Take Heart

Past Heartache is Key to Future Healing

• Carrie M. Holt, Cathy Loerzel, therapist, author • Season 3 • Episode 138

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In this episode, Carrie welcomes guest author and therapist Cathy Loerzel to discuss the importance of embracing grief and negative emotions in order to heal and move forward. The conversation draws from three archetype characters of past wounding and how it shows up in our lives and relationships with others. The episode emphasizes the necessity of dealing with past wounds which leads to healthier lives and the ability to handle present challenges. It offers hope in understanding and addressing the core wounds of orphanhood, stranger, and widowhood, and encourages individuals to press into their pain and grief towards their own healing journeys. 

Ep.138; July 25, 2023

Key Moments:
[1:26] Healing past wounds for a better present
[6:20] Three different “characters” of our pain
[8:53] Our kids reveal to us places we need more healing 
[16:18] Learning to recognize and embrace lament's power

Resources:
Cathy Loerzel’s Website
Cathy’s Instagram
Redeeming Heartache
Wild Edge of Sorrow

If you enjoyed the show:

Carrie M Holt: I'm here today with Cathy Loerzel from the Allender Center. She is an author, speaker, a story work coach. She's co-written a book with Dr. Dan Allender, called Redeeming Heartache. Thank you so much, Cathy, for being a guest on the Take Heart Podcast

Cathy Loerzel: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Carrie: Interestingly enough, in the month of March of this year, we dove into a conversation with Sara, Amy, and me about the importance of seeing a counselor. As a special needs mom, I shared my experience in my journey with story work and the workshops that I've done through the Allander Center. If someone has never heard of story work or that idea of trauma-informed narrative, can you break that down a little bit for us?

Cathy: The basis of story work is the idea that whatever is manifesting, whatever struggles we're having in our current life, our response to it is all directly related to how we learned to shift our needs according to what was available to us as kids. There are so many people who are struggling currently who feel like, gosh, I had a "fine childhood." Or, they've had really difficult childhoods, but they feel like their job is to kind of pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and try to just become a better person. All of that is fine. What we've realized is that it actually doesn't really work that way. For us to really be able to live out more whole, healed lives currently and be able to handle really difficult things in our present life, there may be things that we need to go back into and heal that were original wounds back in our past that that were not dealt with well. So many of us have little "t" traumas. When we talk about trauma work, we talk about little "t" trauma, which is more nuanced, smaller things. For instance, a lot of paper cuts over a long period of time can do a lot of damage. We're more used to talking about the big T traumas that are more obvious. Our work is to go back into both and really be able to look into those stories and understand what we may have needed back then that we didn't get in order to heal from some of those things,  in order for us to be able to have more healed ways of relating in the present.

Carrie: Yeah. I love how you talk about the little "ts and the big "Ts because I think we dismiss so much, or I've heard many people say, "Well, it wasn't my parent's fault" It's not blaming to name the harm that's been done to you. Could you expand a little bit more on that idea?

Cathy Loerzel: Mm hmm. Yeah, that's it's a great point because I think people do get stuck. None of us want, especially when we're so aware of our own faults and failures, especially as moms. The idea of our kids then looking back at their childhood and talking about all the ways we failed them is terrifying. But the reality is we all live in a broken world. We live east of Eden. We live outside of perfect connection with God, self, others, and the earth. That's just the world we live in. There's a tremendous amount of beauty and goodness, and we all fail one another - all of us. We're meant for Eden. We're meant for perfect connection, so anything that is different than what we were meant for is going to hurt. It's going to impact. I think that's to be expected. But we love our parents, we also don't want to be exposed to ourselves as parents, and so we tend to minimize and not want to look at it. Because we feel like that's actually being kind or being loyal but not exposing when in reality, it just keeps us bound to unaddressed heartache and trauma that's actually wreaking havoc in our lives. When I look at that, you're actually doing yourself and your family a disservice by trying to hide or trying to do work around so that you can avoid what was actually really painful. There's actually more love, more connection, more goodness that can happen through being more honest about the impact of harm than wanting to sweep it under the rug. I often look at it as a lake where we're on the surface of the lake. Each time something difficult has happened, where we haven't been able to address it, it's like a toxic barrel that we anchor to a weight. We put it down onto the bottom of the surface of the little lake of our lives. Then we can be on the surface, going well, we're great, we're fine. It's no big deal. Eventually, the barrels start to rust, and they start to leak, and then we start to see fish coming to the surface that are dead, or smells that are coming out, or the ecosystem around the lake is starting to sour. We don't understand why; we have this beautiful lake. Well, there are these things that we need to go back to release, get it out of our lake, get it out of our system. Our bodies are incredible. They're able to work through traumatic situations if we're given the resources and the care that we need to work through it. Oftentimes, that's language or someone saying, "Hey, this is what you're going through. It's really hard. There's no way out." As a parent, can I give you a hug? Can I tend to you? Can I care for your heart at this moment? Can I attune to your face and see you? We're capable of dealing with a lot of really difficult things. When they're not dealt with and they're pushed under the surface, they can, they can cause a lot of damage.

