thanks/grieving
hello.
sending you extra, intentional warmth this week, from my pocket of the void to yours.
so. like many, my partner and i recently cancelled our very tentative, but dearly-held plans to see family for the holidays. it was a decision that, despite feeling inevitable for weeks now, still stung.
in fact, it was “triggering,” reviving old feelings of entrapment and dread. it seemed to send my spirit hurtling back to March of this year, to those first, grim months when the walls of the world were suddenly collapsing in on us, the most familiar and precious things — city streets, loved ones’ bodies, groceries, our very doorknobs — transformed into vectors of potential threat.
i’ve used so many words since then — in these [me]re letters alone, i’ve typed roughly 70,000 of them — to describe this indescribable year. a year of competing, overwhelming, and contradictory senses — of being both trapped and unmoored, afraid and outraged, lonely and crowded, inspired and despairing. perhaps one of the most apt words would be unrelenting — the absence of lasting relief, the constant barrage of physical, political, and psychological assaults we’ve endured.
it can numb us, cause us to forget the daily toll of survival. so, i’ll continue to remind you, even nine months in: we’re all living under a cloud of accumulated anxiety and loss, and however we may have grown “accustomed” to it, our world, right now, is not thriving.
it is straining, grieving. questioning. waiting.
by now, most of us will have known someone who has sickened or passed away in the pandemic — at this point, i have more than a handful in each category. by now, most of us will have felt some loss — economically, socially, physically, or otherwise. by now, most of us who weren’t already confronting our vulnerability now live with a new sense of fragility — the uncertainty of the days we’re given, the limitations of our power. the softness and fallibility of the bodies in which we live.
unsurprisingly, then, this year has been, for me, so much about surrender.
and it’s not always pretty — it often feels less like the Serenity Prayer, and more like defeat. or like rage, or exhausted tears, or a petulant, nihilistic withdrawal from all attempts at optimism.
it’s never easy to let go, to receive circumstances as they are, to move gracefully through the facts of life which are (mostly) outside my control. it’s far more difficult to do it when it feels that each new day brings only bad news — either fresh shock or the dulling, continuous drum of now-familiar tragedy.
yet we’re all making some sort of way through it, are we not? that still bears saying, too.
we are still here, and from what i can see, most of us are still doing our best to be decent to one another, and even to ourselves. some of us are managing to make things, to start or finish projects, even to fall in love or strike up new hobbies (bread-related or otherwise). others of us are on frontlines — yes, there are still “frontlines,” our healthcare workers and essential workers are still facing the possibility of death to keep others breathing, fed, and functioning. this is brave and priceless work, and, for me, a reminder that heroism is far closer and more common than i often believe.
and all of us are “coping,” whether or not we hold judgement for the forms that takes. i’ve cried and vented a lot this week, but i notice how much skill i’ve gained in holding myself in those moments — affirming my right to grieve, knowing that emotions cannot be overridden or willed away, but will either be felt intentionally, or suffered eventually. i show my anger and sadness to those who i can trust to hold it with me, and, a few minutes or hours later, i find myself able to breathe a little easier again. another cycle, another tide endured.
and all this practicing of surrender has me pondering a surprising corollary: gratitude. another word that’s been overstretched and overused, wrung into a pulp by marketers of pop-mindfulness and “self-care,” but one which still holds wellsprings of wisdom.
a word that of course will be coming up a lot this next week, as we move into a Thanksgiving holiday unlike any we’ve known.
i thought about listing some things for which i feel thankful. that felt unbearably cheesy, and also unhelpful — each of us is enduring such a specific set of challenges, hopes, and triumphs that the particularities of my list could very well trigger unhelpful judgements, or come off as sanctimonious. truth is, anyway, i haven’t been the most grateful person this year, and certainly not the most consistent. if you’re looking for a good example, look up any videos by the Dalai Lama (&& i dare you not to smile).
rather, i’ve been thinking about the similarities between gratitude and surrender. both require an honest, intentional engagement with the present, an attention to the details of our lives which may or may not align with our desires. both gratitude and surrender ask us to enter into our experiences, to take stock — and to receive what we find.
