The Past Can Hurt
But The Lion King shows us that you can either run from it or learn from it!
In a first for
, I am delighted to share a guest post from writing about one of her favourite childhood films, The Lion King, what it meant to her as a child and how it has helped her navigate the complexities of grief and trauma as an adult.Though we have yet to meet in person, Clare and I often seem to have lived parallel lives - early losses, late coming outs (mine/hers), working in the world of development and human rights and the highs and lows of freelance writing - and whenever I read Clare’s words I am struck by the many resonances in our experiences. I was delighted to share this essay by Clare on AutCasts and to have an excuse to return to The Lion King, a movie I had not seen since I was a child. Through characteristic care and vulnerability, Clare takes on a fraught journey with Simba, an actual outcast, who must summon the courage to confront his past in order to return home, fulfil his destiny and find some healing.
What The Lion King Can Teach us About Grief and Trauma
By
Content warning: grief, sexual violence
Most people have a special place in their hearts for the movies they loved during childhood. The Lion King was always my favourite. I loved the songs, the story and the quirky characters. What I didn't understand as a child was how much it had to teach me about thriving after grief and serious trauma.
The Lion King is a 1994 American coming-of-age, musical animation feature film produced by Disney studios. Loosely based on the Shakespeare play Hamlet, The Lion King follows Simba, a young prince who flees from his kingdom when his uncle Scar murders his father, Mufasa. Simba remains in exile for many years under the care and tutelage of two friends, Timone and Pumba, before returning to his kingdom to oust the tyrannical Scar and reclaim his throne.
A problem-free philosophy?
I was 7 years old when The Lion King was released in 1994. I loved the delightful cast of characters, especially Zazu (the mouthy hornbill), Timone (the witty meerkat) and Pumba (the flatulent warthog). I loved the opening sequence - the wide, watercolour-esque landscape and the orchestra of animals who arrive to meet their newborn king. I loved Simba’s wide-eyed cuteness and Rafiki’s sage-like authority. I’m not the only one. The Lion King has a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The website's critical consensus reads, "Emotionally stirring, richly drawn, and beautifully animated, The Lion King stands tall within Disney's pantheon of classic family films."
In many ways, Disney music was the soundtrack to my childhood. The Lion King is elevated by Hans Zimmer’s superb score and Elton John’s iconic songwriting. With my siblings, I would sing those songs on long car journeys. Just once, I remember how our small voices stumbled into a perfect “wimba-wa” harmony when we sang ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. I remember the focused intensity in our eyes and how one sibling jammed their fingers in their ears so they wouldn’t be distracted and lose their way through the simple tune.
I remember watching TV next to my mother, as Elton John sang ‘Candle in the Wind’ at Princess Diana’s funeral. The Princess died in a car crash in August 1997. I didn’t know it then, but a decade later, my mother would also be killed in a car accident on a wet August night. I’ve written a lot about her death. I was 19 at the time, and her loss upended my life.
Those kings will always be there to guide you. And so will I…
After my mother’s death, I returned to the comfort of The Lion King but found I couldn’t watch beyond the devastation of Mufasa’s horrific death. I was so overcome with emotion that I couldn’t move through the rest of the story. I couldn’t watch Simba find a new adoptive family with Timone and Pumba. I couldn’t sing the songs. I couldn’t imagine anything but the bottomless loss, the crushing certainty that I would never be the same again. For years, I replayed the shock of her death. Like water circling a plughole, I couldn’t find my way out of a grief-stricken loop. I traced every aspect of my mother’s final days - what she’d said, how she’d felt, what she would’ve wanted me to do next. Without my mother, I was weightless in the world. She had given me life, but her life didn’t exist anymore.
To me, The Lion King is about facing the trauma of your past in order to fulfil your rightful destiny. As a cub, Simba watches his father die. He is bereft. Without his father, the world no longer makes sense. Both emotionally and practically, he is adrift and Scar takes advantage of this enormous vulnerability. Scar tricks Simba into believing that he caused Mufasa’s death and, unable to face the deep shame of his new reality, Simba flees from his life. He leaves his home in Pride Rock, his mother, his friends and his future.
Everything you ever told me was a lie!
