The new abnormal

And sharing joy in the midst of it.

“I tell you truthfully that I cried every day from Aug. 29 until Aug. 24.”

- Journalist Chris Rose, New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 22, 2006

After Hurricane Katrina had done its best to wipe New Orleans off the map in August, 2005, the city was a physical and emotional wasteland.

Some of the already infamously-potholed streets had given way completely and developed into chasms. Roofing nails and bits of tin and other sharp objects were littered everywhere, requiring almost-weekly trips to a gas station—if you could find one open—to have tires patched and repaired. There were no lights in much of the city, making night-time travel feel like a journey into the wild.

Many of us had lost our homes or our entire neighborhoods, and were trying to rebuild in a city where builders were in desperately short supply. (The rebuilding would have taken years longer, it should be said, if not for a welcome influx of undocumented immigrants, willing to do the hard, dirty work.)

Many of us knew someone who had died. Suicide rates climbed. Relationships crumbled. I remember watching my partner’s hair turn gray within the space of a month.

There were no children.

Chris Rose, the journalist who cried for 360 days straight, chronicled the daily experience of devastation, and his columns resonated. Yes! Yes, this is what it’s like. Tell it like it is, Chris.

That is, until he wrote a column titled To Hell and Back, in which he described being forced, finally, to recognize that he was suffering from depression, and that he needed help.

It wasn’t until Chris wrote that column that I realized that I, too, was depressed, and so, too, were most of the people around me.

When depression is the norm, how do you recognize it?

The gift of community

There was a flip side to Katrina, a fierce gift that came from shared grief and shared hardships, large and small.

We felt it in the conversations and wry jokes we shared with strangers as we waited in hours-long lines to pick up mail—there were no deliveries—at the only post office available in the entire city.

We felt it in the first Mardi Gras after Katrina—should we be partying?—where the satire and the pathos intermingled in the parades.

We felt it in the first Jazz Fest after Katrina, where performers who adored the city had come to celebrate our specialness and to pour their musical balm upon us.

We felt it in the first concert given at home by the Louisiana Philharmonic, an unhoused orchestra that had been leading a peripatetic existence for eight months. They played Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, ‘from the New World,’ which birthed “Goin’ Home:”

Mornin' star lights the way,
Res'less dreams all done;
Shadows gone, break o'day,
Real life jes' begun.

The flood, now

My thoughts have returned to Katrina as we experience a different type of inundation.

I’m not going to catalogue the tsunami of changes that has washed over us since the new administration took office; I’m sure you’re hearing enough of that already.

I do want to mention, however, that here in Louisiana we had another hit to our spirits this week with Governor Jeff Landry’s announcement that the state will start gassing people to death. The first executions are scheduled back-to-back a little over a month from today, on March 17th and March 18th.

I think that for those of us who value justice, who center compassion and empathy in our lives, who believe that flaw-ridden democracy is infinitely preferable to the alternatives, the country is starting to feel like it’s coming apart at the seams.

And with that coming apart, I’ve noticed a familiar, post-Katrina feeling emerging in myself and in others. We get on with our lives and do the work that needs doing, yes!, but within, there is a deep wailing.

Our communal gifts

Now, when so much of what we depend on, what we treasure, is threatened, it’s a very good time to embrace the gifts of community; to recognize that it’s okay—in fact, essential—to laugh and dance and revel in the good, human things we share.

On Sister Helen’s website we’ve been collecting songs that reflect communal spirit and struggle, songs that buoy and bind us during hard times. We have a playlist called Sister Helen’s Justice Train—it’s also on Spotify.

We started the playlist during the first Trump administration, as children were being torn from their parents arms. There’s already been an uptick in submissions this year, and I hope to get them all online in the next week. I’d love to include your contributions.

I’d also love to hear your ideas on what buoys your spirits and bolsters your resilience in these times, things that are shareable. A poem. A killer mocktail recipe. A cartoon. An action. A role model. A way of showing kindness.

Please share.