The Gilmore Book Club

3 tips From Literature you need to help you heal from trauma

“I want my jar of dirt.” Recognize that line? If you don’t, that just means I’ve truly ascended to Lorelai Gilmore status in confusing people with pop culture references. It’s a line from the 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and a line that I've come to think of a few times since the movie's initial release. The entire film is based on the not-so-mythical Davy Jones coming to claim Captain Jack Sparrow's life. However, Davy Jones cannot step foot on land because he's more of a sea-creature than a man, and a few other reasons. Therefore, Jack is given the jar of dirt so he is always near to land. Basically, the jar of dirt becomes his new comfort object, and he spends the movie safeguarding it and always making sure it's in his possession. Jack's jar of dirt is Gatsby’s green light, Aragorn’s Evenstar necklace, and Dorothy’s little dog named Toto. They’re all comfort objects. I could even make a case for Horcruxes being demonic comfort objects, after all, they do contain a part of the soul, and our comfort objects are created with the power we give them, with the parts of our souls we entrust them to protect. 

I’ve detailed all the comfort activities and objects that I’m particularly attached to, as well as the trending ones during COVID-19, and Dr. Manette’s therapeutic shoe-making endeavors. (Go back to Part 1 if you need a refresher). Comfort objects and activities are all an important part of how we process and get through things, but they’re a placeholder, allowing us to transfer the burden of dealing with a situation or our own thoughts and feelings onto something other than ourselves. Eventually, we’ll have to face whatever it is that we’re hiding from.  The comfort objects have done their duty to their best extent, but we need to take the next steps in the process ourselves. Say thank you to your comfort object and set it aside for now.

 Long before our COVID-19 crisis and Jack’s jar of dirt, there was Dr. Manette and his shoe-making bench. And that brings us back to A Tale of Two Cities. When the people of France send an innocent man to prison in lieu of punishing the Marquis or his relatives, Charles Darnay decides it’s his duty to return to France and give himself up in exchange for the innocent man’s life. Darnay is quickly and easily captured. The Manette family, their friend/servant Miss Pross, and friend/bank employee Mr. Lorry, all return to France to try and help Darnay win his freedom. In a brave expression of love and strength, Dr. Manette descends into the darkness of his past to embrace the one thing that almost destroyed him: he returns to the Bastille. He makes it known to all that he suffered there for eighteen years, innocent of any crime. In his new role as a prison doctor, he befriends the current guards and revolutionary leaders and gains their trust and respect, all in preparation for the day Charles Darnay is put on trial for crimes against the people of France.

It’s Dr. Manette’s return to his place of torment that fascinates me the most. He seemed so different when confronting the demons of his past, the cowering prisoner now a resilient man of the people. It seems as though he found that ever-elusive state of 'closure' that so many others have searched for. How did he get there mentally and emotionally? After much reflection and several pages worth of rambling writing that is now just brainstorming for this post, I’ve come to determine that this return to the past plays a major role in healing from trauma. Between Dr. Manette’s journey, my own experiences with trauma, and a newfound exploration into psychology, I believe there are at least three parts to healing. I’ll call them the three T’s: Time, Thinking, and Talking.

Now I’m not a licensed therapist, not even close, but I have been reading and analyzing literature for most of my life, and now that I’ve experienced a wide array of literature and life, I’m starting to see the connections between the words on the page and the lives we live. 

The first portion of healing, time, is the most easily achieved, for time is outside of our control and will proceed as it always does. After Manette’s release from prison, the narrative picks up five years later. Five years of processing, emotional and mental distancing, and shoe-making. Another twelve years pass after that, full of weddings, grandchildren, an emotional relapse, and finally, the cessation of shoe-making. Seventeen years in total have elapsed since Manette escaped from prison. The initial recovery period took almost as long as the original trauma (Dr. Manette was in prison for eighteen years). There’s no time limit for recovery, and a time limit should never be put on it because recovery is never linear; it’s a tangled web of ups and downs and an ever-evolving journey. Regardless, the preliminary section of healing begins with the passing of time.

They may say that "time heals all wounds", but it does not heal on its own. It is accompanied also by 'thinking'. During those seventeen years, I think it’s safe to say Dr. Manette spends many moments willingly or unwillingly thinking over his incarceration and the events that preceded it. At this point, he doesn’t reveal any of his musings to his friends or family, but his consistent return to shoe-making and attachment to the tools of the trade are evidence that the subject is on his mind. Furthermore, Dr. Manette also passes the majority of those years with the knowledge that his son-in-law, Charles Darnay, is descended from the French aristocracy. With the upheavals and chaos unfolding in France, concerns and wonderings about the future would easily unfold in Dr. Manette’s mind. I’m sure he hopes Darnay’s genealogy will remain a secret, but our fears often tend to surface alongside our hopes. Maybe his fears take hold, and he imagines Darnay’s life and the lives of the rest of his family will be in danger. Perhaps this is where he explores what might happen, how he would feel, and how he would react if he ever had to set foot in France, or in that same prison, again. 

Years ago, when I was so sick that lying in bed was painful, thinking about my situation caused almost as much torture as the illness itself.  After months of no change in my condition, the emotional, social, and mental ramifications of having a chronic illness began to weigh on me heavily. All I wanted to do was forget about it: dive into books, into movies or TV, into my own dream world.  When a trauma is so overwhelming, it’s difficult to escape its’ grasp, even for a few seconds, but we still try and may be rewarded with a short-lived respite.

