We Did Not Know What Was Coming Series: Grief in the Time of Trump

PREFACE: To say the last seven years have been a journey of growth for me and this country is an understatement. To help me process and cope with the roller-coaster of emotions I have felt these years, I started writing on Medium right after the 2016 election. My last series ended December 31, 2020, after Biden won the presidential election.

Recently I realized I missed writing “in my journal” and decided to go back to the very beginning and re-read my essays. I wanted to see where I started out on November 9, 2016, and where I am now. I decided to repost my favorite blogs with a short present-day commentary and continue onto current times.

I hope a few of you will join me on this journey of recollection, reflection, and learning. Little did we know what we were headed into.

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Grief in the Time of Trump: November 15, 2020

Maps are useful. They help us get to unknown places with relative ease and safety. Someone has done the hard work of surveying and plotting roads, highways, towns and cities so we can drive from one destination to another with relative confidence. Trails are plotted for those who want to hike our forests and national parks without getting lost. Waterways are marked for those who want to sail and fish. Maps help us see where we are and how to get to where we want to go.

We even have maps in psychotherapy. Actually we call them models but they really are maps. These tools help us understand the healing “journey”, to name “you are here” in this moment, and this is the “path forward” to emotional healing and health. Sounds like a map, right?

Prior to 1969 there were no road maps for death and dying or grief and loss in America. That all changed when Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying which was inspired by her work with terminally ill patients.

In her native Switzerland, death, like birth, was considered a normal part of the life cycle. In Switzerland people died at home surrounded by family and friends, and they were comfortable until the end of their lives.

When Kubler-Ross began working with patients in the United States in 1965, she was appalled by the treatment of terminally ill patients at the hands of doctors and nurses. Death was a taboo subject and discussing it with the patient and their family was considered morbid. Patients died alone in hospitals; physicians ignored them; and adequate pain medication was underused. Medical staff preferred to focus on those patients who had a chance to recover rather than acknowledge or help those unfortunate enough to be dying.

Her work as assistant professor of psychiatry at Billings Hospital, affiliated with the University of Chicago, focused on the psychological treatment of terminally ill patients suffering from anxiety. She persisted in meeting with and speaking deeply with dying patients day in and day out. She began organizing seminars on death and dying with caregivers, doctors, nurses, ministers, and others. Her seminars attracted large audiences. “My goal was to break through the layer of professional denial that prohibited patients from airing their inner-most concerns,” she said.

Her work with the dying led to the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying, in 1969, in which she proposed the, now famous, five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She gave us a map for dying.

In On Grief and Grieving, co-authored with David Kessler and published posthumously in 2005, Kübler-Ross expanded her model to include any form of personal loss, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or income, major rejection, the end of a relationship or divorce, drug addiction, incarceration, the onset of a disease or an infertility diagnosis, and even minor losses like moving. The map was expanded to guide everyone through loss and grief.

Kessler continued exploring the subject of grief after the death of Kubler-Ross and in 2019 published Finding Meaning in which he proposed “meaning” as a sixth stage of grief. It is a profound addition to the map.

I like Elisabeth’s map; it is simple and easy to remember but working through grief is anything but simple or easy. Grief work is excruciating. I have suffered and grieved numerous losses in my own life. I have borne witness to many clients as they bravely traveled their own grief journeys and celebrated with them as they healed. I have profound respect and regard for those courageous enough to grieve well.

I would like to share some “rules of the road” as they relate to the journey of grief:

· Grief is not a linear process whereby folks march neatly through the five steps. Rather I might feel shock and denial today, and depression tomorrow back to denial the next month onto acceptance a year later, and then three years later right back into anger and rage as if the loss happened that day.

· Feelings are not time bound. I might feel shock for minutes or days. I might spiral through all the five stages in a minute, a day, or a year. I may process grief for one year, five years, or ten years.

· Each person grieves differently. Each loss is unique. Each history to the loss is unique. Each response to the loss is unique.

· The depth of grief is connected to the intensity of the loss. To grieve the loss of a child is more difficult than the loss of a job opportunity. To grieve the loss of a belief system is more difficult than the loss of a favorite restaurant closing.

· People can and often do get stuck in a stage of grief. This is what brings many people to therapy.

