There are certain questions you get asked ad nauseam when you’ve been divorced. What is your vision for your life? What does the future look like? What do you want? Who are you dating? Are you dating? Are you ok? Do you hate your ex? What happened for real though? Do you feel better now? Do you want to go to a club tonight at 10PM?
(No. 10PM is bedtime. We are not 22 why are you asking me this??)
There’s a lot documented in the divorce literature about letting go of the future you envisioned for yourself. This I understand, but was not quite my issue. My issue was having had what I loved and felt safe, taken away from me abruptly and traumatically by forces outside of my control. And living in the aftermath of knowing I cannot and will not ever return to the place I called home.
It is ironic that this experience has brought me closer to family in way I did not want to be. And what I mean by that is: I come from a long line of refugees who could not go home. None of us arrived here under good conditions because no one leaves home because they want to.
I hate that I can relate to my great great great grandfather who left Russian persecution. My great grandmother who left Romania for reasons we still don’t know. And my grandfather who escaped a war-torn Europe and middle-east to bring us here. He spent his life making sure his children never knew what hate and being without-a-home felt like. The fear of not knowing whether you’re safe, trying to protect your children, letting fear run your life. I know this fear. Different from him, but I know it. I believe you do, too.
I think about all my family members (all. of. them.) who came to the U.S. because they also could not go home. The irony of how many of their decedents preach anti-immigration policies now is ironic. Every time I hear a family member scream “Those illegals!” I remind them they we were once begging to be let in. And a lot of our murdered family members would be here if we had been let in (“But we can’t take in everyone! That’s not our job” Yeah. Obviously. It’s not mutually exclusive.) It’s just not so simple.
I promised you I’d comment on the antisemitism right now and honestly, I can’t. I have nothing for you except a big giant TOLD YOU SO, which I’m not sure is helpful. If you’re confused about what is happening or what they are calling a conflict, I can break that down in three words to tell you: America is crumbling.
Anti-semitism is a harbinger of the end of democracy, this is a known historical pattern documented in books literally everywhere. I’m not an expert on geopolitics, nor do i play one on TV. I can tell you who I’m reading but I don’t think it’s helpful. Because without the ability to discern opinion from fact, history from projection, hate from love, and any basic intellectual prudence – I do not think anyone is properly educating themselves. We’re just aligning ourselves with sides that feel biased in our favor.
We live in a world chasing confirmation bias that calls themselves well read, and self-proclaimed activists inappropriately projecting their (rightful) rage about their own lives onto a conflicts they don’t understand.
If you cannot tell the difference between speaking truth to power and hate and dehumanization, I cannot help you. I can scream here about it. I can share memes on Instagram, as I see many are. I can wish and hope that will help.
But IMO that ship has sailed. The hate train has left the station. Once you see Kristallnacht type stuff happening, that’s your signal to GTF outa dodge. There is no mind changing happening.
There have long been debates on the banality of evil, whether Hannah Arndt was right or wrong with this assertion. I have my opinions, which are she was correct, but there are a lot of very strong, compelling arguments to the contrary.
I’ve written before that evil is human.
And frankly I’m not interested in explaining it or understanding it. I’m interested in those of us who retain access to our moral compass and heart, who choose to stay soft.
I’m disappointed in those who haven’t been listening. I’ve been screaming now for the better part of a decade about this. The time to make change passed. The time for tempered conversation and discussion passed.
The time for introspection and self-work is here. For people to stop projecting their personal pain onto geopolitical issues and learn to sit with the tension of their own discomfort, rage, contempt, and confusion. All of it completely valid.
If I’ve learned anything from the family court system, it’s that you cannot win a game of he-said she-said with better facts or more education. Some versions of reality are so distorted there is quite literally nothing you can do.
They call this “radical acceptance.”
Candidly, I told my therapist to go #$%@ herself when she introduced the concept. I misunderstood it to mean “condoning,” which is why my first impulse was to react, “I will not and do not accept ANY of this.” And proceeded to marinate in righteous indignation and rage for a few months (*cough* years) before realizing “acceptance” doesn’t mean allow or condone. It means: See reality clearly.
Because you cannot find a path forward if you are not rooted in reality. If you’re rooted in what could have been or should be. You cannot ask “What now?” if you’re starting from a foundation that’s distorted by your own trauma.
Part of the solution, I think, we need right now – the path home – is through the eyes. The ability to see reality clearly. Without our projections, without our desires, wishes, resentments, pain, rage, opinions, and wants clouding our vision. Without moralizing. All of that matters but only after you see the truth in front of you.
I could (and did) spend years angry and upset. It doesn’t change reality.
I don’t know what it means to come home. I have always felt that people were my home, not places. And what do you do when you lose those people? Maybe that’s a relic of intergenerational trauma, of being kicked out of place after place. Maybe it’s a family story. I don’t know. It’s a feeling I’ve always had. It’s scary when the people who feel like home are taken from you, whether radicalized by political zealotry, taken by death, abandonment, geographic distance, or the myriad of other ways people we love fade away from us.
I’m learning, for me at least, home is a feeling that lives inside of me. It’s influenced by what’s on the outside (I feel more at home in a bookstore than I do at a beach), but it’s a sense of safety and belonging that exists inside of me, untethered to anything physical. But certainly influenced by others.
Home is a place we continue to re-and-co-create and cultivate.
Going to continue to chew on this idea and revisit it. My best friend from graduate school is a nester who understands home differently. I think it’s beautiful and wonderful and am curious about how each of us understands what it is to come home, be home, and feel at home.
Let’s hold the vision, and live in reality.
Happy Sunday,
Margo
PS: Sidebar as it pertains to radical acceptance: I saw a note in my chart at a doctor’s office that said, “Patient is justifiably angry,” which was quite possibly the most validating observation of my psychology I’d ever witnessed. Thank you to the medical professionals out there who aren’t busy pathologizing but understanding context. You matter.
