Mining the Hurt

The process of launching a novel, part 4

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

This quote almost feels too personal to write about. A friend sent these words to me when I was literally on the floor of my closet, wondering how to move forward in the face of rejection and loss. They are now a small treasure that I pull off the shelf to hold in my hardest moments.

Kübler-Ross’s words are the core of the story of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author I wrote about in AFTER ANNE. Maud’s strength, the endurance of the words she wrote, was chiseled from all the hard she endured in her life. She found her way out of the depths countless times, and building from that experience, she touched the marrow of life in her writing. She also struggled to find her way out, as we all do.

For a long time, I thought I felt everything more deeply than other people. Maud wrote about this in Anne of the Island: “Those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and . . . the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.”

I decided early on that my sensitivity was too much for other people to handle; my feelings made me weak. I quickly learned how to bury that sensitivity so deep that to this day, one of the most common responses I get when I am sad or anxious is, “but you don’t look sad or anxious.” It’s taken me years to start to release my full, single-arm-swinging joy from the cage I put it in when I was young. My pain too.

One of the biggest lessons of my life, and one that I am still learning, is how to use my capacity to feel things deeply as a strength. Kübler-Ross doesn’t talk simply about experiencing loss or suffering or struggle. She talks about knowing them. This means more than not avoiding them. It means walking around in them enough to know their contours—and then finding our way out.

The thing I’ve found when I have allowed myself to do this thing that I try to avoid—to get inside pain and walk around—is that it’s less scary than I think it will be. Once I walk around for a while, I realize that my pain is not just mine. It’s not different or too much. It is human.

It would be easy for this book-launch process to feed my old narrative of being “overly sensitive.” “Why are you focusing on that?” people have asked. Underneath which I hear, Why do you care so much? Why do you take all of this so hard? What’s wrong with you?

But I am learning better. I am learning that for me to get over the hurt, I have to get under it first. This is not everyone’s way, but it is mine. Like Maud, I plunge down and soar up. Where I go wrong is when I try to stifle that process. Numb myself. Feed myself the old “overly sensitive” story and clam up.

Here’s what I’m finding when I let myself feel the hurt fully: Down below the ego bruises, down below the self-doubt that rises up every time I talk about the whys and hows of the book or send out one of these posts, I am finding something that is not just mine to hold. Something that is shared and powerful. Something that says: It’s not just you. It’s all of us.