· Grief over time is lonely and confusing because we are not taught to understand or honor the process in ourselves or in others. Sadly we often travel the path alone.

· Naming is critical in the grief process. We must name our feelings and name our beliefs with respect to our loss. We must name the swirling emotions within us in response to daily events as it relates to our loss. We must name our needs, hopes, and wants both lost and later hoped for in our healing process. Naming is actually the most important tool in the healing process.

· Grief work is very very hard work and exhausting.

· It takes someone with courage, persistence, deep curiosity, and commitment to grieve well.

· Grief is cumulative in the sense that each loss piggy backs on every other loss which has not been healed. Even when previous grief work has been done well, there will be an echo of pain with each new injury.

· If one does not grieve, in time it becomes a poison in the inner system and spills into the outer world of relationships. It does not go away. If not dealt with, unresolved grief and loss causes bitterness, resentment, negativity, withdrawal, coldness, rage, anger, physical sickness, addictions and all manner of darkness.

· If one does grieve deeply and honestly, in time life returns. Not the life of “before” but often life with a bittersweet wisdom and broader perspective — a feeling of possibility in the future.

So why am I writing all this stuff? Honestly, I am trying to figure out where I got lost in my own grief process after Trump came into power. I started my descent into shock and disbelief when Hillary lost and I am still there four years later. Why have I not moved beyond stage one and arrived at “meaning”? Where did I miss the exit on the map?

Writing these two essays, I realize I refuse to go under the events of Trump’s election, behavior in office and heinous policies that have caused my system to be shocked and enraged. I refuse to name my heart loss. I cannot bear to go to the bottom of my own abyss and survey the wreckage of my battered beliefs, betrayed core values, and crushed dreams. I refuse to look at what it currently means to me to be a human being in the United States under this terrible Republican administration. I balk at naming my fears about what comes next for me or who I might become in these terrible times of Trumpism.

I know that sounds dramatic but it is not. I was forced to do this descent one other time in my life when my beloved sister was murdered in 1981. There were times, actually years, I did not know if I was going to be able to take the next breath. Every cell in my body, mind, heart and soul was shattered. Remember when I said that each loss resonates with every other loss even when they are grieved well?

I grieved my sister deeply and well. Her death put me on the path to becoming a better, more whole human being. It was the hardest journey I have ever undertaken. I had hoped I would never have to make such a descent again, but it appears I have to.

Of course this journey is very different than the one I began in 1981 but not completely. What they have in common is once again I must name who I am as a human being; I must consciously choose how I will live out my humanity under the most trying conditions; I must determine what I will compromise on and what I will never give up. I cannot do any of that though until I articulate all that I hold sacred in being human right now in this moment.

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Commentary: December 18, 2023

I really like the essay above.

I think grief work is the undercurrent of our lives. We want/need something. That something may be small or it may be huge. We did not get it or it was taken from us. We want it back. We might get it back or we might not. We grieve.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was a genius in naming the stages we go through with respect to loss. I know I cycle through these stages often personally, professionally, politically, and spiritually.

In the coming days, I will post essays dated November 22, 2020 through December 31, 2020. Each essay explored a specific stage of my grief in the time of trump. Those essays are:

Stage 1 — “Mom, Why Are You Still Shocked?”

Stage 2 — The Wrath of Khan

Stage 3 — If I Just Write One More Postcard Then…

Stage 4 — Depression in the Time of Trump

Stage 5 — Acceptance? Really?

As I read through all the grief essays, I realized that today, December 18, 2023, I am no longer grieving the ugliness of trump himself. I see and understand the man completely. His fate is now in the hands of the courts. I am trusting (sometimes barely) the rule of law will prevail and this criminal will be convicted and held accountable for the crimes he has committed. Honestly, he needs to be sentenced to the psychiatric ward in a federal prison.

What I am deeply grieving, in this moment though, is that millions of Americans still support this criminal — would elect him again if given the chance. I look forward to thinking and feeling my way through the next commentaries exploring why that support continues, at what cost to us as a people — to me — and how can I heal my grief when so many continue to be lost in some madness.

It is also synchronous that these essays are being posted and updated three days to the year of their original appearance on Medium. Grief takes a long time. The Universe honors that. I honor that.