It's Getting Personal

 It's getting personal, people.

So far, as I have watched in horror the dismantling of the democracy we’ve known for 250 years, it has been as someone who isn’t directly affected. Not yet, anyway. And, as I’ve said before, l don’t have personal expertise or experience in foreign policy or economics or budgetary cuts or the rule of law.

But with the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, we are now moving into my territory. Things are getting personal.

I’m deeply concerned that a man with no medical training and with a penchant for pseudoscience is in charge of our nation’s health.

I’ve read the Executive Order “Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commision” and, quite frankly, there is language in that order that is alarming. In Section 5, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, paragraph (iii) states: “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;”

Assess the prevalence of and THREAT. It’s the word threat that is alarming. It is the fact that the use of medications for the management of mental health conditions and neurodivergence is of such concern that it is put into an executive order. And it is coming at the hands of a man who claims that SSRIs are “more addictive than heroin.”

I’ve been watching this administration for 31 days now. Navigating complex issues and gray areas is not their forte. Or their MO. They take a scorched earth approach to pretty much everything they touch. Black and white. All or nothing. And they don’t back down.

So when I see various psych meds being mentioned as a potential threat I know what is likely coming. A vilification of psych med use and a potential ban altogether (I'll talk about the implication for us adults in another post).

And this is where I can talk with confidence from experience. I say this as a person who, at age 11 was diagnosed with anxiety and depression (and would have been diagnosed with OCD had it been a diagnosis in 1975). I say this as a person who was put on her first antidepressant at age 12.

I say this as the mother whose various children struggled with anxiety, depression. OCD, and ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder. I say this as the mother who had to fight to get them help. I say this as the mother who regrets not fighting harder. I say this as the mother who did too little, too late. I say this as the mother who saw the vast difference an SSRI made in one child’s ability to “unstick” from an obsession and the way a stimulant enabled another child to focus in school and quit believing himself to be stupid.

I say this as the grandmother of a child with an anxiety disorder, ADHD, and dyslexia and a heap of trauma and all the complexities that go with that.

I know meds are considered bad. I know that Big Pharma is the boogie man that we all love to hate. But there is a time and a place for medication.

Psych meds are a tool, not the only tool, but sometimes a necessary tool, when addressing mental health challenges. Sure, it would be great if kids got therapy of various and all sorts. But have you ever had to find a therapist for a child? The process is long and hard and maddening and so damn expensive, even if you have insurance. (In some areas, a therapist who works with children is nonexistent.) It can take months to get in with a therapist only to discover she is going out on maternity leave. Or moving away. Or will no longer take your insurance. The good ones are "no longer accepting clients."

Have the use of these meds increased over the years? Absolutely! But so has the diagnosis of various mental health conditions, thanks to our better understanding of the brain and neurodivergence and how these conditions present themselves (especially in females). And I am thankful for this. In the “good old days” so many of these kids would have been labeled as bad or disobedient or rebellious or just plain weird. Today we know better.

So, should RFK, Jr. and his posse decide that children should no longer be prescribed SSRIs, stimulants, and the like, what are we going to do?

How are we going to support these kids who are anxious or depressed or obsessing or so scattered mentally that they can’t focus on school? How are we going to let them know that they aren’t broken? How are we going to accommodate them?

And how are we going to support their parents? Because it is a hard, HARD road. No parent should be scorned for getting their child the help that’s needed. And no parent should be villainized for having a child who needs help in the first place.

I had so hoped this younger generation would not have to suffer the stigma of mental health conditions. I’m afraid they will. Perhaps worse.

Medication is a tool. Sometimes a good tool. Sometimes the ONLY tool available. Taking that away is going to cause a lot of harm.

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On Suffering and Entitlement

 Over the past few months I’ve had a nagging thought that has gradually taken shape and come to fruition at a time when I have desperately needed it. 

It all started back when Helene blasted her way through our community and so many of us were just in this space of getting through to the next thing. And it made sense. There is certainly part of a natural disaster that really is nothing short of survival, hoping upon hope that things will indeed get better. 

And yet I realized how often we are holding out and holding on for dear life. Take parenthood, for instance. We hold on in the newborn stage, hoping upon hope that one day we’ll sleep again. Then we get to toddlers and can’t imagine being able to grocery shop in peace, minus the adorable octopus of a child who makes mad grabs at anything within reach. Eventually we get to adolescence, that stage where we truly think that there is such a thing as Death by Parenthood and they tell us that we just have to make it until they are out the door. And then, per one local rector, we receive this little nugget of parenthood wisdom: “The first forty years are the hardest.” 

