Hello friends,
After I sent out this newsletter last week, I headed to an immunology conference to reunite with some dear collaborators and kickstart our science communication projects for the year. But before I had even started my Saturday workshop, we started seeing the news about Alex Pretti. ICE agents killed him that morning, shooting him ten times in the back, and administration officials immediately unleashed a flood of lies about it.
It was painful to have the travesty playing out in real time, while I was introducing researchers to the Just-World fallacy and learned helplessness. But I found some solace in having the language to describe these dynamics, and I found refuge in a circle of grieving, angry friends. That they happen to be some of the most important scientists in the country didn’t matter particularly much to me right then, but I was reminded later in the meeting how very much it meant for others to see the leaders in their field actually leading it. Humanity, humility, and courage are beacons in the dark right now.
This was Year 2, Week 5. Let’s process it together.
There’s just so much to organize around and against, and life doesn’t conveniently stop in between. For me, this week was also bound up in caring for a very good dog who is recovering from surgery. My partner needed to travel, so I spent my days cleaning up bodily fluids and my nights worrying about terrible things with terrible jargon names like dehiscence and seroma. I kept humming the refrain from a song I like, “I’ve got worries / I’ve got troubles / I’ve wounds to bind”
I’m not squeamish and I was extremely well briefed. But the first time I was alone, facing a large and gruesome wound, it shook me more than I expected. Confronting the full horror of it, and knowing it was my responsibility to care for, was a shock to my system.
Now when I think of circles of grieving, angry people asking me how we’re ever going to repair all this damage to science, I feel a parallel. Knowing what’s happening isn’t the same as actually feeling it, and truly feeling it can catch you by surprise. The first priority is to keep this thing from getting worse - to prevent infection. I don’t know what the precise antifascist analogy is for the antibiotics I’m so grateful to have in my arsenal. But I do know that there was a kind of relief to finally have this wound out in the open, to force myself to confront it.
Tressie McMillan Cottom describes this best. She says, “...Sometimes we aren't exhausted because we are aware of too much. We are exhausted because we are doing too little… The more time you spend doing something, whatever it is possible for you to do in your space in the world, the less exhausted you are by the onslaught of information that really wins when it can convince you that the only thing you can do is watch what is happening to you.”
Sometimes “doing something” means throwing your body in front of danger. Sometimes it means stacking and ferrying supplies. Sometimes it means letting yourself simply show your emotions and voice your thoughts in professional settings that would otherwise pretend all is well. We need it all.
That is how we manage the pain now, and start finding ways to heal.
Liz