Unbroken: Part Two
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- Apr 26
- 9 min read
Even a small, steady experience of love can anchor a person through trauma. This reflection explores how that same capacity exists in all of us, both to receive and to give.
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Unbroken: Part Two
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. – Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass, 1855)
The Improbably Blessed Life of Larry
An odds-maker might say that he had no business succeeding at anything. From the age of four to seventeen, Larry was the target of a sociopathic monster’s rage. He and his brother, along with two stepbrothers and Mom, lived under an almost constant threat of violence. In Larry’s words, “there was always a sense of impending doom.” River town to river town, ramshackle house to ramshackle house, unpaid bills kept the family on the move. Larry couldn’t “even count the number of elementary and junior high schools.” He guessed ten to thirteen. Against all odds, Larry graduated high school, but he “never completed a single grade in the same high school.” This nomadic life kept Larry and his brothers invisible to the curious eyes of teachers or staff, who might have asked a question about a suspicious bruise, an improbable cut, or a vacant stare. Even just a little stability may have allowed a teacher or coach to notice Larry’s older brother’s athletic talent. Could this have provided him better opportunities than the drug dealers who noticed him, then took his money, and eventually took his life?
So how is it that Larry, with so few investments in his psycho-social-spiritual bank account, could appreciate into a man who would successfully raise two boys, and two stepchildren with both affection and fidelity? How does a man from such a hard-scrabble background put together an exceptional marriage and a thirty-five-year career as an electrician? How does someone given so little end up with so much? At the time of my interviews with him, he was enjoying a secure retirement, complete with ten loving grandchildren and winters in Florida.
Last week’s article introduced us to a band of brothers who were able to salvage toys out of junk yards and wrecked Christmases. It highlighted the power of childhood imagination and play to transcend cruelty and chaos. It also placed into focus the power of a shared burden to lighten a load. Once again, Sunday Morning Café returns to the theme of psychological and spiritual resilience as exemplified in this week’s subject, Larry. We return to the question: “How did Larry remain unbroken?”
How to Read This Article
I remember reading about the signature quality of Renaissance art. It almost always seemed to celebrate the natural grandeur of the human body as well as the human being. Renaissance artists, despite the objections of religious authorities of the time, had the audacity to celebrate divinity contained within the human condition. Though not a poet from that era, Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, quoted at the top of the article, nicely captured the Renaissance perspective, when he audaciously wrote, “I celebrate myself,” and then seemed to invite his readers to celebrate themselves as well.
As I sifted through hours of interviews, what came into focus relative to Larry’s resilience had less to do with skills and practices and more to do with something profound that is part and parcel of the human condition. To appreciate this part of his story, I invite you to take up the lens through which Walt Whitman looked out at the world, and then, like him, to look back into yourself, with that same lens. For as long as it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee, I invite you to not only “celebrate” what’s in Larry, but to notice the common humanity that you share with him, and celebrate what’s in you as well. See if you can’t recognize in Larry, and yourself, a kind of flesh and blood nobility that artists like Michelangelo tried to capture in stone and paint.
Overcoming a Cruel Past: “Aunt Rebecca Loved Me to Death”
It’s hard to imagine a worse divorce settlement than the one that ended the marriage of Larry’s mom and dad. It was only a measly once-a-month that Larry and his brother were allowed a furlough from hell at their biological dad’s house. Once a month, the timer on their freedom would start, promptly, at 10:00 am on a Saturday and end exactly at 5:00 pm on the following Sunday. If their dad happened to be late picking them up, Dick, their live-in sociopathic stepfather, would cancel that month’s visit. When these little scheduled oases did take place, and they returned to their usual cruel, chaotic shack, according to Larry, “that’s when the interrogation would begin.” “What did you tell him?” “Where did you go?” “What did you do?” A wrong answer would result in a beating, or worse, the potential cancellation of future visits to Dad’s house. Larry and Greg knew all too well that Dick was mean enough to follow through on such threats. And that’s why—true to the script that abused kids tend to follow—Larry and his brother kept their suffering from anybody who might have been able to make a difference for them.
During these thirty-one-hour visits, Greg and Larry experienced a real home where belts, extension cords, and class rings were never used to administer bruises, cuts, or humiliation. For Larry, the best thing about these monthly visits was getting to spend time with his Aunt Rebecca. He certainly felt loved by his dad and Grandma, but it was Aunt Rebecca who gave him substantial psychological ground to stand on and a horizon toward which he could steer. From her love, his little psyche constructed an inner-home base.
Our interview took place over the phone, but you could hear the smile and feel the warmth in Larry’s voice when he said, “Aunt Rebecca loved me to death! She loved me no matter what!” He continued, “She was always a calming presence.” He credits Aunt Rebecca for his not becoming a drug addict like his older brother, Greg. “Anytime I’d think of her, I didn’t want to be a disappointment to her.” He’d think of her when he needed to complete homework assignments or study for tests. And it was “the thinking of her” that led to his one-year-at-a-time, successful completion of each school year, despite the fact that his full-time family was always just one step ahead of the debt collectors.
