My poor friends! I see you out there, having to face horrible things as this Coronavirus descends on our communities and we’re left without leadership. We’re all terrified and trying to figure out what comes next and facing outcomes that we haven’t seen for generations.
As for me and my fellow crisis comrades, we’re doing great. People with PTSD or extensive trauma histories are finally taking a deep breath. The day all our hypervigilance has been preparing us for is here!
I watch my normal friends reaching these grim conclusions about what is in store for us, and my reaction…well, have you ever been stuck at a dead party? And everyone is bored and inertia has set in, and then, just when you think someone has to call this off already, the door bursts open and in come new partygoers with fresh booze and a ‘we’re here to freak out’ attitude. I feel like opening up my arms as I slosh a cocktail around and saying “Welcome friends! I’ve been waiting for you! [hic]” Grim resignation followed by defiant optimism is a basically my brand.
Bear runs a nursing home and I am a medically fragile obsessive panic news reader, so the Coronavirus has been ruling our life and there’s just not one positive prediction in the whole mess. No matter what source it’s coming from, it all just promises to be really bad and tragic in ways we aren’t even imagining yet. I won’t feed your fears the specifics, but I am not one to get caught up in panic and yet I am still seeing radical cultural changes coming for us.
But we will get through this. With losses and sadness and tragedy, most of us will get through this, grieving the ones who don’t. This is well-worn territory for some of us hard luck kids. Since calamity is the only hometown I have, let me show you around.
Panic is completely unproductive. Worrying won’t prevent calamity, it will only double your grief. Set limits on your news intake. Read enough to be responsible but don’t go “Doomscrolling” which is a genius term I saw pinging around twitter. Feed your brain whatever feeds your spirit. Art, music, podcasts, deep conversations, good books. Make your best, most mindful media choices.
Don’t avoid your grief. This has taken me 40 years to learn and now I’m so speedy I can feel the small griefs immediately and be done with them forever. Grief will not be ignored and will blow your life up however it needs to in order to get your attention. This is true for the devastating griefs that come from losing someone we love, to the stupid griefs of the daily disappointments of canceled plans. It’s not relative. If we don’t stop and say, “yes, that’s sad. I feel sad about that.” and take the time to feel our feelings, our feelings will feel us and by the end of the day you are shouting at your husband for his cavalier attitude about leftovers in the midst of a quarantine.(Just a random example, totally unconnected from anything I actually did. Just off the top of the dome. Yeah, that’s it.) People without a lot of experience with dealing with negative emotions often feel that opening up to the feelings is threatening. Like there is no bottom, or the feelings will overwhelm you to the point that you are lost. I promise that’s not true. It’s awful, but there is an end. The tears won’t last forever. There will come a time when you say, “That’s done now.” The better practice you get dealing with your negative emotions, the faster that time comes.
Seek out connection. Talk one on one to the people you love. Whatever tech you use to do it, just do it. Get out of your head and remind yourself that the whole world is full of people just like you, with hopes and dreams and rich internal lives. That no matter what you think or experience, you are not alone in that. If the fearful thoughts or tragic emotions ping around the inside of your head without an outside influence, they will just get faster and faster and faster until you reach panic. So get them out of your head.
Journal. In a notes app or through copy/pasted Facebook comments if you have to. Get the thoughts out of your head, but also, create yourself a record. Of other times you conquered hard things, survived a terrible loss, learned a profound lesson. And then go back to those journals when you need a reminder that all this will pass, for better or for worse. Looking back through my own journals has taught me a lot, reminded me of what I needed to remember, but most of all, taught me that no matter how much something hurt in the moment, with enough time and resilience, you will keep going. Sometimes it’s even shocking to me to discover something I’ve forgotten. How could I forget something that caused me so much pain? But you do. That’s how time and brains work. I doubt we’ll forget this time, but even if we don’t, the emotions will recede.
Make something. Remind yourself that you have the power to take concrete action. All it takes is baking something, writing a poem, mending a hem, weeding a garden, creating an idea. So much of the fear we are all feeling is existential. This feels like a threat to human existence, so combat that feeling by proving you exist now. Make something that wasn’t there before and get a taste of your power as a human.
