If I'd known then...
If I'd known then what I know now, could I have imagined that I would survive?
Grief is growth, if we allow it to be.
Grief can kill us or enable powerful growth, physically, emotionally and spirtually.
Suicide grief - after the suicide of a loved one - is what opened many doorways for my own growth.
This song ‘Rise’, which I wrote and recorded with Liane Ashberry (her lyrics mostly, and my music mostly) is part of a story told at RudeAngel.co.uk, which offers the album free and lots of background, and all the lyrics and musicians who played on the songs.
Here is the video that was made for the song:
And here is an mp3 of the same song recording:
The song is remarkable for many reasons, not least the uplifting optimistic vibrations and energies of the music and words, given its meanings and origins.
And the song and music and lyrics might be the best that you choose personally to take from this article. You might be transported to a euphoric universe by the magical keyboard solo in the playout. Or by the tenderness of Liane’s voice. Whatever.
Light in the dark. In the blackest night sky we see the brightest stars.
Particularly besides that, I want to focus on growth via grief and trauma from the perspectives of :
1 Liane Ashberry’s suicide in 2015
If I’d known then (when I met Liane in 2010) what I know now, I would have been able to save Liane from her suicide in April 2015, so that like my own suicidal disintegration and recovery, she’d have grown incredibly powerfully (and she was incredibly powerful already) rather than choosing to end her life.
The short explanation about this is:
Nutrition. Liane was eating far too many carbohydrate foods, mainly because of of her vegetarian diet, and her lack of knowledge about the significance of nutrition in emotional wellbeing. For the vast majority of people, a high carbohydrate diet causes inflammation, which causes anxiety and depression, and wrecks sleep. Lack of good sleep is ruinous for human health and healing, especially from traumas such as grief.
Also Liane was being medicated for grief, with antidepressants and sleeping tablets, which she was extremely reluctant to take. However, with pressure from doctors, psychiatrists and family, and with work and money worries too, she could see no other way. Liane’s youngest daughter Ella died very rapidly and horrifically from bone cancer, age 11, in January 2009, and that is very very serious grief. Grief is not mental illness. I’ve also learned a lot about suicide since Liane took her own life, and with hindsight, understanding Liane from 2010. Suicide has become a major part of my work and life purpose. I understand that while grief and suicide and diet are different for everyone, there are certain criteria that are universal.
2 My own survival and ‘rebirth’, instead of following Liane
If I’d known then what I know now, I wonder if I’d been able to imagine that I would survive the next 13 years.
I believe, and I have experienced in myself, and witnessed in many others, that we cannot predict the future.
Growth happens in stages, rather like Erik Erikson explains in his ‘Psychosocial Life Stages Theory’. Erik Erikson and his wife Joan studied the lives of Native American Indians for decades in the mid-1900s, and wrote some very important award-winning books about it. A summary is below, which I wrote about 20 years ago for the website Businessballs.com, which I founded and built very successfully, internationally, and in which I remain a minority owner (another long story).
As we grow through life, in age, awareness, adaptability, wisdom and resilience, we make choices in life. These choices are a reflection of and influential on our changing personality. These choices are dependent on our past experiences, especially including traumas, and how successfully, or unsuccessfully, we transition to each next life stage. Each event in our life is both a cause and an effect. This is especially so because our thoughts and actions affect our external environment, such as our reputation and credibility. And of course many external factors then affect our own internal feelings, thoughts and actions. It is a feedback loop.
My main point about, “If I’d known then what I know now,” is that when we are at relatively low levels of personal growth, it is impossible to imagine the depths of traumas and growth several levels ahead.
And this is probably a good thing, because while traumatic growth such as suicide grief is quite frightening and life-threatening, there are potentially much deeper more frightening traumas and growths that are available to us, when we are ready.
Some brief notes about Erikson's Psychosocial ‘Life-Stages’ Development Theory:
Erikson's model of psychosocial development is a very significant, highly regarded and meaningful concept.
Life is a series of lessons and challenges which help us to grow. Erikson's wonderful theory helps to tell us why.
The theory is helpful for child development, and adults too.
For more information than appears on this page, read Erikson's books; he was an award-winning writer and this review does not convey the richness of Erikson's own explanations. It's also interesting to see how his ideas develop over time, perhaps aided by his own journey through the 'psychosocial crisis' stages model that underpinned his work.
Erik Erikson first published his eight stage theory of human development in his 1950 book Childhood and Society. The chapter featuring the model was titled 'The Eight Ages of Man'. He expanded and refined his theory in later books and revisions, notably: Identity and the Life Cycle (1959); Insight and Responsibility (1964); The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (1982, revised 1996 by Joan Erikson); and Vital Involvement in Old Age (1989). Erikson's biography lists more books.