How We Go On: Self-Compassion, Courage, and Gratitude on the Path Forward

By Ken Druck

How we go on is the most frequently asked question of our lives. It is also one of the most important. Our willingness and ability to meet life's changes, challenges, crises, losses, and opportunities, determines the quality of our lives. Clearing the path forward to our best possible future involves skillfully and courageously

• Language: English
• Publisher: Druck Enterprises Inc. Publishing
• Release date: Sep 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988284710

Ken Druck

Ken Druck, Ph.D. Dr. Ken Druck is a best-selling author and international authority on healing after loss, family relationships, aging and turning adversity into opportunity. Recipient of the prestigious Distinguished Contribution to Psychology award for his groundbreaking work on traumatic loss, Dr. Ken has guided clients, communities, readers, audiences, and the general public for over 45 years with his life's work on Courageous Living. His books, including "How We Go On: Self-Compassion, Courage and Gratitude on the Path Forward," "he Real Rules of Life," "Healing Your Life After the Loss of a Loved One," "Courageous Aging" and "Raising an Aging Parent" are based on his personal journey after the death of his oldest daughter, Jenna, his work on the front lines after tragedies including 9-11, Sandy Hook and Columbine and his experience as an Executive Coach/Consultant. Ken speaks for distinguished organizations including the United Nations, Harvard School of Public Health and Young Presidents Organization. He trains psychiatric residents in Grief Literacy at the UCSD School of Medicine and his work is featured regularly on CNN, PBS and in network specials as well as in top newspapers, podcasts, magazines, and social media sites. Ken, his beloved partner, Lisette, and their rescue dog, Jack, live in Del Mar, California only a few minutes from the offices of Druck Enterprises Inc. and a few miles from his daughter, Stefie, twin grandsons, and son-in-law, Tony.

Book preview

Chapter 1

HOW WE LEARN TO GO ON AS KIDS

Childhood is romanticized as a carefree, innocent stage of life, but it’s also the training ground where we learn the basics about how to go on. Some children’s first years are spent in paradise, bathed in the love and affection of doting parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. They become the center of their families’ attention (unless and until a baby brother or sister is born).

Some children’s first years are spent in war zones, where learning how to go on means dodging missiles, being caught in the crossfire of warring parents, getting diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, or living under the constant threat of conflict (whether school, gang, domestic, or international) and violence. Children in famine-struck nations struggle to stay alive, watching their parents get by on short rations so that they and their siblings will have enough to eat. As if growing up and figuring out how to be a person under normal circumstances weren’t difficult enough, these kids live in survival mode.

Growing Pains

It may appear that children born to affluence, like many of the kids I’ve seen over the years, escape the kinds of danger, trauma, hardship, and adversity described above. The dramatic increase in drug- and alcohol-related deaths, suicides, and diagnosable mental health problems have shown us that this is far from true. While spared the many ills of violence, poverty, and famine, rich kids often suffer from other ills and insecurities. In a world where one’s worth is often based on their status, image, and conformity to whatever happens to be cool, the rude awakenings of silver-spoon kids who grow up in privilege with a sense of entitlement and arrogant superiority are severe in the real world. Without a true sense of self, our ability to develop confidence and self-worth in childhood and adolescence, get along with others, and come to terms with adversity, is limited.

One of my mentors, Dr. Mike Friedman—who coined the term Type A personality—described some of his heart patients as suffering from status insecurity. Mike tied heart disease to living with the persistent fear of not fitting in. In my forty years of executive coaching and consulting, working with leaders in business and government, I have found this situation to be dangerously common. I have also found that people whose parents had status insecurities often live with this same fear, grow up asking themselves, Is my house big enough? My car expensive enough? Are my clothes classy enough? Is my spouse hot enough? The underlying doubts and questions are Am I cool enough? and Am I worthy of love and attention? These doubts have their origins in early childhood.

Kids yearn for attention and status, as well as love and approval. Growing up is an exercise in figuring out how to get these things as we get older. Kids who don’t get a full measure of love and approval may spend their lives searching for that attention—and struggling. They might, as the song goes, begin to look for love in all the wrong places, leaving them feeling empty and unworthy. Some of these kids ultimately find what they need, building a sense of confidence and worth.

The challenges facing kids, parents, and families in today’s world are monumental. Because of work schedules and other demands, giving our children the attention they need is not always possible. Kids whose parents have little or nothing left in the tank at the end of the day may look for attention by becoming sick or getting into trouble. I used to ask my daughters, Do you want Daddy’s good attention or bad attention? The way kids learn to get their parents’ love, attention, and approval establishes a pattern in their lives that can lead to either failure or fulfillment.

In a Perfect World

Aren’t kids supposed to feel loved, protected, and safe? And aren’t they supposed to face each day in a relatively predictable way, so that they learn and grow in early childhood? Isn’t home the place where they learn how to navigate the unexpected curves in the road, as the characters did on Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver? We’d like to think so, but the idea that all kids will become fully formed human beings simply by growing up in their family of origin is wishful thinking. Childhood is a time when kids suffer some of life’s toughest challenges, including their first losses.