Do we ever get there? 

We are so often holding out for better days ahead, just white knuckling our way through. But those better days are not a guarantee. Sometimes one kind of hard replaces another. And sometimes it just lands on top of the already hard and we start dealing with layer upon layer of hard, an existential parfait of life’s little and big challenges.

So a while back I realized that maybe, just maybe, we would be better off accepting the hard as the normal and not some blip on the radar that will disappear when the life we want, the life we think we are owed, shows up. 

Last month I listened to Kate Bowler’s interview with Rev. Sam Wells, vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. He talks of his mother’s very hard life, as a refugee of the Holocaust, as a mother who lost two children shortly after birth, and then as a woman battled cancer for 14 years before her death at age 53. 

As Kate spoke with him she said: “...I realized that so much of your tenderness in your personality comes from this place of knowing where I don’t have to explain to you that sometimes life is difficult and people go through personal tragedy because it’s a part, it’s life woven into who you are.”

His response was what got me: “..I think when people approach something like suffering… it’s all about what you think the normal story is…I’m firmly convinced we live our lives in stories and the story of suffering for somebody who thinks they are born with some sort of entitlement to a life of a certain security and well-being and health and modest success…If that’s their implied story, then suffering is made of up of why me? This is a terrible scar…So the default in our household was never, you know, why doesn’t it work out for us?”

The word ‘entitlement’ stuck with me. 

One definition of entitlement from Oxford Languages is “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.” 

Fast forward to the election, the inauguration, and the past two weeks of executive order upon executive order and news stories and developments coming so fast it’s like trying to drink out of a fire hose to keep up. And everywhere I see the dismantling of our national government and the very real possibility of the loss of our democracy, our freedom, and life as we know it. 

And part of me, at times all of me, wants to panic or cry or flee the country altogether. But there’s another thought that comes to mind. 

Who am I to believe that I am entitled to a life free of suffering and oppression? 

Well, let me backtrack…I would be the first to say that there is certainly a lot of suffering that can and does happen within the bounds of a free society and I have had my share (and probably written about it ad nauseam). And I will also be the first to say we should do everything in our power to protect our free society and fight oppression in any and all forms. 

But I also recognize that I have not experienced oppression the way so many have throughout the whole of human history. I have not personally encountered pogroms or massacres, slavery or feudalism. I have not had to watch my own husband or son go off to war or had my home burned by the enemy forces. I have not, as some of Matt’s ancestors did, buried nine of my twelve children before they reached adulthood. And I have not, as all four of my great grandmothers did, died prematurely due to lack of vaccines or basic antibiotics. I, and those I know and love, have not spent time in prison for my political or theological beliefs and I have not been attacked for the color of my skin. 

I have not had to run. I have not had to hide. And while I certainly know what it is like to be dismissed and ignored, patronized and even scorned because of my gender; I am a white, Anglo-Saxon (with some German, Dutch, and a hair of some other things mixed in for variety’s sake), Protestant, middle-class, straight, educated person, I have never been discriminated against based on my color, ethnicity, education, orientation,  or socioeconomic status.   

Perhaps it has all been too easy. Perhaps we are about to learn what so many others throughout time have known, that there are no guarantees on freedom or safety. That at any time and in any place we could come face to face with oppression. Maybe it is time for us to learn the lessons that our Black brothers and sisters have learned, passed down, generation to generation, from their ancestors in shackles at the hands of mine, or at least those who looked like me. Maybe it is time to learn from my Jewish brothers and sisters, who learned from their parents and grandparent, great grandparents and aunts and uncles what it is like to be in hiding, to depend on the kindness of neighbors for a hope of safety and a life ahead. Maybe it is time to learn from my indigenous brothers and sisters what it is like to have what is rightfully theirs taken from them, and done so, as it often was, in the name of God. 

Maybe it is time to stop hoping for better days to come and start embracing the days that are now. Maybe the good days made us lazy and entitled, leaving us with the expectation that life owed us something. Maybe the good times led to too much independence from each other and reliance on all the things that our driven, white, middle class, American culture values: money, stuff, success, and a house worthy of HGTV. 

So this is what I’m thinking: We aren’t guaranteed anything. We shouldn’t be surprised when the hard times come.

