The power of humour in dark times

How funny can become a super power

(Warning, some references to suicide and post natal depression in this post).

I have had a fair amount of trauma. Not to show off about it or like it’s something to get competitive about, but I lost my stepmother and baby sister to suicide when I was 15 (my step mum committed suicide whilst suffering with PND, and jumped from a building with my sister in her arms).

Later in life I went through 7 rounds of IVF, and whilst I was lucky enough to have 2 kids, I suffered 3 miscarriages in the process. These weren’t really acknowledged as such as were framed instead as ‘failed pregnancies’ at the time but there we go. Then my father became an alcoholic, and died of a ruptured aneurysm in 2020. He died alone in the first week of lockdown.

Is this an average amount of trauma? I know for a fact that there will be more. I am the Mad Max of trauma. I hurtle along, my chariot momentarily calm but knowing it will come. Small hurts. Big hurts.

It is inevitable.

Of course therapy has helped me overcome some of this stuff. And self-help books which I devour, and have devoured my entire life. I read these quickly, absorbing the tools, and tossing those aside that don’t resonate. I am cynical about some techniques and have formed my very own, self-help without bullshit tool kit. I want to feel better and live as good a life as I can.

I want to live (and this is always a question - do I want to live? And if the answer is yes then I have to find the things that will help me do that).

I finally feel that I am doing more than surviving. I can experience the flickers of light coming through the blinds.

And the one underlying thing that has kept me going is humour. This is something I learnt from my father. I wanted to make my Dad laugh from a young age. Like many daughters this was when my people pleasing kicked off in earnest. Then in the bleak, grey days and months after losing my stepmum and sister, there was an absence of anything funny. The world turned to dust. People looked grotesque when they laughed. It wasn’t right. This went on for a couple of years or more, this living in darkness and ash, and a hushed sense that we wouldn’t survive. I would find my dad some mornings lying in his bed, fully clothed, the CD player blasting Wagner at full volume. When he didn’t come home in the evenings I was sure he had died. Nobody talked about what had happened. We battened down the hatches, and stewed in our losses.

However as time moved on I would cling to the small moments when I’d see my dad laugh - usually when watching a show like ‘Have I got News for You?’ or anything satirical on TV (he loved comedy that poked fun at politicians). I marvelled at it and tried to build on these tiny moments. I would remind him of the thing that had made him laugh whilst we ate dinner together. I would work very hard to make more laughter come if I could. I willed it along.

When I started writing properly, I realised that a lot of my motivation was to see the humour, the stupid comedy in life. The more I practiced doing it, the more natural it became. My brain was helping me navigate pain by showing me something else.

Something that would allow the light to come through.

‘It was really funny,’ my dad said to me when my first book came out, ‘Can you believe you’ve actually got a book published? It’s pretty amazing.’

This silly side of me started blossoming even more when my first daughter was born. Each day I was struck by how fucking stupid we are when we think we can have a normal life, and be a parent to a thing that simply will not do what we want it to. The sleeplessness. The desperate desire to control. The optimism that the next day will be different, better. I would laugh at it all.

You see Dad was also saying to me - ‘Can you believe that we are surviving this thing? Can you believe we are still here?’

Then when I had my second daughter, Instagram was in full effect, and I used stories to tell people about my experiences. I wasn’t actively trying to be funny but perhaps reflecting on it, I was trying to make my dad laugh (he was never on social media though so wouldn’t have seen them). I got hundreds of messages from other mums who were struggling - they said these narratives were keeping them sane.

‘Being a mum is a complete shit show and I feel seen.’

‘I am literally on my knees with tiredness and you made me spit my coffee out just now.’

When we laugh we are collectively saying- ISN’T IT ACTUALLY FUNNY THAT WE ARE STILL HERE?

Humour is not about negating bad things, or trying to push them under the carpet. Instead it’s about letting things settle, reflecting on what’s happened, and realising that even when life is dark, or there’s a struggle, there’s a benefit in allowing the light in. When we are ready.

My father laughed despite the worst thing. It was his super power. Even now with his absence feeling stronger each month, I know this is my tool to survive. The one that self-help books don’t always tell you about. The one he gave me through genetics, and through observing how he lived his life.

‘Your dad had such a strange sense of humour,’ my aunt told me on a call not long after he’d died, ‘He’d laugh at things that nobody else found funny.’

‘It was his way of surviving,’ I replied, ‘It was his super power.’

After he died I found a bottle of craft beer, he’d bought along to a family get together at our house. The beer is called - ‘Rotten End.’ I have kept it next to the box containing his ashes on top of his piano.

‘Did you see it coming?’ I ask him, ‘You know it is actually a bit funny right that you left me with this?’

He would have laughed at the irony. Rotten End. We would have laughed at the bitterness of it.

Just as we always did.