What I really love about How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is the way the show contends with trauma.
Margot's entire hypothesis is that by rejecting a traumatic event, by forgetting it, you can "become someone new," you can move on. But the show disproves that hypothesis.
Trying to "move on," trying to "forget" actually only brings more pain, more anxiety, more despair. Life remains off kilter for all of them. At the beginning of the series all of these women are stuck, are lost, are feeling out of place in some capacity — all because they haven't actually acknowledged the shit that's fucked them up.
For Greta and Jodie their separation— largely pushed by Margot— makes it so that they never actually get to talk about the church fire and all the guilt they hold about it. When Charles Sampson brings them together again, that's the first time that they might actually begin to process it. Jodie even says, "I want to tell my story... I am still there, in that place, on that night."
It's Jodie's desire to unpack that night and Greta's refusal to (first, with Sampson, and later, at Greta's house) that leads to Jodie's death — another accident, another point of trauma caused by refusing to think about and talk about the past.
Similarly, Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara have refused to discuss the night at the cabin since it happened. They end their friendship with Greta to "put it all behind them." Saoirse says early on "it DID happen" indicating that they have basically written it out of their memories (as best as they can). But it haunts them, it creeps up, because trauma doesn't just *vanish*
What is deeply tragic about all of their stories (Greta, Jodie, Saoirse, Robyn, Dara) is that if they had just TALKED about it, if they had held each other through all the grief and fear and guilt and agony, then they might have actually healed from it.
The show ends where Greta's trauma begins (the church yard), and it also ends with S, R, and D finally finding Greta (who symbolizes all the trauma they have from that night at the cabin). It is in the returning, the acknowledgement of the dark points in their youths that actually sets them free— well, not entirely free from the trauma, because it will always be there, but free from the weight of carrying it alone. They all have acknowledged it, come to some terms with it, and THAT is what will allow them to move forward, to become someone "new."
I think that that's the message I love most about this show: don't run from your trauma, look at it. Face it, however you need to.
I think that's fuckin beautiful.
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