receptivity runs counter to my normal approach to life. usually, i’m expending enormous amounts of energy in the opposite direction — producing output, making the kind of day i want to have, working towards goals and desires, pushing against obstacles in an attempt to accomplish my version of reality.
i seldom pause to simply take in, to look clearly and openly into the facts that surround me. i avoid doing this because i fear what i will see — a careening country, a bleak future, the shabbiness of my own attempts at excellence.
understandable and common as this fear is, much is lost when i fail to receive the present. despite all my hustling, i will never ultimately outrun my anxieties — and along the way, i miss the experience of my life altogether.
this year has taught me a lot
about the myth i’ve believed,
one that tells me that
effort and striving
and constant
motion
will eventually deliver
happiness, success —
and, that most-sought thing,
control.
not so. safety, it turns out, is promised to no one. “happiness” is not a birthright, and never a permanent state. success, comfort, wealth — perhaps our definitions (and distribution) of these things ought to be re-examined, in light of this topsy-turvy time.
these are difficult, even frightening, things to consider. yet as i’ve slowed down and let myself grapple with the fear and frustration of this out-of-control year, i’ve discovered new graces. as circumstances have thrust me into living day-by-day, i’ve found relief and even joy in accepting each hour as it comes (i simply can’t handle more, most days, anyway — and at least for now, i see little use in trying).
in coming undone, i’ve learned to let new kinds of love and support in — discovered that, even from a distance, there’s a village that surrounds me, ready to pipe in compassion when my own tank runs empty. as my brittle self-reliance has shattered, i’ve learned that tenderness and resilience are not opposites, but kin.
so this coming week, as i find myself in an apartment which i’ve come to hate (too small! too dark! too roof-leaky and too expensive!) rather than alongside friends and family, i won’t feign happiness if i don’t find it. instead, i’ll sit still and let the day show itself to me. i’ll take account not just of “my blessings” but of the bare facts, both “bad” and “good.” and i will find that, if not exuberant, i am still very much here, still okay. i will try to lay aside my questions, and breathe. i will let anger or sadness swell, if they must, knowing every wave will crest and fall. and whatever gifts the day reveals — i know there will be gifts, because there always are — i will be more able to see and receive them, having quieted myself enough to know them when they come.
in pondering all this, i took some time to burrow into the etymology of the words thanks, thankful, and gratitude. from what i found, the origin of all three comes back to the root for thought, including “to think, to feel” and “good thoughts.”
what strikes me, then, is that thankfulness/gratitude, ideally, is more of a posture than the result of any particular action or circumstance. while the normal formulation is usually: “i am grateful for ____,” or “i am thankful for _____” or simply, “thank you for ____,” the original meaning suggests that gratitude or thanksgiving are reflexive, states of being that do not require any cause or object. the sentences “i am grateful” or “i am thankful” or even “i thank,” may be truer renderings of these words.
and again, when this feels impossible, which it often does for me, i return to the baseline of receptivity. if i don’t feel able to celebrate or “give thanks” for this day, or this week, or this year, can i at least be open to receiving it? can i lay down my arms, cease my resisting for a moment, and rest? is there a place between fatalism and fighting?
i think so. and i think we have no choice, really — if 2020 has, if anything, taught us that Reality is unfazed by even the most earnest denialism, the most rabid resistance to the truth. refusing to acknowledge or “believe” what’s real does not change it; it only harms us and others. the invitation instead is to find a way to reconcile ourselves, humanely and wisely, with the truth. (that’s not to say that productive work, “resistance work,” is not appropriate — it is the moral choice in many cases — but it ought to begin in truth, not denial).
so if you’re already doing that — if you, too, are choosing to stay home out of care for yourself, your loved ones, and the untold many your decisions effect — i thank you.
if you’re feeling sorrow or frustration or anger over the “facts” — the dark months ahead, the irrevocable loss already suffered, the now-distant expectations you held for this year — i am with you.
this week, rather than forcing some performance of “thanksgiving,” my hope is that we will all simply be honest, with ourselves and others. that we will be able to take stock of the full range of emotions, struggles, and “blessings” our lives encompass in this season. that we will find ourselves in community, if only from afar. and that we will discover that, against all odds, in each given moment, we are “okay.”
sincerely,
Sarah
(this essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter, [me]re. please subscribe here to join the conversation!)
