A few weeks ago, Megan Markle, Dutchess of Sussex, asked this question in an op-ed column of the NYT, The Losses We Share. She wrote about the miscarriage she’d had and the terrible grief it brought. She spoke about what it had meant to her, while traveling with Harry in South Africa, exhausted and breastfeeding her first child, trying to keep up a brave front, to have a reporter ask her, “Are you okay?”
She answered that she was grateful to be asked, saying that not many had.
I’ve been pondering that question ever since, wanting to ask it to those of you who read these posts.
Answering it to myself.
No, Megan, I’m not okay.
Not at all.
And I don’t think many of us are.
More than a quarter of a million dead of COVID, a record 3,000 yesterday, the shameless, astonishing, nearly criminal indifference from the current administration, the worry that we or someone close to us could be next to die—how can we be?
A president brazen and depraved beyond wildest imagining, refusing to acknowledge his significant loss in the November election, members of his administration and his party joined with him in this cruel lunacy, his cult followers surrounding the homes of truth-telling, hardworking people with guns and death threats---how can we be?
Holiday traditions shared with relatives and friends, parties and celebrations, the fun of shopping for gifts for loved ones, saying Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and meaning it—all disabled--how can we be?
The death of truth, the uselessness of surety.
I know, one day at a time. I know, the only certainty in life is change. I know, I have no control. I know, patience and tolerance for the views of others different from me. I know, how lucky I am compared to most.
But I’m not okay.
Nor are most people I know. One friend wrote today, “I feel like I’m going crazy a lot of the time.” Others describe a numbness, a persistent, debilitating outrage, feelings of despair and pervasive anxiety.
We are rudderless, trying somehow to navigate the formerly familiar without compass or captain.
We are lonely, in our safe pods, sheltering in place, so many struggling with children at home mixing uncomfortably with work responsibilities, food insecurity, job losses and bleak futures, Congress doing nothing to help.
Yesterday a friend came to bring me some takeout chili and soup. She is one of the strongest and most resilient women I know. A single mom, she has run the most successful new business in town, a well-attended gym and an adjoining café specializing in healthy, delicious food, along with a massage practice that I’d eagerly supported pre-COVID.
Her landlord is demanding rent, her clients have fallen off, the massage business is almost non-existent, one of her four children is in crisis, and she is doing almost all the cooking for the take-out food that is supporting her now, along with teaching classes to the few who attend and selling exercise videos.
She is hanging on, waiting for the vaccine to bring her business back.
We sat outside for a bit of time, masked and shivering in the freezing afternoon, as I listened to her story. How badly I wanted to hug her long and hard.
She is not okay.
I would like to tell you all, tell myself, that we will be okay one day, as Megan Markle predicted in her op-ed. But I have to say, at this moment, I have no idea if that could happen.
I would like to be able to write a different ending, a more upbeat, consoling conclusion, wish you all a joyful and peaceful holiday season, imagine that you will have one.
It feels wrong not to be able to do that.
But I’m not going to apologize. This is the way it is right now.
What I can offer you is this: I care how you are, and want to hear your story. It may not be a big deal, no wrappings of bright tissue and curly ribbons, no shiny baubles—but it’s what I have right now to give.
Megan Markle thought it was enough.
I hope you do too.