We Don’t Talk About Bruno

By Marie Duquette

For twenty-five years, Mariska Hargitay has played Olivia Benson on Law & Order SVU--the Law & Order spin-off that focuses on crimes that include sexual assault. She wrote a personal essay for People Magazine (January 22, 2024) in which she tells the story of being date-raped in her thirties. It was the first time she shared this experience publicly. In explaining why she had finally come forward, she wrote, “…my hope was for people to be able to talk about sexual assault the same way they now talk about cancer. Tell someone you’ve survived cancer, and you’re celebrated. I want the same response for sexual assault survivors. I want no shame with the victim. The shame of the act belongs with the perpetrator: they’re the ones who committed the heinous, shameful act.”

This is exactly what I think about mental illness. I want people to be able to talk about their mental health, when it is stable, and when it is wobbling, in the same matter-of-fact way that we talk to people who have cancer.

My first friend who had breast cancer died within two years of being diagnosed. This was in 1993. We had been pregnant together; our children were toddlers. When I think about her now, I remember how everyone, me included, kept their distance once she was diagnosed. We simply did not know how to engage in conversation with her about something so frightening and tragic.

Since then, we have learned how to talk about cancer with those who are living through it. It is now acceptable to ask: how many chemo treatments do you have left? Is this new medication helping your nausea? How is your fatigue today? We know that a person living with cancer is not to blame for having it. We also know that cancer does not discriminate—any body is an acceptable receptacle for it to wreak its havoc.

Mental illness, however, remains stigmatized in much the same way as being sexually assaulted. Both carry a sense of shame, often imposed by an unspoken judgment that implies the illness or injury could have been prevented if only the victim had done something differently. This makes it difficult to have honest conversations with survivors of sexual violence and those who live with mental illness. This inability to have open and compassionate conversations often leaves the one carrying the pain feeling even more isolated and unjustly ashamed.

As I write this now, I realize there may be no limit to conversations we ought to have openly and compassionately. Conversations that are silenced by awkwardness and fear of hearing things that make us uncomfortable and unwilling to acknowledge this discomfort.

I once knew a woman whose eighteen-year-old daughter developed schizophrenia. The daughter had broken her foot when she jumped off the roof of their three-story home. I went to sit with the family, thinking it might be helpful for them to talk, but we could not talk because we spent so much time taking turns making sure the daughter did not jump off the roof again. In her mania, she insisted that God was telling her to jump, that she was not worthy to live, that she had an illness that made her sin. I have rarely felt so ill-equipped to be helpful in my life. When I think about her now, I wonder if the voice telling her these things gets to all of us eventually—those who have been sexually assaulted, those who live with mental illness, those whose relationships do not follow the trajectory for happy endings.

Recently, I read an essay by a woman whose child died last year. She said that a friend had asked her how she was doing in her grief, adding this phrase to her inquiry, “Please know that I would not ask if I did not have the capacity to hold space for you, so you don’t have to pretend that you’re okay.”

Holding space refers to being fully present with someone, physically, mentally, and emotionally. It means sitting with someone in such a way that they feel supported so that they feel cared for, seen, not judged. It means showing up prepared to let this time be all about the other person.

I’ve thought about that sentiment, “I would not ask if I did not have the capacity to hold space for you.” Perhaps we don’t “have the capacity to hold space” for one another, and we know it. Perhaps we don’t know what to do if the injured person doesn’t act like they are okay. Perhaps we wrongly assume that if we bring up the illness, the loss, or the experience, it will remind them of it, as if it wasn’t already the primary thing they think about day and night.

And yet, could it be that by not having hard conversations, we are denying ourselves the chance to learn how to have them, and we are settling for silence and distance when we could experience connection and closeness?

Somehow, we need to read these silent spaces and discern more intentionally whether what is needed is simply our presence, or our words. And if it is our words, we need to choose words that acknowledge how messy and painful the truth is without trying to do so in a way that is clean and efficient. For example, to someone who lives with mental illness, we can choose to say, “Did you take your meds?” Or we can choose to say, “How does the grayness of winter affect you? I know for me it makes me want to sleep all the time.” The difference is that the first question presumes judgment and puts the onus for health on the one who is suffering, whereas the second question presumes shared experience and puts the onus for health on both of us for being willing to talk about how we really are.

There is no easy solution to this cultural problem of avoiding hard conversations, but there are steps we can take to begin the practice. One step is simply to realize that hard conversations are redemptive not just for the one who needs to talk, but for those who are listening. Holding space so that another can share the truth of their experience opens a door to connection, whose healing benefits we will never understand, unless we are willing to unlock it.

Marie Duquette is a writer, teacher, and  pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). She is an advocate for racial justice, economic equity, and mental health. She is working on her first book, due out in February 2025.

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