Like many people, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday:  great food, togetherness, and very little commercialism. I also really love a holiday in which we take the time to think of all we have to be thankful for.  Most of us know by now the many psychological and health benefits of expressing and cultivating gratitude (the famous gratitude list in which each night you write down things you are grateful for really does decrease depression and increase positive feelings) from the field of positive psychology.  But I am thinking bigger about being thankful this year.  I feel the urge not only be thankful, but to truly give thanks.  Showing people that I appreciate them is such an easy thing to do, makes people feel so good, and yet, most all of us don’t do it as often as we could.

First I can start with just noticing things and saying words of thanks.  Over time I fall into routines with people, especially with my family.  I learn to expect certain things as part of our day to day living and the give and take of family life.  I could go out of my way to really say thanks and notice the little things that people do because of the bonds we have with one another.  I can see my husband’s hauling the trash down our hill as more than just a chore, but as a way that he shows us our family matters to him.  I can truly recognize how grateful I am to my friend who meets me each week to hike, even when it makes it hard on her schedule for us to go together.  

Another thing I can do to give thanks is to do something to be helpful.  I could appreciate being cooked for by doing dishes, or express my thanks to a neighbor by pulling in their trash cans.  I remember years ago, in our old house, our neighbor across the street mowed our lawn for us, without saying anything, just because he knew we did it every Sunday.  Sometimes those unexpected encounters, where we show someone we notice them by doing something to help them, makes us all feel more connected.   

And how about just listening?   We all underestimate how hard it is, but know how amazing it feels, to have someone just listen.   I am so quick to interrupt, give advice, or check my phone while someone is talking, without even realizing it.    Time and attention literally cost me nothing, and yet, they are the most precious commodities.  So many misunderstandings happen because people are so concerned with being heard, that they can’t really listen.  

So this year as Thanksgiving passes, I want to make sure my good intentions last longer than the five pounds I’ve gained.  I want to go beyond the words of gratitude I shared around the table before the meal (and before the NY Giants got beaten) and put my words into action.  It literally takes so little to make someone else feel so big.

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I have been hearing the words “survivor guilt” a lot lately from people in my community who survived the fire with their family and home intact.  They feel uncomfortable with their good fortune, as if they have something to feel badly about; as if their good fortune and other people’s bad fortunes were somehow related.  Survivor guilt is a common feeling after a tragic event, and adds a layer of suffering that also needs our attention for healing.

The term survivor guilt came from those who worked with Holocaust survivors.  Although they made it out of the horror of the Concentration camps, survivors often became depressed from the burden of knowing that so many millions did not.  It was also found in Veterans who made it home from war when their brothers in arms were killed or injured and in many people after 9/11.  SInce then, the concept of survivor guilt has been applied to a broad range of situations where people feel a burden from a comparison with someone close to them who has experienced a misfortune from which they were spared, such as surviving a disease, a car accident, or even drug abuse.

It can be hard to understand how someone who should be grateful can actually feel burdened, even for some to the point of having thoughts that they wish they, too, had died.  Even for the individual themselves, their mind tells them that they should be happy and make the most of their lives, but their psyche cannot let go of feeling guilty.  Researchers theorize that survival guilt represents our mind’s need to feel a sense of control, not able to accept the randomness or lack of control or influence that we have over our lives. Instead, we feel a sense of responsibility, as if there was something we should have or could have done to alter fate.  It is our mind’s effort to believe that life should be fair and therefore we, too, should suffer.

People who feel responsible for others, whether through a position of authority (leader, parent) or in an emotionally caretaking role are most vulnerable to survivor’s guilt.  Even children of alcoholics who often take the role of the caretaker in a dysfunctional family, can grow up with a sense of survivor guilt that ties them to unhealthy relationships.  Survivor’s guilt is the burden of an inflated sense of responsibility, as if your survival or good fortune was at the expense of someone else’s suffering.

I must confess that as I look up the hill from my home to the empty space of my mother’s home, I feel  twinges of survivor’s guilt.  It’s a pain very familiar to me in my earlier years.  As my sister struggled in her life, it was hard for me feel happy.  Even after her passing, each milestone, completing graduate school, getting married, and having children, was layered with a deep sadness I could not get a handle on.  It was as if there was not enough good fortune to go around, and my having good things happen was somehow at her expense.  I carried an overblown sense of responsibility, in some ways a child like understanding of my being at the center of all that happened around me.  It was a long and profound process of healing for me, that involved much forgiveness and letting go.  I can now be sad and grieve her loss, missing her sense of humor and wishing she could meet my daughters, without feeling guilty.

