Fall With Grace

Sisu is a word I grew up with, deep in the Northwoods of Michigan. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula. Most people don’t know there even is an upper peninsula, it’s that isolated. The town’s heyday was back in the 1920s, when the land was still rich with iron ore and mines needed miners to fill them. Most the miners were immigrants from Finland, first or second generation. Everyone I knew was Finnish.

Sisu is a Finnish word. The classic definition is this:

A uniquely Finnish concept, describing extraordinary determination, courage, and resolute perseverance in the face of adversity. It is the ability to sustain an action against the odds, to continue even after strength and hope have been exhausted.

I remember visiting my mom on weekends. Sitting at her kitchen table, looking at this weird sign, it was a blue board with white blocks placed upon it. The white blocks stood up from the background, and the background itself spelled the word SISU, with the white blocks arranged to surround the letters. If that sounds difficult to picture, it is. I don’t think I would have ever figured out what it said if my mom hadn’t shown me. I asked her what it meant, and she told me it meant family.

I was probably in my early twenties when I found out the actual definition. It was somewhere in the 2000s, in the early days of social media. I saw a little inspirational quote about it on Facebook. I read and reread the definition. It was defined as a noun. A thing, tangible. Not a family. A part of a person’s character, of who they are. Strength, but beyond that. I was drawn to this word. It illustrated something in me I didn’t have the confidence to name. It would be almost 20 years before I could really see why this word had such a pull for me.

I knew on some level why. I was Finnish. And I had perseverance. By that point in my life, I’d had more life experience than anyone my age, perhaps more than many people ever have. While that might sound like a flex, it’s not. I hadn’t gone through anything because I was brave, because I was special, or because I was motivated. No, I went through things because it was the life I was given, and I had no other choice. And I suppose, that’s where sisu comes from.

I had survived neglect, poverty, abuse, instability, abandonment, and trauma as many of us do. I’d survived by turning off, drinking night and day until I couldn’t feel any more, as many of us do. Eventually, my survival skills had become liabilities, and it became painfully clear that alcohol would bring me to death if something didn’t change. I quit, almost against my own will, but I did. I’d gone from homeless to housed. I’d gone from high school dropout to college student. I’d changed, I’d survived myself. I’d survived my childhood. I’d survived the bleak future that had seemed assured since as long as I remember.

When I graduated college, I was accepted to grad school. A physician assistant program. I felt like a fraud. I was the girl who used to smoke and drink in the girls locker room instead of going to class… at age 13. By 15, I had dropped out. Now I was going to college? To one of the top programs in the country? To learn medicine? I felt like I had run a really successful con, and I was terrified. Terrified I didn’t belong there, that everyone would know, that someone, somewhere had made a mistake.

It was around that time I remembered sisu. When I officially graduated undergrad, right before starting grad school, my dear friend Bob wanted to give me a gift. Something I would always have. Bob had been like a dad to me over the years. We decided on a tattoo. I wanted something that would mean something to me, as well as remind me of him. I chose sisu. It’s a small script. I had it put on the inside of my left wrist. The script faces me, so that it’s readable from my perspective. I chose that spot to remind me I had already overcome the hardest thing I would ever have to overcome, and I had excelled. I was sisu.

Looking back now, I think, wow- how cute. I thought that was it, that it would be smooth sailing from there. I’d peaked at the ripe old age of 25, my battles were won. How young I was. I want to pat my own little head and say “Bless your heart.” I wasn’t entirely wrong though. By that time, I had most certainly had two distinct moments that tested me, which allowed me to show up with my sisu.

The first was my dad. I’ll spare you the details, but it was a complex relationship with a difficult, authoritative man, and I was a willful, inquisitive little girl. That combo doesn’t bode well. Despite our checkered past, when he died shortly after I turned 17, I was broken. He’d raised me since I was 7 or so. I’d run away and gone to foster care at times, but he was home. He’d been sick for years, but cancer was another sick altogether. My feelings were anything but easy. I’d watched him die, as his caretaker in that last year. He’d become kinder as he approached death, and it made it much harder to lose him. My grief was mixed with rage. Rage over how he’d treated me. The ways he’d damaged me. But also that he’d left. That he wasn’t coming back. He may not yell and hit me again, but he’d also not be there to give me a hug and tell me he loved me.

It broke me. I remember moving to my mom’s. The first three months all I remember was laying in my room and crying. As the snow melted, I started to walk. I’d walk for hours on backroads going nowhere, until I was too tired to think or feel. When I had walked far enough, I would have this overwhelming urge to lay on the ground, and just melt into the earth. I felt certain that I could not tolerate the pain for another moment. The only humane thing would be for the earth to swallow me whole, I could not continue any further. No matter how far I walked, no matter how weak I might be, the earth stubbornly refused to accept my sacrifice. So I kept going. When I was certain I could not breathe another breath, I did. I had to. It was sisu.

The second was the alcohol. It had helped me “cope” enough that I survived the loss of my dad. And then it took everything from me. I was sick, I’d had a major health problem and nearly died. I missed work. Bike messengers didn’t have paid vacations. I probably would have been okay if I’d stopped drinking then, but I am no quitter. So I kept drinking. I stopped working. So I stopped having a place to live. I did a lot of walking then too. I had to. I’d walk to steal alcohol. I’d walk to sell that to make enough to go to the bar. I’d spend it at the bar so that I could find a place to sleep. It was a pretty miserable existence, but I saw no other way. When I tried not to drink I became very sick. But worse, my feelings would return, and I didn’t have the courage to survive them.

Eventually, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I would drink, pass out, wake up after about 4 hours with signs of withdrawal already showing. I’d cry and drink until I passed out again. Over and over. That’s it. That was life. I found my way to a detox, and from there to treatment. I only made it about 30 days that time. I still needed to make sure there wasn’t some way to make the alcohol work. There wasn’t. The next trip to detox, I returned defeated. I had no hope of a better life, alcohol had been

the first thing to bring me joy. Without it, I was prepared to life a miserable and painful existence until I died.

Of course, that didn’t happen. My sisu showed up for me. It carried me to meeting after meeting. Day after day it walked me away from my bars and the corner store, into the fellowships. Until one day, I saw, life had changed. It wasn’t the abysmal experience I believed it to be. It wasn’t pain free, but it was different pain. Normal pain.

I saw that I had some agency in my life, that I could chose to deal with the pain I was dealt and make use of it, or I could give myself to it, allow it to swallow me entirely, until it really did kill me. I saw that pain wasn’t my destiny, it was just my past. It was a past that was unfair perhaps, but also it gave me a distinct advantage- sisu. I could, and would, survive anything. I knew it then, though perhaps not so fully.

I’d love to say from that point on life was great. That trauma and grief didn’t flavor some aspect of almost everything I’ve done. The fact is, some hurts are bigger than others. Some you need to repeat, time after time until you understand. Life will always give you what you need to learn, until you learn it. I’ve lived out the same hurtful dynamics, over and over again, until the pain was great enough. Until I thought it couldn’t go on. That I couldn’t go on. But I did and I do, time and time again. That’s where sisu is built. Those moments, not the bad ones, the everyday pain, but those times where you have tried all the things, you have done all you can, and you can do no more. Then you do. That’s sisu.

I still feel like a fraud most the time. I worry about belonging, and the fact that I don’t. I’m not like the colleagues I work with. I’m not like the people I grew up with. I’m not like the person I was. I’m not the person people assume I must be. I’m different. I have sisu.