Should we do what we can when we can to push back against oppression and seek to have a free and just society for all? 

ABSOLUTELY!

But there may be times when all we see is the hard and in that hard we are called, per Micah 6:8,  to do the most basic of things: Do justice. Love mercy. And walk humbly with our God. 

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Patience with Mess

 It has been 82 days since the worst storm to hit Western North Carolina in recorded history roared through our lives, dumping upwards of 30+ inches of rain in some areas, causing rivers and creeks to leap their banks and engulf houses and business and roads and bridges, triggering over 2000 landslides, and damaging or destroying an estimated 40% of the trees in Buncombe County alone. It left a mess. A devastating mess.

Word on the street is that only 5% of the debris has been picked up so far. The entire cleanup will likely take years. 

The reality is that there is mess and there will be mess. For a long time. 

It can be hard to look at mess. We equate mess with laziness or poverty or litter bugs. We equate it with people who don’t care and even assume that messiness is somehow a measure of the character of a people. So when that mess is staring us in the face, we want it gone. Now. 

Mess is the unfortunate reality of an event that has wrought destruction. 

The reality is that the aftermath of natural disasters isn’t all that different from the aftermath of the more personal ones. 

Traumatic events leave a field of debris that can be very hard to absorb and process. 

We want to rush past the mess. We want the cleanup to be simple, efficient, and in our time frame. We don’t want to see it any more. 

The loss of a loved one. The death of a marriage. The betrayal of a friend. The fracturing of a family. The loss of a job or a home or an entire community. Innocence taken before its time. Trust obliterated by the one you thought was trustworthy. The shattering of a dream. The list could go on.

In natural disasters there is debris. Lots of it. Debris that can take years or decades to clean up. Debris caught in trees and lodged into riverbanks of our lives. The entire landscape is often changed forever. Landslides scour the earth to the bedrock. Rivers change course. Ancient groves of trees are leveled. 

If a single storm can do this much damage to a world made of stone and earth and wood and all that has been built upon it, how much more can this storm or any storm, physical or relational or emotional, do to us humans who are made of flesh and bone and often the tenderest of hearts. 

If the physical world cannot endure a torrent of wind and rain without sustaining jaw-dropping, life altering damage, why do we think that our emotional worlds, our very souls can absorb a traumatic event and bounce back, neat and tidy, in record time. 

And why do we rush our friends and family, our coworkers and neighbors, to clean up themselves on our timetable  so we don’t have to look at their mess?

 It’s natural to want it all fixed now. But it won’t be. It can’t be. 

Our towns, our houses, our landscapes, our relationships, our hearts will all take time to heal from whatever devastation has come their way. 

Let’s be patient with each other. And with ourselves. 

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The Love of Systems

Jesus Christ did not die for our systems; he died for broken human beings who he longs to make whole so they bear his likeness. - Diane Langberg in When the Church Harms God's People

We humans love our systems. And systems can be good and necessary. But any system, even a system set up to do good and even holy things, can, over time become a distorted and even hideous version of what it set out to be. And then there are some systems, we discover in our horror, that have some pretty crappy roots to begin with.

We humans love our systems. They bring us a sense of order. If we make our way up the ladder, our systems bring us a sense of pride and accomplishment. They give us a purpose. They make statements and if we agree with those statements we feel like we belong. And if we agree with those statements then we are 'right' and those who don't agree are 'wrong.'

Our world needs order and systems bring that order into being. It is only natural that we look to those systems to make our churches function. It is only natural that we look to those systems to link arms with those who share our beliefs and then figure out how to govern churches and their members.

But we have a problem when the system itself is king. We have a problem when the system no longer looks out for the best interest of those within it. We have a problem when the system no longer looks like Jesus.

Part of my spiritual journey over the past 10 years has been grappling with the failure of these systems. I've been in three different churches in three different denominations and in all three I saw the system, the agenda, the 'way we do things' bring unspeakable harm to the humans seeking fellowship and a shepherd. And in all three situations I tried to seek some level of accountability and in all three situations was met with silence. (Maybe I'm the wrong gender to get the job done.)

I don't know what to do with this.

People say to me 'no church is perfect' and 'we're all sinners, after all' and things like that. And to that I will say that that is no excuse for harming those within your care and often harming them IN THE NAME OF GOD.

