It’s Okay to Feel What We Feel

By Jan S. Gephardt

Around my neck of the woods, it’s the season of “holiday cheer.” But frankly, I’m not seeing a whole bunch of bright, sparkly people out and about, having a real good time. That may partly be because (when I go out at all) I tend to hang out with people smart enough to wear masks. I can’t see their smiles, if they are smiling. If they are, that’s nice. But if they aren’t, that’s all right, too. It’s okay to feel what we feel.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog post titled “A Season of Small Bright Spots.” I sought out hopeful stories because I am by nature a hopeful, and generally optimistic, person. I thought that in the midst of “the COVID-19 winter” (I was assuming there would only be one), finding reasons to stay hopeful was a good idea. It still is. And there are still reasons for hope.

But as we crank up for a second COVID-19 winter, I also want to say that it’s okay to feel what we feel. If you're “merry and bright,” that’s awesome! Congratulations, and don’t let anybody cast aspersions on your joy!

Truth is, however, a lot of us are having trouble getting there, this year. Me included.

An uncredited illustration I found on Medpage Today and used in my December 2020 post “A Season of Small Bright Spots.”

Exhaustion

We can be forgiven for feeling exhausted. Especially those among us in the health care sector have carried far more than a fair share of the burdens that never seem to end. My husband worked in an extremely busy lab until his retirement earlier this year, and my daughter recently secured a certification in health care, so I am “closely adjacent” to that overburdened sector.

To the anti-vaccine holdouts across the USA let me just say: Y’all please get vaxxed and boosted so we can end this thing before it ends all of us. And thank you to everyone else who already did take those measures.

Quote image from Brookings.

Heavy Burdens for All

I’m not sure how teachers continue to cope, either. Between the historically chronic under-resourcing of time, funding, and facilities, combined with the most bizarre teaching environment in living memory, I’m surprised there’s anyone left in the field. Except, kids need to learn and teachers need to teach. God bless you all.

Both quotes are from an excellent article in the Tulsa World.

A deadly pestilence has spread everywhere, and it’s ravaging the immune-compromised (and the misinformed) among us to a catastrophic degree. Complications from the seemingly-endless pandemic have snarled our supply chains, spiked inflation, and exacerbated food insecurity.

The exhaustion spreads much farther, of course. Maybe you’re a front-line worker living in daily danger just so our grocery shelves stay stocked, our deliveries get made, or our community services keep working. But you don’t have to be one, to be exhausted. Every single one of us carries heavier burdens these days, and it’s okay to feel what we feel.

From AZ Quotes.

Fear and Division

Meanwhile, one of our major political parties in my country has been taken over by death-cultists, insurrectionists, and white supremacists. It used to be a party of community-oriented, business-centric, mostly-responsible old white men. Now it fields “public servants” like the ones in Missouri who are trying to kill as many school children as possible. That is for sure scary.

So are the unmasked (yes, pun intended) efforts to subvert voting rights and election integrity, in service of keeping a dwindling minority in power. So they can . . . force young women to have babies they can’t support, in the name of the party of . . .  personal liberty?

Quote image courtesy of BukRate.

Oh, yes, and so they can provide a continuing drag on efforts to mitigate climate change. In case we weren’t beleaguered enough already, there is always the existential threat posed by climate-driven superstorms. No one can argue that this month’s historic tornadoes and recent hurricane seasons were “normal. Not scary enough? How about extreme drought and ever-longer wildfire seasons? We’ve now got those, too. “Thanks,” climate-change deniers.

See credits below.

It’s okay to feel what we feel, because our fear is justified. We can’t allow fear to destroy us, but maybe it can motivate us to push harder for necessary changes.

Grief

God help us, we have plenty of reasons to grieve. As I write this, we’ve had 805,112 COVID deaths in the United States, per the CDC, and 5,384,178 from COVID worldwide, as reported by “Worldometers.” By the time you read this there will have been all too many more. Of course, COVID isn’t the only health issue out there that’s killing people.

