The Ghost of Christmas Present, Rage, and Ferguson

As I head into the last sprint before the week of Christmas, I find myself thinking of Carol Kane  as the Ghost of Christmas Present in the movie Scrooged.  She is one of my favorite comedic characters...I have such a soft spot for physical comedy  - Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher, Gilda Radner as the Girl Scout.  Carol Kane's Ghost's  utter silliness and punching the crap out of Bill Murray totally cracks me up.

Here's one of my favorite clips, in case you haven't see it:  http://movieclips.com/U2oH-scrooged-movie-the-truth-is-painful/

Physical comedy does two things...it demonstrates absolute absurdity that is part of this human life and it has the energy of rage.  It's something I get.  I don't know where the rage in me comes from sometimes.  I don't know if it's in my DNA, I don't know if it was born of my work with abused kids (I felt deep despair and later,rage, after hearing the stories of dozens of young girls who'd been sexually abused).  I don't know if the injustice of different parts of life just builds up in all of us over time.  But, I get rage when I see it, and I get why the energy of it is overwhelming.

So, Carol Kane's Ghost tells Bill Murray - "Sometimes the Truth Is Painful, Frank!" and I realize just how much this resonates with the message that I've gotten from two different community/racial dialogues I've attended in anticipation of and after the grand jury decision in Michael Brown's death.  These dialogue's are called Mother 2 Mother and they are modeled from community and healing work that was done in Northern Ireland with Catholic and Protestant mothers.  Here in St. Louis, the two I attended were at churches. They were well attended - the last one had over 240 people present.  Black and white women and even some men sat first to listen to black mothers tell their stories - what is it like to be the mother or grandmother of a young, black man in St. Louis?  What are the honest and very sad messages that parents feel they must impart to their black sons about the way society is more likely to see them as suspects and perpetrators?  How or why should they NOT stand up to authority?  The second part of these evenings was conversation and sharing.

What I vividly understood from these talks was the feeling that black mothers express:  that white mothers absolutely don't understand the fullness of their experience.  Perhaps a feeling that black mothers could not tell the truth, speak freely, with their white friends, neighbors, colleagues, because white people did not want to listen.

It seems to me that we in St. Louis are in a Ghost of Christmas Present a la Carol Kane moment - sometimes the truth is painful. 

When I feel anger, rage, the weight of what is unjust...I know what I first need is to be heard.  Then, I need to feel validated.  Then, I need hope.  I need to have the feeling, the hope, that whatever is the root of this injustice will change.

The truth is painful.  It is painful to see what's been in front of us the whole time - whether it's Frank seeing his brother or his assistant, or even himself, or it's us - white people and black people, finally seeing and talking about the way things are.  Despite it's ugliness, there is truth in most rage.  That's painful too - both for the person experiencing the rage and for the world that witnesses it.

As a therapist, I think that in the end, rage is TOO painful to sustain and often brings with it more hurt than help.  But, I think it is a seed of something necessary.  It is a spark of energy to give attention to.  We have to look it in the eye, we have to open our ears to it.  It will hold up to us what is utterly unfair and cruel.  And when we see that clearly, we can begin.

I think the beauty of Carol Kane's Ghost of Christmas Present, is that though she punches Frank square in the jaw, she is not enraged.   Maybe annoyed and impatient, but not enraged.  This is why she can be both silly and effective - she doesn't do him any real violence, but she does, metaphorically, help wake him up to the way his world is and the impact he has in it.

I think it's ok for us all to be willing to metaphorically slapped and to wake up.  Whether it's about racial injustice or about some aspect of our own lives.  The truth is painful, but it will also set you free (shout out to one of the Apostles, I think it was John).

In this life, I've found that I have some purpose that has to do with being willing to change.  I have found that life again and again calls me to change.  I have to learn a new skill, I have to grow my patience, I have to be willing to be vulnerable, I have to be myself, but that's not entirely the person I was yesterday and that's okay.  In fact, that's good.  That's hope.  If I were in Scrooged, I'd want to be the Ghost of Christmas Present (that looks fun!), but I'm probably more Bill Murray - and my guess is that we're all more Bill Murray.  And that's okay too - if we see the truth (even if we get  knocked over the head with it), it's never too late to change.

