What a century the last three months have been. Unrelenting chaos, an increasingly rapid news cycle, and new pressures in our daily lives – it’s a lot to cope with. It’s hard to name the feeling or the root cause of dysregulation when there is so much coming in. For me, the feeling is grief.
Grief is a natural emotional response to the loss of someone or something important. In this case, those somethings lost are human rights, a sense of security and opportunity, and the innocence of our children. I am grieving a way of life that, while not perfect, at least felt like there was some semblance of fairness. Now in my 10th year of this new normal, I’m still going through the five stages of grief, as well as observing others in their grieving process.
Denial is a defense mechanism that helps buffer the initial shock of a loss, giving the nervous system additional time to process overwhelming emptions. Denial takes a lot of forms, including avoidance and escapism. Another form of denia8 l that I have observed over the last 10 years is the desire to exoticise what is happening and characterize it as something foreign. “1939 Germany.” “Y’all Qaeda.” It’s tempting to fall back to American exceptionalism: “This isn’t who we are!” or “I never thought *it* could happen here.” The uncomfortable truth is that the ugliness we’re seeing across US culture IS who we are. Our country’s origin myth celebrates a sect of religious fanatics who, though they wanted the right to practice their religion, did not embrace freedom or rights on a broader scale. The Nuremburg laws were inspired by American Jim Crow. Framing our current reality it as something foreign absolves Americans of our responsibility to do better. It’s time to move past denial.
Anger is easy to understand. Rage, cursing people’s mamas. Shouting at the TV or your computer or your social media feed.
Bargaining entails attempts to regain control or negotiate a way to reverse or soften the loss and restore an individual’s sense of agency and safety. “If X% of the population sustains protest over Y amount of time, this will all be over.” “If I sit at home and be quiet, I won’t be targeted.” “If this was a Madeline L’Engle book, I could travel through time and space to alter a critical event in history and all of these problems would go away.” “I’m [insert ethnicity/gender/social class], so they’ll leave me alone.” My maternal grandmother had a saying, “If ifs and buts were candies and nuts then every day would be Christmas.” There’s no magic formula for protecting oneself against state violence.
Depression. Yes. This is all so sad and infuriating and it is hard to see a way out. Functional freeze. Doom scrolling. D’oh – now we’re back to cursing the TV news host and wishing for a time machine to undo some critical event that got us here.
Acceptance is such a radical concept. Acceptance is not the same as resignation. Acceptance requires us to get curious about United States and World History to improve our understanding of how and why we ended up on this timeline. Acceptance requires us to be accountable and forgiving of ourselves for some of the bad choices we have to make in order to survive Capitalism. Acceptance requires us to acknowledge the general fvck3d-uppedness of reality and find something to do to move the needle forward. Volunteer for food rescue. Support programs that fight poverty. Volunteer to read with kids. Support organizations that facilitate economic self-determination among historically excluded communities. Support our constitutional rights. Support organizations that continue to cultivate the study of accurate and inclusive history.
