shoulders drop
reflecting on inauguration day
I slept in on Inauguration Day because our kids are still in elearning for a few more weeks, and I am taking advantage of the sleep schedule if nothing else. By the time I woke up, Trump was leaving the White House in Marine One. I watched the footage on my phone and couldn’t help but smile. My shoulders dropped more completely than it feels like they have done since the middle of 2016, even though I’m sure that isn’t true. My body felt the relief almost before my mind had a chance to catch up with me.
Four years ago, on Inauguration Day, our pastor invited the community to watch the Inauguration together at church, as a way of practicing unity after a terribly divisive election. Because I didn’t work that day, I went to church, thinking that I would try to listen to the pundits who kept saying that Trump would pivot (spoiler alert: there was never a pivot) and attempt to give him a chance. An ardent Trump supporter showed up at church too. I remember biting my tongue continually at the comments she made throughout the ceremony. If the 2021 Sara would have been there instead, or even the 2018 Sara, I would have walked out.
The Trump years have changed me. I’m not grateful for the Trump presidency, but I can see the gifts in it. I wish that I had listened to my marginalized neighbors sooner, who were calling out our culture’s sickness long before Trump arrived on the scene (as in, from the beginning). And, even though I wish I had gotten there sooner, the Trump years removed the scales from my eyes about so much - both personally and societally. Even though the learning was arduous and uncomfortable, I wouldn’t go back to my pre-Trump ignorance.
The Trump years were the first time I felt nervous about my own and my children’s future and safety in this country, a feeling that so many of my immigrant or Black or Indigenous or Jewish neighbors have never - or at least rarely - not known, like an undercurrent running beneath everything else. Shame on me for not putting myself in a position to listen better, sooner. And yet, I am grateful for that small taste of what others have always felt in much larger and more threatening ways because it helps build my empathy muscles for the mountains of work yet to come.
There is so much grief from these last four years that we can’t really process until now, once they’re really over. President Biden is uniquely qualified to lead us in this grieving because of the personal tragedies he has faced. Already, he and MVP Harris led us in our first national remembrance ceremony of all of those we’ve lost to Covid, saying that in order “to heal, we must remember.”
The same is true for all of us - and not just about our grief related to #CovidSeason - but to all of the losses we’ve faced these last four years: losses of faith in leadership and our fellow Americans, a loss of idealism about our country, a loss of optimism about our future, the physical loss of over 400,000 Americans and counting…and more, you can fill in the blanks for yourself. As President Biden said, we have to remember first, so that we can move onto the work of healing. Part of remembering, of course, is naming that which must be grieved - whether it’s a person’s name or an ideal that has died.
Today, I’m celebrating the beginning of something new, but tomorrow, I’ll begin that work of remembering and naming, knowing that, only after that work, is healing available.
Reflecting on my own personal changes, I find that “the 2021 Sara” is feeling
more jaded, but also more honest
more confident about her values and less willing to excuse others’ lack thereof
less optimistic and more realistic
more in touch with her anger and more comfortable with others’
less in control and more content with listening
more of herself, and less of cultural or familial expectations of who she should be.
I’m hopeful about the growth available to me - and any of us willing to stay awake for it - on the other side of this healing process we’re invited to now that the trauma is beginning to abate.
Just raves
👍 Inauguration Day. I’m usually kind of “ehh” on the pomp and circumstance - we aren’t crowning a king, after all. But I found myself grinning and close to tears all day. I also vote for always doing an Inauguration evening ceremony for all Americans instead of the balls and stuff just in DC. We let the kids stay up late, and we all watched and enjoyed together.
👍 Amanda Gorman. Holy goosebumps, I told the kids that I think they’ll be telling their grandchildren (if they have them) about watching her perform that beautiful poem live yesterday. I’ve already watched it five times through, and it gets better every time. The backstory makes her even more inspiring.
👍 I also loved Reverend Beaman’s prayer that was more like a sermon in and of itself.
👍 I have many opinions on Executive Orders, but since we’re stuck in this situation until Congress starts acting like the legislative body they are, I can’t tell you how relieved I was when President Biden signed this one:
Stuff worth sharing this week
I loved this Center for Action and Contemplation reflection from earlier in the week. I got out of my first-thing reading the CAC emails in 2020, and I’m trying to get back on track.
I think Tim Miller’s thought experiment about the Iranians should be required reading. I know we all want to just put the Trump years behind us, but, just like remembering is required for us to process our grief, remembering is required to help us set in motion consequences and safeguards so that the kinds of things that happened these last four years (check out this thread for a small listing of some of our institutional breakdowns during the Trump administration) are less likely to happen again.
You’ve surely already read this because you signed up for Chris’ newsletter when I told you to last time, right? This one kicked me in the gut, but in a good, keeping me accountable kind-of way.
Quotable
I finished The Power of Ritual last week, which is honestly one of the better, more practical books I’ve read in some time. I can’t stop thinking about this part:
In his landmark book In Over Our Heads, Harvard developmental psychologist Dr. Robert Kegan explains, “The mental burden of modern life may be nothing less than the extraordinary cultural demand that each person, in adulthood, create internally an order of consciousness comparable to that which ordinarily would only be found at the level of a community’s collective intelligence.”
More simply put, we need to recreate an entire village network of support in our own brain. Alone. And this goes far beyond physical support and even mental health. “We feel unaccompanied at the level of our own souls,” writes Kegan.
Seasonal pic of the week
Because the kids are virtual this month, we got to watch the Inauguration Day festivities together. A #covidsilverlining for sure!
Cheers to remembering, naming, and reflecting!
Sara