How, when we’re new parents, can we automatically know how to help our children deal with the kinds of feelings that come with loss? When small children realize the family dog, their parents, and their grandparents are one day going to die, their worlds turn upside down. At age four, my daughter Jenna asked, Daddy, why do we have to die? Searching to give her some degree of comfort and soften her sadness, I asked her what she thought. I told her that I wasn’t 100 percent certain and assured her that we could try to figure it out together. She was satisfied with that and we went out for ice cream.

As discussed earlier, life also brings living losses, the kind that happen when nobody has died but the child faces daunting changes and challenges, which often means some part of their fantasy life and innocence is being lost. Perhaps they are losing Mom and Dad’s attention to the new baby, or they have to adjust to their first day at preschool. School may be the first place they hear the word no from a teacher or classmate, get punched in the nose, or are sent into time out. When some of the old ways of getting what they want no longer work, children can feel confused or humiliated. They may be embarrassed or ashamed after an accident or mistake. Without a trusted adult to hold their hand, give them a reassuring hug, or teach them to communicate or vent by using their words, the normal challenges of figuring things out can become overwhelming.

A little girl who is used to being the center of attention, for example, is told how lucky she is to have a baby brother. All she knows, though, is that Mommy and Daddy are now all about that baby boy and they don’t pay attention to her the way they used to. The parents who don’t notice or deal with the fact that their daughter is suffering a painful loss of status may be setting the stage for a fierce sibling rivalry.

When a child’s parents announce, Guess what? You’re going to sleepaway camp this summer! it can be a source of genuine terror for a child who has never been outside the parental bubble. They may feel excited at first, but fears of spending night after night in a strange place away from their parents override their excitement. The first time a child is called a name or knocked to the ground during recess can be shockingly painful, especially if the kid has no idea why they’re being attacked. This is when it’s a blessing for that child to have a trusted confidant who will listen attentively. Not having anybody to talk to can leave a child feeling helpless, sad, frightened, angry, undefended, and alone.

Growing Up Is Tough

Being part of a human family, starting with the expectations and pressures of being a sibling—which can be a blessing, a curse, or both—is especially tough. Living 24/7 under the same roof with anyone is challenging. Being the baby with older siblings who have been sharpening their nails on one another and now smell fresh meat can present a whole new series of developmental challenges and problems. As we will see in the chapters on aging, sibling rivalries, left unchecked, can last a lifetime.

And then there are the millions of kids whose parents split up. In addition to suffering the loss of their family as they knew it, they now must figure out how to stay out of the crossfire of unfinished business between their parents. They might have to live in two different households and deal with new siblings. When a parent goes to war in the divorce, starts dating, gets remarried, or becomes depressed, children are put in a position of split loyalty and not knowing whose side to take. It is a horribly confusing, no-win situation.

Children who are born with or develop physical problems—birth defects, chronic illnesses, the effects of accidents—or are discovered to have learning deficits or a place on the autism spectrum face known and hidden losses and challenges. They also inadvertently create difficulties for their parents, who are unexpectedly tasked with extra caregiving and must readjust their hopes, dreams, and expectations. Figuring out how to help their special-needs child and still have a life can be difficult, disappointing, exhausting, and seeded with guilt. Some parents become so overwhelmed that they delegate a disproportionate amount of responsibility to others, turn to drugs or alcohol for solace, or just leave. Others, like my friend Suzie, search for resources and do their best to put an effective game plan into action when disaster strikes.

Suzie is the mother of Mia, a spirited seven-year-old who has a rare form of cancer. Going through rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, medication regimens, and doctor’s appointments—all with the knowledge that her life might be coming to an end—has been excruciating for Mia, her mom, and their entire family. This beautiful little girl’s biggest worry should be the next day’s spelling test or having to wear something dorky to school because her grandma picked it out. Instead, Mia is ridiculed because she has lost all her hair.

Mia’s anger, confusion, and fear are understandable as she grapples with the idea that, unlike every other kid she knows, she is sick and may die. Watching her parents struggle as they try to come to terms with how to go on emotionally, financially, and spiritually breaks her heart. Her family once invited me to a family haircutting party in which her mom, dad, sister, best friend, aunt, uncle, and grandparents all shaved their heads. It put a great many things in perspective, like what it means to be there in a genuinely loving way for our children, grandchildren, family, friends and clients.

Our Children Are Watching Us

In childhood, as we develop our first notions about how to go on, we watch our role models and see how they react after a difficulty. We also watch to see how they respond to happy news—theirs and that of others. In early childhood, we rejoice in our first victories and suffer with our first defeats. We meet people who are wonderful and trustworthy as well as those who don’t have our best interests at heart. Entering the real world, and beginning to learn its ways, we gain experience and lose innocence.

In a perfect world, childhood would be a time of love, safety, and discovery as trusted adults around us did their best to support us. They would try to understand how we were wired, what we did well, and what we found difficult. In our imperfect world, the adults in our lives may be way off base when it comes to understanding us. That’s one reason it’s so often said that it takes a village to help kids grow up: if the adults at home miss the mark, another caring adult will be there to guide, support, and understand