Shortly after Bruce and my father died, my life started to come apart. Not my professional life. If anything, that was the one area of my life where I found solace, even strength. Whether it was working with clients one-on-one, teaching workshops, or speaking at live events, when I was in the flow of service to others, I was at one with my spirit and a million miles away from my own increasing heartache and emotional unhappiness. When I was working or teaching, I was peaceful. The problem was that I couldn’t work 24/7, although there were days when I almost succeeded.
As the initial shock and sadness over my losses wore off, I found myself consumed with anger. Top of the list of targets for my ire was Bruce. My brother had introduced so much pain into my family for so many years because of his addictions that his death was just one more bullet in our hearts. I had tried to be kind and loving to him during his life, but his addictions and self-absorption had made it difficult to do.
Over the years, I ignored most of his obnoxious behavior, telling myself the spiritual thing to do was to love and support him in spite of his actions. After all, he was not physically or emotionally well. I did my best to be a good sister, but he had been so manipulative and self-centered with his drug use that it disgusted me many times over.
But I never told him. Instead, I just tried to love and accept him as he was. I managed to do that while he was alive. So I was appalled that suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. I had so much pent-up anger toward him that it took my breath away.
It also shamed me. I was not supposed to be angry with him. He was dead, for God’s sake! I was supposed to have unconditional love for him and be glad he was at peace.
But this didn’t deny the chaos, drama, and manipulation that his behavior so often, and for so long, brought to the family—that’s what made me so angry. Why did he get to be such an asshole and not have anyone expect anything of him? Why did he get to live with impunity from all the ways in which he had inflicted pain on the rest of us?
The unspoken family rule (or maybe my own) was that as the stronger, more fortunate one, I was to be kind, loving, giving, nonjudgmental, and accepting—and not have a single negative reaction to his endlessly crappy behavior. And while he was alive I had more or less managed that. But now, apparently, I was having an intensely delayed negative reaction toward him that I couldn’t shut off.
I prayed for these feelings to go away, but they didn’t budge, and for that I was also disappointed in myself. Being this angry with my now-dead brother didn’t fit in at all with my self-image as a spiritual teacher and guide, and that left me feeling embarrassed.
If I let slip to anyone that I did harbor these feelings, especially to any of my spiritual or professional peers, I was immediately chastised. I was told things like: “Forgive him.” “Don’t judge.” “It was your karma to have a brother like this.” “Be grateful it wasn’t you.” “I’m surprised that you feel this way given that you should know better.” Essentially, I heard the same words I had told myself for all the years he was alive. Now those words only made me angrier.
I slipped away in shame, and seethed all the more in silence when alone.
I was especially angry with myself for confiding my conflicted feelings to my husband, Patrick.
His response when I was reacting to Bruce’s past behavior was often to agree with me about how unacceptable his behavior was all those years rather than simply listening to me. All I wanted to hear was, “I’m so sorry, Sonia.” But it never came.
I was so angry that he failed to comfort me when I was in so much pain. Why couldn’t he just put his arms around me and reassure me that everything was going to be okay? Why couldn’t he see that this much loss all at once was suffocating me with confusion and grief? Instead he withdrew, leaving me to struggle in pain on my own.
To add to that nightmare of angry emotions, I was also furious with my father. All my life I had been a “good girl” and done everything I could to love and be present with him. But for many years—for reasons I could not for the life of me understand—he seemed to resent me, and he let me know it. When I was a child, he often lost his temper and smacked me around; and when I got older, he told me that I wasn’t wanted because I upset my mother. When I became a published author and began to work in the public sphere, he told me that I was not to speak of my work when I went home to visit them. I wasn’t allowed to talk about my books or my workshops or any of my successes, because he feared it took the spotlight off my mom.
I never understood these conditions, but agreed to them anyway. Only now they enraged me. What kind of weird control was he exercising over me all those years? It was as if he banished my light, and it hurt me terribly, although I never let him or my mother know. I simply respected his unreasonable and extremely painful request, and tried to be loving toward him anyway.
Now I was furious with my father for refusing to see and welcome my gifts. But worse, I was angrier with myself for suddenly having these immature feelings toward my father, and so soon after he was gone. I hadn’t felt those feelings for years, and some I had never allowed myself to feel.
Come on, Sonia. Really? Haven’t you worked out your childhood wounding yet? I admonished myself. How pathetic of you.
My father loved my mother so much that he completely doted on her and thought she was the center of the Universe. He did not want anything, including me, to outshine her. I thought I had come to peace with, and even achieved sympathetic appreciation for, his devotion to her. After all, how many great loves does one witness such as his for my mother?
My father met my Romanian mother in the small town of Dingolfing, Germany, toward the end of World War II. She was a newly released prisoner of war, and my father was an American officer stationed there. Soon after they married. He was 20, and she was 16.
He brought his pregnant bride to America, and they proceeded to have seven children. He felt responsible for her in so many ways, and circled her with dedication and loyalty that was near heroic. He was a true knight in shining armor. But as a knight, he often considered anything that took attention off of her as the enemy.
