I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Grinch, about trauma, about childhood, and about love.

I sort of feel like we all got the Grinch a bit wrong and a bit right. I’m not usually one who is keen to apply intense analysis to children’s stories that are meant to teach kindness, rightness, wrongness, meanness and bullying. With any story we read I strongly feel it’s important to just accept the story for what it is; to not analyze or apply your own world view onto whatever the author was trying to convey. I mean, really, think of every high school English class where you’re called to intensely analyze a sentence or a paragraph and somehow extract a different meaning than the simple and beautiful story on the page before you. That said, I’m going to play a little game of ‘pretend’ here about what came ‘before.’

In the story, the Grinch is the bad guy who finds redemption in the unconditional and welcoming acceptance and love of the Who’s and so becomes this changed character who exemplifies and embodies all the good things we want our children to become as adults.

What isn’t address is why the Grinch was so darned Grinch-y at all. Why was his heart so small? Why were his shoes too tight? Why was he alone with his dog at the top of a cold and dark mountain, living a hermits life and wishing revenge on any and all who celebrated love and joy and light?

What if the Grinch represents to us what happens when a child who is bullied, abused, neglected, has undiagnosed and unaddressed mental health challenges like dyslexia, dyspraxia, adhd or autism? What happens to children when they are teased incessantly? Tickled or hugged without their permission? Molested or touched and told to ignore it? Children who are not welcome unless they smile, regardless of what’s happened that day?

I think about events that went unaddressed in my own childhood only to be multiplied and expanded as I reached adulthood – the big obvious acts committed by men – and those are behind the doors of ‘we’re not talking about that’, but also the small traumas that come alongside gossip and the challenges of navigating ‘friendships’ with girl-groups when acceptance requires the type of resume I never had. If you take the time to apply a chicken-or-the-egg logic (which came first), there’s a lot that can be argued about being a smart autistic girl growing up in the 80s (undiagnosed), and how vulnerable that can make a person to predators, and also to rejection by peers. How mystifying I found navigating friendship with other girls, and how much easier life was to me if I just worked being physically superior to everyone else (as a middle-aged adult, I’m 5’1″ and about 110lbs, so I was never truly impressive in the whole physically superior categories). I think about the hardness in my own heart that I hide and cover up with smiles and make up for by trying to help others. I wonder at my own reactions (tears and fear and distrust and worry) when someone starts to show acceptance and love to me. I think about the physical hurt that’s in my chest as I navigate true healing and love, of my heart actually growing in size. As I shared with a coworker today, as a child I would exasperate my mother by constantly bringing home “strays” – people and animal alike – and this further exemplifies my point about a child trying to navigate their own trauma or hurt or loneliness by trying to fix and heal others. The first instinct in a child is to help, and children who know hurt empathize by trying to heal everyone they can in all the ways their small hands and minds can (in my case, my mom was -and is- healer to all, and so to her I brought everyone).

I’m not like the Grinch in many ways; Christmas to me contains an unimaginable joy and hope that I have never been able to quantify. Even before I became a Christian and a baptized Catholic, the Spirit that infuses Christmas is infectious to me, and a nectar that I simply cannot resist. I love joy, I love to give, I have always fully and wholly felt the spirit of Christmas even when my own world was filled with stress and anxiety and worry and fear.

But, the heart growing three sizes… that’s something I’m learning to understand. I would not have ever thought that my heart was too small – I give! I give and volunteer and help and spread cheer! I would argue with a huge smile … look at all my baking! look at all of my gifts! look at how pretty my wrapping is! my beautiful tree! look at that person I helped! look at the animals – they like me too! (notice all the exclamation points trying, in vain, to make a desperate point about how great I was/am/are/will be?)

Yesterday, Sunday, as I knelt in prayer following Holy Communion, a fellow choir-members sweet daughter came up to me and gently touched my shoulder… and at all of maybe 3 years old, much like little Susie Who, asked me… “why are you sad?” and she showed me her prayer card, and then she went and mimicked me in prayer… and she came back and touched my shoulder again and said “time to stop, don’t be sad”… and the sweet spirited girl would not stop until I finally sat up and sat on my chair, feeling thoroughly warmed through… and feeling that same hard lumpy ache in my chest I feel when someone gives me an unexpectedly big hug, or clasps my hand, or truly and unconditionally shows their welcome of me.

And so I wonder about the Grinch. Who hurt him? Who filled his life with the 20,000 rejections, corrections, and snide comments that slowly, slowly and inevitably cause us to wall off our hearts, to build protective layers; For some people those layers are sarcasm; Some it’s a snarky and sharp wit designed to fend others off quickly; Some, it’s a bright smile and a gift for giving to others so others don’t look too closely at all that is missing and wanting there.

I asked, recently, about healing Masses. “Why do they hurt so much?” – I need to know. Why, when I attend, are memories I have intentionally suppressed… things I absolutely do.not.want.to.remember surfacing? I was told that part of healing is remembering what others have done to me. I guess it’s also in forgiveness. It’s in prayer. It’s in realizing that people still love you and accept you no matter how broken you think you are, deep down inside.

That God is there and he not only Loves unconditionally, but has been there the whole time just waiting for you to look at Him and ask for help. He’s been helping all along, we just often don’t see it for what it is.

So. Growing our hearts 3 sizes is a necessary pain. A healing pain. A pain of remembrance; a pain of acknowledging that we are broken; a pain that comes from breaking the rust on the sealed hinges of the doors we slammed into place around our heart and memories to protect us. I think it’s a process that takes more than a day. However, the Grinch was a only story and the truly unconditional love of the Who’s can only come from God Himself; there is no power on earth that can help us open those walls.

Whoever is reading this: I love you. If you are like me, our journey is long from over. I don’t know what the journey leads to, but I feel like it’s a necessary wrestling in order to be able to fully give love back to those who love us in our lives. In order to fully love God, I must heal enough to fully accept His love without question.