Among all the other dangers in the world, we’re also murdering each other at an astonishing rate, especially in the United States, where it’s easier to buy a gun than it is to legally drive a car.

And let us not forget the frightful toll of famine throughout the world. Food insecurity is widespread in the USA, but we’re far from the worst-case scenario. We could be living (or struggling to) in The Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, South Sudan, Syria, and more.

More to Grieve than Deaths

Egregious as they are, all the unnecessary “extra” deaths aren’t the only losses to grieve. We could be fleeing widespread violence and climate disaster, only to be penned up in squalid COVID hotspots at an international border. Or subject to slavery, torture, and genocide in “re-education” camps, at the hands of other authoritarian governments, or in failed states.

We may be climate refugees who’ve had to flee our homes. Or we may have been priced out of homes in our communities. We may have lost our beloved small businesses and personal financial resources during the pandemic. Political tensions and other stresses may have torn our families apart. (Yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too).

Many thanks to QuotesLyfe.

It’s Okay to Feel What We Feel

Is it any surprise our children are struggling with mental health issues? If we’re honest, most of us are. So seriously. It’s okay to feel what we feel. In fact, stepping past denial and letting ourselves feel whatever we truly feel is the first step toward healing.

A reader new to this blog could be forgiven for having started to doubt my earlier claim that “I am by nature a hopeful, and generally optimistic, person.” This post has been pretty much of a downer. But we can’t successfully fight an enemy if we can’t name it, and we can’t overcome an evil if we can’t describe it. Given the misinformation abroad in the world and in our popular media, identifying the sources of our perils accurately is more of a problem than it should be.

We can’t help how we feel. Bug we can help what we do with how we feel. We must have the courage to face our situation, before we can do anything about it. It’s a vital first step. Only then can we can educate ourselves and start to build a stronger future out of the rubble all around us.

So, it’s okay to feel what we feel. In fact, it’s more than “okay.” It’s absolutely essential.

IMAGE CREDITS

I used the first illustration last year in my post “A Season of Small Bright Spots.” I found the uncredited illustration on Medpage Today. And it really bums me out that it’s appropriate again.

The quote image of Andrea the ICU Housekeeper is from the Brookings article, “Essential but Undervalued,” about the forgotten and underpaid front-line health care workers who keep hospitals running. I wanted to include both quotes from Oklahoma teachers. It was very hard to choose from among 20 insightful teacher-quotes in a Tulsa World article from July 2020. Many thanks to AZ Quotes, for the wisdom of David K. Shipler, and to Bukrate for the timeless Hannah Arendt quote.

Deepest appreciation to Greta Thunberg for her iconic and straight-to the-heart words, to Wikipedia for making them available, and to the AP via the Los Angeles Times for the photo of Greta at the UN (I assembled the image-quote). And finally, I’m indebted to QuotesLyfe for the quote from poet, author, and founder of Icetratt Foundation for Social Investments, Oscar Auliq-Ice. Many thanks to all!

Dealing With Death in Reality and Art

 By Jan S. Gephardt

A whole cluster of holidays happen during what is for the Northern Hemisphere a season of harvest and winter’s onset. The common thread that weaves through them all is dealing with death.

I’ve written about Halloween/Samhain, Día de los Muertos, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day on this blog in the past. Indeed, my “Virtual Ofrenda” is one of my most enduringly popular posts. Through them all, I’ve kept coming back around to similar themes.

Dealing with death is hard. It’s sad. Terrifying. Inevitable for all of us. Death is as much a fact of life as birth, but we—and especially my fellow Americans, as a culture—have trouble dealing with death.

Design by Jan S. Gephardt (other credits below).

A Culture of Insulation from Death

Americans are really bad at this whole “dealing with death” thing for cultural reasons. Our culture worships youth, wealth, and personal autonomy (Especially for cis white guys; many politicians make exceptions on the “autonomy” front, when it comes to liberal voters, brown people, and “lady parts”).

