A Monsoon of Crisis
It has been an overwhelming couple of months, y’all. The year started with chaos at work. Then. the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Although I am a textbook extrovert, I welcomed time at home with my guys, a stacked fridge and Netflix. I was overdue to some downtime and self-care! Just when I was finding my rhythm, someone sent me a video to watch with the caption, “Can you believe this ****?!” That should have been my first clue not to watch it, but it was a fellow social worker so I figured that it was something outlandishly funny or something that required immediate and serious attention. It proved to be the latter as I watched a young black man being gunned down in the street. Ahmaud Aberey. My soul is instantly troubled. I could feel the rumblings under the earth and knew that this usually happens in threes. Then, Breonna Taylor. Shot in her bed by unmarked officers at the wrong home, in the middle of the night. My thoughts began to race throughout the day; I struggled to understand how things like this happen. I started reading up on the disproportionate amount of women killed by police officers. I try to balance the heaviness with sleep and some self-care. And just when I got to the place where I could process the current events without it pulling me under, a new video surfaced. This time, I knew what would happen and I didn’t watch it. I just couldn’t. But the details began to surface. “That cop has such a smug look on his face.” “He said, ‘I can’t breathe’!” “Oh my God, I fell apart when he called for his momma…” Without ever pressing play, it was like I was standing on the street corner, watching yet another black person die by the hands of the vigilante. I couldn’t fall asleep without my thoughts racing to those faces. My appetite began to wane; almost a whole day would pass before I realized I hadn’t eaten anything. Tears would fall, without hesitation, when I would look at my wonderfully blended boys and realize that I would have to have the ‘Talk’ with them sooner than I was ready for. My anxiety was so deep that I felt like my limbs could take flight if I wasn’t grounded by someone or something.
We are not Alone
“Three times the charm,” I thought, ironically, as the world began to raise its voice in lament. #blacklivesmatter was tagged all over social media platforms and protests were already being formed. People were speaking out. They were angry. They were sad. They were disappointed. Why did this keep happening?? How many black and brown people have to die before we, as a collective, set things right?
In the midst of my frenetic combing through historical race laws, brushing up on deeply systemic the racist structure is in our country and digging into social media platforms to glean from the brilliant minds of today’s scholars on race, I came across a video clip. In this shot, it was a little girl, on one knee, first in the air, watching a protest stream by her. She remained there, even after one of the protesters broke rank and gave her a fist bump. My racing thoughts screeched to a halt. Our children are experiencing this! Our children are experiencing this WITH US! There is no invisible shield that is protecting their hearts and minds from the crises. While I was struggling to process grief/loss, pandemic, societal ills, vicarious trauma, so were my babies.
While I understand that kids and adults do not process in the exact same manner, I was able to connect the dots. Struggling to sleep at night? Check. Increased irritability and tearfulness? Check. Need for closeness, extra hugs and kisses? Check. Furtively looking at me as if gauging my mood? Check. My beautiful boys were living with their own stressors and feelings and, as devastated as I was as an individual, I felt this intense desire, as their mother, to help them deal with their emotional aches and pains in a way that wouldn’t overwhelm them. I had to find a place, fill it with grace and hold space for them to explore their feelings. And, by God, I was going to figure out how to do that.
Let’s Have a Talk
I started by creating space for my thoughts and feelings. I had to offload some of these heavy and complex emotions in a safe and meaningful way. So, I reached out to my Lafayette Mom friends, dug in deep with my accountability team and my husband got ears full of my feelings and thoughts. I was talking it out and writing it out and was reaping the benefits of my explorations. Now that I realized how much of my experiences were parallel to those of my kids, my husband and I decided that we would have a talk with them. As we are prone to doing, we piled up in our bed with the kids and started with a simple, “This is happening. What do you think about it?” It was as if they had been waiting for us to initiate the conversation. We explored mommy’s decision to leave her job. Edison empathized feeling worried and nervous, “I feel like that sometimes, like when I go to school.” We talked about things that make us sad, like when someone pushed us down on the playground. “Mom, when you feel sad and hurt, I feel sad and hurt.”, Oliver expressed, which almost brought me to my knees. But, I was reminded of how important it is to consider the children, especially during times of crisis. Assuming that they are too young to process what is happening around them is erroneous. They may not be able to aptly express what they are thinking about the environment around them but they are definitely feeling the energy of the space they live in. Making the space for them to process doesn’t mean that you neglect your emotional self but that you invite them close to you as they grow in emotional intelligence.