So it was with great relief that I read Langberg's words this morning. It isn't just me. She, perhaps that woman I respect more than any other, she sees it, too. And she is calling it out.

When we pledge our loyalty to any person or any system we are in danger of running roughshod over another human being created in the image of God. And there is nothing like Jesus about that.

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Lean In

I have tried, for the most part, to avoid political posting on Facebook. I have friends across the spectrum. I am not one to debate or argue. But there does come a time to speak.

This election came at a hard time anyway. Or perhaps it was an easier time. After all, I was already in disaster mode.

This is the second major disaster I have experienced in 6 weeks time. I live in Swannanoa, NC, one of the epicenters of destruction from Hurricane Helene. My life and my family and my community and my livelihood have all been significantly impacted. I was just starting to come out of the post-disaster fog when came the election.

I will be totally honest here. I do not want to endanger my relationship with those who voted differently, but the reality is that I'm horrified. I am so afraid for what this means for the dignity and safety of women, the Black community, the LGBTQ population, and immigrants. I am afraid for what this means for healthcare. I am afraid for what this means for the freedom to disagree with power without consequences. I know this means that this could be the end of our country as we know it.

And yet, as I have seen with a natural disaster and I am experiencing yet again with the horror of this election, communal trauma is so different from personal trauma. In a disaster, the entire community is experiencing this together. And with this election, you have pretty much half the country in collective horror over the results.

That "me, too" is so key.

I believe the isolating factor of abuse is by far the most painful. This is why the "don't talk" rule within churches is damaging. And think of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (look up ACE score). These are all personal. They are often secret. And they are all coated in shame. The child is powerless and alone.

Powerless and alone. This is the essence of trauma.

Here we are with a disaster. A national disaster. A disaster for women. For the LGBTQ community. For the Black community and people of all colors other than white. For immigrants.

We may feel powerless. We may BE powerless. But we are not alone. We are in this disaster TOGETHER. And we must stick together.

A part of me wants to give into fear and run down the rabbit trail of the worst case scenarios (and I have a very good Worst Case Scenario generator in my head). But another part of me knows that there is way too much work to do.

A few days ago I wrote a post about my need to not look away from the destruction in my community. After that, a friend shared a phrase she heard. "We can look away or we can lean in."

Let us take some time to grieve. But then we have a job to do. We need to, we must, lean in.

We lean in and listen to those who are afraid.

We lean in and defend those who are oppressed.

We lean in and offer light and hope to those flattened by despair.

We lean in and include those who are cast out.

We lean in and treat with dignity those who are marginalized.

We lean in and speak words of truth and courage in the face of tyranny.

We lean in and love in a country being led by hate.

We lean in and make friends and neighbors of those who are called the enemy.

Come on, people, we've got work to do.

We lean in and do justice.

We lean in and love mercy.

We lean in and walk humbly with our God.

(Micah 6:8)

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Three Weeks After

It’s been over three weeks since Helene did her dirty work, leaving indescribable heartache and destruction in her path.

People ask me how I’m doing.

I am exhausted.

There’s physical exhaustion that comes in waves, despite my level of exertion of lack thereof.

There’s mental exhaustion that leaves me virtually incapable of complex thought, problem solving, or reading a book.

There’s emotional exhaustion that leaves me feeling everything and nothing, all at the same time.

I am angry.

I am angry that our tragedy has been used in service of a political agenda.

I am angry that the world out there has gone on spinning while we are here…with all this.

I am angry at the lack of information, leading to both intentional and unintentional misinformation, as people fill in the gaps the best they can.

I am angry at the failure of the emergency alerts, which were too little, too late, and inaccessible to those that needed them most.

I am angry at the insurance industry which seems to play a game at their benefit and the expense of those they supposedly serve.

I am angry that the cell phone provider that has always promised the best service has failed us terribly when we needed it most.

I am angry that people still don’t understand how to navigate an intersection where the traffic light is out. (Four way stop, people! Four.way.stop!)

I feel guilt. So much guilt.

Guilt that I haven’t lost more.

Guilt that I haven’t done more.

Guilt that I am physically incapable of doing more, due to my ls spinal limitations and lack of big, beefy muscles with which to hoist cases of water and piles of debris.

Guilt that I lack skill with a chainsaw or earth moving equipment.

Guilt that I didn’t warn my daughter’s neighbors to evacuate and wasn’t there to rescue them from their roofs with a canoe.

