'I'm a psychiatrist, working with trauma victims. But nothing could've prepared me for how my dad died.'

Dr Lisa Myers’ story begins with her recounting the frantic moments of uncertainty leading up to her discovery of her father’s death in tragic and horrific circumstances. Struggling to come to terms with the experience herself, Lisa was forced to put on a brave face as she broke the news to her mother and her own children. Unable to simply accept the reports from authorities, Lisa details her search for the truth of what really happened to her father, reaching the ultimate conclusion that she may never know the truth of that fateful night.

Follow Lisa on her journey as she describes how she learnt to cope with the pain, trauma and suffering she experienced through the loss of her beloved father. Along the way, Lisa takes us inside her mind as she shares a number of insightful life lessons learnt through her experiencesas a doctor, psychiatrist, wife, mother, daughter and trauma survivor.

While you're here, watch The Journey Through Loss And Grief - Jason Rosenthal. Post continues below.

The following is an extract from Dr Myers’ latest book – ‘When the Light Goes Out’ 

I get into the front passenger side of the car and Jason, the driver’s side. We sit silently, thinking about the past nine long hours.

We still have no news.

My phone rings for the umpteenth time –it’s Ralph again.

I am not prepared for the sound of Ralph wailing and gasping for air. His cries and screams cut into me. I hear him say my name. I don’t want to hear more. My heart is galloping. ‘Lisa...’ My baby brother cries out my name a second time.‘Lisa...’ I want to help him, hold him and comfort him, but I can’t; and he can’t articulate more than a single word. I am floating, and the world around me seems unreal. Finally, I hear his agonizing cry across the Indian Ocean, and the words I pleaded never to receive reverberate like crashing thunder in my ears.

‘Lisa, they’ve cut him up! They’ve cut Daddy up!’

The devastating phone call was the starting pistol that marked the beginning of my journey of trauma and mourning. My father’s death up ended and changed my life forever. Everything fell apart the day he died, throwing me into confusion and emotionally eviscerating me. For the first time, I knew first hand what it meant to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) combined with grief. In the months following his death, I suffered from jumbled thoughts, flashbacks, frequent nightmares and strange visual illusions of imaginary dark shadows. I was disconnected from the world, as if living in a bubble from whichI could see out, but no-one could see in the world seemed strange, pointless and rushed; and although I was alive, I was not living. I felt depressed and paralysed as I floated around, isolated in my snow-globe world, whilst from the outside, people saw me functioning and coping. It’s difficult to completely understand experiences you haven’t lived. I can admit now that prior to my father’s death, I had been clueless and thoughtless towards those mourning the loss of a parent.

I am still not sure how, but I have survived the initial trauma and am now working my way through the never-ending process of grieving. But I still have been unable to get any answers as to how and why my father died. Despite my tenacity, I have been forced to let it go without the closure I so desperately needed. It has left me deflated to agonise over my efforts, wondering if I did enough. Although my story is shocking and, at times gruesome, it is by no means the worst experience in the expanse of human suffering. I don’t want to be pitied or regarded as a noble victim of psychological pain or to cause you, my reader any vicarious trauma. I share it and the hard-won meaning I have made from it, in the hope that it might help you to navigate your own path through your trauma.

In the upcoming chapters, I will share the details of my father’s death and the investigation I pursued after the authorities in South Africa deemed it a suicide and shut the case – this was part of my own healing process. Please navigate these pages with caution, the specifics are shocking and belong more in an episode of CSI than in anyone’s life. I have included these terrible details after careful consideration. Narrating my story tamed the ghastly nature of my trauma by providing safe re-exposure and giving time to befriend the responses of my body and mind. Peeling away the layers of trauma has revealed the depth of grief, which I’ve learnt is an endless, winding road.

Trauma is threaded through everyone’s life, but on a spectrum, it extends from the micro-fractures of a mother rejecting her child, to the macro and gross violations of abuse and neglect. I, like everyone else, have experienced trauma of varying degrees peppered through my life, beginning with my mother whose own traumas left her emotionally unavailable. My parents had a difficult marriage and their arguments echoed throughout my childhood, leaving me confused about love and afraid of abandonment. My teens were fraught with shame and extreme perfectionist behaviors. I then struggled with postnatal depression (PND), and my marriage ended in divorce, leaving my children forever pained at not having a ‘normal’ family (if there is such a beast), These were nothing compared to the trauma that awaited me when my father died.

This book forms part of my father’s legacy. Writing those words both comforts and pains me. Processing the shock surrounding his death has helped me find the words to narrate this story.

Image: Supplied

We all have painful stories to overcome, and it’s important to remember that it is never a competition about who has suffered worse or more. On the relative nature of grief, Mark Twain eloquently said, ‘Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.’ What is important is that we each acknowledge our suffering. We do this by owning it, and from that moment on, we can begin to change. 

I have long wished to write a book about mental health and share my journey of growth and development. I want to normalize the struggles we all have with mental health and reduce the stigma which obstructs people from accessing help. I’ve had benefits of long-term therapy and have made it my life’s work to understand this area and how it’s possible to rewire the brain and change one’s life. I want to share what I know to empower you to do the same.

As a doctor, I am trained in mental health, which requires daily attention –just like physical health, we naturally attend to our bodies, whether it be treating illness, minor ailments or tweaking what has been transcribed by our genetic code. We all understand the imperatives of maintaining a healthy diet and doing regular exercise to mange hypertension, diabetes and excess weight. But somehow, we don’t get that the same vigilance applies to our mental health, there still seems to be a stigma that managing our mental health means we are sick in the head, crazy or ‘nuts’. Carrying a bit too much weight doesn’t appear as shameful as having borderline personality traits or being on the autistic spectrum. Weare quicker to judge variances in mental health than we are with physical health.

I wrote this book because I am passionate about good mental health, and I want to help other manage theirs. In helping others, we help ourselves. This has proved true for me.

Feature Image: Supplied