The Truth

into the Wilderness: Story 27

Catina and I just finished listening to the Podcast musical “36 Questions,” featuring Jessie Shelton and Jonathan Groff (you may remember him as King George in “Hamilton”). Told in 3 Acts, the musical features a divorcing couple grappling with a broken relationship, lies and second chances using the 36 questions that lead to love. If you’ve never listened to the musical, it’s worth the 2.5 hours. Catina and I started listening on the way to a mom and daughter lunch and ended up taking longer routes home so we could listen longer.

The last song is called, “The Truth.” For anyone who has dealt with childhood- or adult- trauma- the song carries an important message: The truth is your truth and “is all about you and your honest point of view.”

This last song really stuck with me, enough so that I went back to listen several times. It even made me want to write another blog- after a nearly 90-day break.

The truth.

If you’ve had a child in wilderness and/or residential treatment, your truth and your child’s truth can feel immutable and forever. I felt that way with Catina, especially as the ugliness of what she had been hiding spilled out during her early weeks of wilderness. The truth felt like a wall we’d never scale. How would we ever heal? How would our identities be shaped by what we were learning?

And yet, here we are 3 years later. Now, we see that truth from a distance, knowing it’s there but also knowing it no longer determines our present or our future.

And that is the truth.

We can often get stuck on what’s true as if it is fixed, fact-based or dictated by a diagnosis. We can debate our reality, weighing external opinions greater than our own. When someone questions our reality, we can question ourselves and whether our perceptions are real. This leads to depression and confusion and prevents healing.

In reality, truth is an individual perspective that can shift with time and reflection. My truth is an example. I grew up in a fairly abusive family who went to extraordinary efforts to hide it. From the outside, no one would have known. None of my friends. None of my high school teachers. None of my dance instructors. If I had spoken my truth, no one would have believed me. I had no hard evidence. I had my sister’s shared understanding. I had my inner pain. Both of those could be debated. I spent many years of therapy coming to the realization that I didn’t need external validation. I only needed my acceptance of what I knew and the ability to move beyond it.

Now that I have done the work, that truth no longer stays with me daily. Every once in a while, it raises its hand and I acknowledge it and say, “I see you.” That is enough.

The same is true of our struggling children who have landed in wilderness and residential treatment. Their truth is theirs. With time, and processing, they will heal. That truth will become softer and less life-shaping and other truths will come to the fore. They will move beyond it. While you may want to debate it, you need to listen. Your job as a parent with a child in treatment is to accept your child’s truth, to work through it with them and to help them find their way forward.

Your truth and your child’s can both be right. DBT tells us that. Your filters and your child’s are not the same. Consider that as your child works through the realities of what got them to wilderness. For your child to heal, they need to hear your acceptance and understanding, even when what you know may seem different. By listening to your child, you may begin to see some realities- about yourself and your family- that you didn’t want to see. Stay open. You may learn something.

In the end, time does heal. But only if you let it. As the song from “36 Questions” says, “what’s true for you doesn’t have to be forever.”