10/03/2024
Client Story: Tom
The year was 2014. Tom, a young, 26 year old man from Minneapolis found himself in love with a girl named Betty from Florida. Their love story? Meeting at Hmong New Years.
Betty was radiant, her laughter contagious, and her presence seemed to light up every space she walked into. Despite the distance, they stayed in touch, and soon it blossomed into a relationship. Their love was strong, and Tom found himself traveling constantly to Florida to see her. Every trip only strengthened his feelings for her. She was the woman of his dreams, and after two years of love shared between state lines, Tom decided it was time to bring Betty home to Minnesota — not just for a visit, but to make her his wife.
However, things took a different turn when Betty stopped picking up his calls and became distant. Then one day, pictures started surfacing on social media — pictures of Betty with other men. Some were just friendly snapshots, but others made his heart sink. He couldn’t shake off the gut feeling that something was wrong.
He began questioning everything. And one day, the truth finally came out: Betty had been seeing other men the entire time they were apart. When Tom confronted her, his heart heavy with betrayal, Betty denied any wrongdoing. Then, without another word, she left his life. She blocked his calls, erased him from her social media, and disappeared, leaving Tom in an emotional whirlwind, leaving no trace that she even ever existed.
Crushed by the betrayal, Tom withdrew into himself. He even attempted to travel to Florida to get her to answer, but her older brother answered the door and told him to go home, that she didn’t want to see him anymore. Tom was brewing with anger as he flew home. He had been humiliated. He began to believe that all women were liars, that love was nothing but a lie. His heart hardened, and he swore to never forgive Betty, to hold onto that resentment until the day he died.
His sister intervened when she, herself, realized a decade had passed by and he was still angry. Seeing her younger brother spiral into bitterness, she referred him to me. Tom wasn’t sure if he wanted to be “Hot and Healed”, but his sister sat next to him in our session, forcing him to admit that he was burdened with the weight of heartbreak and unresolved anger. “My brother’s really angry, like, all the time,” his sister would chime in. “You’ve been an assh*le since she left”, she’d turn to him and say.
I gave her a half hearted smile and asked her if she could step out of the room so he would feel comfortable, but he declined and wanted her to stay. As we began our session, he expressed his deep mistrust of women, and his resentment towards Betty. “I’ll never forgive her,” he declared, his voice filled with conviction. “She ghosted me and lied.”
But as we delved deeper into his story, peeling back the layers of his pain, something unexpected emerged. It became clear that his anguish wasn’t just about Betty. As we explored his emotions, he began to talk about his childhood. That’s when he brought up his pog (grandmother) — the one person who had always made him feel safe, loved, and cared for. She had passed away when he was just a boy, and that loss had left a scar he never truly healed from. His first heartbreak.
Tom’s grandmother was not just a family figure to him; she was the love of his life, the foundation of his childhood, and the one who nurtured him into the man he would become. Growing up, Tom spent most of his early years under her watchful eye. His parents worked long hours, trying to provide a better future for the family, so his grandmother became his constant companion, his teacher, and his guide.
She was strict, but her tough love came from a place of deep care. When Tom misbehaved, his grandmother was quick to discipline him. She believed in teaching lessons that would last a lifetime. If Tom talked back or ignored her words, she’d make him sit down and reflect, sometimes with a sharp word or a stern look. He remembered those moments when her eyes narrowed, and she spoke with a firmness that made him realize there was no room for disrespect. Yet, even in her discipline, there was love — the kind of love that molds character and builds resilience.
Though she was tough on him, she was also his biggest source of comfort. When Tom had bad days, when school was hard, or when other kids picked on him, it was his grandmother who would hold him, smoothing his hair and whispering to him in Hmong, telling him that he was strong, that he could endure anything. She was his shield against the world. Her love was steady, like the heartbeat of their family, always there, even when no one else seemed to understand him.
But then, everything changed when she passed away unexpectedly. It was a sudden loss, and it left a gaping hole in his heart. He remembered the day vividly, the way his family members cried and mourned, and how he, too young to fully grasp death, felt as though his world had crumbled. The woman who had been his rock, who had given him the strength to face life’s challenges, was gone.
She had always been so strong, so unbreakable — how could she just be gone? He didn’t realize it at the time, but that moment marked the beginning of his unresolved feelings of abandonment.
Without her, his life felt emptier. His parents, though loving, were busy with work and couldn’t provide the same emotional closeness. No one else in the family was quite like her. Her absence haunted him, and he carried that pain with him as he grew older. He never talked about it, never allowed himself to cry, and never forgave her for leaving him.
As Tom became a teenager and eventually a young man, he buried the hurt deep inside. He didn’t want to think about it. Instead, he focused on other things — his friends, his career, and eventually, Betty. When he met Betty, she brought a sense of joy back into his life that he hadn’t felt since his grandmother. In many ways, Betty filled that void of love and warmth that his grandmother had left behind. Her laughter reminded him of the times he used to share with his grandmother, and her presence made him feel less alone in the world.
But when Betty betrayed him, it was as if his grandmother had left him all over again. That old wound, the deep fear of abandonment, resurfaced with a vengeance. He was left with the same questions he had as a child: Why did the people he loved most always leave him? Why did they betray him when he needed them the most?
As Tom recounted his relationship with Betty, it became clear that his pain wasn’t just about Betty’s betrayal — it was the unresolved grief from his grandmother’s death. He hadn’t just been heartbroken by Betty; he had been heartbroken by his grandmother, too.
Through our session, Tom realized that his anger toward Betty was a mask for the deeper hurt of losing his grandmother. He had never forgiven her for leaving him, and that unresolved grief had influenced every relationship he had since. Betty’s betrayal had reopened a wound that had never fully healed.
As our session came to a close, I asked Tom what he was learning from his reflections. He sat quietly for a moment, lost in thought. “I don’t know.” he responded.
“Well, if you did know,” I asked. “What do you think it’d be?”
I was going to suggest that he ask the Universe what he was learning, but he suggested himself that he’d ask his Ancestors. I nodded and supported him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes - but just as he closed them, he got his answer.
“By setting them free, I can finally set myself free,” he said as he choked back his tears. “My pog (grandmother) said that to me.” He began to cry uncontrollably. His sister, lost for words, gently gave him a hug and looked away to wipe her tears.
By confronting his pain, not just with Betty, but with his grandmother, Tom started his journey toward healing. He realized that the key to freeing himself from a lifetime of heartache was not holding onto the past, but in learning to let it go.
*Please note that all stories I share are shared with the explicit permission of my clients. In some cases, certain details have been altered to protect their privacy and maintain confidentiality.
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