Carrie: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of one year my son had a wound from surgery that he had. They could have just put a bandage over the top of it, but instead, it was healing from the inside out. They put this silver dressing on it and a wound vac. I think that's the equivalent to this, as we need healing from the inside out. I know you have co-written a book with Dr. Dan Allender called Redeeming Heartache. We have a book that just came out May 9 called The Other Side of Special, and it's dealing with the emotions that a mom experiences as a special needs parents. This summer, we wanted to feature authors whose books have had a huge impact on us. The work from the Allender Center has had a huge impact on me. I love stories. I've always been drawn to story. I'm a bit of a talker. Could you share just a little bit about the premise of Redeeming Heartache> I think one of the things that you just mentioned is the language. I love the language that you both give in the book to the orphan, the stranger, and the widow and how that relates to our pain. It's a beautiful archetype of our pain.

Cathy: Well, the hope of the book is one, to allow all of us to realize none of us have escaped harm. Harm has impacted us, and we actually need to go back and remember and allow ourselves to feel the heartache in order to be able to grieve and feel the heartache o the present lives we're living. I think that's especially important for your audience. Because any mom with special needs kids (I have two boys, a six and a nine-year-old and they are healthy and well-adjusted), it is so exposing to be a mom, no matter what, not to mention if you are having to deal with medical crisis after a medical crisis or emotional difficulties that are never fixable. Parenthood will bring you to your knees, regardless. It does. It's brutal. It's brutal. Our kids reveal to us all the places where we have not had enough healing yet. It's heartbreaking because they're the thing we love the most, and our hearts are broken when we see our impact or our lack of capacity to love them in the way that we really desire to love them. I say all that because I think my heart is just so open and, oh, just tender towards your audience, knowing what you guys have to bear every day. Yeah. The hope of the book is to allow us to understand that there is hope to be able to handle the heartache of our current lives if we're willing to open up ourselves to understand that the way we're dealing with it is directly connected to how we were taught to deal with disappointment and heartache in our past. What the book goes into is it gives some categories and language. Because oftentimes, what keeps us from healing from trauma in our past is the lack of language, the lack of categories. We didn't have parents who were able to settle themselves down enough to say, "Hey, you know, this was a really difficult situation that you were just in; you may be feeling upset; you may be feeling overwhelmed; you may feel anxious, or Mama was really angry with you, and that may have been difficult to see my face." Very rarely do we have parents who are willing and able to go back and help us understand why we're upset. When you don't have a parent who can do that, trauma gets lodged in your body. It doesn't leave. It stays for a long time. 
What we did with the book was we picked three different core wounds: one is the orphan, one is the stranger, and one is the widow, and help people understand how those things manifest in your current life in terms of how you're relating to the world and then help you link that back to where that may have stemmed from your past. 

The first one is the orphan archetype, the idea that at some point, the orphan wound realized that no one was coming and that, for the most part, they were on their own. That doesn't mean that their needs weren't taken care of, but they knew at some level, their emotional needs, their deeper needs, the need for really deep care and attunement was not available to them to the degree that they needed. So they adjusted to only need what they could give themselves. A lot of us are still living out of this wound. You become very self-sufficient, and that creates a lot of safety because you don't actually need to be vulnerable to what you need from other people; you can be a closed circuit. That also comes with a lot of limitations because eventually, you do actually need more than you can give yourself, and especially for moms who are caring for special needs kids, you are having to give them your whole self all the time. If you don't have other people who are caring for you, or if that's not available to you, you can get into devastating situations really quickly where you're giving more than you're getting. And you reach your limit, where you either have to shift how much you're giving out or you have to start searching for other places where you can be receiving care from other people. That's a very vulnerable situation to be in if part of your safety structure is that you don't want to need from other people.

