Grieving for this Place is Work

Some days just start out like this, with a heaviness in the eyes. I am trying to copyedit a manuscript, and that surface-level task allows for the sadness to creep in, like toxic fumes from beneath and around a closed door. I know there were terrible things said at the CK memorial. What has really gotten me this morning is a range of German writers I follow on social medium who are all saying, “UM GUYS, LISTEN….” and if you know Germans, they are not like that without a reason.

I am writing this to remind you, and to remind myself: they say that massive life changes like moving or switching jobs or divorce all come with a disorienting stress that shakes us to our core. I need to remember that so much I was able to take for granted—the country, the way it operated, the list of certain agreements based on document, and this illusion of stability most often granted to white people—is quaking beneath our feet. That induces the kind of stress that makes us foggy headed and slow, that makes us reactive, that makes us cry at random times, that messes with our sleep and our guts and our very selves.

There’s an urge in me to jump over the feelings, to get right to the next task. This desire to fast forward is balanced with the advice from recovery communities, which I was reminded of in a meeting this wekeend as Awareness, Acceptance, and Action. I am aware, I suppose, of the depths of our new fascist reality, but the Acceptance—well, that’s the hard part.

There are social justice quotes that argue against the idea of Acceptance as it is featured in the Serenity Prayer: “God Grant me the Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot Change….” I think it’s an Angela Davis quote that says “I am Changing the Things I Cannot Accept.” I see both sides here. It’s a matter of two different definitions of the word “accept.” In recovery, acceptance isn’t assent. It’s a complex spiritual mission to understand something as real. This is happening. To take something in and to orient one’s self.

That is difficult, because I so often want to escape or deny. But that kind of acceptance isn’t assent. Instead, it’s the bedrock of resistance, the way to get to the Action. The way to get to the last part of the Serenity Prayer: the Courage to Change the Things I Can, and the Wisdom to Know the Difference.

We are in some shit as a nation. And maybe your individual brain wants to time travel, like mine does, into nostalgia or into the future, anything to not be here now. Anything to not have to feel what is happening.

All I want to say, to you and myself, is that feeling each moment of sadness is like lifting a rock. We are not being sunk by those stones. We are moving them, one at a time, off of our chest, as we work to get oriented to this new place, this new level of destruction. We are surveying the territory. We can be together in this territory, with other people connected to and committed to reality. We are not lost to each other. We are looking around and assessing. We are seeing and feeling, as much as it burns. And we are resting when we need it. Which is often, because carrying this sadness and loss and fear is hard work. But we are recommitting to being in reality together.

One stone of sadness at a time.