Bad News

We keep waking up to bad news.

Morning after morning we receive alerts on our smart phones cheering us onto the day. In the beginning it felt easier, the notifications weren’t so frequent and the news felt far away. We didn’t know anybody affected or feel a personal connection to the tragedy. Maybe the people suffering didn’t look like us, or maybe they did and they didn’t think like us, or maybe they did and they just didn’t hold our attention.

In the beginning, when the screen lit up, it didn’t seem so bad.

But then it kept happening. Again. And again.

A few more times. And then, something else. And another, or another. And maybe still we didn’t know the person or the place.

But then maybe we did.

Maybe then the graphic photos started to be more than just jarring images of catastrophe, maybe they felt like pieces of our heart.

Maybe the broken buildings and the broken bones and my GOD the broken souls. Maybe they were pieces of our breaking hearts:

our broken hearts.

And yet, we slog through an onslaught of angry people angry at other angry people and some of that anger ends up as sadness threatening to permeate the carefully constructed supersuit that we tightly knit around each exposed limb and extremity to be sure that sadness and that anger don’t breach.

We’re getting out of bed and we’re going to the store and we’re going to class and we’re going to work and we’re going to bed and we’re staying afloat.

But we keep waking up to bad news.

And it’s getting normal.

It is easier to move day to day and to see the headlines and the bulletins and to focus on the little things that upset us — the jeans that used to fit better or the gas that seemed to cost less — instead of the big things that are breaking us.

We’re getting really good at waking up to bad news.

In a world that prioritizes success and strength and steely grit over all of the opposites, how do we cope with it? In a world that loves a superhero, how do we take off the uniform and expose our emotions? In a world that says go, go, go faster, run harder, jump higher and you will succeed, how do we stumble? How to we handle our fear, being scared of the unpredictable?

We feel. We connect. We let it seep in, if only a bit.

We are weary and we are embattled. Some of us more so than others. Our struggles are unique and valid as they are to us individually.

We don’t have an easy solution to fix it all. I don’t have one, the President definitely doesn’t have one, and there won’t be a pushed button or a flipped switch to turn off tragedy.

There are any number of ways to take action and any number of articles and posts that have been created in response to the tragedies. There are amazing organizations people are channeling time and money towards. There are innumerable productive endeavors individuals are undertaking and we should continue to support it all.

We keep waking up to bad news.

We feel pain, and fear, anger and confusion. Every emotion we feel is valid, and in order to handle them we must acknowledge them.

It is exhausting.

We will support each other. We will lean on each other. And even when it seems selfish, we will love ourselves.

We take care of ourselves. We listen to our bodies and we get good sleep and we eat solid meals, and maybe some ice cream too. We prioritize time to color a picture or read a book or walk a dog. We do it as we are able.

We will love from overflow, treasuring ourselves in order to love ourselves and those we don’t know.

We cannot control the uncontrollable, and we can not predict tragedy. We cannot take the pain of others away, nor can we judge why they hurt.

We keep waking up to bad news.

We will do our best to heal.

We will go to sleep with hope.

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