peeling and healing

She never signed up for this……

She was 17, trying to escape problems with her mom, when she ran away—to the home of a family member, hundreds of miles away.   A few weeks later, her father arrived to make peace and bring her home for Christmas.   On Christmas Eve, they boarded a plane together to fly home.

She didn’t get to thank him.   And she never got to say goodbye.

She was the last of 27 survivors pulled out of the wreckage of Allegheny Flight 736 on December 24, 1968—after it crashed into a deserted snow-covered field outside Bradford, Pennsylvania— killing 20 people, including—her dad.

Weeks in the hospital allowed her body to recover; the emotions weren’t that easy.

It’s hard to imagine how a teenager would begin to handle the overwhelming jumble of feelings that would follow such a trauma.

Mostly she couldn’t—and mostly she didn’t even try. “I was lost in life.. no direction, no anchor, no feeling, no self.  I felt like a shell with nothing in it.”

In her thirties, she began to do what she needed:  finding books, therapists, workshops, anything that would help her “bring forth the happy spirit that lived beneath the wings of a broken airplane. “

Kristen King describes her healing as “peeling an onion—multiple levels through many modalities”….a process that ultimately helped her feel “fully ignited in life” –with hope that her journey will inspire and help others.

Part of that journey sent her from California, 40 years later, back across the country to the rural Pennsylvania crash site she had never seen.   And part of her mission was to bring together other survivors of the crash—and their rescuers—who had survived their own version of hell that night.

For the first time she met the other survivors.

For the first time, she met the man who had saved her life.

For the first time, she heard stories of the local people who heard the crash and rushed there in snowmobiles to reach people trapped in the upside down plane,  using nothing but hand tools and their own ingenuity.   They carried away survivors and their own emotional scars, as they returned to their families for Christmas.

In addition to donating a plaque at the site,  Kristen made a film of her trip, Return to Bradford.

I heard Kristen’s story when she cut my hair recently,  my first haircut after donating 15 inches.  Hearing her story of survival, I found myself thinking about my own.

Most of us haven’t survived horrific plane crashes that killed our fathers.  Most of us haven’t survived life-threatening accidents or illnesses.  But we all have hurts buried in our hearts.  And though most of our healing stories don’t require a trip across the country, it can be just as hard to heal a hurt —when the journey is only a few steps—- across the street….or even across the room.

We’re lucky.   Though the body has finite limitations,  the heart has an infinite capacity to expand and to heal.   There are no rules; no  timetables;  no boundaries.   Like Kristen King, we’re all survivors—-with  the ability to reach inside, to reach back—and to reach out.