The book I am reading at the moment is Rise, by Ingrid Poulson (thanks Kate at Little Dog Books).
It is an inspiring read, and I would recommend it to anyone who has suffered at some stage in their lives (that would be most of us, I’m sure).
The difference about this book is it is not written by a theorist with little practical experience. It is written by a woman whose two children plus her father were murdered by her estranged husband. The author herself was absent at the time of the killings because she went to the police after being raped by the children’s father. The children’s grandfather died trying to protect them.
The book does not dwell on the details of the crimes, rather it focuses on how this resilient woman refused to be brought low, despite her pain. She knows her husband wanted her to live a life of pain, and she chooses not to be brought undone. It is a choice she has to make everyday.
Many times people have to choose whether to sink or swim. Choosing to swim doesn’t mean the pain goes away, but it allows you to live with the pain.
As a doctor to whom she told her story said, “I am continually surprised at the resilience of the ordinary human being.”
Ingrid says her conversation with that doctor started to shift the guilt, “a shift away from the guilt of surviving to the pride of being a survivor”.
That step is a very big one for many people to take. Some can’t give themselves permission to enjoy life without their loved one; they feel they need to remain in mourning as a memorial to the one they have lost. If you feel guilt about something that has happened, it can exacerbate those feelings.
Ingrid Poulson shows how, each day, we can choose how to live. She cites Victor Frankl, whose 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning I have often drawn on. It chronicles his experiences in a concentration camp and describes how he found a reason to live amid all the inhumanity.
Frankl talks about stimulus and response, and the fleeting gap between the two. It is in the gap that we can make our choices. We can’t change the stimulus, but we can choose the response.
Ingrid Poulson not only talks the theory, she gives concrete examples of actions you can take to make yourself feel better. The techniques she talks about are easy and not limited to people who have lost loved ones. As I see it, they can be applied to anyone who is going through a hard time: people like farmers battling prolonged drought; workers laid off in a recession; people who have lost a fortune on the stockmarket.
Like any book, you take from this one what you think will work for you, and leave the rest behind.
I’m firmly of the opinion there is enough in this book to make it well worth the read.
If you see me walking down the street with a special spring in my step, you’ll know I’m putting into practice my version of Rise.
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