I Challenge You Not to Cry...

...when you watch this amazing interview

I’m a big fan of Chris Stefanick and Sr. Miriam James Heidland. Here, they come together for a 30-minute conversation titled “From Addiction to Redemption: Sister Miriam’s Radical Journey to Healing.”

It’s about how our wounds shape us and how Christ can and will heal them if we let Him. It’s beautiful, it’s vulnerable, and it’s so moving hearing them talk about this.

Here’s just one line from that conversation that struck me as incredibly profound.

“I really believe,” says Sr. Miriam, “that our addictions, whatever they may be, are the trauma responses to our Sorrowful Mysteries.”

In the talk, she shares how the fact that she was adopted—and the reaction of her mother—left her deeply wounded.

“There is trauma in the womb when mother and child can’t bond and there is no song sung over the baby, and there is no joy and expectation. I think I internalized a lot of her shame, and I was tremendously lonely in the womb, and then there was the threat of death looming.

I was given up for adoption, and then I was put up in a foster home for three months before I was adopted. So by the time my mom and dad adopted me, who’d been waiting a long time for a little girl, that was mother number three.

So you can already hear… the catastrophic attachment wounds that I would have from the womb, and how that would affect me.”

The video is here (and at the link above); I urge you to watch it. Even Chris Stefanick can’t hold back the tears.

I can relate because I have a very similar story: born out of wedlock to a poor mother who lived with her parents and couldn’t afford to keep the baby; given up for adoption; living in an orphanage for some months until my adoptive parents came and got me.

My story was complicated even more by the fact that at the age of 13 or so, I discovered that my brother, who was one and a half years older than me (same mother, different father) had lived in that same orphanage at the time. My entire life, I had wanted a big brother, and when I learned that I had one, I was stunned.

“Why didn’t you adopt him too?” I asked Mama.

She shrugged. “I just wanted a little girl.”

It’s hard to describe my pain and outrage. I was absolutely heartbroken. Many years later, when I studied psychotherapy and took a weekend course in Bert Hellinger’s “Family Constellation” therapy, I found out that one of the biggest wounds in my life has been the gaping hole that was left by my missing brother.

And yet, Jesus always picks us up where we are. One of my sweetest experiences with Him was when He came to me before Mass on my 58th birthday to soothe (if not fully heal) my old wound of abandonment and rejection. (You can read about it here.)

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Why didn’t He just heal me completely? Like Sr. Miriam, I believe there is value in shared suffering. And like her, I’m still on my healing journey, learning to give my pain and fear of abandonment to Jesus whenever it wells up. There are so many layers to that particular onion—and it takes a long time to peel them off one by one.

Right now, it’s very strong again because I’m in a vulnerable situation (currently unemployed, sick for the last few weeks, and my son is getting ready to move to Germany this year). It’s easy to give in to the helplessness and fear and the horrible loneliness that I feel even now that he’s still around and living with me. It’s like I’m rehearsing loneliness, an attempt at self-preservation, at weaning myself off before the actual loss happens. At the same time, I need to be careful not to push him away, like I did for a while when he was getting ready to go off to college.

But I know all of it is part of the path to sainthood that some years ago I asked God for… and He delivered. As I said many times before, this doesn’t mean I am a Saint or even close to it. It just means He complied with my wish and has been supplying me with all the tools and experiences that one would need to develop the virtues of a Saint: material deprivation to embrace poverty; humiliation to learn humility; a firm structure to learn obedience; health issues to learn chastity (FYI, abstaining from foods, too, falls under chastity).

The whole point, I believe, of putting me (and you) through the wringer like this, is that, little by little, we will learn to trust in Jesus and hand over our old fears and wounds so He can turn them over in His hands and look at them and create something beautiful from them. And as He keeps doing this, one day, we will sparkle like diamonds.

God bless you!