of hand.
That night during the war in Croatia when the shrapnel from the grenade flew through my bedroom window, it hit and destroyed the bookshelf that was right behind the head of my bed. The entire thing collapsed onto my bed and shattered into pieces. (Another reason I’m thankful that I wasn’t sleeping in my bed that night.) The thing on that shelf that meant the most to me was a photo album my mom had put together. Pretty much every photo she had of me, from birth to twelve years old, was in that album and it was almost completely burned. We had no digital backups or negatives, so we had no way of reprinting those precious memories. There are about ten pictures of me as a child that I rescued from the little corner of the photo album that was still intact. Most of them had charred edges.
When I was thirteen, I was so angry that my childhood photos had been destroyed that I took a pair of scissors and cut off some of those charred edges. I guess it was my unsuccessful way of trying to erase any reminders of what had happened to my photos. During my senior year of high school, a teacher asked us to bring in a kindergarten or first-grade photo of ourselves for a project. I didn’t have a photo of myself at those ages. And I didn’t feel like explaining why, so I just didn’t do the project. I pretended I forgot about it and accepted an F on the assignment.
Later on, in my adulthood, I was complaining to my mom about how much it bothered me that I didn’t have many childhood photos. “I don’t even know what I looked like at certain ages. It makes me really sad.” My mom listened and let me take a dip in the disappointment marinade, and then she said, “I understand it’s really upsetting. And of course you’re sad about it. But also keep in mind that that’s the only meaningful material possession you lost in the war. Your photo album. You have friends who lost everything.”
She was right.
She didn’t point this out to suggest there was something wrong with me for feeling sad about the album; she was just reminding me that I needed to put my loss in perspective and realize how much I had to be grateful for. Yeah, but . . . how amazing is it that at least that one corner of the album didn’t get burned? Yeah, but . . . my parents’ entire home could have been destroyed and it’s still standing to this day. Yeah, but . . . I could have been in my room that night, sleeping in my bed, and then I might not even be here to be sad about the photos I lost.
I want to make sure I’m clear on something here: I’m not in any way suggesting that we should suppress our feelings or our pain because someone else has it worse. I’ve been on the receiving end of comments like “Well, you don’t have it as bad as so-and-so, and you need to get over it!” Or “Your being upset about that one event is an insult to people who experience it daily!” Or “I went through that, too, and it didn’t affect me the way you’re saying it affected you, so you must be lying or exaggerating your pain.”
Whether it was about my divorce or my depression or even something as sensitive as being sexually assaulted both as a child and as an adult, I’ve received feedback that has made me feel like my feelings aren’t valid. I can tell you from experience: those words aren’t helpful and they don’t lead the recipients to gratitude or happiness. Statements like those come from a place of judgment, and judgment has never helped anyone become a more positive person.
We have a right to feel what we feel! Suppressing our feelings or being shamed for how an experience is affecting us is not the path to healing. Each individual experiences things differently. We are not weaker for processing things in a different way than someone else might, and we are not liars or “too dramatic” for feeling something more deeply than someone else. We need to acknowledge, respect, and fully experience our own emotions, even the