A Community Grieves and a Therapist Wonders What Justice Means

I thought I was going to come out of my 'blogger' hidey hole after more than a year with some kind of big statement about myself, but the truth is, the thing that motivated me to write again, in prose and in public, is my community - St. Louis, which has been all over the news in the past two weeks.  It's surreal to me that the name Ferguson became a household word and that the intricacies of St. Louis civics are being given a national and international forum.  These type of stories always seem to happen 'somewhere else' and feel so sensationalized that I stop paying attention.  But this is my city and it's important to me.

In most ways, I'm reluctant to add my voice to the cacophony - what good would it do?  Do I really have something unique to say that isn't already said or could be said by someone who says it better?  I don't know.  I'm taking the chance.  I'm a believer that every little voice that speaks for truth and love also works for justice.  Justice is a concept I have many ideas about - with all my experience being with grieving people and in my own personal experience of grief, I don't believe justice can ever be done, in a literal sense. Justice cannot be done because the person who died cannot be brought back.  The wrong-doing cannot be undone.  The circumstances and variables that came together to create a real tragedy cannot be un-created.  We have got to change our thinking about justice.

So here I go, jumping in with a few ideas that I hope will be helpful to whoever reads this.  I am using an idea called systems theory (check it out - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory).  My interpretation is that a person is a system and a person interacts as part of many systems - family, neighborhood, work, etc.)  All systems are influenced by every little part of the system.  Each cell in your body makes a difference, each person in your neighborhood makes a difference.  In such a way of thinking - there are no little things.  Or little things can also be big things.

Ferguson is what grief looks like when it's played out in a community system - the stages of grief that an individual goes through:  shock/denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance - these are the same things a community experiences. It's grief writ large.  I've said to some of my grief clients, that if I were to have the chutzpah to mess with Elizabeth Kubler- Ross's stages of grief, I'd add PROTEST.  Protest may be a bit like bargaining and anger mixed together.  Not everyone experiences this - but a fair number of people that I see, especially if that tend to have what we call 'strong personalities' (and I say that as someone who has one), almost carry a placard in their grief  "I DON'T WANT THIS TO HAVE HAPPENED.  IT"S NOT FAIR." And some unconscious part of them hopes/believes, "Maybe through the sheer force of my will I can undo this."  We are seeing protest in Ferguson.

I also see what happens when a secret gets revealed.  In family therapy, secrets are a big deal.  If a family has a secret (Dad's an alcoholic, little brother was sexually abused, etc.), the secret holds much power and shapes the family in very unhealthy ways -mostly by creating shame.  The way I see it,  there is still racism in our community of St. Louis.  I don't mean that literally everyone is a racist, but our communities aren't integrated for the most part and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  I think racism has been a 'secret' - we are impacted by the shame of it.  This is a very complex issue and I don't think it's my area of expertise - only that I want to bring to light anything that's in the dark.  I want to live in a world where there isn't shame and there aren't secrets.

Finally, I work with a lot of people who have survived trauma.  For whatever criticism or support there may be of our police officers, I know that many of them experience trauma repeatedly (as do all our first responders).  I just want to point out that trauma, without intervention and emotional support, rewires our brains.  Even neutral stimulus can produce a flight or fight response for someone who has PTSD.  Again, I don't claim to be an expert in anything about the system of the police force, but I am guessing that they don't have adequate access to education and support as they experience repeated trauma.

And now back to justice.  It's such a confusing philosophical concept for me.  But here's a real laymen's take on it from my experience - real justice is a fair society in which each and every person has the ability and access to choose freely what and how they live their lives.  But in the real life we live in, I can't honestly say we have a just society.  In real life, I think we understand justice to mean, 'you hurt me, you get punished.'  Maybe that is the best we can come up with.  But what I find is that more victims seem to get created.  Anger seems to perpetuate, rather than diminish.  Here's what feels more just to me:

Ask yourself, how can I help Michael Brown's family heal and support them and the community through grief? Ask yourself, how can I help Ferguson, St. Louis, and other communities to honestly look at covert and overt racism and promote better relationships in our communities?  Ask yourself, how can I support police officers, firefighters, EMS?  Justice is served when we focus less on the 'wrong-doer' and more on supporting and loving the survivors of the wrong-doing.  Each of us can do something.   In systems, small things may very well turn out to be big things.