Object relations psychology describes the process by which children “introject” or psychologically swallow their caregivers into their developing psyche. When successful attachment occurs, thanks to a person like Aunt Rebecca, such a child is able to take the raw material of unconditional love and weave it into a “secure psychological base,” from which they can construct a life and identity in the world. It was from this secure base within, crafted from the psychological calcium and oxygen of Aunt Rebecca’s love, that allowed Larry to disprove Dick’s premonition, “You’ll never graduate high school!” “The hell I won’t!” Larry whispered to himself on the day he took his last beating and ran away from home to finish his senior year and meet his destiny.
Larry’s story tracks precisely with the findings of resilience research like that of Gina O’Connell Higgins (Resilient Adults: Overcoming a Cruel Past, 1994). She interviewed over a hundred adult subjects whose childhoods were marked with abuse of the severest kind. The subjects she interviewed were like Larry. After their cruel childhoods, these adults had achieved success in both their careers and personal lives. What was the thing they had in common? In each of their stories, there was someone who showed them a “no matter what” kind of love—someone like Aunt Rebecca. Again, like Larry, it was often a love that was experienced no more than once a month, or far less. Sometimes it was experienced as an observation of a neighbor’s family, providing an aspirational goal for the future they would one day create. O’Connell Higgins’s case studies read like Larry’s story. You get a sense that children in these settings possess the ability to multiply loaves and fishes. It’s as if the human soul has a CRISPR function built into it that can take a sample of an Aunt’s unconditional love and replicate its RNA until there is enough love to construct a scaffold that can hold a life.
A Takeaway from Larry’s Story
Over the years, I’ve been surprised by the great variety of people who have come to share their stories with me. It seems to me that over the decades, there’s been a growing awareness in our culture of the ubiquity of trauma in our lives, as well as the impact of that trauma. Maybe you’ve had to recognize and heal from something as dramatic as Larry’s challenges? Or maybe your disruptive event was more subtle, but nonetheless real? I listened in disbelief, four years ago, as a ninety-something-year-old farmer told me that, in his estimation, the pandemic of 2020 was “harder on people” than the Great Depression or World War II. Those epic events of the past hit our society with a kind of centripetal force that pulled people together and united communities. COVID hit our society like a powerful centrifuge, pulling us apart. For human beings, whose superpower is connection, a kind of collective trauma settled on a whole nation.
If we are to acknowledge our own psychological wounds, it seems to me that it’s essential to equally acknowledge that what was true of Larry and the study I just mentioned is true of you and me as well! Dorothy Day, the twentieth-century saint and co-founder of The Catholic Worker movement, used to bristle when she was referred to as a saint. “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily,” she’d protest. Ms. Day knew the human tendency to construct Mount Olympuses, where we elevate those whose lives might otherwise challenge us. We make them safe and tame their challenging messages down by creating a little gated community for them in our imaginations. Once we regard their holiness as unattainable—after all, they are saints—we can admire them from a safe distance. All the while, an unrecognized greatness pulses at the core of ourselves. A greatness that calls us to quiet and not-so-quiet acts of beauty and bravery.
My profession rightly invites men and women to acknowledge the trauma and suffering in their lives so that they can heal, and better meet their destinies with unfettered energy, creativity, and love. At the same time, I worry that my profession fails to simultaneously highlight the unbroken part. After all, as Walt Whitman reminds us, what is in Larry is in you and me, too. We celebrate Larry’s resilience in the face of impossible odds because his story points beyond himself and to a strength that resides within us.
Additionally, Larry’s story challenges you and me to look out beyond the boundaries of our fenced-in yards. Perhaps you are called to be someone’s Aunt Rebecca to provide a small or large piece of a “no matter what” kind of love that will one day fit together with other pieces to form a secure base for a young man or woman’s life? Do you have a loaf of a “no matter what” kind of love to spare, not only for your own children, but for your nieces and nephews…or for your adopted nieces and nephews…for kids who visit your house…for kids you coach and teach in big and small ways?
Can you spare a little meditation time this week to step back into those moments in your life, when your own version of an Aunt Rebecca invested a “no matter what” kind of love in you?
Dialogue and Discussion Questions:
Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.
What stood out to you in this article? Why do you suppose it stood out for you?
In my experience as a clinician, I find that clients are reluctant to use the word “trauma” to describe their experience. Without employing that word, can you think of any difficult experience or series of experiences that have left a psychological or spiritual scar within you? What effect does this cause in the current time zone? What helps you with those effects? What is unhelpful?
Can you get in touch with a story of when someone’s “no matter what” kind of love made all the difference for you?
Can you think of a time when your “no matter what” kind of love assisted someone else through a hard time?
What are the creative ways that you connect with “the divinity within,” however you’ve come to understand that?
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.
Comments