By Charles Watson on behalf of a staff member at Sunshine Behavioral Health. Special thanks for her sharing in the hope of offering encouragement to others.
It isn’t uncommon for people to lose valuable things in their lives—homes, cars, money, a member of the family or a friend. In fact, on some occasions, people even lose themselves—often while trying to find something.
Well, that was how I felt 10 years ago.
It started with the death of my firstborn son. In my thirtieth week of pregnancy, I was on leave as an associate professor for literature at a community college in California. I still remember clearly, opening the fridge at 4:15 in the afternoon to prepare a meal when a contraction ripped through my abdomen, almost too painful to bear. I called 9-1-1, and the rest became a blur.
Little Frederick, the name of my angel, was stillborn. He died of asphyxia inside my womb. The cord connecting the two of us had wrapped around his fragile neck. The doctors cut me open, and I didn’t know it then, but they took a part of my soul when they removed my son’s lifeless body. My husband Jeff took off from work and rushed to the hospital where he attended to me for days.
The power of grief
Our lives took a great turn the moment I got out of the hospital. We both mourned the loss of our child, but Jeff had no idea the unimaginable sorrow within me. Doing the simplest tasks could be overwhelming.
I tried to go back to teaching, hoping that being busy in school would distract the hollowness I felt. But if household chores were exhausting, how did I think I could teach literature to college students? My ineptness grew increasingly obvious, and after a few months, the department supervisor advised me to take a leave of absence. I didn’t tell my husband.
The sadness of losing my son had swallowed me. Whole.
I gave birth to a dead child.
My body killed my baby.
These thoughts played over and over in my head. There had to be a reason why Little Frederick died suddenly — and someone to blame. I could point to no one but myself.
Even without me saying a word to Jeff about my deepening despair, he knew I was sinking into depression.
“You need to get help,” he’d say. “You know that.”
“I’m okay. I just need to sleep,” I’d tell him.
He insisted that I shouldn’t blame myself nor should I let the incident affect my work—and I loathed him for it. I told myself: My husband only thinks that because Frederick didn’t die inside of him. He is clean, and I am not.
Jeff tried to talk me into getting help from our family doctor but I refused. I said he should not belittle my capacity to overcome problems. Lying to myself as much as Jeff that I could deal with my grief on my own only made things worse for our family.
Since then I’ve learned sometimes we are given good options, but our anger can diffuse our will to fight to regain ourselves. Instead, I succumbed to the pain. I nourished it.
I didn’t go out of the house and stopped talking to my colleagues. I pretended not to have read their emails. A glass of wine now and then numbed my anguish a little. Before long, I consciously kept count and mentally justified the number of the bottles I drank, well on the road to alcoholism.
Jeff would come home from work to find me dozing on the floor, on the stairs, in the garage, or inside the room that was supposed to have been Little Frederick’s nursery. He would patiently wake me or carry me to our bedroom. Drunken afternoons became our new normal.
Deciding to get into rehab
At some point, I began to notice the strain on Jeff’s face and realized his misery was my fault. I felt so guilty and embarrassed that I asked him for a divorce. He pleaded for me to go to a rehab program. The idea sounded ugly, but I knew I had to do something to take control of my life again.
Jeff brought me to a center for women where I had a session with a counselor who told me of the loss of her family at the hands of a drunk driver.
“They were out to pick me up from work because it was my husband’s birthday,” she said. “Suddenly, another car changed lanes and rammed into them.” Her voice didn’t crackle. She didn’t cry. But her eyes looked really sad.
I worried for her. “How have you gone on without your whole family?” I asked.
“I decided to help other people not lose theirs,” she said and smiled.
Finding hope in therapy
I was admitted to a 30-day rehab program. Inside the center, I saw women fighting to get out. Some of them found ways to sneak out. Others would hide their medicines and opt not to take them. Often, I heard how they felt like they were in prison.
Honestly, at first, I felt the same way. But during one of my one-on-one sessions at the center, I realized that there are things we cannot control, but we do have the power to deal with our emotions, which gave me hope.
The detox process was not easy though. I would crave a drink or any drug to help ease my loneliness. Thankfully, the 24-hour monitoring makes it difficult to take the easy way out — which actually means not recovering from addiction.
The patients who tried to sneak in contraband would have to start at step one again. And again. Until they finally decided they wanted help to manage their addictions.
I told myself that I had to finish treatment if I wanted to become better. After detox and the one-on-one sessions, I joined therapy groups and went to lectures on coping with addiction. We attended seminars on how to recognize our triggers. I particularly liked the meditations and yoga where I learned about mindfulness. In time, I started thinking more clearly.
But the realizations came in trickles. There were countless times when I would revert to denying losing my child and then myself. When I first joined group therapy, it had taken the whole session for me to describe my guilt and pain.
I was happy when I successfully finished the program. Jeff showed me he’d turned Frederick’s nursery into a library filled with my books. I remember feeling so excited to come home.
Ongoing recovery
Therapy opened me up to a lot of real stories of people with substance addictions who inspired me to move on. Losing my Little Frederick, my unborn child, had been devastating. But I met mothers and fathers who had lost several children, their homes, and more, under horrendous circumstances. I shared their pain and cried with them. And I began to feel less isolated.
I wrote my thoughts daily as well as letters to Frederick and Jeff. Several I read aloud during sessions with the recovery group. Again, I found 
hope, writing and talking to people who understood. I also learned to listen and support them in their recovery. Slowly, I realized that losing Little Frederick, and my old self with his death, had become the path for me to discover the things I cared about most.
I returned to teaching—not at a local college, but at a private facility for young people recovering from mental illness and drug abuse. My pace picked up, and the void inside me began to fill. I knew then that whatever pain I experienced prepared me to become a better teacher and parent. If it weren’t for Jeff, I would not have been able to find myself.
Today, my day starts at 6:00 in the morning since I take the kids to school before heading to teach my class. At 3:00 in the afternoon, I pick them up and take them home. I practice yoga from 4:30 to 5:30, and I write in my journal after dinner. Before bedtime, I read books with our two kids — Michael and Roger.
Yes, I was given another chance to have kids, and I am grateful they came on my path to long-term recovery. They have had a better mom to care for them.
Sometimes, things don’t go the way we plan, but now I know we have the ability to decide how we’ll proceed into our next life-chapter.
Charles L. Watson is the head content writer for https://www.sunshinebehavioralhealth.com. Thank you for sharing your colleague’s story with Tenacity to Triumph.
Readers, if you have an experience of grief or recovery to share, we would love to hear from you! Your comment could be the spark that ignites someone else’s healing — begins their journey to eventual triumph.
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