Rage is the spark, not the fuel.
—Karen Walrond, Unlocking Us
Kaiser Permanente Rock Creek Medical Offices
On November 11, 2021, my almost six-year-old child received her first COVID-19 vaccination. Palpable relief immediately washed over me. When I went to the same clinic for my own booster shot the following day, I welled up with tears upon seeing the bulletin board pictured below. If only every time we turned to the outside world, we experienced this much love and care for each other.
Then news of the Omicron variant hit the airwaves, and my motivation to write this post died on the vine. Meanwhile , the Supreme Court weighed in on Texas’s draconian anti-abortion law, the Senate has not been able to move voting rights legislation forward, and ongoing obstructions are blocking the passage of the Build Back Better Plan. Thank you rage for prompting my return to the keyboard.
Given how hard it is to detect the water while we’re swimming in it, we likely won’t know just how impactful the last 21 months have been on our lives until several years from now. On November 11, however, I got a glimpse of the massive energy, time, and effort that have gone toward protecting and negotiating for the safety of my daughter since we first locked down in March 2020. Knowing I’m never alone in these moments of collective struggle and transformation, I feel inspired to give a shout out to my fellow moms and additional parents who may not be women but are largely, if not entirely, carrying the load of what remains heavily skewed as women’s work within patriarchal, gender-binary systems. That load includes but is not limited to the actual physical labor of caring for children as well as the mental and emotional weight of establishing and maintaining the systems that keep daily life afloat. Here are just a few examples of that systems maintenance: keeping track of what food is needed to fill hungry bellies and what bills need to be paid to keep those bellies dry and warm, enrolling in and coordinating children’s activities and appointments, transporting and/or organizing transportation for children to get to those activities and appointments on time, communicating with third parties like schools and doctor’s offices, and doing the due diligence necessary to determine which peers and community members are safe and hospitable for our little ones. During the pandemic, engaging in near constant cost-benefit analyses of how much we expand or shrink our children’s worlds to keep them safe has been yet another burden added to the already unbearable weight of being a mom. Parents with children under five remain saddled with this additional burden.
It recently came to my attention that my daughter thought she caused my exhaustion. Initially, I felt heartbroken. She’s not crazy for picking up on how limited my patience has been for the brilliant ways she delays bedtime. She accurately detects the irritability that emerges when I’m trying to get us somewhere on time and her freer timescape does not give a hoot about others’ rules, judgments, and rigidity. And she’s most certainly not making up the fatigue she detects in my eyes or the sadness she picks up in my voice on a regular basis these days. Of course she believes all of this is about her. That’s what kids do. So I at least have said and will continue to repeat to her that the depletion is not her fault or her responsibility. When I went through a list of reasons I grow weary that have nothing to do with her, I appreciated her solemn contribution, “Mama, playing hard makes us tired, too.” Amen to that.
As a bit of my worry about her has dissipated with her vaccination shots, that spark of rage has started to replace the heartbreak. I have been a psychotherapist throughout the pandemic, working with approximately 25 clients per week. This experience hasn’t exactly felt like a walk in the park. I look back at those first six months with incredulity, as I would see five clients for hour-long sessions from 7 a.m. to noon in the basement, come upstairs, and take over childcare for the afternoon. Now I understand that initial period as one of crisis, when my stress response system had enough reserves to tackle day after day with no time or space to nourish myself. And I was one of the lucky moms who didn’t lose my job or have to leave it because there was no one else to take care of the children. I also had a reliable co-parent and so was able to tag-team work and parenting.
Even with those resources, as 2022 fast approaches my reserves are gonzo. And a lot of people in this country—many of whom refuse to get vaccinated—deny there is even an issue. Re-enter the rage and our need for a different kind of fuel. Amanda Doyle poignantly captured the reality for too many of us when she said,
…in chemistry, fire burns when fuel meets heat and oxygen. You need heat and oxygen to turn fuel into fire. And I realized that I have that fuel in me. I do have fuel in me for fun and joy and desire and curiosity. And I think we all do. But I think because of the way our lives are structured, mostly for women, we don’t give those things heat and we don’t give those things air. And that is giving space and time for these things and allowing attention for them. And if you have no room or time in your life to live, you just won’t. And the truth is, is that the world is fine with women not living. And that means that we have to decide whether we want to live because not a damn person is going to require it of us, because that is how the world turns...And I think the key thing for me has been not viewing this as yet another duty that I’m failing to meet. Not just another way I’m jacked up, not just another way that I have a problem or my relationship has a problem, or I haven’t prioritized correctly, but it’s just that I have been doing the best that I can. And that best has been not making any fucking room to have these things in my life. And I’m just viewing them not as a something I’m failing to make happen in my life, but as a birthright that I want to reclaim. And so I’m taking back that room because I can either spend my time resenting the world for failing to ignite me, or I can make some time to give myself the heat and the air that I need.
So how do we reclaim this birthright of feeling ignited in life? I say we love the shit out of ourselves and each other. The isolation and self-reliance required by a toxically individualistic society are not badges of honor. They are our death knell. With the recent loss of Bell Hooks, it seems only fitting to return to her wisdom on the power of beloved community. As she said, “…people in oppressive institutions will not change from the logic and practices of domination without engagement with those who are striving for a better way.” Finding and loving those who want to address what is happening, rather than avoid it, as well as those who embrace the compassionate mess that is life, rather than judge it, will bring us back to life. With some vitality, we can mobilize collectively for transformation of those systems, which benefit so few and devastate so many.
In addition to engaging with trusted others when I can muster it (there’s been more cheesy holiday film watching this month than I would care to admit), I am paying closer and closer attention to the harsh voice that I’ve appropriated from various institutions and relationships across my life. That voice derisively says my first name before dismissing my struggles. Usually a negative evaluation follows as well as an order to be different. “Connie, why are you getting so upset over such a small thing? Pull it together.” This voice represents the colonization of my mind that would have me buy into systems designed to objectify me, exploit my labor, and violate my dignity. So I am committed to not giving that voice any more of my power, which I can do regardless of whether or not I have a beloved community to lean on just yet. And when I struggle to pull my attention away from that gaslighting voice, the following poem by Becky Helmsley reminds me of what is actually true:
She sat at the back and they said she was shy,
She led from the front and they hated her pride,
They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance,
They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad,
So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad,
They told her they'd listen, then covered their ears,
And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should,
Be the girl they told her to be best as she could,
But one day she asked what was best for herself,
Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees,
She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves,
She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine,
And she told them what she'd been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough,
She was either too little or far far too much,
Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak,
Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,
And she stopped...and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.