I was named after my mom—and I was most like her. I was convinced that my father didn’t like this about me. There was to be only one of her. Somehow I accepted that while he was alive, and even took no offense. So why now, as soon as he passed, did my feelings of anger toward him erupt?
It was not as though he was never there for me. When Patrick and I bought our first house, a dilapidated two-flat in Chicago, just after I became pregnant with our first daughter, he spent over a month with us, tirelessly helping us renovate the house before the baby was born. At that time I felt he truly loved me and wanted to show me in the best way he could.
So it’s not as if I hadn’t tried to move beyond and heal my childhood wounds before this. I thought I had. I went to healing workshops, saw a therapist, read a ton of books on the matter, and studied with master teachers explaining that all that transpired in one’s life was part of one’s karma and life lessons, and that no one was ever a victim.
And I absolutely accepted and believed all that to be true. I lived by those principles, and for the most part was at peace with this understanding of life and my difficult relationship with my father.
He was devoted to my mom, and she was his great love. If the power of that love blinded him to the hurt he caused me by pushing me to the side, I accepted and understood that, and even thought it sweet. I had a nice relationship with him in the last years of his life and knew him to be a patient and loving man, clear to his last breath.
Yet the minute my father died, right on Bruce’s heels, all sorts of ancient, denied, or ignored feelings erupted inside of me like a volcano I couldn’t contain. I was blowing up inside, and I was horrified that this was happening. I remembered the father I was frightened of, the one who would lose his patience and beat me for the slightest infraction. The one who was depressed and angry and felt threatened by me. Why on earth were these feelings poisoning my life all of a sudden?
Now, of all times, I needed to be mature and compassionate and helpful to my mom, and instead all I wanted to do was take someone down because I was so outraged. Although I tried to hide how I felt, I was less and less successful by the day.
Perhaps inevitably, my anger at Bruce and my father infected my already frustrated feelings toward Patrick.
In a book called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, I once read about the four apocalyptic horsemen that kill a marriage: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. We were embroiled in all four, and it was getting worse by the day. While these problems were not new, after my dad and brother died, I found I no longer cared about working to solve them.
So the battles raged on between us—over what I felt was his defended stance and lack of sympathy for my losses and pain, and his anger toward me for running away to work even more than ever. For neither of us being what the other wanted.
He called me crazy. I called him cruel.
He told me I was a fraud. I told him it was his projection and that he was a child.
He iced me. I fried him.
It got to the point where the air he breathed infuriated me, and I told him so.
I had to get away.
Consequently, I accepted every single invitation to teach or speak that came my way, even though I was exhausting myself. At least when I was traveling and teaching, I didn’t have to be around him.
Truthfully, in my own sneaky way, I had been using this ploy to run away from him for years. When we were first married, I invited him to join me in teaching my students in small groups, but not long into our arrangement we found ourselves fighting on the way to and from workshops. It broke my heart. I loved my work, and he was stealing away my joy. So one day, after yet another argument, I simply told him I couldn’t work with him anymore. He was shocked and furious. I was relieved.
Once I stopped working with Patrick, I started to hire other people to take his place and help me at the workshops. Only that just brought into my life a series of others who, while I appreciated their efforts and talents, also let me down and left me feeling as disappointed and unsupported as Patrick had in the end. What I didn’t see then but was beginning to see now was that I didn’t need support at work. I needed support in my life. I needed love. I needed witnessing and kindness. I needed care and reassurance, and I paid these people to offer it to me.
Looking back, I blamed myself for these failed relationships. What was wrong with me? Why were the people I attracted to me so wrong?
Finally, I reached my limit. I was nearing a nervous breakdown. I could not keep up with my work demands while my emotional life was so turbulent and unhappy, and my wounded self was bleeding to death. I was sad. I was hurt. I was lonely. I was ashamed. I was angry and tired. All the dark feelings and unfulfilled emotional needs that I had danced around or spiritualized away over a lifetime came back with a vengeance and demanded attention.
One day, Patrick started yet another petty argument with one of our daughters—over something that I thought was silly. I felt he was being controlling and mean-spirited, and I just hit the wall.
I told him enough was enough and that I couldn’t live with him anymore.
He couldn’t believe it. I was the kind of person who always bounced back, stayed in the game, and kept on trying. Quitting wasn’t like me.
I couldn’t believe it either.
Like Humpty Dumpty, however, I felt as though my life had been slowly cracking and crumbling apart, and on that day, what remained just shattered. I had felt it coming but didn’t realize it was so close. I could not put it back together again. I didn’t want to.
I didn’t like Patrick. I didn’t like my unhappiness. I didn’t like my unbridled anger and resentment. But most important, I didn’t like me. And I didn’t want to continue being the unhappy person I had become.
As much as it scared me to do so, as loyal and devoted to my family as I was, I needed to stop. I was no longer living by my own values, and I needed to admit it.
Patrick moved out two months later and went to Breckenridge, Colorado.
I moved inward.