Harriet Cabelly, LCSW
Therapist . Speaker . Author
“Recovery (and I’m not a huge fan of the word because I don’t think one ever truly recovers from mental illness but rather learns to manage it) is not about the light at the end of the tunnel, but realizing that there is light – even if it’s just a tiny bit seeping into the tunnel – and you’ve got to grasp it.”
I love this quote by Andy Behrman. There’s so much right here in this one sentence.
Most struggles and problems in life are not ‘recoverable’. We don’t recover from, we integrate into our lives and {attempt to} manage them.
Are there any human conditions, struggles, problems that are ‘fixable’?
Addicts are ‘in recovery’ forever. They are not recovered. It is an ongoing condition that must be maintained and managed on a daily basis – one day at a time, as the mantra states.
My daughter, Nava, manages her permanent ostomy. She has her life and her health back with it, but it’s a life life-long daily maintenance regimen. (And by-the-way, she’s a natural at incorporating it into her life in a most matter-of-fact way and positive way.)
We manage the pain and sadness that loss brings. Does one ever ‘recover’ from the loss of a child? Does one recover from the sudden death of a young spouse? …from the death of a parent during their young years? … from the fall-out of a bad divorce?
With time we learn to integrate loss and steer it towards new territories. We try to build new frontiers using pain and hurt as our compass.
We eventually come to see that there is a tiny bit of light seeping in and we try to grasp it. It’s not about waiting till the end of the tunnel, for we need little hints of hope and light to hang onto along the way; it’s about stepping tentatively through the darkness and adjusting one’s eyes to the bits of light that gets into the cracks and crevices of our soul.
We’re managing. We’re grasping. We’re hanging on and watching those clouds part. They always do. There is light.
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Thank you for this lovely post. Until I had a bereavement of a close family member as a result of an accident I had never fully appreciated how inadequate a notion ‘getting over it’ actually is. I learnt to integrate that experience into my life and it stays with me and is part of me. Recovery is a tricky term because it suggests getting over something and the word contains medical connotations. It also is suggestive of getting something back. But I prefer to look forwards and find the word discovery a more appealing one 🙂
Hi Victoria,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. Love your idea of the word ‘discovery’ as opposed to recovery because as you say, we don’t really get over something. We incorporate it into our life. And yes, integration is key to be able to move forward and re-engage in life together with the sadness of the loss.
Sorry for your loss.
I agree with this post on so many levels. How can you “recover” from something that completely changes your life and who you are with it. No…recovery is a term for somebody who is looking for a quick fix. Managing is a term for somebody who has accepted the fact that they are involved in a life long challenge.
Hi Evince,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I like your distinction between recovery being for someone looking for that quick fix and managing for someone who’s accepted they’re in it for life, as a challenge to manage. Great!
I agree! Two years ago my mother fell down a flight of stairs onto a concrete floor. She suffered, and still does a traumatic brain injury. She’ll never be the mom that my sister and I had. A few months later, my father committed suicide in a shockingly gruesome way. This parent gone totally. Since then I’ve gotten a bit tired of people telling me that as time passed the pain will go away. Not exactly. As you pointed out, as time passes, I’ve learned to live with and accept/integrate the pain and sorrow into my life. My kids who will mention Grandpa…STILL makes my heart ache with pain. I see a vehicle that looks like his driving down the road makes images of him laying in a thick pool of blood without the majority of his head, and I get teary eyed. Yet I live on. A new and different chapter in my family’s existence. We integrate the pain and sorrow as what it is and move on. The world for my family stopped spinning two years ago. But, dor everyone else, the world kept moving. We jumped back on, in a different path, and moved on too. We’re not the same family, nor the same people, and we will never be those people again. We’ve inegrated the events, pain, sorrow, making us who we are now. Loved the article, and related to it perfectly!
Hi J. Patrick,
Wow, I am so sorry for your terrible losses – that of your father and of your mother as she used to be. Grief lives on and pain lives on, but as time passes it takes on new forms and different intensities. Sounds like you’re doing the best you can by not denying the existence of pain and sadness which is so normal and by accepting that life and time continue on and that you need to somehow manage to carry this trauma in your life (and your family’s) and yet live on in a {possibly} new way, carving out new meaning and even joy. This sounds like emotionally and psychologically healthy living and dealing well with life’s {sometimes} awful circumstances.
I wish you and your family the very best in living well despite…..And always give yourselves ‘permission to be human’ – that’s it’s O.K. to feel those awfully sad and bad feelings whenever. It is so important for kids to be able to express their feelings and know that it’s normal and acceptable to feel that way.
Beautifully put, Harriet. And I would add that we reframe, too, as we find the blessings in even the hardest events and memories.
Hi Laura,
Thank you for your feedback. Yes, we do reframe as things evolve.