The Ways We Process
Remembering, Feeling, and Creating
A few days ago, my son Lazlo was asking me a lot about my Grandpa George Trotter, who died at age twenty-five in Italy fighting Nazis during World War II. My mom, Jean Ann, was 14 months old when he was killed. I showed Lazlo a lot of pictures and told him everything I know. This morning, I read historian Heather Cox Richardson’s (I highly recommend her work) Substack post on the history of Veterans Day and its origins in Armistice Day, and I realized my grandfather was born the same year the treaty agreement took place, 1919. In 1938 during his senior year at Guthrie Center High School, George was a star player (#29) and was offered a scholarship at a university in Tennessee to play and study law. This same year Armistice was made an official holiday with the hopes we would work with other nations to avoid war and large scale death. George met my grandmother Velma, and decided to forgo the scholarship, so he could work and court her.
They married on Christmas Eve, 1941, as the writing was on the wall that war was imminent. Most of George’s friends enlisted early to have some choice of their branch and position. George postponed as long as possible, until he received his draft notice. He postponed taking positions overseas, and offered to train others, working up to a Sergeant position at bases in Texas and Oklahoma, with short visits back home in Iowa. For a few months my grandmother was able to stay with him in married housing on base. In the hundreds of letters I have from him to my grandmother and family photos, I can date that he was able to see my mom twice before he had to go overseas in May 1944, once right after she was born, and again in May before he went overseas.
He died three months later August 24, 1944 in Pontedera, Italy near the Arno River. We were lucky in that his remains were returned to the Golden Gate Cemetery in San Bruno in 1947.
There are many veterans in my family and my sister served as a therapist for the VA for a decade. Over the years, I’ve had scores of Veteran students in my classes. I’ve seen what the impact of war has done to my family members, friends and students: death, suicide, PTSD, alcoholism, and more. We don’t learn from history, we fall into the same cycles. This election result will only further hurt veterans and so many others.
As I am still reeling with the news, my fear and nervous system dysregulation have been deeply tested. My worries fly from veterans, my elderly mother’s Medicare, LGBTQIA family and friends, the idea of losing my older son’s disability services, to young DACA students who are in college, no memory of another country, facing the threat of mass deportation. My thoughts go to women who will die without proper healthcare.
When I was happily pregnant in 2011 and learned my child had fetal abnormalities and chose to terminate the pregnancy to protect my own life and not extend her suffering, I was able to safely make that decision with my doctor. I wrote about my experience, an experience that was terrible, but I was safe.
Currently, women across America can’t access safe reproductive care like I did.
I am a person who loves, has empathy, and cares deeply, even for those who I don’t know well or don’t know at all. Even for those who believe differently than me. But it is a heavy thing to remember that those who say they love and care about me and my family would vote for someone who is actively promising to harm those who are marginalized.
Since Tuesday, I’ve been of several minds: reading James Baldwin and Thich Nhat Hanh.
I re-read James Baldwin’s Nothing Personal, a book co-created with Richard Avedon, and I was reminded that Baldwin often weaves history, grief, failure and love. He captured my body’s grief.
“At four AM, when one feels that one has probably become simply incapable of supporting this miracle, with all one’s wounds awake and throbbing, and all one’s ghastly inadequacy staring and shouting from the walls and the floor — the entire universe having shrunk to the prison of the self — death glows like the only light on a high, dark, mountain road, where one has, forever and forever! lost one’s way. — And many of us perish then.”
Nhat Hanh reminds readers to center and breathe. I notice I’ve been breathing shallowly, holding my breath.
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness
When I have been breathing on IG, it is both for myself and an outreach—a way to remind you all to take care of your human.
How are You Coping?
When all else fails, we create.
I’m writing, staring, reading, breathing and made this clay sculpture with Lazlo to do something with my hands, giving my brain a break.
One of the reasons I made a life with an artist, is we understand that art and its flow state is our way to process, to live.
With all of this rain, Michael has been working on music. Yesterday, my punk rock husband, wrote and produced this fun, groovy song “Way that you Wish,” and he let me share it with all of you. It’s the most uplifting sort of tune I’ve been able to stomach this last week.
Later this week, I’ll return to my breathwork and retreat offerings, but for now, just sending peace and finding ways forward.
Feeling this. Are you still in Costa Rica? Are people asking you how to move there?