a wailer

on knowing my role.

Bunny Wailer, original member of the band that came to be known as Bob Marley and the Wailers. Bunny and I share a birthday. Photo credit: Peter Verwimp.

What does it mean to be a human being at this moment in the history of our species? What is my role? What is yours?

I think and speak and write so much about my convictions, my belief that we’re here now so that we can become the people who embody and create what must come in the aftermath of all that is dying.

I believe this with every cell of my body. And every cell of my body is exhausted, overwhelmed by the dimensions of this dying.

I titled my newsletter the woman who feels everything because I do.

Some of us came here wired and equipped to feel it all – our own feelings, those of the people we meet, those of the collective, those of the earth, those of the ancestors. I recognize my capacity to feel as my greatest gift. I also experience how this gift can feel like a curse in a world such as the one that is crumbling.

The days when waves of grief knock me on my ass and render me immobile. The shame of struggling to shower, to feed myself, to go outside, to call people back, to show up. The autopilot mode I must engage in order to perform the façade of functional. The questions of how much longer I can sustain myself, how much of this my body can actually withstand.

There have been other worlds, other times in human history, in which the deep feelers – the healers, oracles, diviners, seers, canaries in the coal mine – had a defined role in our societies. We put our gifts to use for the community, and we were, in turn, cared for by the community. We were graciously resourced by virtue of our agreement to feel and work with energy for the collective good. To be attuned in this way, receptive in this way, is deep work. Knowing this, the people ensured that we had all we needed in order to do the work that we were here to do for them, for us.

I’ve had one experience that approximated this. A year ago, I spent three weeks at a writing residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts. Three weeks in a beautiful, serene environment full of plant and animal life, in communion with a small group of fellow artists. Fellow vessels through which energy moved and took shape in breath and body, on the page and on stage. We were there to be open, to be raw, to heal ourselves and each other through our creations. This witnessing, supporting, and amplifying of energy was simultaneously enlivening and draining. This depth of receiving, refining, and revelation was honored as such necessary work that it necessarily required us to be cared for. In interacting with the staff who tended to the grounds, prepared our meals, administered programs, and liaised with funders, it was clear that they offered this labor with deep joy and a shared sense responsibility for who and what they were nourishing with their labor. They knew all that we were there to feel, and they ensured that we would have all we needed in order to do just that.

The beautiful amphitheatre and visitor center at Atlantic Center for the Arts.

I’ve longed for this place all year, ever since I left. Not just because I’d love to have more dedicated space to feel and create alongside others, but because this way of living felt right to me. It felt aligned with how I might be living were we in another time, another world, one in which those of us who feel everything had a space and a role and a community of care.

This feels wildly unrealistic under our current conditions, to want to be cared for so that I can best embody my gifts. It feels like asking to be spoiled, to be coddled. But in the absence of a reality in which feeling and sharing what moves through me is my contribution - and the collective cares for me in kind - I don’t know how I’m meant to live.

My therapist tells me that I’m in a functional freeze. That I’ve perhaps existed in this state for most of my life, to varying degrees. That the chronic stress of feeling everything without a safe container and proper care, the sustained trauma of freezing in order to survive threats that I couldn’t fight or flight my way out of, led me to learn that my participation in society depends on the degree to which I can numb enough to get by.

I imagine that I’m frozen because I would otherwise be a flood.

I’ve had to freeze because it isn’t safe for me to be a walking flood of feeling. I’ve had to freeze because my flood of feeling would otherwise be a menace to hegemonic normalcy.

Icebergs on ocean. Photo credit: Stephen Leonardi

I know I'm not the only person having this experience. I know we are all, on some level, consciously or not, feeling the weight of everything that is falling, everything that is coming to light, everything that we can no longer ignore about what we as humans have become and who we must now decide to be. I also know that I’m feeling this with an intensity that most others are not, that I’m impacted to a degree that most others are not.

This makes it increasingly difficult to know how to be with people. I don’t know how to answer when people ask me how I’m doing. I don’t know what to say when it’s my turn to check in during the initial minutes of a Zoom meeting. I don’t know how to keep engaging in the normative modes of interaction that we’re all expected to employ. But I do know that I’m not here on the planet to be a half-alive frozen front in an effort to fit in.

My role right now? It feels to me like I’m meant to wail. To weep in the street. To grieve openly for us all. To move this energy through me for the benefit of something larger than me. To allow these sacred tears to flow into the earth and fertilize all that we’re seeding together.

I’ve been isolating because I’m in a functional freeze, yes. But I’ve also been isolating because there’s nowhere to perform what feels like my role. Nowhere to weep, nowhere to wail. Nowhere to do what I’m here to do other than my own couch, my own bed, my own floor. I don’t know where my fellow weepers and wailers are. I don’t know where to find the people who would recognize our sobs as service and hold safe space for us accordingly.

2024 has been a year of getting good at holding myself through the flood, and getting better at giving myself grace when I have no choice but to freeze.

I know that the coming year will require us all to feel what we’ve collectively avoided.

I know that what I have to offer will be more necessary than ever.

Wailers. I know you’re out there. I hope you know that your howls are holy.

I hear you.