But there is no autonomy over death. It ends youth. It disregards wealth. We Americans  fundamentally don’t know what to do with that.

In what we call “the developed world” of today, people have become adept at insulating ourselves from death, but even so, there are variations. Sixty percent of Americans die in hospitals, while another 20% die in nursing homes. Compare that to the UK, where in 2019 47% died at home. The rates throughout the EU vary, but generally at least 10% more die at home than Americans.

American families overwhelmingly allow other people—professionals—to handle their dead. We even have laws to enforce that division of labor. There’s nothing wrong with legal standards meant to ensure public health standards and an absence of foul play in the manner of death. But it serves to place death off-stage, out of sight.

(Enkiquotes).

A Middle-Ground for Grief

A culture that allows no room for dealing with death gives poor service both to the dying and to their loved ones. At the time I’m writing this, nearly 750,000 American families are dealing with deaths of loved ones lost due to COVID. (We rank 13^th in the world for deaths per capita). And those are “excess deaths,” beyond the natural attrition rate. Heartbreaking numbers couldn’t be with their loved ones when they died. Many have been forced by the pandemic to put off holding any but the smallest funeral services.

If ever a nation needed to grieve, we do. But for many decades, American culture has been impatient with grief. If an employee gets any paid leave at all for bereavement, in the US it’s typically only 3-7 days, and usually varies, depending on the “degree” of the relationship. There is no national standard, so each business gets to set its own rules.

(Quotefancy).

Dealing with Death Takes as Long as it Takes

As if there’s a statute of limitations on grief, after which we should be “over it.” Grief over the death of someone significant in our lives isn’t an even-paced or predictable process. Fact is, we don’t ever “get over it,” because our much-missed loved one stays dead.

It’s a truism that we don’t get over it, we get through it and bring our love along with us. All grief is a process of recovery from loss, and it takes a heck of a lot longer to recover than 3-7 days, or two months, or even two years in many cases. It has been more than 15 years since my mother died, but I still sometimes miss her, or wish I could share something, or ask her about something. I’ve gone “through” my grief over her death, but I still love and miss her. I always will. Getting “over it” is an impossible ask.

There’s help for grief. There are rituals, such as funerals, memorials, and days of remembrance. Veterans Day, coming next week, is such a day. As are the just-past Día de los Muertos, All Saints, and All Souls Days. There are grief counseling services. And there is art.

(SayingImages).

Dealing with Death Through Art

I don’t only mean art therapy, although that is often extremely valuable. My point is that any of the arts can help us work through grief. Artists, writers, musicians and practitioners of many other arts will tell you (if they’re honest) that there’s a strong element of mental health therapy involved in practicing their art. But the benefits hold for viewers, readers, and listeners, too.

How often have you discovered a particular piece of music that says just what you’re feeling? A recently-released example that I dearly love (on the subject of trials and loss, by the way) is Merry Clayton’s Beautiful Scars. I’m sure you could name a favorite, too. “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,” as William Congreve noted in 1697. It still works that way today.

Visual artists through the ages have grappled with grief and loss as well. And if you think about it, every story, at its core, is about some form of death that threatens the protagonist. The protagonist must face physical death, professional death, or spiritual death. Sometimes two of those, or even all three. The stakes in a well-constructed story are high. Reading about fictional characters’ struggles can help readers deal with their own trials and tests.

(Quotefancy).

Dealing with Death on Rana Station

As it happens, my current work-in-progress spends more time dealing with death than the previous books. Yes, every mystery story starts with a murder. And in the course of my science fiction/mystery trilogy so far, protagonist XK9 Rex and his friends are now working to solve two mass-murders. Rex and his human partner Charlie each have also had their own near-death experiences (SPOILER ALERT: by the end of Book Two they’re both still alive, although it was a very near thing).

