Why I decided to stop saying "This happened for a reason" | Amy Bickers | TEDxBirmingham

In this deeply personal talk, writer Amy Bickers shares the challenges she faced following a traumatic incident and the insights she took away from it. She shows how the cinematic structure of the stories we're raised on isn't the right way to look at the structure of our own stories.

Amy Bickers writes frankly and often humorously about such topics as grief, post-traumatic stress, and the antics of contestants on The Bachelor.

A former newspaper journalist and associate editor at Southern Living, Amy Bickers is the author of "The Geography of You and Me," her debut memoir about suicide loss. The memoir's publication was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

As a writer, I've spent my career
thinking about stories and how they work.

I've fit dramatic pieces
into narrative puzzles,

and I've thought about what feels true
versus what simply feels good.

But I never realized
how much I bought into the idea

of beginnings and endings

until I started trying to make sense
of the pieces of my own story.

This is the beginning,

but it's not really the beginning.

On a Monday night in August 2009,

my ex-husband confronted me
with a shotgun

and trapped me in my garage.

He had been struggling
with prescription pill abuse.

He'd lost his job.

He'd lost his wife.

He'd lost that thing
that keeps us tethered to this world:

the ability to see tomorrow.

He said to me,
"You don't know how hard this is ..."

And only moments later,
he took his own life

so then I would know how hard it was too.

In the wake of devastation,

those who are affected
can fall into a trap

of believing the universe has punished us
based on our worth as a human being.

And if we're now good enough,

if we learn our lesson,

we'll be rewarded.

This is what books and movies and so many
tragedy narratives tell us comes next.

In the wake of my own devastation,

I came up with a list of things
the universe could bring me

that might make things right:

a Best Actress Oscar

for a role I like to call
a human woman pretending to be okay;

(Laughter)

a call from Oprah asking me
to be part of her book club;

and finally -

this is the most important one -

George Clooney as my boyfriend.

(Laughter)

So I fell into this trap for a while -
of waiting for what comes next.

I made vision boards,
I read self-help books,

I went to therapy,
and I tried to learn my lesson.

What I was looking for, of course,

was something to make sense of the past,

some equal, yet completely
opposite reaction

that could bring
a traumatic story to an end.

I had the idea that maybe
this phase of tragedy could be over

if only some happily
ever after came along.

This is the structure
of the stories we're raised on,

the cinematic sweep of epic films,

the narratives that take a person
from rock bottom

to glorious heights of success and love

and all in less than two hours.

This is what happens in movies
I like to call "misfortune porn."

Don't Google that by the way.

(Laughter)

No.

Misfortune porn is a movie
where you have this sad lead character,

and they get screwed non-stop
for at least an hour and 45 minutes.

And then at the end they get their reward.

The cinematic reward for tragedy
is having your dream come true

or making a big play

and getting carried off the field
on the shoulders of your teammates,

getting carried out of the factory
by the leading man,

someone starts a slow clap,

everyone cheers,

credits roll.

The End.

We want the cinematic climax to be
the structure of our own difficult stories

(Sighs)

So I entertained fantasies
about things that could save me

because I felt I needed saving,

cinematic happy-ending saving.

I wanted the things people promised me
in their messages of condolence,

the things we say
when we don't know what to say:

"This happened for a reason."

"You will find happiness again."

"You deserve something wonderful."

But the terrible truth is

that even the biggest thing
you can dream up

is not the secret to healing your grief.

What arrived for me, for a while,
was a case of chronic disappointment,

a certainty that I must be
doing something wrong,

I was failing to learn my lesson.

I needed answers,

and I made looking for answers
my full-time job.

I looked for answers in the suicide note

my ex-husband had written
only moments before we were in the garage.

And it didn't give me
the answers I needed or wanted.

Notes like these rarely do.

He had written seven words:

"I'm so sorry. This is very hard."

One winter day a few years ago,

I was sitting at my kitchen table
writing about what had happened.

I was looking out the window
past the bare trees

toward this vast expanse
of peaks and valleys in the distance.

It's this amazing view

that I forget about completely
when everything is in bloom.

Now by this time,
I'd written thousands of words

in journals, and blog posts,

and in letters to people
who could never read them -

all in this attempt
to understand devastation.

And when you got down to it,

really, what I'd written
was just a longer version

of "I'm so sorry. This is very hard."

And on this day it struck me

that we cannot wait for the universe
to bring us some amazing thing,

some equal yet opposite event
that will make up for tragedies.

And we cannot wait for a grand reckoning

that will explain what is unexplainable.

Because no good thing can be big enough
to erase loss from who we are now,

not even George Clooney,

who, I don't know if you heard,
but he got married, not to me ...

(Laughter)

I don't know why.

So I decided to stop saying,

"This happened for a reason."

"The next thing that happens
has to be great."

"Something or someone will save me."

I decided to allow myself
to say what is true:

"This is very hard."

While "Once upon a time"
and "Happily ever after"

are the structure of so many movies,

"sorry" and "hard" and "okay"

are more akin to the structure of life.

So this is the ending,

but it's not really the ending.

Everything is going to be okay.

I know this now.

And it's going to be hard again too,

and then it'll be okay again.

Good and wonderful things will come along,

and difficult things
will find their way in too.

At the heart of any story,

what you find beyond
the attention-grabbing highs and lows

is this battle for balance
between hard and okay.

This is where we live.

It's not cinematic.

It doesn't come with a dramatic score
or cheering crowd,

but there is something beautiful
about how we survive it.

We begin to heal when we give up the idea
that a tragedy is a beginning

and if we're good enough,
we'll be rewarded with an ending.

We don't need a Hollywood ending.

We only need to regain our equilibrium
as often as necessary.

When we stop asking "What next,"

we can find our way
toward accepting "What is."

We do this by acknowledging
our struggle and our regrets,

and we allow these things
to have a place in our lives,

not as roadblocks to something better,

but as essential elements
of life structure.

In this way, in tiny increments every day,

we can make peace with our own stories.

Thank you.

(Applause)