with me, and once again…she became home to me, a safe place for me and my unborn child. She was also there during my daughter's dramatic entry into this world. Like my younger sister and I, my daughter was raised on Aunt Mary’s fairy tales most often entirely made-up from her imagination on the spot.

As is often the case with Bipolar disorder, my aunt was diagnosed with it in her early twenties. Due to this disorder, every few years we would lose her… she would lose herself. She would get sucked into a full-on manic episode and become an entirely different person. She became a free spirit…one with no job, no responsibilities, no family, no laws that couldn’t be broken and absolutely no fear. Nearly every episode she would get into a car and disappear... Just vanish. To some that might sound like a pleasant break from reality …to those of us who us who love her we were living in a real-life nightmare. We knew how vulnerable she was and even from a very young age I thought that “this time” they were going to find her dead. Horrible things did happen to her on multiple occasions, sexual assaults, battery, once the authorities found her in a barn with her body covered in insect bites. Most often her episodes would come to an end by landing herself in jail. Other times she would be admitted to a mental health facility. Zero times were professionals able to help us help her. Unless she was a threat to herself or others, they could not…would not intervene.

After weeks, sometimes months of medication, she would begin to mentally return to us. The returning was never easy because after the super high of mania there begins the slow descent into the hell that is depression. There begins the realization that she has just blown up her life with a proverbial hand grenade. No job usually to return to, no money or savings in the bank, her precious flute and clarinet held for ransom in some pawn shop that only God knows where along with the absolute humiliation and self-loathing that come with it like a rotten cherry on top. Despite it all, she would always be cared for. She would always have a safe space to land, she would always have someone to fight for her. Because of her nurturing, because she first loved us, because she showed us all in great detail through her sacrifices how to love, never expecting anything in return…we would rescue her…we always did our best to save her from herself.

 On a gorgeous spring day in April of 2012, Earth Day to be exact, I was sitting in the front row at church accompanied by my toddler son. My phone began to vibrate, and I silenced it, it was my Aunt Mary. After church I called her on my way home. She had just been calling to check in and I asked her if she wanted us to stop by for a visit after my son had a nap, but she said she would call me later and possibly come see us. Less than 2 hours later she had taken her own life. Less than two hours later I was staring at her lifeless body lying face up on the cold cement floor of the family home she had inherited from my grandfather. In that moment I felt and heard something inside my head pop… and in an instant the person I had been before I walked down those wooden steps that led straight into the pit of hell became irretrievably lost.

Within the first two months of her passing my marriage fell apart and I was riddled with nightmares while sleeping and wide awake. I had to drop out of college because I could no longer comprehend the words in the textbooks (I had been a straight A student on the dean’s list working towards a psych degree), my hands developed a subtle shake and I reverted to an irrational childhood fear of dark, but on a much grander scale. I also became very angry with God…pissed actually, but you couldn’t talk me out of my love for Jesus, yes, I am fully aware of the whole three-in-one thing, but this was not the time.

Scariest of all I kept seeing myself dead, and I became very afraid for my sanity.

What saved me I believe was the fact that I wasn’t willing to go down without a fight. I was down, but I refused to tap-out, so I fought. I went into weekly therapy sessions, sometimes more than weekly. I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed proper medication, and I am not ashamed to admit it, but I voluntarily checked into a mental health facility twice, once for only a day, and the next a week. Also, my identity has always been wrapped up in my kids, and I could not, would not destroy them.

 I hope I have given you a glimpse of who my aunt Mary was, and what her having been here means to me. Her love lives on in me and everyone who was blessed to love and be loved by her.

In the pages of this blog, you will hopefully find that my story is one of redemption. I didn’t have to walk this path alone. I had incredible people on my side, one being my pastor. He had a scripture for every single break-down I had. Over time I let my wall down with God and allowed His love to soothe my weeping and weary soul. Through it all He has made me new and continues to refine me daily.

XOXO,

Shellie