More Words of Wisdom from Nora Roberts

This is from her J.D. Robb novel "Visions in Death" - it's from a bit of dialogue between two of the principal characters in the series. I've taken the liberty of editing it from dialogue to essay form.

" 'Overcoming' and 'getting over' are two very different things. [We] should strive to overcome. To survive, to have a life, to be happy, to be productive. [We can] do all that, and a great deal more. But [we're] not required to 'get over' it. To 'get over' being [physically, emotionally, psychologically] abused."

Ms. Roberts is absolutely right.

The difference, of course, is that when we overcome something, we remain well aware of it; and I mean exactly that. We are well, when we overcome; we have reached the point where it is well with us. And yet, we remember, we remain aware. What we overcome becomes part of who we are, because it is our experiences, and our responses to them, that form us.

When we 'get over' something, we deliberately put it behind us, and turn away from it. It has no part in our lives from that point forward. It's possible to do this with a cold, or the flu. But a broken arm is as much 'overcome' as 'gotten over' - the knit in the bone will always be there, to a sufficiently well trained observer, with sufficiently sensitive instruments.

And a broken heart? Broken dreams? These can be overcome, eventually, and by the grace of God, they eventually will be. But to turn our faces away from them, to repudiate them entirely, to wish them out of existence because they were used by predators to cause us pain? When we do this, we hand the predator a victory over our lives. It is as though we choose to have our broken arm amputated, long after it has knit and healed, because we do not want to live with the memory of its breaking.

Nobody who truly cares for you will demand of you that you amputate your past. They may join with you in mourning it, they may try to help you overcome it [and sometimes, with the best of intentions, may push you to overcome at a pace that suits them, rather than a pace that suits your healing]. But they won't demand that you deny, pretend, or otherwise dismiss your own history. It is precisely that history that makes your overcoming a triumph, it is precisely that history that gives it meaning.

In the Roberts novel from which I quote, the two characters in this dialogue are a forensic psychologist and a policewoman who survived horrendous child abuse, and worse. Roberts is by no means trivializing her chracter's suffering with these words. She is, instead, choosing to respect the sufferer, and to profoundly respect the sufferer's healing. There is much wisdom in her words, and even more compassion.