What to Do With the Despair, Panic and Overwhelm

Sit by me for a minute

I’m giving a workshop next week, Feb 27, on Writing for Change: Using Our Gifts To Resist. Sign up here!

Hello friends.

The Washington Square Arch commemorates the centennial of George Washington's 1789 inauguration as President of the United States, He was a president who refused to be a king.

On Monday I was in the streets for Not My President’s Day, a protest and march from Union Square to Washington Square Park in Manhattan. We had a contingent of several friends, plus our big kid and one of their friends. It was peaceful. Bands were playing, the signs were funny and pointed, the crowd was diverse and fired up. I felt elated. I couldn’t stop laughing.

My friend Emily, who is hilarious, had this on a sign; it’s by artist Tommy Siegel

This is my sign and I think it is funny

By the time I got home, though, I was exhausted, and numb; from the freezing weather, and from fear and despair.

Twenty years I’ve been marching these very streets. I was in Washington Square Park speaking at an Occupy Wall Street-related gathering when my big kid was in utero, and here we were again, together.

And this whole time, so many things have been getting worse.

I’ve been so busy almost every day of this first month of Trump 2.0. I’ve been working hard on my writing, showing up at meetings and events, caring for family, supporting friends, going on my little runs and trying to eat well and listening to my little meditation tracks for self care, trying to keep other people’s spirits up. And all that frenzy of activity has been doing its job, creating a little air current, a little pocket of flow that separates me from the world as long as I keep moving.

So it’s just now all starting to sink in. I found myself weeping in the kitchen the other night, unexpectedly.

So many, many terrible things are happening every day. So much cruelty, so much willful ignorance, stupidity, corruption, brute force and violence, carelessness, greed. And this is the beginning of the beginning.

They are building a dark tower, with a long, looming shadow. All of our joys, all of our moments of laughter and love and growth, are happening, are going to happen, in its pall.

My little kid said the other day — “I’m looking forward to turning 12, because I can get my ears pierced, and because Trump will be out of office.” That’s her whole goddamned childhood!

Four years is the bulk of the time that my big kid will be home with us before college.

Four years is most of the rest of my 40s.

And that’s assuming we can pull off an authoritarian U-Turn and get rid of this regime in *just* four years. And that’s going to take some very hard work.

Meanwhile the climate crisis keeps going, and many of the conflicts and struggles around the world keep getting worse, as people process the loss of the United States as a (wildly imperfect) ally and avatar of peace and democracy.

It’s not just one country going down the tubes here; it’s the loss of a world order, the only world order that most people on Earth have ever known.

I have some inspirational messages I can end on here, some mental reframes that nearly always work for me as coping mechanisms. Or I could make another joke.

But I’m not going to do that. This post is for sitting with the crappy feelings. I don’t think we always have to chase them away. If you’re feeling them too, I want you to know you’re not alone.