There isn’t a family or an individual living that hasn’t had its own “earthquake” or “can of worms”. “Can you recover?” asks Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, Paul Andrews. The answer, he sees, is in the Gospel parables – the lost coin, the lost sheep, the prodigal son – and in the story of Judas and Peter. God is not found stuck in the past. He is in the present moment, in the Now.
It started with a row between the children, a fight over nothing, but one that blew up into an earthquake. As young Michael and Fiona argued with their older brother Hugh, their tone suddenly changed. Beside themselves with rage, they accused him of messing with them – meaning sexual abuse. Hugh was furious and appalled, but he did not deny it. The can of worms had been opened.
This was not what you would call a dysfunctional family – quite the opposite. They looked like the original happy family: two devoted parents, a comfortable income, lovely home. They had coped with the difficulties and expense of one daughter with Down syndrome. The other children, handsome and intelligent, made friends easily and passed exams. A teacher once puzzled the parents with the remark that Fiona seemed a sad child. They remembered that later, after the earthquake.
Those two images, the earthquake and the can of worms, were the two sides of what Brendan and his wife had to endure. The worms were the dirty, slimy details of the abuse that gradually came to light. The earthquake was the effect on the family, shaking apart the illusion of harmony as they voiced their fury with Hugh.
The two parents supported one another and their children as bestthey could. But they felt that nothing could be the same again. Both they and the children showed the various signs of trauma: inability to sleep, unprovoked rages, difficulty in coping with the daily demands of work, feelings of guilt and self-reproach – How could I have missed what was happening under my nose? – and above all an overwhelming sadness at the loss of what they had worked so hard to build, a sense of home.
`Nothing can ever be the same again.’ It is not just Brendan and his family who feel that. Look under the surface of almost any family and you find sad secrets. They weigh heaviest on the parents who have worked to create a family. Something happens that seems to blow the family apart: a daughter has an abortion, a marriage comes apart painfully, a son is in trouble with the law or spends time in prison, Father loses his job because of sharp practice, Mother gets depressed and tries to kill herself, one of the children is so disturbed or needy as to require institutional care.
There is no end to the sorrows that can afflict a family over the years that they lean on one another. The bitter Irish novel that won the Man Booker Prize in 2007, The Gathering, is a catalogue of such miseries. They are the stuff of our lives.
It remains true that success is what we do with our failures. Can you show me a family without failures, a family with no cupboarded skeletons, a family where all topics of conversation are safe? I doubt it. Yet the differences are enormous between those families or individuals that can move on from their past, and those that cannot let it go. I think of a young man whose talk gravitates all the time to a mistake he made four years ago. His self-reproach absorbs all his energies, so he does not face present tasks, and goes on repeating his mistakes.
If you live long and listen hard, you learn one consoling fact: it is possible to recover from past trauma. You remember that old James Bond film: Never Say Never Again. In fact the papers are always reporting people who say Never again. ‘Since my daughter was mugged, or my son was killed, my life is over. I can never be happy again.’ That is simply not true. If people want to recover a zest for life, they can.
We are creatures of time, which can be a marvellous healer if we allow it. Some people do not allow it. They keep the wound open, keep their anger or sorrow at the point of pain, and do not allow anything but the past onto their agenda. They imagine that moving ahead is a betrayal of loved ones. Not so.
I started with the earthquake in Brendan’s sad family. The names and details have obviously been changed, but there is a true story behind them, and part of that story is the long journey to recovery. The parents sought help for their children, the abuser and the abused. The home remained a place of refuge and healing, despite the tensions between the children. Every step of that journey to recovery was difficult and dangerous; but it is working.
If you want stories of healing and recovery, turn to the gospels. Jesus stresses the joy at the groat that isfound, the lost sheep that is brought home. In the parable of the prodigal son, he reports the boy’s remorse – I have sinned against heaven and against you – I am not worthy to be called your son. But his father will not let him brood on the past. He hugs his son, dresses him in the best robe, and throws a party.
Or think of the two apostles who betrayed Jesus. Judas cannot escape from his past. He broods on it, and hangs himself. Peter takes the path of recovery. Though he wept with remorse at his betrayal of Jesus, he put it behind him, and Jesus pulled him into the present by confirming him as leader of the Twelve.
We all have sadnesses in our history. There is no virtue in getting stuck in them. God is in the Present Moment, in the Now.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (April 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
