Oh the irony of feeling intimately connected to the hostages recently released from Russia! My experience many years ago was so different, stuck in Iran, a husband jailed, released after a mere month! Even upon release, they kept his passport. No way to leave. Seems paltry compared to hostages held for a year, five years, less and more depending on the captive. And yet I feel an odd intimacy with those released from Russian incarceration.
Still, the overwhelming power of trauma on the heart, mind and soul is. well, soul-sucking and I will tell you, lasts a lifetime but not to the same severity or degree! I was 25. At this writing I’m 72. My experience created a kind of perverse emotional cartilage scarring that is both connective yet at times dislocating, as if a bone or limb is ripped but left hanging for the rest of your life, with no way to ultimately rid yourself of the torn part. No way. And yet, the worst of it has passed for me many years ago. But it took a while.
DIFFERENT YET THE SAME
The details of my story are only relevant to the degree that they mirror aspects of those recently released. Having your personal freedom denied is not something most Americans experience. There is, quite simply, a profound sense of differentness that continues for a lifetime though lessens over time. Initially, you know you have been separated emotionally, psychologically from those in your family, your pack, your community and the nation at large on some level.
That sense of separation, alienation, of “otherness” becomes a kind of compass more useful on another planet than the one you return to! I remember while my husband was in jail in Tehran, I had brought a few books for the trip. One was Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Ironic to think of even now! My sense of dislocation began at Tehran airport and continued until we finally got out. And part of my point is it never really left because of the residual effect of the initial trauma or wound itself. It leaves an irrevocable scar!
HEALING
Yet remarkably, miraculously, blessedly the scarring allows a strange new opportunity to identify with and connect to some new souls that surprise you. Years ago I had the great good fortune to meet and write the life story of a Holocaust survivor. There’s more to the telling of that experience but suffice it to say, there was an odd and inexplicable connection that was indescribable, a ‘lost in translation’ kind of thing to others yet identifiable to he and I. Our individual experiences were vastly different, our generational gaps substantial, and yet we each caught the whiff of the others’ having been irrevocably changed by freedom denied and then recovered. It sounds trite, obvious even. And yet, and yet…
While similar perceptions will likely come to the hostages recently released, they will feel the sense of alienation from their previous normal life, from the rest of their tribe, their family, even from their former selves, a sense of torn connective tissue that once bound them together. Yet individuals who’ve undergone a similar depth of violation and survived will become recognizable in a way previously not known. Like ET on Halloween night thinking he sees another of his people in the street with a ghost sheet, the search for what you know of yourself and your tribe continues. It is a longing which can’t always be satisfied.
THE NEVER ENDING SEARCH
I remember walking out of the cemetery in LA after my Holocaust survivor friend Bennet’s burial ceremony, with his nephew. He said he was going to miss him and I said I wouldn’t. I think he was shocked and said ‘yes you will.’ What I didn’t know how to understand, let alone articulate, was that I had already internalized Bennet, the experience of his, the identification of the violation he endured and survived because I had my own violation regardless of how different mine was.
It was a recognition on some level, an “I know you, I see you “ kind of thing not spoken but understood, internalized. That I would miss (and to this day still do). the sharing of that energy in his presence, yes, I would miss that! I think Bennet knew such things himself which became part of why he revealed as much of himself to me as he did, some of which never made it into the book. It was the comfort of being “seen” and known in an odd way. That recognition of a reconstituted self born out of terror, trauma and survival created a kind of reverence for life for him too, ultimately preserving his original dignity though dramatically reconstituted.
A NEW DAWN
And it is that slim yet indelible link I witness with the hostages recently released from Russia. It’s part of how and why I feel a simple connection, regardless of kind, size and scope. Those recently released will undoubtedly connect with yet more folks who’ve experienced different separations, violations, or injustices as time passes.
In the end, component parts of trauma are the same. They transcend language, culture, personality and time. They transcend gender; they include the obvious alienation, but also anger, shame, and fear. They include depression, grief and despair after you know you’re even safe, and maybe have been safe or perceive yourself as such for quite some time. There’s a universal quality to it. You have learned life can change in an instant, irrevocably and life-alteringly! It’s not a concept. It’s not words on a page. It’s a bone-deep internalized reality.
WE ARE EVERYWHERE
I remember meeting Terry Anderson, the longest held hostage held in Beirut in the mid 1980’s. I felt his energy, both his earlier terror and surprise at his liberation after more than five years in captivity. He had become a changed man both because of his experience and in spite of it. His core was the same. The joy had returned, even gusto. He had become transcendent, a new man remarkably though not singularly defined by it. Or defined in such a new way, a wholly invigorated way.
It’s hard to describe this to “lay” people. I struggle with the words to describe it even now. So much of it remains ineffable and is forever thus. Suffice if to say, while a traumatic experience seems like a kind of altered perception of your old self it is more than that. It is greater than the sum of the parts. You become a new self, a bigger self and for some of us a better self. Not everyone is able to make that kind of transition or “rebirth” but some can and must surely try.
For the newly released hostages, I pray you’re able to see that, in time, you will recover with all the messiness of living. Have faith in a recovered and broader self, a new definition of you. For now, it is time to rest. Feel your anger, your pain and sense of fury, much like the rage of being born. The whole resultant episodes cannot be rushed but you will be reclaimed, the deepest and bestest part of your one true selves can and will be reclaimed.
