From Despair, Into Action

I enter the end of the Christmas season with the usual lack of Christmas cheer.  The kids will probably be critical of the gifts.  The world is filled with tragedy.  My baking and wrapping skills aren't up to par. A few situations in my life are not getting any better. I feel like I have little power to change one of them, and plenty of power to change the other, but lack motivation.

One of my biggest lurking feelings is a feeling of despair.  Reading the comment threads on subjects related to racism, rape, and homelessness has caused me to reflect on the lack of kindness and compassion that seem to be pervasive in our society right now.  Another things that troubles me is a lack of attention to huge horrible things that happen, like our countries drone program and the fact that the Taliban recently slaughtered 145 people, mostly children.  It seems, we either want to hide our heads in the sand or lash out in 'black and white', us vs. them ways that don't serve any of us.

This feeling of despair is not new to me.  I have felt this 'weight of the world' feeling since I was a small child.  It has not served me well in many ways.  But, it did make me an excellent case worker, someone who had big compassion for my clients and an ability look at solutions.  Being a case worker broke my heart, over and over again.  Seeing a system that was so broken, that did not serve my people in the ways they needed to be served killed me a bit inside.  It left me feeling powerless and burned out.  So, I have taken a break and started writing again, an old love rekindled.

Somehow, I need to learn to turn that despair into action.  Blogging has helped ease my powerless feelings.  It has given voice to my personal experiences while hopefully helping others learn from my past and my insights into my experiences.  In ways, it has helped me combat the powerless feelings that I have when I read hateful comments on Internet threads.  My hope is that maybe in my little way, I am doing my part to combat the hatred, to educate people about things like rape, racism, mental health stigma, domestic violence, and more.  I can only hope that it is better than staying silent about these things and wanting to hide in a cave. (although writing does not always take away that 'hide in a cave' feeling)

This Christmas, I also try to have gratitude to turn around that despair.  Sometimes, this works and sometimes it fails miserably.  Many times, I throw up my hands in hopelessness, feeling like I don't know how to parent or even be much of an adult.  So  many things happened this year in the world 'triggered' me and filled me a sense of powerlessness.   There are days that everything seems freaking crazy and that there is nothing to do but despair.  It's my fall back, I am far from an optimist.

I do see that change happens sometimes.  In my home state of Wyoming, gay marriage is now legal. This is something I would never imagine happening in my lifetime.  We have a religious leader, the Pope, who is talking about deep and important issues regarding class and poverty.  Personally, I see the inherent goodness in people; from rallying around people who have loved ones with cancer to people in recovery helping each other in concrete and helpful ways that change lives. The Black Lives Matter protest movement is working to address systemic issues that pervade our culture regarding race.  We cannot afford to be disheartened because all around us, we see that change can happen, sometimes very slowly, but we cannot give up.

Perhaps my despair is actually a gift that pushes me to speak my truth.  It has inspired me to move, to speak about the issues important to me in my personal and professional life.  My despair has almost killed me, but it has also given me a strength and insight that I would not have without it.

This Christmas, I can look back at all the horrible things that have happened in the world and get completely bogged down, or I can choose to re-commit myself to making change in the ways that I can.  I will choose to re-commit myself to being a better parent, to teaching my kids that the latest, greatest gifts and purchases are much less important than the connections we make with people; that through their gifts of writing, dance and art, they can make changes in the world in their own small ways. I will choose to continue following my passion to speak out through writing about issues that are important to me, particularly about our mental health system and changes that must be made.  I will choose to continue learning to connect with new friends and expand my circle of people to make my world a little more 'large'.  Finally, my hope is that we can all learn to speak out a little more when we see injustice, that we can choose to help, instead of harm, that we can make space in our hearts for the suffering of the world and use our own unique gifts to keep pushing forward and change this crazy world.