Carrie: I can see that even in my own life, my tendency to...You don't feel like you want to be a burden on other people, especially because your journey is an ongoing thing for the most part throughout your child's entire life. We tend to be very much moms who pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and don't share with other people, and then what we end up doing is isolating ourselves, which is so dangerous. 

Cathy: Yes, and I would imagine, as you look at orphan is that it seems; it feels familiar.

Carrie: It does. Yeah, it does because, in some ways...The interesting thing is that I will identify with orphan and the widow probably the most. I've grown up in church, and I've had a strong faith ever since I was a child, but the specific thing that I prayed for in my son not to happen - happened. I think there's a feeling among special needs moms that they have been orphaned or widowed by God.

Cathy: Yes, absolutely. Well, and that realization of every limit in your own body and soul gets met when I think you have special needs, kiddo. You're also meeting the limit of the structures, of the care structures even if you find that your child needs a specific type of therapy. 
Well, now you're on a waitlist, and it takes 20 different phone calls to get the care that they need. Then, you have one more appointment or one more thing that you now have to caretake. It's almost impossible not to reach your limits and then realize that the people around you, you're reaching their limits too. So what do you do when the care you really do need really isn't available? You're turning to God and saying, "Well, now what? How do I stay tender? How do I stay vulnerable? How do I even deal with the fact that what's needed is more than I can give?" It's a very lonely place.

Carrie: It's definitely interesting because one of the tensions that I have found myself in through the years; my son has been in the hospital multiple times. He's had 60 surgeries in about the first 15 years of his life; not each of those was an individual admission. But we've been inpatient at least 50 to 60 times. You find yourself as a special needs mom being cynical and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it's self-protection.

Cathy: Yes, absolutely. That's what we talked about a lot in that orphan chapter. Even when you do get care, or someone does show up for you, there's this sense of, well, that's not going to last, and that's devastating. You're protecting yourself and your kiddo from a world that is cruel and unpredictable, and what we need isn't actually available to us.  How in the world do you stay in that space and not fall apart or become so hardened?

Carrie: I know one of the biggest things that I learned even before working through story work, my son was around five years old. I think I ended up having a blow-up in a library with a librarian over books that my toddler daughter, who's younger than my son with special needs, ruined or something. We had just come out of a five-day inpatient hospital stay with another surgery on the schedule. I remember thinking. This isn't about the library books. This is about something deeper, and I felt like God finally revealed to me you're grieving, and the grieving cycle is going to be an ongoing part of your journey. It's something that I am passionate about for special needs moms, understanding and recognizing, and naming. There's so much power in identifying that. It was like the sky opened and the sun came out when the Lord showed me this. I've learned to lean into lament. I know that's a huge part of story work, and it's a huge part of that book. Could you talk a little bit about lament?

Cathy: I've been reading this book for years now. I keep going back to it because I can't stop. It's not my book, so I feel fine about talking about it. It's called The Wild Edges of Sorrow by Francis Weller. It's really an invitation into the beauty and the process and the need for grief. He has several premises. One is that we will never be loved the way that we were really meant to be loved. I think it's so important because part of what I think happens for each of us is that when we meet our adult lives, they're so different than what we had an imagination around, who we thought we would be in the midst of it. 
When people imagine or fantasize about getting married or having kids, or the career or the church they want to be involved with, so much of our life is then having to reconcile the reality that that is not what we're living. It's so much harder. It's so much more disappointing. As you said, the very thing that you begged God not to have happened is the very thing that happened. What do you do with that anger, with that resentment? What do you do with the fact that you're still looking at this precious kiddo that has your heart, and yet you're so deeply disappointed and upset by the fact that this just is not the way it was meant to be? Now this is the rest of your life. There's no escaping it. What do you do with a heart that just needs to stop, that needs to own the fact that we're so undone by the life that's in front of us? We really don't know if we're going to be able to keep going. I think so many people are terrified of grief because we're afraid that that's going to mean that we're going to give up, but it's the opposite. I think when we are able to sink down into those places of truly allowing ourselves to weep, to feel the disappointment, the horror, the resentment; it actually allows us to release those things and allow them to move through our bodies so that we can come to the other side. Because we're terrified, we don't want to tolerate those feelings. Those feel like I can't feel this. I can't feel resentment for my child; I can't feel like I wish this wasn't my life. I'm not allowed to feel these things. I think the beauty of lament, and I think even what God invites us into the Psalms, is that we're allowed to feel all of those things, say them out loud, and be angry at God. Then also allow the comfort of God to be on the other side of that. If we're not willing to admit the emotions and let them move through our bodies, then we can never get to comfort. We'll always just stay boxed up. I think that keeps us from being able to experience goodness and comfort in the land of the living. 

