Saturday Stories #16 The Silver Lining
Rediscover a love for fiction, because stories can change the world
These fiction stories are unedited, unfiltered, and written in 15-25 minutes. Please be aware that they may contain intense material related to emotional healing, trauma recovery, and redirected fears.
Written March 15, 2013 in The Berkeley Wellness Center Fiction Writing Group
It is sometimes hard to find, but it is there. Behind every cloud is a silver lining, the bit of sun that penetrates through and around the cloud. It’s like the grass that grows up through concrete. Supposedly life has silver linings too. One of the clouds in my life is my disability, but if I didn’t have it I wouldn’t know any of the wonderful people that are my friends. I wouldn’t be able to have a service dog. Oh, I would probably still have Suzen, but she wouldn’t be able to go with me everywhere. And having a cooped-up border collie would be hard to manage. And she would be cooped up, because I would have to have a job. I wouldn’t have that nice little check that comes at the beginning of each month. I wouldn’t have the Creative Wellness Center or other support programs. I wouldn’t have my therapist, but I would have other things that I don’t have now. I’m trying not to go there though because it would be the opposite of a silver lining. It would be focusing on the negative.
I feel like I’ve come to the end of this topic right now. It is good for me to think about because it makes me thankful for my life. It is after all the only one I got, I best make the most of it.
I’m glad it’s sunny today, even though clouds have a silver lining, sometimes it’s nice if they’re not there to start with. It’s nice when the good just shines down on me and I don’t have to search for it. Sometimes on has had enough rain, but I guess we need the rain, without it there is no growth. Without going through hard things, I wouldn’t grow either.
Today’s Insights
As you may have guessed this is not a fictional story. I wrote this almost 10 years ago before I learned about the dangers of toxic positivity. While I think this piece of writing reflects a lot of what I truly am grateful for, looking back I feel critical of what I said. At the time I didn’t realize how much I really needed a service dog. Lots of people want to take their dogs with them everywhere, but needing to rely on a service dog is difficult. Suzen, my border collie service dog, saved my life and connected me to people. She taught me how to talk and how to build relationships and make friends and her passing was extremely painful.
As Suzen got older and I couldn’t take her with me everywhere, I saw how much I needed her when I dissociated to the point of feeling like I was on drugs or got migraines when she wasn’t with me. I’ve now healed to the point that I can be without a service dog for periods of time and that is a huge blessing. I love my little Bayless, a labradoodle, but I’m glad that there are many times that I can choose to take him or leave him home. He has taught me how to check-in with myselves and shown me ways to take care of myself. That little guy alerts me to migraines, stress, needing to eat before a blood sugar drop, and ignoring the need to go the bathroom. He even alerts my friends to what’s going on with them sometimes. He’s such a blessing and I dearly miss my first service dog Suzen.
In my life most, if not all, of my closest friends have come out of difficult circumstances or because of coping with and healing from complex trauma, alcoholism, or severe dissociative conditions. Another thing I noticed when reading this piece of prose, just under a decade later, is that while I didn’t have a job at the time this was written, that I was working full time on my recovery and healing. That was some of the hardest work I’ve done in my life. It looked like sitting in art classes and having free-time, but the intensity and the effort that it took just to stay alive during that time in my life was more than the effort of graduate school. I also find the learning that I did during that time more valuable than graduate school. The school I went to was excellent and I learned a lot, but nothing can beat the school of hard knocks and the insight that comes with doing your own inner work.
Interestingly, I mentioned the grass growing through the concrete. Today is “festival of life in cracks” day. Until this morning, when looking for a prompt for the group I facilitate, I didn’t know that was a holiday. Festival of life in cracks is a day to celebrate the coming of spring and the little bits of grass and life that grows in the cracks in the sidewalks, walls, and concrete. Recently,
when meeting with my therapist in an outdoor yard with concrete, she looked down and noticed all the little bits of green filling in the cracks. I don’t remember what she said, but it was something exhilarating and celebratory of their determination to grow despite their space to do it being crowded in upon. In that moment I also felt that she was giving me space to grow and to be. Throughout our work together she often says, “Much Respect.” She seems to really honor all that I’m doing and the effort that it’s taken to get where I am today. I often feel that people don’t fully see or get this. I often don’t fully see or get this. Then there are times when someone gives me this acknowledgement and really gets it and I am so moved I begin to cry. This is yet another accomplishment. In the past emotions were tangled, shut down, and dissociated. They came out sideways as anxiety and thoughts of self-harm or worse.
We used to have gardeners that came and sprayed these little plants, these weeds, these invasions into the pristine concrete. How often in our lives does our growth get judged as regression? Sometimes growth can look like those tears that I now am able to cry, tears that might be labeled depression, rather than be seen for what they are-a powerful human emotion that connects me to those around me, a way of processing, and working through, an expression of care and love and feeling deeply.
Our cracks, broken places, and wounds are often what lets the light in, connects us to community, or brings us to a deeper place of healing and growth. This is not to say those things were good or that being wounded was okay, but rather a way of holding space for the pain and that something good can come out of difficulties.
You’re Turn:
If you wish to continue the story in your own creative writing or prose you can answer the following questions for fiction to continue the story or answer the questions for prose that can be used as journal prompts, for essays, or poetry.
Prompts for fiction:
Write a story about a character who goes through challenges and ends up finding relationships and friendships as a result
Write a story from the perspective of the grass growing in through the cracks in the concrete
Prompts for prose
Are there ways that you have grown despite all odds, despite someone putting metaphorical pavement down to stop you?
Is this expression and growth sometimes interpreted as weeds or something to be stopped by those who don’t understand?
Write about the silver linings in your life