Oh, how much I want to help. To DO something. I ache with the desire to be useful.
I want to give water and food to every person in Haiti who needs it. I want to get them the best in medical care. I want to dig every last survivor out of the rubble, and then help families find and bury their dead in a respectful way. I want to take every last orphan out of Haiti and personally adopt every single one. I want to rebuilding buildings, put the lights back on and get the water running, create safe housing, put businesses and people back to work, provide trauma counseling, help put lives back together. I want to make Haiti into an island paradise, to solve all the problems they've ever had, because they've already suffered more than their fair share.
And I can't. I can't do any of that, personally. Yes, I can send my money to disaster relief, and I can pray that things will be better for Haiti, and I can encourage others to do the same, but realistically this is the most I know how to do right now. And it really, really sucks, that I feel so limited.
I'm sure most of you feel the same sadness, the same frustration, the same sense of helplessness, in the face of what feels like the worst human tragedy I've witnessed in my lifetime. I was saying to Georges last night, that every time one of these disasters strikes, I think, "THIS is the worst thing I've ever seen". I thought that after hurricane Katrina, when on TV I saw bodies floating in the flood waters of New Orleans and when I heard stories of what fresh hell was going on in that football stadium before they were able to evacuate those people, because I never thought I'd see that kind of horror happening in any American city. I thought it again after I saw video footage of people being swept away by the big tsunami in Asia, because the scale of damage and loss of life was so overwhelming. Each disaster seemed to top the one before it, and each time I'd think, "Well, THIS is as bad as it can get".
I was wrong. It could get even worse. And it has.
Overwhelming? I don't think I knew the full meaning of that word until the Haitian earthquake. My brain can't even quite process the magnitude of "overwhelm" that is Haiti right now. I mean, an entire country virtually flattened? I know there are buildings still standing and people still alive and maybe in some parts of Haiti, the earthquake left no destruction in its wake. But these people had nothing to begin with, and now? I never thought it was possible to have LESS than nothing, but it seems that it is. Because it's not just individuals or some small businesses or homes that were destroyed; you're talking about nearly the entire government and social service infrastructure -- GONE.
What does that do to a country, to a people? Yes, aid is coming, although it will never be soon enough for everyone. Yes, people will be helped, although not nearly enough of them, and some who survived the quake and aftershocks may not survive the aftermath of chaos and deprivation. Short term, this is hell on earth.
What about long term? What does it do to these people who have already suffered so much, to have to experience trauma on this scale? What does it mean that thousands of prisoners are now roaming the streets free? What happens when people are desperate and fighting for food and water, where there is no sanitation, where there is not even a decent roof over your head, where you can't feed your children or take care of their most basic needs? What does that do to someone?
I am not, in all candor, an activist by nature, nor am I likely to become one now, which is why this blog is typically not about world events and how we should be solving them. But neither am I the type who can turn a blind, uncaring eye to human suffering, even when it's happening so far away from me. I'm just not made that way; I'm the "sensitive" type (ask my mother, because it used to drive her crazy) and I seem to feel the suffering of others almost as if it was happening to me, personally. And it grieves me that I am so limited in what I can do right now, financially, physically, even emotionally. I find myself wishing I had the resources or the "connections" to write a huge check or make a phone call to arrange to airlift sick and starving Haitian babies to safety, but wishing this while knowing it isn't possible only makes it harder. The only thing that is keeping my heart from breaking in two with the grief I feel for Haiti, and my frustrated inability to contribute more, is something I remembered hearing on an Oprah show a long time ago.
There was a mother who had been grieving for 10 years over the untimely death of her only child, a son. I forget whether he died from an accident or was murdered, but either way his death was such a traumatic shock to this woman that she had all but closed herself off, and even after 10 long years, she was still grieving every single day as if it was the day after her son's death. She literally had not been able to pull herself together and move on with her life.
The guest therapist on the show that day -- I think it was probably Dr. Phil before he got to be such a big shot himself -- said something to this poor woman that I've never forgotten. He said that she was mistaking her overt grief for love. She had been operating on the false assumption that the more she grieved, the more pain she was in over her son's death, the more she wore her loss on her sleeve for all the world to see -- the more that meant she loved her child. And that if she did NOT move on with her life -- which she felt very guilty about doing, since her son had lost his own life -- if she just let herself stay frozen in this state of existing without really LIVING, then that somehow also showed how much she loved her son.
He said that nothing could be farther from the truth. That the greatest tribute she could pay to her wonderful son -- by all accounts a young man with a lot of promise -- was to live her life as fully and happily as she could. That her son would not want her to be so unhappy, so miserable, so trapped in her grief and in the past. That she owed it to her child to live her own life the way she wanted, because he wouldn't get the chance to do the same. And that she was not a bad person or an unloving mother if she gave herself permission to release the burden of her grief, and find joy and happiness in her life again.
Wow. It was really something, watching Dr. Phil's words sink into this woman's consciousness. Her body language changed instantly: she sat up straighter and her pain-clouded eyes seemed to clear as she "got" what he was saying to her. She said the magic words: "I never thought of it that way" and I knew she'd probably never be the same again. A year or so later, Oprah did a follow-up show where this same woman came back and it was like she had become a different person! She was glowing, vibrant, healthy-looking! Of course, she still missed her son and thought about him every single day, and sometimes she was sad enough to cry. And then she'd go back to living her life again. She said she'd decided the best thing she COULD do for her son now was to live in a way that would MAKE HIM PROUD.
What I took away from that program was the knowledge that, when I am facing loss or tragedy, whether it is close to home or a catastrophic event half a world away from me, I need to keep my perspective. I need to remind myself that there is a time to be shocked, to be grief-stricken, to cry, to feel sick in my heart at the loss. There is a time to feel badly about whatever has happened. It is natural to feel these feelings, and there is no reason to hide them or hide from them. And of course, if there is something of a practical nature I can do to help someone who is suffering as the result of a tragedy or disaster, I can, should and will do it.
Yet there will also come a time, and usually sooner than I think, where I MUST give myself permission to step away from the grief, the sadness, the overwhelm. Where I must remind myself that I have a life I need to live, and I need to get on with living it -- and living it with joy, with laughter, with love, and with gratitude. Where I must realize that there are limitations on what I, one small person, can hope to achieve when confronted with certain situations in the world.
And that I don't need to feel guilty for accepting my human or financial limitations, or for choosing to move on with and enjoy my own good life, no matter what the circumstances.
I will continue to wish I could personally and directly do more to save and comfort the suffering people of Haiti. I will continue to watch, read or listen to the news. I will continue to have hope that Haiti will somehow, in the long run, become a happier, healthier, safer, better place for all who live there. I want to believe things can be better for Haiti, and perhaps the good that will come out of this mess is that the world is finally paying attention, and doing something. Hopefully, it will be enough in the long run, even if may not seem like enough in the short.
But now, and in the coming days and weeks, I need to tell myself that I've done the best I could, what little it may be. I need to give myself permission to turn off the radio or TV, stop reading the news and looking at the photos, and go do whatever I want and need to do in my own life. Here's the thing: my feeling sad and grieving for the people of Haiti, my subjecting myself to horrifying stories and images daily, will not actually HELP the people of Haiti. Adding more negativity to an already negative situation never helps; it only attracts more of the same.
Maybe the best way I can honor the suffering and loss of the Haitians now is to simply be happy and grateful and appreciative of the life I have. And to go and live it, boldly and fully.
-----------------------------------------------------
Photo at top, credit CBC.ca
