Even her father-in-law, Michael’s uncle—who was present in the aftermath of the shooting, who took Caroline and her family in for three or four months when she couldn’t function on her own—would tell people, “She’s back to normal, one hundred percent.”
“Are you kidding me?” Caroline said with a rueful laugh. “But it made him feel better.”
Now, in many ways, stability has returned. The boys are adults, married, a couple with kids of their own. Caroline and her husband live in the US, thousands of miles away from Michael, across an international border, where the chances that he would track them down seeking revenge for her testifying are slim, nearly impossible. But the fear hasn’t dissolved.
“He was family,” Caroline said. “He lived in our home. We trusted him. And the last thing he said to me was, ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this.’ If he didn’t know why he tried to kill me—and he’s family—who else out there is going to try to hurt me just because?”
Caroline told me she’s scared all the time, always expecting somebody to come and finish what Michael started. She doesn’t go outside and garden, something she used to enjoy, because someone could walk up behind her and she wouldn’t know they were there. Even indoors she’s on constant alert. She doesn’t move around her house without an alarm button she can press if someone breaks in. If she misplaces the alarm, she can’t breathe until she finds it.
“For a while, I went back and lived in the home where he shot me,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let him take my home away from me. I was going to take it back.”
But it was too terrifying and painful to live in the place where she’d nearly died. They moved far away, to a safe and friendly community in the southern United States, near a beautiful lake where they take their boat on the weekends. Even so, she lives in fear.
“Sixteen years of living like this isn’t living,” she said.
She felt imprisoned by the past, and she desperately wanted to be free.
As we spoke, I heard so much love and strength and determination in Caroline. I also recognized four behaviors she was practicing that were keeping her stuck in the past and stuck in fear.
For one thing, she was exerting a lot of energy trying to change her feelings, to convince herself to feel differently from the way she actually felt.
“I’m blessed,” she said. “I know I’m blessed! I’m alive. I have all these people who love me.”
“Yes!” I said. “It’s true. But don’t try to cheer yourself up when you feel sad. It’s not going to help. You’re just going to feel guilty, that you should be feeling better than you’re feeling. Try this instead. Acknowledge the feeling. It’s grief. It’s fear. It’s sadness. Just acknowledge it. And then give up the need for others’ approval. They can’t live your life. They can’t feel your feelings.”
In addition to trying to reason herself out of her very reasonable sadness and fear, Caroline lived in the prison of trying to protect others from her feelings. The people who love us want the best for us. They don’t want us to hurt. And so it’s tempting to show them the version of ourselves they long to see. But when we deny or minimize what we’re feeling, it backfires.
Caroline told me that since the shooting, she and her husband had always had dogs, but when their dog died recently, her husband, not understanding how much a dog improved her sense of safety, said he needed time before they brought a new one into their family.
“I was really angry,” she said. “But I couldn’t tell him that. The logical thing would’ve been to say, ‘I’m afraid to be alone without a dog.’ But I wouldn’t say it. I think he would understand—but I didn’t want him to know I still have that level of fear. I don’t know why.”
I told her she was protecting him from worry. From guilt. But she was also depriving him, not letting him in. Denying him the opportunity to try to protect her.
Caroline said she was doing the same thing with her sons. “I don’t think they know how imprisoned I am. I try not to let them know.”
“But you’re lying. You’re not being the whole you to your family. You’re depriving yourself of freedom. And you’re depriving them, too. Your strategy for dealing with your difficult emotions has become another problem.”
In protecting others from her feelings, Caroline was avoiding taking responsibility for them.
And in remaining consumed by fear, she was giving too much power to Michael and the past.
“My husband and I were just three years married,” she said. “We were joining together as a new family, the boys embracing me as their mother, starting a beautiful life. And Michael took it.” Her chin stiffened. She clenched her hands into fists.
“He took it?”
“He targeted me. He came to my house with a gun. He put two bullets in my head and left me for dead.”
“Yes, he held a gun. Yes, you did what you had to do to stay alive. But nobody can take your inner life or responses from you. Why do you give him more power?”
She’d been victimized in a horrifically cruel and violent way. She had every right to every feeling about it—rage, sorrow, fear, grief. Michael had almost robbed her of her life. But that was sixteen years ago. Even when he was released on parole, he was only a distant threat—far away, with no permission to travel, and no way to find her. Yet she was giving her power away to