Move your body. Listen to the trauma survivors: You need those toxic stress chemicals out of your body. We are all – especially small powerless children – being flooded with cortisol, adrenaline, and a host of other hormones and brain chemicals that are trying to keep us safe. But if there’s no way to fight and there’s no way to flee, those chemicals serve no purpose and can become toxic. (Read The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris for more on this subject.) So we need to give those chemicals a purpose. Run, dance, flail your arms over your head as you run around screaming for a minute. Just get those chemicals out so your nervous system can calm down. We’re big fans of dance parties at my house, so I made a spotify playlist for a kid friendly dance party.
Embrace adaptation. The whole world is getting a glimpse of the work of disability advocates now. Able to work from home? Thank a disabled person, who probably didn’t get your job. Relying on delivery services you thought were only for lazy people? You’re welcome for that too. The entire concept that as human beings we are more than what we can achieve that makes money for somebody already rich? Welcome to Crip Theory. This whole radical mind shift has been one of my greatest joys in being Atti’s mom. I couldn’t get there for myself, with my own invisible disabilities. I could only get there for him and then go, “Wait a minute. If he gets to do things the way they work best for him and not according to some arbitrary social rule…does that mean *I COULD TOO*??” And from that moment on my whole life has exploded in joy. Just think about all the things you really shit on yourself for. The “bad habits” and neglected chores that you cover yourself in shame over. What if you didn’t have to feel that anymore? It’s true! It takes trial and error and a lot of creativity, but if you build a life that works for your own needs and regular human biodiversity, you will be shocked at how much better everything gets. Here’s one dumb example: I am a night owl. But my whole life I have TORTURED myself (and been tortured by people enforcing social norms) over my mornings. Coming from religion, I was taught that early to bed early to rise was the only way to function. When I couldn’t get myself up for early morning seminary despite working two jobs and taking a full course load at the community college, all the adults in my life viewed it as a character flaw and gave me consequences accordingly. There was no framework at all for me to shrug and say “people are wired differently, what are you gonna do?” I was just lazy. Now, we know better. I still have responsibilities in the morning, so I still have to build a life that includes a 7am wakeup, but I can build in supportive systems to make that happen and I can stop feeling like hot garbage for not being able to hop out of bed like god himself prodded me awake. Often the solutions aren’t even that big a deal, but the act of acknowledging that you need one is what is transformative.
Depend on the kindness of strangers. This is really only news to people who have a lot of privilege. It’s a pretty common approach for all kinds of marginalized groups. Disabled people, gay or trans people, black people, immigrants, these have always been the communities where I found resonance for myself, largely because they are communities that rely on mutual and community caregiving to survive. If you don’t have the “assigned relationships” of family or systems or other traditional roles, you still need community. And if there are forces in this world out to get you, you learn to find that community in all kinds of unconventional ways. When I was Mormon, the thought of not having that community kept me from leaving for a long time. But community is all around us. You make community one person at a time, looking out for people who look out for you. If you are a loving person, love will rise up to meet you. I bet my life on it every day.
It is what it is. This is the catchphrase of grim resignation and one of the fastest ways to spot a trauma survivor in the wild. Some things can’t be changed, they can only be borne. This world is hard and brutal and most people don’t have their needs met. Some of us get to live in comfortable fictions that say that’s not the case, but a global pandemic sure cuts through privilege and individualism to show everyone up close that they are not special, they are not immune, and they are not going to get through this life without knowing trauma of one kind or another. Losing those coping narratives is traumatic and I have genuine empathy for those of you just discovering how rigged this world is. I especially feel for religionists who have been taught that following a rigid set of regulations will inure them from calamity, because I spent a whole lot of time in that space. It didn’t work. Even a little. I have my own feelings about what calamity is for and why god allows it, but no matter where the beliefs come from or end up, it is shattering to lose that certainty. I also believe it’s essential to lose that certainty, but my surgeries have been essential and that didn’t make them good either.
I feel for you, new partygoers, and I hope that I can stand here like a lighthouse. There is a way through the fog. It may require embracing some new realities, but you will find benefits from it. You will have more empathy and depth and understanding, which will improve every one of your relationships, most of all with yourself.
