Day 59: How Does a Therapist Grieve #12? PLAY
Yep. You read it correctly. Even after my marriage died, then after my dad died—even after Buffalo and Uvalde, the assault on Roe-v-Wade, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Gorge Floyd, Jan 6, the wild fires out west—after each of these onslaughts—I tried to play.
This is not an act of forgetting. Or being flippant or disrespectful. It is an act of connecting. An act of defiance and refusal. It doesn’t mean that playing feels wonderful and that I always have the capacity for it. But I try. To move my body like a kid. To dance to Whitney and Tina and Lizzo in the kitchen. To chase and ride a bike and attempt a cartwheel when my 5 year old insists, even though it makes me feel my age and I might pull a muscle.
The more I work in the grief and trauma realm, the more I realize that much of my job is to help adults unburden themselves enough to gain more access to playfulness and joy and possibility.
Today a group of us will be playing #wallball (not hand ball) as we hold the people of #uvalde and #buffalo close to our hearts. No—this will not solve the woes that encompass our country right now. Yet is a way to come together, to connect, to feel less alone in all of it—and I believe this builds capacity for action and change.
#wallballforuvalde&buffalo
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