I have not written for a long time. I have had little energy for writing. My heart has been ripped in two by multiple losses and griefs. I imagine probably yours has, too. When will this end? When will I figure out what this means? When will I stop crying?
I know there are no firm answers. As Rilke advises, “We must live the questions.” An RN who works in an ICU wrote to me about the hypervigilance that she had worked so hard to let of as a trauma/abuse survivor, but that has returned with tears as both bane and protection in her work with Covid 19 patients. The following is a reflection that I wrote back to her:
Tears are good things (as you know). They are cleansing, exhausting (pushing us toward sleep), and actually help rid our bodies of some toxic chemicals. Don’t stop them when they come.
You are experiencing what is normal and adaptive in an abnormal situation. You are not crazy, bad, abnormal. And I wish I could predict for you and others what the recovery will be from this PTSD . . . but I can’t. Life and our experience of recovery is in the future and we are headed toward a future that (at this time) we can no longer envision. It isn’t clear. We can only live in the present with trust (also called faith) that we are not alone, that there is a Loving and Healing Presence that walks with us through life and death.
We are part of a larger reality that is rebalancing itself in a shocking way (to us) in order to survive. We as humans have been consuming and using up what we needed instead of caring for and protecting it for the future. The earth has reached a tipping point where the balance has shifted drastically and what we are experiencing in this rebalancing is different and completely unfamiliar. It won’t go back to what was. What will come we don’t yet know. But those who survive this (probably not those of us over 70) will adjust to and settle into that new reality. Who will be left it is not ours to know.
What I think is important now is to be present with as much compassion as we can muster — compassion for others and also in large measure for ourselves. It is compassion/empathy/service in these times that differentiates genuine humanity from the monstrous evildoers. You are one of the compassionate ones.
I offer you a prayer from our prayerbook that I just read: This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever shall be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. If I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words and give me the spirit of Jesus.
I will be repeating this prayer today . . . for you, for my sister in hospital, and for me.
Pilgrimages and Paths 