Overwhelmed by the World’s Grief

The news right now is pretty grim. It always is but it seems exceptionally so right now. The worst parts for me are the stories that evidence discrimination, hatred, fear, and control: the racism-driven massacre at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY; anti-trans laws being proposed and passed across the country, especially those targeting kids; anti-gay laws; book and textbook bans; anti-choice laws being proposed in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade; and so on.

It’s hard not to want to crawl into a corner and hide. Very hard.

In search of something uplifting this morning, I watched Abby Wambach’s commencement speech at Loyola Marymount University, and she reminded me of the fundamental principle that keeps me going, got me into foster care, and is going to drive me to continue my activism.

You can watch the excellent speech in full here.

Here’s the thing. No one of us can right the world’s ills. All we can do is what we can do. I loved Abby’s reference to this quote:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief… You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

The Talmud

I’m one of those sensitive folks who feels bodily overwhelm at the news. I can’t fix it all. It doesn’t even feel like I can fix one tiny bit of it. I went for years feeling like I was drowning in the sorrow and grief and misery of the world, and it affected me physically and emotionally and mentally.

Then one day I reached a point where I realized that I had things backwards. I didn’t need to fix everything, I just needed to give all I could give. If I was giving of my time and energy and money to the fullest extent possible, at least I could rest in the comfort of knowing I was doing what I could to right the world. It would never be enough to fix all the world’s problems but I would be doing my part.

I looked around and recognized my privileges. I’m white, was raised middle class, am well educated, was well employed. My husband and I owned a 3-bedroom home for just the two of us and our pets. We had lots of time and energy and love to give. I had always deeply cared about kids who are in need of help because of family problems, and my husband did too. We’d long talked about being foster parents. Why not just dive in? There was never going to be a “right” moment – life is too crazy for things to be “perfect” for such a huge undertaking.

There was one thing I was sure of: being foster parents was going to use up my spare time, energy, love, and house space. Those were the things I had to give. So I needed to give them.

I have not regretted becoming foster parents for an instant. Not. An. Instant. Not when our first kids were with us and the boy was a danger to himself and others at 6 years old. Not when a kid would get triggered and scream for hours. Not when kids I loved like my own had to go back home. No regrets.

Part of the reason I had no regrets is that I had gone into foster care wanting to give as much of myself as humanly possible so that I was doing all I could to help the world be a better place. Some days foster care has taken more than I intended from me, but never so much I could not handle it with a great parenting partner and a good therapist.

Now that we are tapering off being foster parents in that we are no longer going to take long term placements, I need to take up some other activities to use up all I have to give. Mind you, I’m still parenting one special needs kid who has a zillion medical appointments (Sprout), and half a challenging kid (Kiddo is here every weekend), so I don’t have tons of time and energy leftover, and I have no money leftover. But every time I’m overwhelmed by the world’s grief, I eventually come back to the place where I can assess my privileges and decide how to give of them to the greatest extent possible. Right now I have some time available because I’m not working, so I’m adding in some advocacy around kinship guardianship becoming an option for foster parents.

I’m not going to abandon the work because I feel despair and grief. I’m going to double down on doing what I can, using the privileges I happen to have. I’ll keep writing about foster care’s disparities. I’ll keep advocating for the kids who are with us and for kinship options that help preserve families a little bit more. And I’ll keep loving on these two kids as best I can. I’ll donate what little cash I can scrape together to organizations doing good work. Once I can walk again I’ll march, and I’m going to look into becoming a legal observer for marches. And I’ll always keep looking for other ways I can give of myself so I don’t drown in the world’s grief.