Telling Our Own Stories
I uninstalled Instagram today. I do this periodically when I notice myself becoming frozen with overwhelm from its noise, when I mindlessly click to see like or responses from posts, or when it is a general distraction from presence and the sensual pleasures of life. Today it was because of heartbreak and grief.
It is not helping anyone — not those suffering nor those I love — for me to see and read toxic comments or uninformed blame or to waste energy judging what I perceive as apathy or tone-deaf posts while people are experiencing unspeakable horrors. People can be helped and supported when I’m in my strength, not when I’m depleted.
Instead of the chaotic energy-drain of social media, I will read news from trusted sources and support organizations like Jewish Voices For Peace who “envision a world where all people — from the U.S. to Palestine — live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.” And The US Campaign For Palestinian Rights, “for all who believe that freedom for the Palestinian people is an integral part of achieving our collective liberation.”
Before the violence and suffering ensued I was going to share a post about pumpkins. About how they traditionally scared away ghosts around the time of Samhain. The custom of making jack‑o’- lanterns on Samhain or All Hallows’ Eve began in Ireland and Scotland. Turnips or beets were hollowed out to act as lanterns that were carved with creepy faces to keep wandering spirits away. When settlers arrived in the Americas the custom continued with pumpkins.
In her book, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, author Judith Lewis Herman writes that atrocities “refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told… Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.”
Maybe that’s what haunting is. The stories that haven’t been told. The ghosts that cannot rest until they are.
On this cusp of Samhain, Halloween and Día de los Muertos, I think about the ancestral stories that were never told and those that still need to be. It is important for us to tell our own stories, and to listen to the truth of each others’. Not let others tell or write them for us.