Writing this book also has led me to ask questions. What memorial practices one would develop in a space-based habitat with limited land? Especially when nearly all the available land must be devoted to living space or agriculture, and the people come from diverse backgrounds?

Science fiction authors and filmmakers have come up with many ways to have funerals (Star Trek alone has quite a list). But none of them are located in an environment like Rana Station. I’m still working on ideas, but I’ll figure it out. I’ve come to believe that fictional funerals, like all other life-experiences reflected in art, have a role to play.

(QuotesSayings).

A Glimpse in A Bone to Pick

Perhaps you’ve read A Bone To Pick. If you remember the Memory Garden with the roses and the water feature, you’ve glimpsed a small part of the Ranan system for dealing with death. Even on Rana Station, a place several readers have told me they love to go, there’s no escape from it.

Yes, dealing with death is hard. It’s sad. Terrifying. Inevitable. It transforms us in ways we can’t anticipate. And once we’ve gone through a season of grief, we’re never the same again.

But we ignore our emotions, we deny our grief, and we turn away from death’s reality at a steep and dreadful cost. If my stories can offer some brief moment of peace or insight, some small step forward along the way, then I will feel blessed indeed. Because we’re all of us fellow travelers on that road of dealing with death. We owe it to each other to share the load if we can.

IMAGES

First of all, many thanks to Fidel Martínez and his newsletter, “The Latinx Files,” where I found the words I quoted about his Día de los Muertos experience. Many thanks also to “tabitazn,” of 123rf, for the background image.

I also want to thank Enkiquotes for the unattributed quote-image about the pain of hiding emotions. Deepest gratitude to Quotefancy, not once but twice: For the Joan Didion quote about the nature of grief, and for the John Armstrong quote about the power of music. Thank you to SayingImages (via Shine on Counseling) for the Earl Grollman quote about grief. And finally, many thanks to Quotessayings, for the quote from Brook Noel.

Days of the Dead: All Souls Day

I was told at some point by somebody that the first of the Days of the Dead, All Saints Day, is focused primarily on memorials of loved ones who lived with us, became adults, and maybe even are our ancestors.

An unidentified woman sits by the decorated tomb of a relative in San Antonio Aguascalientes, Guatemala. (AP/Moises Castillo)

The second day, All Souls Day, shifts the focus to the babies, the children, the innocent spirits we lost too soon. I cannot imagine any grief greater than losing one's child, and I thank God every day that's one terrible sorrow I have so far been spared.

Unfortunately, as I write this all too many parents and grandparents--in Kansas City, and everywhere else--are grieving just such losses. Wherever there is strife, poverty, illness, famine or terror, the children suffer the most. The world is full of evils, and it has been a bad year for far too many children.

For me, that category of "innocent spirits" also must include beloved pets and other animals: pure spirits who have enriched life on earth, and who are gone all too quickly. I do not see this attitude as a belittlement of lost children, simply an acknowledgement that profound losses may come from many different quarters. For most of the people in my life, their companion animals are cherished family members, and I cannot see that as anything but appropriate.

Oh, and--don't try to convince me that animals don't have souls. I have no patience with such claptrap, no matter how many famous persons or theological authorities you care to quote. If they said that, they're flat wrong, and probably never paid proper heed to the animals in their lives, or they would know better. Even the Bible agrees with me (if there are no animals in Heaven, how can Jesus come from there on a white horse in Revelation? I rest my case).

My hope is that today's post will encourage anyone who reads it to live more mindfully with those they love--be they humans, or some other species. Cherish the time you have with them, no matter who they are. And be sure they know how you feel!

Blessings to you.

IMAGES: Many thanks, once again, to NBC Latino's 2012 feature on the Days of the Dead, for the beautiful photo from Guatemala. I also want to thank Judy Jacintho's "Quotes" Pinterest board for the image and quote about spending time with loved ones, and The Better Future's website for the quote about grief.