Children are always vulnerable to manipulation. Their young brains are still developing, and their moral understanding of the world is very basic. Children often internalize the negative things that happen to them. They believe that if something bad happens, it’s because they are bad or that they caused or deserved it. Or at least, that’s what happened to me. I was sexually abused as a child, and believed it was my fault. Experiencing sexual violence leaves survivors with a wide range of emotions, and a profound sense of shame is often among them.
I find it hard to write about shame. Intellectually, I know the abuse wasn’t my fault. I always want to reassure other survivors that the shame belongs to the perpetrator, not the person who was targeted. But when it comes to my own experience, there is often a whisper of doubt. The trauma inflicted by childhood sexual abuse is often foundational. It shapes the child’s sense of self, and becomes part of their core understanding of the world. As adults, we understand that we have nothing to be ashamed of, but our deepest emotions don’t always reflect that.
Brene Brown makes a clear distinction between guilt and shame:
Shame is “I am bad”.
Guilt is “I did something bad”.
But, sexual violence leaves behind a deep-seated feeling of wrongness. I’ve spent years wading through the thick black tar of shame, and still haven’t fully excised it from my psyche. On difficult days, its thick tentacles coil around the core of who I am and make me want to die.
Like Simba, I left the place I grew up and built a new life somewhere else. Many survivors have to. Too often, communities are unwilling to deal with the trauma of sexual violence and find it easier to disbelieve survivors or side with perpetrators. Other survivors leave because they find it easier to heal and move forward in a different context. But as Simba discovers, leaving home doesn't mean you can leave the past behind you.
Simba reconnects with his childhood friend, Nala, who describes how Pride Rock has deteriorated under Scar's rule. She persuades Simba to return home and fight to regain his rightful place as king.
You can either run from it or learn from it…
This is where my story diverges from Simba’s. I’m not royal (!), and will never return to the place I grew up. But I have made a new home with my partner. I’ve funneled the pain and trauma of my past into a newsletter where I write about what it means to recover after serious trauma. This summer, I’ve been working to reimagine the
newsletter as an early-stage social enterprise. Brene Brown’s research has found that shame needs three things to thrive: secrecy, silence and judgment. What shame cannot survive is empathy. I want to build an organisation that helps survivors of sexual violence feel less alone, and that provides them with the empathy, support and resources they need to rebuild their lives.For years, I told almost no-one about the abuse. Back then, it didn’t feel survivable. But I, like Simba, have found a way to come to terms with my past. That work is never done, but I have built a life that far exceeds my wildest dreams.
As a child, I often craved the comfort of a Disney movie. I wanted to see “good” triumph over “evil” and experience the psychological satisfaction of feeling like the world made sense. But the world is infinitely more complicated than that. Back in 1994, our society wasn’t thinking critically about class or colonialism. The Lion King uncritically celebrates a monarchy, and the logical domination of some animals over others. Contrast that with the hard-won harmony that’s depicted between predator and prey in Zootopia which was released 2016. The Lion King celebrates the circle of life, the supposed “natural” order of things. But the concept of “natural” is often used as a tool of oppression. Last year, I wrote about queer ecology, and how depicting people as “unnatural” is often a step towards dehumanizing them. Like much of culture in the 1990s, The Lion King seems to view Africa not as a continent, but as a country. Wikipedia tells me that the film is set in Tanzania, but the film never makes that clear. In 1994, this wasn’t controversial. It was common to think of the African continent as a vast expanse of indistinct people and places. In recent years, Disney has had to reckon with its exoticization of indigenous cultures in films like Aladdin and Pochahontas, among others. They have remedied this to some extent with more recent offerings like Lilo & Stitch and Moana.
At its core, The Lion King is a classic story of good versus evil. It’s about facing the trauma of your past, and trying to find a way to live alongside it. It’s about confronting your shame, and working to liberate yourself from it. That liberation is never tidy or complete, but it is possible. If you’re willing to look at the worst things that have ever happened to you, you might find a more authentic path toward your future. Or maybe you’ll decide to leave the past behind you and sing a song instead.
Clare Egan is an award-winning writer, editor and social entrepreneur. Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Longreads, The Irish Times and others. Clare is the founder of Beyond Survival, a publication which aims to change the conversation about life after sexual violence. She lives in Dublin with her partner and pets.
Thank you so much to Clare for sharing her insights on The Lion King and her experiences as a survivor who continues to support others. I’ll be back next time with something special I’ve been calling ‘Blast from the Jungle.’ In the meantime, why not share your favourite memory of The Lion King or another animated epic from your childhood?
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