Trauma in the age of Covid
My 42nd birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. I spent the night of my 40th at a local vigil with my family following the murder of George Floyd. I may to spend my 42nd at a March to end gun violence, devastated by the murder of 19 children the age of my son James, almost 10, and their two teachers.
I feel like I’ve cried more the past two years than my first 40 combined. I am changed, different. I feel it in the way my breath becomes shallow, quick. In the way I nervously bite the insides of my cheeks. Or when that glass of wine or extra snack or intense workout or daily meditation or focused yoga session helps to numb or process but not to make it go away. New habits emerge, ways to cope. Because we have to show up, to be strong.
We are changed. I am changed.
This isn’t the first collective trauma I’ve lived through, and it won’t be the last. Each of these instances brings it all back. When I was in 2nd grade in Winnetka, IL, a nanny named Laurie Dann entered a 2nd grade classroom at the public school 1 mile away and shot Nick Corwin, who died, and two others who were injured. Some of his classmates, one who was shot and survived, became my friends in summer camp a couple years later. I know how that impacted all the children who were in the classroom. Had Laurie Dann had an assault weapon, we know what would have happened. I lived in DC during 9/11 when phones weren’t working to contact my brother in NYC, to find out if my family was ok. I was a new mom in Brooklyn when the Newtown massacre of 20 children and 6 adults happened. I held my baby and cried for the children, for the parents, for the families. It could be me; it could be us.
I was working at ABC News Nightline in 2004 as a Researcher when the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire. How did we let that happen? I interviewed veterans from Vietnam and other wars about these weapons. I talked to gun sellers about the demand, why would anyone want or need them?
I was working at Sotheby’s as a press officer when online news sites became customizable to personal preference, when social media became prevalent. And I remember my boss, the worldwide head of public relations, talking about how dangerous it was. I didn’t grasp the magnitude of this shift. Everyone can believe what they want, see what they want. There’s no truth. What it’s led to is radicalization, polarization, and the epitome of self-interest rather than collective good. But we still need to bear witness. We can’t turn our back on the tragedy. What happened in Uvalde could happen anywhere.
Covid has exacerbated all of this. We spent two years separated from one another, making judgements about others’ preferences for mask or no mask, judgments about the movement for social justice or about the looting that ensued by those who were outraged by the inequity in our country. Judgements about the desire to look critically at our country’s history of slavery and oppression in order to better understand how we got here and how we can collectively heal, leading to a backlash to anything related to diversity, anti-racism, social-emotional learning, and critical race theory. Teachers, who have hands down the hardest job in the world, to care for and prepare our children to be our citizens of tomorrow, have been made to be afraid of backlash from parents for talking about sensitive topics and they are also showing up at a time when schools are targets of mass shootings. They are the true heroes.
I want my kids to grow up. Period. To connect in person with others. And to be empathetic, feeling, loving, engaged humans. I want them to not desensitize themselves to the problems but to have the creativity to help make the world better. My daughter Lara, 7, was crying last night, dealing with the departure of our beloved au pair who went home to her home country after two years with us. And with the transition to having a new au pair who, while wonderful, does things a little differently. This loss is personal and real to Lara. She doesn’t know about Uvalde. I don’t have the heart to tell her.
When we paused from crying together, a cathartic release needed by us both, her mind started free associating, like a weight had lifted. First, she was laughing about how words sound so strange when you stop to listen to them. “Great” “Suspicious” “Okay”. A smile came across her face. Then, out of nowhere, she looked around the room and said, “I wish I was in the clouds, in the rainbow, like a bird, not in a human body. That way I wouldn’t need all this stuff that hurts the environment.”
Kids want to be good, to help, but they have to process first. Otherwise, they resort to tantrums, to acting out, to feeling out of control. Whatever they are holding in, they, we, all need to get it out. So that we can breathe deeply.
