At the Intersection of Proof and Faith

One Wordle answer and three months later.

Hello Loves,

A friend of mine made a post on social media this week, about the end of her marriage, the beginning of life after divorce, how to write about it, and the ways in which the trauma is being healed and faced in her family. It was brave and clear, and she was rocking a red lip in the picture she posted.

Her words made me remember the vulnerability of the last days of my divorce and the new vulnerability of the first days post-divorce, the complexity of co-parenting, the feeling of being free and also being stuck, and not quite being able to imagine what it would look like later, when the dust had truly settled, and the next phase of things began.

I wrote to her, “It gets easier. I’m proof if you need it; I’m faith if you don’t.”

Me, some days I need proof. Some days I can lean into faith.

Every day, when I play Wordle, I use “faith” as my opener. I have been tempted to get a new word, one with more vowels. I can’t. I’m inconsistent with Wordle, so I may have missed the moment when “faith” was the word of the day, my word being validated by the Wordle God. But then, that helps the metaphor along. I am inconsistent with my faith.

This week and the last one have been a grind. I have been ground down.

I was helping Dex with college transfer applications and copy editing both my novel and my memoir, looking at cover images for the memoir, soliciting blurbs for the novel, auditioning for the audiobook reader job for the memoir, and prepping for my deposition in the case about my shattered knee.

It was, as the kids say, a lot, some of it very lucky. Somewhere in there was the boring stuff—I was trying to help with homework, and make folks coffee in the morning, plan spring break, and remember my friend’s birthday. Then there was the ugly stuff—I was trying to keep track of the massacres and the nightmare election.

And the backdrop to it all was the missing winter here in the Midwest.

I have walked my neighborhood, gone on weekly errands, while temperatures have skyrocketed to seventy degrees, a bright, blue-skied mirage in the middle of February, in the first weeks of March. Everywhere, Chicagoans were in shorts and tshirts. In my yard the crocuses were blooming. Everywhere there were happy faces, recharging vitamin D and so glad to be out of winter.

But among them I stalked, devastated, terrified.

My social media feed was full of other terrified activists, news about the potentials of a slowed or stalled Gulf Stream, pictures of penguins from a trip to the arctic, a melting glacier. “No one belives this is a warm winter,” a friend said. And it seemed to be true. The greetings in stores and restaurants were all on the order of, isn’t it a beautiful day?

All through this, I was re-reading my book, the ecocollapse threading through my own story, the science I’m desperate to communicate. All along I was researching for my next work in progress, a book all about trees and fire. None of it was helping my mood.

At the end of it, my brain was mulch. Not destroyed, probably a good substrate for something, but not much in the way of growing or lush or whole—not fertile, not soft.

So, I reached the end of last week with that anger under my skin. “I feel poisonous,” I told friends. I got into a fight with my family immediately before therapy.

My therapist said, “You are going to have to figure out what you did with that exile, Anger. Exiles only want to be included.”

“But she’s awful, Anger,” I said. “I don’t want to spend any time with her.”

“She’s got something to tell you. Put her on your shoulder this week, let her explain everything she’s pissed about.”

When you’ve been through trauma in both your family of origin and a family you built, letting go of anger is one of the first choices you make to ensure your survival. Your anger can destroy your life in certain situations. And even after those situations have passed from your day-to-day, your anger still feels like it could kill you. It is so large. It is so overdue.

Finding a therapist that can remind you that you are safe enough now to let anger back in is essential. And then there’s the work of doing it. That’s where I am. I hate it.

I just don’t know how to run anger through my system. All the work ahead of me is about clearing my emotional engine so that it runs properly on any fuel—anger, joy, pride, hope, fear—and in any weather—chaos, overwork, disappointment, success, rest.

So, I’ve tried to put Anger on my shoulder. I’ve felt her. I’ve felt her around people. I’ve reminded my beloveds that when they see me trying this out, it isn’t about them. I’ve apologized when I make them feel that it is anyway. I’ve remembered that my book baby, the story of my life, is about to be out in the world and beyond my control. I’ve remembered that my actual baby, now quite grown, is about to go away to college and have a new life of their own.

Humans are angry. It is part of us. It won’t kill me.

I’ve tried to have faith that this is true, and that I won’t be consumed by all the unfelt things as they come back to me, all the shocks around me now, faith that I can welcome them as honored guests who can sit around my kitchen table telling stories and eating soup. They’re fine. I’m fine. I have faith in us.

So, inconsistent or not, I woke up today, not as angry as I was yesterday, not as tired. Anger was on my shoulder, pointing out everything that is completely fucked in this moment.

“I know,” I told her, “you are 1000% right.”

And then I opened Wordle, and typed it in again: F-A-I-T-H.

I’ll write soon.

Love,

Eiren