Today I Just Wept

Today I just wept.  My anger has bled out of me.  I am now just deeply, deeply sad.  It hurts, excrutiatingly, to watch the video of the life seeping out of George Floyd.  I don’t understand how anyone can watch that video – or any of the thousands of others – and not weep for days. 

I wrote that paragraph in July of this year.  I was sitting alone, away from my friends, most family and the city I love.  I was engaged in a friendly email debate with an acquaintance about systemic racism – what it is, and how it is still shamingly present today.  I had been reading and watching Trump and his cutting, evil vitriol whitewashed in a haze of “greats,” “amazings,” and “wins.”  I had been watching the local brawls over the Confederate statue in the middle of Pensacola, and the town near me with 30% positive Co-Vid tests try to “fire,” debase and shame the mayor for suggesting a mask order.  I was overwhelmed and drowning in a sense of horror and trappedness.

Compassion is unequivocally good.  It must be our first response, and then our guide.  But I flailed around in it for a while, barely keeping my head above water, no ground under my feet and no place to channel the deep sadness, hurt and horror.  As a therapist, my clients would often come to me in that place – drowning and just desperately hanging on.  I could be their life preserver.  I could pull them into my boat and row toward the shore.  But I had a hard time doing that for myself! 

Instead my emotions were suffocating me.  I was responding to vitriol and hatred with vitriol and hatred.  I was exploding with rage and punching the air with futility.  Until finally all of that passion bled out of me and I landed where so many people are – feeling helpless, powerless and exhausted.

But, this is not my steady state.  My deep emotion, passion and yes, even anger, have always been my strengths.  If I can channel them.  I am white and middle class, so I have been steeped in a sense of power in the world since I was little.  How can I mobilize that and channel it skillfully? 

That’s really my job now – to mobilize the strengths and resources that I have access to, and use them toward MANIFESTING love, equity, wisdom and peace in the world.  And what does that look like in this exact place and time?

I can tell you what I’ve been doing, but you are a part of this army too.  What are your strengths?  What are your resources?  What do you see, hear and feel – YOUR truth?  How do you manifest?  What gritty place and time are you in now?  And what can you DO today? 

Please don’t become apathetic, or believe the LIE that we are powerless.  Please don’t drown in your rage and compassion.  It is so powerful.  Right now!  With the person you pass on the street, with your pen, with your child, within your own body.  Join others who are fighting for justice, peace and equity.  You are alive and pulsing; you are powerful; you are one of us and we together can manifest goodness.