Shame, Contrition, and Grief in the Face of Covid19

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Coronavirus has us homebound, and along with the economy, spirits are down for some folks. Others may feel agitated, anxious, or restless. Some feel angry or resentful. Many are scared. We may also enjoy moments of hope, assurance, and connection. In a given hour, we may experience all these states.

I’m reminded of a time I went to a Zen Buddhist meditation center. We started innocuously enough, with 20 minute sets, and walking meditation in between. Easy, I thought, since I had a fair amount of meditation experience under my belt, sitting for up to an hour, however haphazard and half-assed it may have been. The priest arranged each of us facing a wall, spread throughout the room with our knees almost touching the wall.

The first few minutes were manageable. But soon I could feel the wall encroaching on me. All my prior experiences had been sitting in circles or rows. In a meditation circle or in rows, I can expel my energy and let it dissipate. I can crack my eyes open and take a reprieve from my own mind and get a little bit of sensory input and distraction, even momentarily.

But facing the wall, there was no escape from myself. Every breath, every fleeting thought, every vibration bounced off the wall and came right back to me. I started to feel restless. My heart rate and body temperature started going up. Claustrophobia started to edge in. I could not have been more relieved when the priest struck the bamboo clapper.

What was it within myself that was making me restless? With my face twelve inches from the wall, what was coming up that I could not bear? There was nowhere to turn and no one to blame.

We have a similar opportunity now, maybe with a little less intensity, and for many, with the comforts of internet, food, and opportunities for distractions. Even so, lots of folks are feeling restless, anxious, depressed, bored, frustrated, and any number of difficult emotions.

Especially for those who have enjoyed mobility, access to shopping and resources, control over their environment, ability to make a living, etc., the shelter in place order as been extremely inconvenient, to say the least, and at worst, panic-inducing. But for those who have been habituated to living with restrictions, coronavirus is only somewhat more limiting than usual.

For instance, many of you know that I am the primary caregiver for Baba Baxter Jones, a Black male elder living with disabilities. His condition is such that he cannot leave the house by himself, requires special vehicles to accommodate his wheelchair, is on a fixed income, unable to work, and depends on others to provide groceries and meals. As he recently pointed out, “COVID-19 is a disability. Welcome to my world, m_f_r!”

Many folks of color have always experienced living restrictions. Systemic economic racism is such that poverty disproportionately affects Black and Brown folks. Detroit is filled with Black and Brown folks with unreliable transportation, whether it’s a vehicle they cannot afford to insure, a hoopty they can’t risk driving across town, buses that don’t run on time, or lack of opportunity to acquire driving skills. Many still fall through the cracks regarding healthcare, earning too much to qualify for Medicaid or Marketplace, but not enough to cover co-pays.

Most POC know where they can go, and where they cannot comfortably or safely go. Sometimes this is because they feel physically threatened, and other times, it’s because they know they’re likely to be targeted, hassled, tokenized, stereotyped, or otherwise aggressed, especially by white folks and law enforcement.

People like me have been dismayed and a little amused at the reactions of some white folks, who may be clearly ill-equipped to deal with these conditions, if this is the first time they are experiencing imposed restrictions, or, as one Black friend put it, “anything that isn’t unmitigated ease.”

So, white friends and other highly privileged folks, I join Baba Baxter in saying, “Welcome to my world.”

Are you experiencing scarcity, and fear of not having your needs met? Are you feeling physically threatened by everyone you meet, any of whom could be carriers of coronavirus? Are you worried about your finances? Are you afraid you might get sick, and not have the care needed to overcome your sickness?

At best, this could be an opportunity for empathy, and a wake-up call to the inequities so many Americans and others experience daily. Then maybe this could lead to a closer look at history, and why systemic oppressions persist. Keep going, and maybe one will wonder, “What is my role in all of this?”

Maybe you will conclude, like Ibram X, Kendi, that you can’t be anti-racist and a capitalist at the same time. Maybe you will also conclude that you can’t be an environmentalist and a capitalist at the same time. Maybe you will reflect on generational wealth and privilege, and who has benefitted, and who has been hurt.

If you have benefitted from the structural -isms, this required period of reflection and introspection may bring up a whole range of feelings, including resentment, anger, fear, and shame. This is where it gets juicy. Do not run from these difficult emotions. You may need to marinate, and stew for a while. Besides, there’s nowhere to go. Here is your wall: face it.

If shame rears its head, welcome it in. Shame especially gets a bad rap. It silences us, it shrinks us, it makes us ill, and sometimes it kills us. But shame is part of the emotional healing process when addressing injustice committed or perpetuated by ourselves, our ancestors, and our governments. Sometimes there’s no getting around it. When I drive from Detroit to Milwaukee, I have to contend with the traffic in Chicago. It’s just part of the journey, and I can’t avoid it. In my isolation, I can wallow in difficult feelings, I can rage against them, but I cannot deflect them for long. Can I stay in the discomfort, and remember to be patient, and trust the process?

If you can stay with shame, on the other side is its gentler cousin, contrition. Contrition comes when we can admit the harm committed, acknowledge the privileges we have, and deeply grieve. If shame is actively avoided, we never get close to the depths of grief. Grief is grossly underestimated and undervalued. Whenever we love, we make ourselves vulnerable to loss. When we lose what we love, we land into the arms of grief. Grief is a mature stage of love. Allowing ourselves to grieve fully, deeply, daily, inch by inch we climb out of grief into an expanded, more soulful, world view.  

We have so much to grieve. I achingly grieve the state of the planet, the loss of glaciers, the rising waters and devastation of people, cities, and nations. I carry the grief of my ancestors, my people, and others separated from their homeland by war, empire, colonization, and greed. I grieve the suffering caused by coronavirus and its thousands of untimely deaths, and these losses reverberating through families and communities. I grieve all the ways I unknowingly harmed others, and the destructive systems I’ve upheld, unable to find ways to extricate myself. Soooo many mistakes over so many years….. My white friends have all of this to contend with AND the burden of global white supremacy.

Let us utilize shame, contrition, and grief as a personal call to action, to identify more deeply with the most vulnerable in our society. We recognize the disparities are a result of the profound inequities we have put up with, or felt powerless against. Let’s commit ourselves to dismantle the privileges we have taken for granted. We each have parts of ourselves which are privileged, and parts of ourselves that are marginalized.

Let the privileged parts of yourself actively dismantle the systems that have upheld you, while allowing the marginalized parts of yourself to blossom, take up space, and embody your whole self. The current mutual aid movement is an opportunity to integrate those parts of ourselves. We realize all of us have something we can offer the community, at the same time that we can ask the community for assistance.

Do you have access to resources? Food, money, health care, jobs, protective medical equipment, transportation, good health, strong immune system, information, training? Do you have a Zoom account you can share? or Netflix, Showtime, Hulu….? Time to pony up. Do you feel vulnerable due to disability, age, chronic illness? Time to ask for support and assistance. Time to DEMAND change from our leaders and governments. We must all do better.

These are the times to grow our souls, as Mama Grace Lee Boggs foretold. Stay home. Go deep. Don’t let yourself off the hook. Our planet and community depend on the integrity of our inner work, along with the unrelenting rigor of our outer work.

PS I just learned that our State Representative, Isaac Robinson, died at age 44, due to difficulty breathing, presumably from Covid19. I am unspeakably shocked and heartbroken. He was a good, good person, devoted to the people, and a tireless warrior. A huge loss on every level. The grieving is only beginning.