As I sat in the coffee shop that I normally write in, I pondered what to share today.  Usually it comes to me on my morning run, but today, it did not, I was preoccupied with the election. The sky is one of those brilliant blues that have been rare here lately, so I was gazing outside lost in the birds flitting around, the contrast of the trees against this bright backdrop pondering the importance of today, being election day, and the angst among the people leading up to and including today.  I am actually less anxious about the actual results today, but what weighs heavily in my mind is the rift that has happened in our country. I have had the privilege of witnessing several elections at this point, and none have been this contemptuous, vicious, hateful, and dividing as this one has. Anyone who has even been remotely watching these past few months has to have seen and felt this sentiment. I remember when President Obama ran for the first time, and even up to this day, people called him the devil reincarnate.  The conspiracy theories ran abound unabated, feeding this frenzy of hate and demarcation.  I thought I would never see anything worse than that. I remember thinking, dear god, please don’t let him get assassinated. I also recall when President George W. got re-elected, we democrats thought that was the worst possible outcome.  And yet, here today, we have this choice before us that has illuminated the fracture that has been growing steadily in this country.  This split that continues to grow instead of heal.  A Congress that refuses to work together, instead stalwartly being like a petulant toddler throwing a tantrum. At the end of today, we will have a new president. A president who sadly will stand before a divided country, and the people on either side really hate, and I use that word rarely, but feel it is appropriate, really hate each others opposition. I feel like if Hillary is elected, and the chances are good that she is, that the Trump supporters will never get behind her. I feel like even if she did no “wrong” it will never be right in their eyes. No matter what. Instead of saying, “ok, who I wanted to win did not win, but lets move beyond this and work together” will not happen. The concept of resilience comes up, where in the past, I feel like the country as a whole was more so. So dear readers, the post below was written months ago on this concept, more around the tragedy in my life in regards to the community around us.  Today, I feel like it is important not in just this construct, but as a country as whole.  Because in the past I feel like the country had a sense of resilience after an election, I do not think that definition will hold tomorrow, or the days after sadly.

July 26, 2016

I was listening to a podcast today on my run, and the concept of “resilience” came up in reference to communities after a tragedy (Sandy Hook, Aurora, Orlando, Dallas most recently). They stated that there is a resilience that happens. It stopped me in my tracks. I thought about it. I know something about this, right?  Yes. Of course life goes on.  Does that define resilience?  Good old Merriam Webster defines it as such:

– the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.

-the ability of something to return to its original shape after it has been pulled, stretched, pressed, bent, etc.

Hmm.

I think there is more to defining a community after a tragedy than being resilient. There are so many layers to what happens, a single word actually minimalizes the tragedy and the ripples after.  A major tragedy bends a community in ways it would never otherwise experience. It can show both the ugly as well as beauty of human nature, much like the yin/yang symbol. I was lucky. The tragedy that happened to my family and community brought out the beauty. This beauty and love was able to buoy me up and carry me along some of the darkest days of my life. It still does, because when you have an experience of the magnitude that I have had, those days won’t ever stop. The parents of the children murdered in Sandy Hook think about their child everyday and carry these scars with them forever. And then there is the community. When you know someone directly or indirectly impacted, it in turn affects you as well.  These things change you in ways you never thought possible. It literally changes your brain. You start to think bigger than yourself, your immediate surroundings. In my instance, my husband killed our four year old daughter, then himself. I found them soon after. This is a man who was on the sidewalk days before playing with the kids. The man who baked a congratulatory cake for the kids who did Battle of the Books a couple of weeks before. The man people would call to pick up their kid if they were running late. Not a man who would do something like he did. Yet he did. He broke. This caused our community to say a collective wtf?! Of course it caused anger, confusion, frustration, sadness, the whole gamut. It also has raised awareness of mental illness, suicide prevention, ptsd, and help for people after a tragedy, to name a few. It has changed the fabric of my community.

So I take issue with the concept of a community being resilient after a tragedy. It says that it returns to its original shape afterwards. It does not. Not one person is the same after what happened in our community. We have been changed forever by that one moment. Have people moved on to their normal lives? Yes.  It has been two and a half years (exactly today). One has to, a society must if we are to survive. However, our foundation has changed. The strength of our human spirits are being tested daily. We get to choose how we react. We get to try to learn and understand all sides of the tragedies, or, just judge. When you try to comprehend the magnitude of the things that lead up to these events, it should lead to more questioning, not just a snap judgement. If people based an opinion of my late husband on that one act, they would miss out on the wonderful human being that he was, and that would be their loss.

Sadly, tragedies are going to continue to happen. When you look back on history, we have a habit of killing each other over various things. It is the reality. It happens on a single scale to mass. Every single time it happens though, there is an effect on an immediate family as well as the community. We continue on. We grow. We are forever changed, we don’t just bounce back to our original state. Just resilient? No. It is so so much more.