Guilt that it seems like I have given so little, mostly receiving from people’s kindness.

I am grateful.

Grateful that my daughter and granddaughter got to safety before the flood water engulfed their house.

Grateful for the hoards of volunteers and that people can actually pronounce Swannanoa now.

Grateful for the kindness of so many family, friends, and strangers in donations of money and food and water and goods and offers of help.

I am overwhelmed.

I am overwhelmed with all of the offers of all the good things.

I am heartbroken.

I am heartbroken that those that lost the most were, for the most part, those who had the least to lose and also have the fewest resources to rebuild.

But right now, right now I am afraid.

Afraid of what will happen to the local businesses.

Afraid that the world will go back to normal and not learn and not change.

Afraid that we will be expected to go on living as if none of this ever happened.

Afraid that we will be forgotten.

Afraid that we will forget each other.

Afraid that we will lose the connection and sense of community that have been our oxygen, our water, our source of life for 21 days.

And yet, I do have hope. I hope for so many things. But that is another post for another day.

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Why Didn't They Leave?

(On September 27, 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Helene, now a tropical storm, passed over the mountains of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee, dumping upwards of 30 inches of rain and resulting in massive flooding, landslides, washed out roads, and downed trees and power lines. The death toll in North Carolina is currently at 96 but many are still missing. This is Western North Caroina's Katrina.)

"Why didn't they leave?"

I see this question constantly when I do the stupid thing of reading the comments on videos and posts about the flood and destruction wrought by Helene. They ask that question as if everyone here is stupid. As if we just didn't know any better. As if all of this trauma and loss wouldn't have happened if we had just heeded the advice of the professionals.

Why didn't they leave?

The Rainfall

Days before they started telling us that we would get the remnants of Hurricane Helene. They said that we would likely get 6-10" of rain. They did say that this could be a catastrophic storm. When they said the same thing in 2018 with Hurricane Irene, we got drizzle. Most people in WNC are "I'll believe it when I see it" people because predicting the weather around here can be extremely tricky.

Instead of 6-10" of rain, we got around 14-15" at our house in Swannanoa. The areas around Mount Mitchell (highest point east of the Mississippi at 6684ft) got 24-30" of rain. All that rain has to go somewhere.

The Flooding

They said that the flooding could be bad. When I hunted and pecked I found that the rivers were expected to crest at higher that what we had with Frances in 2004, but lower than the historic Flood of 1916. They said that the rivers would crest on Saturday afternoon.

The flooding happened Friday morning. The Swannanoa River in Biltmore Village crested at 5.4 feet above the 1916 level.

We were expecting a lot of rain. We expected some flooding. Nobody was expecting this.

The Emergency Alerts

Well, some of us got emergency alerts. I say some of us because my husband, sleeping beside me, his phone on his bedside table, did not get those alerts. My phone did. But the alerts didn't say exactly WHO should evacuate (our house is high on a hill). And when I tried to read more information, assuming that this alert was in my text messages, the alert would disappear into some unknown alert stratosphere. Or sometimes the alert would say "For more information, go to buncombeready.gov" which you cannot do if you no longer have cell service or internet. I have heard other people saying that they never got an alert.

The Timing

The flooding started in the wee hours. Even when our daughter texted and then called us around 6-6:30am, it was still dark. Who can see where the water is in the dark? Who wants to venture out into flooding roads when they can't see anything?

The original plan with our daughter was to wait until a bit of daylight for her to try to evacuate or for us to try to go get her and our granddaughter. We didn't wait and, as we discovered, daylight would have been too late. By the time there was any daylight, her road was impassable. Her neighbors were trapped. Within 3 hours they were on their roofs, the water to the eaves.

So why didn't they evacuate? Because nobody expected this. Nobody expected the 2-2.5 FEET of water to pour down over our watershed, fill our reservoirs to the point that the spillways activated, flooding our rivers which overflowed their banks well beyond the 100 and the 500 year floodplains.

Nobody expected houses that had never seen water to be wiped off their foundations. Nobody expected roads to washed away. Nobody expected mountainsides to come crashing down. Nobody expected that the terms "unprecedented" and "Biblical" to be used with regard to our weather event. Nobody expected the words "decimated" and "apocalyptic" to be used to describe their town, their neighborhoods, their homes.

So please, PLEASE have compassion on those most impacted. Please don't question their judgment.

We expected something. None of us expected THIS.

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