Sandbags and Trauma: A Useful Symbol for Us All
I just finished reading Charlotte Maya’s moving memoir, Sushi Tuesdays. My reading of it touched me on both professional and personal levels. Indeed, who goes through life without dealing with grief, howsoever defined? Short answer: No one. And to be clear: grief does not always derive from death; termination on relationships through divorce can produce grief. Grief can come from injuries, whether through shootings or loss of a limb.
What I want to do here is share, expand and explore a symbol of grief that appears in Maya’s book. Maya’s college friend points out that grief is like a heavy sandbag. If we never pick the sandbag (grief) up, we will keep tripping over it. And, when we pick the sandbag up, we note that the bag has a tiny hole that lets its sand drain out over time. Maya keeps referencing this sandbag as she and her family and friends process her late husband’s suicide.
The Sandbag’s Shape and Draining
I want to expand and add some nuance to the sandbag symbol in the context of trauma. Grief is but one form that trauma can take. We have trauma everywhere. We don’t have to look far to see traumatized adults and children. So, we are surrounded by sandbags. They are at our feet everywhere we are.
But, one key for me is that even if you lift the sandbag and it starts draining, it changes shape. And the shape it takes moving forward is not uniform among those holding the sandbag. There is no ONE sandbag and no ONE drainage system.
Our sandbags may look similar on the ground but when lifted and draining, they look and feel different. The bag’s shape, the speed of draining, the weight of the bag at any given time — these all vary. And, sandbags need to get lifted by both children and adults. Imagine a large sandbag’s ability to overpower a young person; just getting it off the ground is hard. Denial is easier. Just read Maya’s book to see the different ways her two young son’s deal with their father’s suicide.
For me, one key to appreciating the depth of the sandbag symbol is to breakdown its “life.”
First, one needs to see the sandbag. Not everyone sees it; some folks just keep tripping.
Second, even if one sees the sandbag, lifting it is tough for children and adults. We often need help with getting the load into our arms (minds and bodies). And we need to know we need help. Yes, people can offer help but those with big sandbags need to be able to also ask for help.
Third, how the sand drains differs from situation to situation and person to person. That means homogenizing how we help those struggling with grief or trauma is a flawed approach. We need to see people’s situations contextually. By way of example: Death of a parent is not identical for all children. Some children know their parent is dying and can process it. Death by suicide is something altogether different. The age of the child, the gender of the parent dying and the child surviving all matter.
Fourth, the sandbag never disappears although we may assume it does. The bag always has a wee bit of sand in it — sand grains stay around. Not to trivialize this but if you have ever lived near a beach, you know sand goes everywhere and even when cleaned up, it reappears out of nowhere. And the sandbag is never actually destroyed.
Fifth, the sandbag presence in our life can be changed over time. We can paint the sandbag. We can add color to it. We can decorate it. We can move it into new places and spaces. We can give it a home, a comfortable place to rest — literally and figuratively. Imagine the sandbag as a piece of evolving art. We can give the sandbag a place in our contemporary lives.
Sixth, what happens to all the sand the spills out of the sandbag over time? Does it just sit there? Do we sweep it away? Do we turn it into beaches in our minds? We can’t just let the sand pile up. We need to find a place for not just the sandbag but the sand.
I Worry
I worry about the trauma that abounds today among our population. Just think about the number of lock-downs that students experience through swatting incidents. These aren’t actual emergencies but they appear real when they are occurring. When you are on a lock-down, it feels like what it is: a lock-down. Seeing police cars and swat teams and weapons are visuals that get etched into our minds.
So, ponder the number of sandbags that surround us. Some of us have more than one. And for all of us, we need help dealing with seeing, unpacking (draining) our sandbags and then finding places where those bags and sand can be located over the length of our lifetimes.