Carrie: Let's talk a little bit about the side of healing, and the prophet, priest, and the king and queen. Can you explain a little bit about that? Maybe dive a little bit into what does it require for us to get there to this redeeming of the heartache that we experience?

Cathy: Yeah, if the first stage is admitting that we have heartache that's impacted us and that we didn't necessarily get everything that we needed, and that's shifted our style of relating, that's shifted how we operate in the world, then we get to start to understand our impact. If we're sticking with the orphan. When you're able to understand I feel safer in a closed system where I don't need anyone, you can then recognize that you're actually meant to need people. But you also then have to bear the grief of knowing that perfect love, perfect connection is not going to happen this side of heaven. Then how do you ask for it? 

Carrie: It's so hard.

Cathy: It's so hard. How do you bear the reality of living in a fallen world without turning to cynicism and pure resentment? I think part of of the way that we do that is through grief and then also allowing ourselves to imagine that there's more that we're meant to create and participate in here on earth to create beauty and goodness here. When we talk about the healing of the orphan, stranger, and widow, it's that sense of can you understand and tolerate and sit in the fact that you've encountered harm that's impacted you? But now, as you recognize that, can you also lean into what our calling is? The priest, prophet, king, and queen come from the biblical categories of those stations of leadership from the Old Testament, but also then, Jesus says he's the perfect representation of the perfect priest, the perfect prophet, and the perfect king and queen. We're meant to move into those places as we heal. The priest is really part of us that is able to tolerate and lean into what's true about our stories. Each of us can be a priest, especially as we encounter one another, lingering in our stories of harm, lingering in the places of saying, "How are you? Are you okay? Can I sit with you? Can I make you a meal? Can I show up? Can I help you ground? Can I weep with you? Can I be with you in the dirt of your life? That's the healing. As the orphan becomes more aware that they have been harmed and left, they then get to help other people join. They get to invite people back into connection and back into being together. The priest, part of us, is the part that helps people connect to their grief, to their sorrow, to their suffering and is able to hold that space without allowing it to collapse. The prophet part is the part of us that sees the heartache of the world and also invites us to be able to contend with that, to believe that there's more; that will expose injustice and heartache and harm and also calls us out of the depths to say, "Hey, rise up." Yeah. We didn't really talk about this, but the stranger wound is the where part of you that sees all the destruction, the heartache of the world, your sight, your capacity to see what's wrong in the world has been rendered really dangerous, and people want you to stop talking. Even those of you who have had to advocate for your kids, you're automatically in that stranger/prophet category all the time. Right? Because you're seeing what's wrong with the systems, you're seeing what's wrong, you know, with how things are happening around you, and you have to step into that and use your voice. It's a hard part. 

Carrie: I realized I did get a little bit ahead of myself. I'm glad you went back to stranger. It's funny because when I read that part, in the book, I thought, well, I don't really identify that much of this piece, at least from childhood experiences, but you are so right. We are raising kids, and my son is a teenager now. He's 16, and once he's gotten out of that cute stage, and he's not a "contributing member" of society, we're fighting a lot of prejudice, Honestly, it's happened our kids’ whole lives because we've had to fight for, whether it's the things that we need, or for somebody to understand where our kids coming from. We've had mistakes happen in the hospital. 

I've never been able to, in a hospital situation, let my guard down because I'm always educateding. I'm always advocating or giving them ideas of what's going on. Could you expand just a little bit more about the stranger wounds?