Healing from survivor’s guilt involves accepting that bad things happen, even to good people.  It also involves expanding our tolerance for having incompatible feelings, the absolute joy of gratitude together with the pain of grief.  One feeling does not negate the other.  Because you are grateful and joyous to be alive, does not mean you are not genuinely sad and compassionate for someone else’s loss.  It involves accepting that we are all vulnerable, and at times completely helpless. That although we wish we did more, or did things differently, there is nothing we can do to change a tragedy.  The best we can do is to make our lives meaningful and honor the memories of those we love and those we continue to live for.

The older I get, the more I understand that no one goes through life unscarred and unscathed.  We will all have our time for both good fortune and tragedy.  Our lives are not scorecards, where some people end up winners and others losers.  We all have relative burdens that tend to even out over our lifetimes. When I am the lucky one, that is the time to use my strength and resources to help other people with their burdens.  For certainly the tables will be turned, and I will need to lean on someone else, who will then be the lucky one, to help me get through.

Note – I came across a treatment group for Veterans that I was very moved by.  It is a group for combat survivors experiencing survivor guilt.  In the group, each member shared their story and their sense of burden,  “confessing” their mistakes as leaders or soldiers that they can never undo.  The group listens and contemplates, and then makes a ruling regarding the culpability of the member.  Along with this, they give the Veteran an act of penance that they must do to be absolved of their burden.  The focus is to help each member, with the judgment of their peers, to experience a realistic sense of culpability and then to move it through by taking action.

 A picture taken on the side of my house.

This past week, many of the neighborhoods that had burned to the ground in my hometown opened to the public again. Personally I have been sifting through the pit of gray soot and ash that was my mother’s house, looking for whatever we can recover of her belongings. Nothing is more humbling than witnessing the power of fire. Plastic, wood, metal, and even stone are disintegrated in its wake.  As I drive through the streets that were the bustling neighborhoods of my friends, I am deeply stricken by a profound experience of impermanence.

It is no wonder that ashes are a symbol of repentance and humility: ashes to ashes.  There is a ghostly feeling as you witness the complete annihilation of the rows of dwellings we don’t just call home, but where we feel home.  With houses destroyed, displacement happens, neighborhoods and families torn apart.  For me, my mother had to move thousands of miles away.  For a dear friend, because of health issues, her family has had to split up to keep her husband away from the potentially unhealthy environment.  Students struggle to attend classes now that they are homeless.  Life becomes unbearably chaotic when even the basic necessities become a challenge.  At our local Junior College, hundreds of young students are dropping out, too burdened with finding a place to sleep and with no notes or binders to study from. Even in the high school choir concert we attended last night, the performers wore polo shirts and jeans, because the formal wear of so many students is gone.  My daughter notices how many of her fellow students now wear the same shoes and jackets day after day.

The layers of losses to our community are staggering.  And the pain ripples out to the stress of others feeling so inadequate and useless to be of help, no matter how much we would like to be.  There are no words that can make things better or bring back what has been destroyed. Profound loss changes us.  I have heard the term Zero Point used in grief groups.  The Zero Point is the instant everything changed, from which every future event would be dated and every previous plan or expectation had to be mourned.  Attachment is the root of suffering, Buddha teaches.  Healing involves an intense process of letting go.

And yet, already on our hill, green grass is poking through the charred cinders of burned foliage.  In my local coffee shop, tables are filled with people reviewing architectural plans and FEMA tents and United Way donation centers pop up around town on a daily basis.  It will take a long, long  time to clean up and rebuild, and some may never be able to replace what they have lost. But for all of us survivors, our lives will inevitably move forward, as nothing stays the same.  We will forever be both blessed and burdened with with a new understanding that will rise from the ashes.  A friend who lost everything in a flood several years back told me, while it was a hellish period of her life, the blessing was that possessions never had as much power over her again.  The experienced bereaved will tell you with great wisdom that the Zero Point is not just an ending, but also a beginning.