Trauma & Dissociation discussion

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (2012)

Allegedly about trauma, when life falls apart, a woman decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, from California to Washington. If we’re going to read on every month, they can’t all be text book boring. A memoir facing the topic is another way to approach it, and it’s good to have the anecdotes or metaphors that come about reading such books. And people are more likely to join when they see we sometimes read books they might have heard of or read.

Publisher’s Summary
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone.

Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

The book starts with a 22-year old Cheryl, learning her mother has lung cancer. She recounts life growing up, in poverty, very isolated, in a home (more of a shack) built by her step-dad in the middle of nowhere, remote land between two very small towns (population 400) in northern Minnesota. They didn’t seem to have running water and cooked with a camp stove, and there was no electricity though I swear she mentioned having a TV. Seems they had a water pump on the property. She speaks of lying in bed under a big sky light and seeing all the stars at night. It sounds a lot more like “roughing it” than camping with a camper/trailer or RV. From that perspective, living on the trail and sleeping under the stars sounds closer to her roots than an apartment in a city. Conspicuously, she doesn’t mention the cold, snow, or ice of northern Minnesota (beyond the climate experience of most Americans), and doesn’t really talk about school, or much of anything that doesn’t relate directly to her mother.

Living in poverty, and in significant isolation, is surely very challenging … though she doesn’t characterize it that way. She has two siblings and a step-dad but speaks of her mother as just about her everything. Losing her mother … her everything … must have been devastating.

Is this trauma? Is this appropriate for this group? Losing a loved one can be devastating. What if it is due to natural causes? What if it takes days, weeks, months, or years? Does that make any difference? It is an indelible mark on your soul. Is that not trauma? I’d say it is … or can be. If the threat of a permanent change can be trauma … then the actual death of someone so close must be traumatic. If the threat of long-enduring adverse change in life is trauma, then the realization of permanent change must be traumatic. If even a change in your world view and perceptions of safety can be trauma, then an actual death to someone so close must be traumatic.

Non-sudden death of someone close by natural causes is probably not the kind of trauma that drives us to this group. Most of us will lose our parents and more before we die. When it happens prematurely … that is especially upsetting. Her mom died at 45. Yes … that can be trauma. Many of you are therapists, and surely people come seeking relief from overwhelming grief.

I could not at all relate to Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. Joan speaks of the “lean years” when they lived in a house in … Malibu … in the former home of an Oscar winning movie star who left his statue behind … and their were peacocks roaming the property. The “lean years”? Most of us will have to go to work and make ends meet even when someone dies. Maybe we get a couple days off for bereavement. Maybe we take vacation time if we have any. But, it won’t be a “year of magical thinking”. It will be days, not months, and we’ll be back to the grindstone putting one foot in front of the other come hell or high water with bills to pay, mouths to feed, and so on, … picking up the pieces left by our loved ones as helter skelter as we find them on nights and weekends and any unused vacation days until all the pieces are picked up. I can’t relate to Joan at all. Glad she found someone she could love so much and who loved her back just as much.

Will see if I can relate to Cheryl or at least appreciate the story.

Cheryl takes on the Pacific Crest Trail with a backpack and supplies, but no experience ever backpacking before. She is recklessly too green for such a hiking trip on such a trail, and the weather that year entails record snowfall that makes it yet more challenging. But, she substitutes persistence and resolve for experience, and her survival instincts of when to bail off the trail and/or reach out for help are regularly spot on. Without a TV, or even sight of another person for many days on end, she is devoid of distractions and has the abundance of time for reflection she had sought out.

"I'd set out to hike the trail so that I could reflect upon my life, to think about everything that had broken me, and make myself whole again.
...
Why oh why had my good mother died, and how is it I could live and flourish without her? How could my family, once so close and strong, have fallen apart so swiftly in the wake of her death? What had I done when I squandered the marriage with Paul, the solid, sweet husband who loved me so steadfastly? Why had I got myself in a sad tangle with heroine, and Joe, and sex with so many men I hardly knew?
...
I had planned to put them all to rest while hiking of the PCT."

This book, in hindsight, seems more about grief after a parent dies than trauma. Losing a parent early can be traumatic, but this seems more about grief, despite being shelved by many under trauma.

She was almost recklessly unprepared for her hike, and if 100 people so unprepared started that hike, I’m not sure they all would’ve survived. But, I choose to take the story as showing that you don’t have to fully understand, predict, or be prepared for whatever your future path is. I’m not advocating recklessness, but having the courage to forge ahead, we can often adapt, find our way, get some help when needed, and ultimately be very fulfilled and glad we started.