Cathy: Sure. The stranger where that comes from as kiddo. There are some of us. (It's actually not as much of my story as Dan writes that part. It's great because he's far more of that stranger as a kid). The stranger within a family ends up being the one who sees the beauty of the world, the way the world is supposed to be, and they have started to expose because they're also then seeing the difference between how things should be and how things are. The stranger within a family will be seen as the rebel or the dramatic one, or why can't you just be more like your older brother? Why do you always have to see the worst in everything? Those stranger wounds really get relegated to: why can't you just be quiet or submissive, like the rest of us? Why do you want more? What happens for that stranger wound is that kid then gets identified as the troublemaker, the problem, and they get kicked out. Nobody wants the stranger in their camp because the stranger is always wreaking havoc and exposing. The stranger is the kid who is in the car on the way to church on a Sunday morning, and Mom and Dad are in a big fight. Everyone knows that as soon as you get out of the car, you are meant to put on a happy face. You're meant to get inside because Dad is an elder and Mom' singing in the choir. You have the stranger kid in the car who's looking at all of that and saying, "No, I'm not gonna go in and just put on a happy face." They are pissed off; they're sitting in the back. They have their arms folded, and Mom and Dad are super embarrassed. They're just like, Why do you have to be this way? Instead of the parents dealing with the fact that they are in a dysfunctional relationship and need to work on what's going on? All the energy goes towards the stranger kiddo because they're exposing the reality of what's going on in this family. Yeah. The way that that gets taken in is that child just feels like I don't belong. I'm broken. Why can't I just ignore it like everyone else does? But they're also the ones who are feeling in technicolor, the reality of the world, both the beauty of the world and the brokenness. It's easy to see how that stranger is actually really wrestling with their prophetic gifting. Because the prophets are the ones who are the poets, the musicians, the artists, the people who are both inspired by what they see in the world; they want to create beauty, but they're also really connected to all that's deeply broken. You can become really cynical and want to blow everything up, or you can choose to actually believe I saw something that was good. But I also need to learn how to settle that part of me that sees so clearly, knowing that not everyone is going to be ready for that. How do I grow my prophet with wisdom and kindness and beauty and delight in the world while not losing sight of the fact that I'm seeing something that's true? But I need to be able to honor my sight and honor the heartbreak that is to see the world so clearly and know that that really sets you apart from the rest of the world and, frankly, makes you hated. 

Carrie: That's so good. I can see a little bit of the special needs mom in all of that because a lot of us are taking our heartache and doing something beautiful with it. We are trying to advocate, educate and change the way that our society minimizes people who are quite different from everyone else, whether it's the way they look, the way they behave, or their mental and emotional. Let's switch gears to the widow and dive into that one a little bit.

Cathy: Sure. The basis of the widow is that they had delight, goodness, and connection, and somehow throughout their story, there was death and loss. Something that they had trusted or connected to or given their heart over to; now they understand the reality of death, of loss. Something was taken from them, and that feels like a very broad category, but let me land it in a quick little story. Oftentimes, the widow's heart for a little kid will be around; let's just use the idea of divorce. They've sunk into mom, and dad are together; we're solid, we're okay. This is the way our life looks. Then all of a sudden, their world is shattered, and they realize that Dad was having an affair. He's now left and gone to be with this other family. She's left with a destroyed, distraught mom. She's now left with this heart, which she knows that she trusted. She connected. She loved deeply. She believed that this was the way that things were going to be, and now that's been shattered. The heart of the widow is really that sense of you understanding that death is an inevitable part of loving, and so now what will you do with that? Will you choose to keep your heart hard because you never want to be vulnerable to that sort of heartache again? Will you choose to grieve that and then love again, even though you understand that death is inevitable, that heartache is there? Even under the best circumstances, your heart, even if it's vulnerable and good, will still receive heartache, and be betrayed. That widow is really in that place what will I decide to do now that I know? Will I keep my heart open and vulnerable? I'm thinking of your story and that idea of now I understand; you had the hope of a baby and the hope of a life that you had an imagination for. Now you understand that this other life happened instead. The life that you had thought and trusted and gone blindly into, this is gonna be great didn't happen. Then do you turn your heart cold and keep it protected, or do you keep it open and vulnerable and connect even though you now know what's possible on the other side, the heartache and the heartbreak?

Carrie: Yeah, I think a lot of our listeners are facing that in two different ways. One, we have a lot of moms who went into adoption with this beautiful picture of love will change everything, which love does in some ways, but not always when there is uterine trauma and you have reactive attachment disorder. We have a lot of listeners who have kids with that behavioral piece. I also think on the other side of that is families my son is the third of four. One question I get asked a lot is, what made you decide to have another child after? Because, as you said, now, I can't unsee or on know almost every diagnosis that's in the book or everything that can go wrong. 
My son was prenatally diagnosed in-utero at 20 weeks. I have friends whose children were two, and they were diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy or Sara, my cohost, her son has Duchenne. He was eight. What do we do when we are facing what life really looks like? What do we do? 

Cathy: I think the other piece of widow is that once you understand what death looks like, there are a lot of other people who don't actually want to be around you because you show them that life doesn't have to work out.

Carrie: Yeah, in sometimes I think they feel like it's contagious like it's catching.