But in the quiet moments when you cannot distract your brain or your body, thoughts about the trauma will begin to creep in. Our minds have the incredible ability to replay events over and over, rehashing every little detail. This often feels unhelpful, but it’s our mind’s way of processing, understanding, and adapting so it can heal. I’ve thought about how isolating and lonely it was, how trapped and stifled I felt, how scary and infuriating it was. I’ve thought about all the excruciating things, how my life was an explosion of pain and suffering. I’ve imagined how incredible my life would be without my illness: all the things I could do, all the dreams I could achieve. And how my life might look if my illness never went away, how I’d adapt my habits, how I’d manage to take part in our world, how many things I could realistically accomplish. Going over the future scenarios gave me insights on how I might prepare for the future, what to expect my life to look like. It gave me hope.

Looking back seemed so painful then, and at times, it still is, but there is a benefit to all these visits to the past. It helped me to move on, giving me a semblance of the detached ambivalence that comes with repetition. More than that, it helped me begin to understand why things were the way they were, why I felt certain things and had specific reactions, and why others may have had their own feelings and reactions. In history class, we delve into the culture, politics, and characters surrounding events to understand why things happen. We assess their actions and reactions, creating an imaginary psychological map of everyone involved. Our personal histories may not be written out so clearly for us to reread, but we can go back in our memories and make discoveries that could be of use to our present and future selves. 

All that time ruminating over the past helps prepare you for the final step, the step I believe to be the hardest: talking. While time happens automatically, and thinking does have slightly more opportunities for control, talking, especially about painful things, most often requires deliberate intention, which can make it the most difficult phase to achieve. 

Now if you were my therapist, you'd be telling me, almost every week, that just talking about something can help you change it. Believe me, my brain often shakes its little cerebral fists at that idea, preferring a to-do list with clear-cut pathways to solutions instead of talking, talking, and surprise, more talking. For some areas of my life, I’m still having a hard time letting go of the to-do lists, but for other areas, like my chronic illness, talking has had some benefit, and I can see that now. 

Dr. Manette’s seventeen years of separation from and thinking about the trauma prepares him for one of the most important moments of his life. Since his return to the Bastille, the good doctor has spent his time befriending revolutionaries. He becomes respected and revered not only for the hardships he endured while incarcerated, but also for his loyalty to his friends and his dedication to those who need medical care. At the trial, Manette speaks of Darnay’s devotion to the Manette family and recounts that Darnay once stood on trial for treason against England, making Darnay a friend of the previously revolutionary United States and therefore a friend of France. Dr. Manette’s celebrated status as a former prisoner and his well-thought-out responses to the questions of the court convince the jury of Darnay’s innocence.

But there is more to Manette’s journey of healing. Darnay is taken back into custody after new evidence is revealed, and that evidence has been written by Manette’s own hand. When Manette was a prisoner, he had secretly tasked himself with writing down the account of why and how he was locked away in the Bastille. The letter details how Manette had been kidnapped and taken to attend to two patients. In trying to care for his patients, Dr. Manette discovers that his patients were wounded, physically and mentally, by the two men who had forcibly required Dr. Manette’s assistance. These two aristocrats of atrocities are Charles Darnay’s ancestors. When the jury hears this, there is no question of Darnay’s fate: he must pay for the blood on his family’s hands with his life.

Manette did not intend for this letter to be read now, he had not even known its whereabouts, but this letter does serve as the opportunity for Manette to tell his story. We do not get to see far into the future of the Manette family after the trial, but I believe after the revelations contained in this letter, Dr. Manette is able to heal more fully from his trauma, and his family is better able to understand his journey and help him in the healing process.

When we speak or write about our thoughts, they transform from secrets as fickle as the wind to concrete truths. The torment and pain begin to bleed out of you like toxins releasing from your body. The lessons you've learned, the things you begin to understand, and accept, the strength you've built begin to take root in your mind and body. They may start as small and fragile saplings, but as you continue to talk and process, a sturdy trunk will take hold, and luscious leaves will grow, covering the charred and scarred places of your heart with the vitality of its beautiful vegetation.

And that is how healing begins.

That’s not to say that life won’t come along and rip out your foliage like an out of control toddler, because it will, and you’ll have to get out your gardening tools of time, thinking, and talking, and begin to grow again. You might even be in a constant state of tending to your scars, but just as the seasons change from winter to spring, so you too will move from a season of pain to a season of growth.

It seems like every day I bounce back and forth between pain and growth. When I just can’t deal with my Fibromyalgia or even a tough day at work, I wait for time to pass, counting on the distance to separate me from the severity of my hardships. I try to intentionally think about how to adapt, how to prepare, or how to react next time. Of course, I do get caught in the rabbit hole of unintentionally fixating on scenarios of what went wrong or how bad it was. But that’s ok. It’s all part of the process.

And yes, I try to talk about it. There are times when it’s difficult and painful to share the most vulnerable parts of myself, but I believe it’s important. Years ago, when I had to tell one of my best friends how sick I was, I was so overwhelmed by all of it that my mom had to help me break the news. As the years have gone by, I’ve gotten better at telling people. It’s still a serious condition, and it’s ever-present, but I’m in control of the way I tell my story. It no longer feels like the end of the world when I reveal my condition to someone else. And for me, that is a major success and evidence of healing.

You may already be thinking it, but yes, I’ve also begun to write about it- the good, the bad, and the things I don’t even understand. But the more I talk and write, the more I learn and heal, and hopefully, that helps someone else heal too.

Wherever you are in your journey of healing, I wish you all the best. And know that Dr. Manette and I are right there with you.

Rory’s Reading Recommendations

If you liked this post and A Tale of Two Cities, here’s what to read next.