I'm already off to a bad start. When I sat down to write this today I literally looked at my blog ideas on my phone, picked one, stared at it for a second, couldn't figure out instantly how to start and decided to watch Instagram stories instead. Now I'm starting this much later than intended and with no more creative inspiration than what I started with. I always find beginnings the hardest with writing. In school I often struggled to start writing a paper until I felt happy with the introduction sentence or paragraph. That is not a good hang up to have.
Anyway, as always, I digress.
This is a blog post about the show Stranger Things and how it got me pondering mental health, support systems and community not about how I struggle to begin.
I'm not sure how many of you have watched the most recent season of Stranger Things. To be honest, when we started watching it I said to Rob, "I think you're going to have to watch this season without me but remember it in vivid detail and tell me what happened because I need to know". I ended up watching it anyway because I was just too intrigued with where they were going with the idea.
SPOILERS (potentially) AHEAD!!!
In this season of Stranger Things there is this phenomenon that keeps happening (that you discover is being caused by this character named Vecna) where people have these very lucid flashbacks of being back in particularly horrible or shame filled moments of their lives. They then get stuck there, in this shame inducing moment and struggle to get out and eventually this Vecna character kills them. Horrific. I know. However, I just found myself internally and externally saying/begging each new character that started to have the flashbacks, "Talk to someone. Tell someone. Tell someone your experience." I would turn to Rob and ask in a very stressed out manner (I get very attached to fictional characters), "Why don't they just talk to someone?!"
But it got me thinking right from the beginning of the show about the connection to our struggles in the real world where we're not being pulled into these "flashbacks" by some evil, magical creature but instead by our wonderfully complicated brains. I think we do this exact thing so often. Each of the characters was stuck in some sort of shame about the event they keep going back to and because of that they don't reach out. It just got me thinking about how often we do this. How often we feel shame about something, some interaction, some response, some circumstance and instead of reaching out to trusted people who love us we keep it inside and it just gains power.It got me thinking about how important it is to talk about it, to not close ourselves off, to not give those flashbacks/remembrances/memories/etc. the power to determine the truth.
I know I have had plenty of times, especially in the area of motherhood, where I have shared with a trusted friend a shameful moment that I'm stuck in and they're able to pull me out of it. Not necessarily telling me that what I remembered was wrong or that my actions were totally pure and good but reminding me that I am loved and human and also loved by an incredibly gracious God. Then that shame moment would suddenly lose it's power when I wasn't facing it on my own. I wouldn't get stuck in it where I suddenly believed that I am horrible and worthless and should be ashamed because I had my friends words and reminders calling me back to reality, helping me see the full truth in the picture.
The thing is, the only reason that one of the characters escapes this evil wizard/being/monster/thing (who has a specific sort of name I believe but I currently can't remember) is because she is surrounded by people who care about her and who push her to talk to them. They don't leave her alone in it, they notice that something is wrong and they ask (and they know her favourite song...). They question what she remembers about the traumatic/shame event and they let her process it. I found this whole aspect of the show so powerful, about how important it is to talk about and process our stuff. To have people see our less than great moments, to see our really crappy moments and tell us that we're still loved and lovable.
I've been reminded of how freeing this is in a personal way lately as I shared some parenting struggles with friends and they saw me and didn't shame me. They offered support and shared their own less than great moments and suddenly I felt so much less alone, the shame felt less powerful and the whispers that I was unlovable, a failure, that I needed to hide it all away became even quieter. Those people would have made it possible for me to fight my very own Vecna if needed (though I hope it would never be needed because I would definitely run away screaming in the other direction and never look back or just faint either or. I flee or freeze, I have no fight in the face of terror).
It's hard though, especially to be the first one to be vulnerable. To be the first one to say, "Hey. Guys. I'm struggling. Here are these shameful areas that I really believe say horrible truths about who I am." But it's so, so worth it and hard and freeing. And just think, in being vulnerable, in saying "Me too. I struggle too." how many people are you helping beat their own personal Vecna's?
(Disclaimer: the Stranger Things story is much more complex and complicated than I get into here as I'm just pulling one piece of it out. So if you are a die-hard fan you may not like that I over simplified Vecna/the whole 4th season and for that I'm sorry. I hope the point is still clear.)
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