Cathy: Right? There's even more isolation then around that widow wound. What the book asks you to look at is not just where that's playing out right now but also where you learned that from your past. Why you're reacting in this way, based on where you learned that back there? I think to understand the widow and then to love and to create, and to do it anyways is one of the most courageous, admirable things because to know death, to know heartache, and to then know that's not going to be the end of the story. You faced death, and you lived through it in some ways, allowing you to love in a way that is more full, that is less afraid, that is more honest. There's something stunning about that. But again, that scares the crap out of people who don't want to acknowledge life is fragile. 

The healing of the widow is that sense of okay, you've come to recognize there is death and marring and jealousy and things that ruin in our world, and you've seen it, and yet, you've decided to create beauty anyways. That's the king and queen. The king and queen is the one who sees the reality of the world, and they choose to create boundaries, to create structures, to create a table for people to come to it. I think it's the equivalent of the Maundday Thursday table with Jesus where Jesus knew that he was going to die the next day, that he was going to be betrayed that night by Judas, and he sits, and he eats, and he loves them, and he washes their feet. He does it because he knows that death and betrayal are not the end of the story. I think it's one of the most beautiful descriptions of the king is the one who will sit and wash the feet of those he knows will deny Him, will betray him, and he sits and eats bread and creates ritual and beauty for the table and invites them into life in the very face of death.

Carrie: I think that is just beautiful. I know so many moms who have children with special needs, and I think sometimes we have this idea that we have to create beauty and be courageous in all these really big ways. But the truth is, every day that they get up, and they get their child up, and they feed them, or they run their feeding pump, or they change their diaper, or whatever part of care, or they step in, and they're attuned to their child's needs, who is behaviorally going berserk; they're creating beauty in their situations.

Cathy: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there's nothing more holy than being able to understand that in the very the least of these the smallest moments, even knowing that when you lose it, when you lose your mind when you flip your lid, you can then come back to yourself, you can center yourself and settle and understand your humanity, you can have grace for it. Then you can enter back in and repair. That is a holy moment. That is only allowed when we both have grace and kindness for our own hearts and also understand the heartbreak of what's being required of us. It would bring any person to their knees. So, when it brings you to your knees, will you offer yourself the grace and the capacity to cry, to rage, to grieve, and then tenderly pick yourself back up and try again? That is a radical way of life that most people would shy away from. These the women who are listening to this, like you all, do this every day. It is nothing less than heroic, and there's also the grief of knowing this is not the life you chose, and it's okay for you to have wished that this wasn't the life you were having to live. All of that is all true.

Carrie: And I love the end of the book, where Dr. Allender kind of dives into Jesus's crucifixion. You mentioned that beautiful picture of Maunday Thursday and just the separation and isolation that he felt from God and his grieving. One of the things, back to that story about the Lord saying, "Hey, this grieving cycle is going to be ongoing," was reading that part in the garden where Jesus prayed, "If it's your will, let this cup pass from me." I knew in that moment (sorry, I'm gonna get a little teary), that if Jesus can pray that this cup passes from him knowing he's God, he knows he has to face this for our redemption, I can lament and grieve my situation. It was a beautiful picture at the end of lament and the redemption, in that tension of as you said, we're living East of Eden. I also have the hope that my son's going to run in heaven and play football with his brothers. 

Cathy: The beauty and the brutality of this life can take your breath away. I think the holiest thing that any of us can do is live radically committed to the reality of what's true. Any denial of suffering, any denial is not worthy of the life that we're living. Also, to not then be able to have an imagination of your boy playing football and running with his brothers while also tending to his space and his body every day, and his little heart that doesn't understand why his world looks the way that it does, either, brings you face to face with a God that I don't understand. But I can worship because the fact that he's offered us a glimpse into the fact that he knows the suffering and the complexity of what it means to be human and doesn't shy away from it.

Carrie: Yeah. It's just so beautiful. It's probably time for us to wrap up. This was just a beautiful conversation. We'll have to have you back on the podcast again. I think this book is so wonderful. I recommend it to our listeners. If people want to find you, where can they find you and learn more about story work and this whole idea of redeeming heartache? 

Cathy: I have a website, www.cathyloerzel.com. You can also follow me on Instagram @cathy.loerzel and all of our upcoming events, where I also see clients and do intensives. If any of you really want to get some care, do some of your own story work that's available to you.

Carrie: I highly, highly recommend it. If you have the space for that, please do it.