Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. A billionaire businessman and reality television show host with no political experience is leading the country. There are many who still remember how they felt on the night of November 8, 2016. And I, as many around the world, heard the message loudly.
Our historic near-decade of leadership by an African-American man would end for some as a glorious achievement and necessary change, and for others as a bitter note of racial intolerance, misogyny, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. A woman with political experience and capability was rejected for a man who prophesied his disrespect, disregard, and objectification of women while also saying he would “Make America Great Again!’
With a vast environmental crisis threatening our world, our economic system fragile, and billions of folks feeling dis-empowered, angry, undervalued and paralyzed, the American people made their choice, resulting in what some call “Whitelash.” I think of it as a global dark night. Or what psychology calls the emergence of the “shadow.”
The morning after the election, shock waves reverberated throughout the country and the world. In my neighborhood here in Providence, where there are several elementary schools and an entrance to Route 195 just up the street, it was eerily quiet. I’m talking dead-silence. People were in mourning because what was at best a remote possibility had become a sobering reality. And all we could think about was who was to blame–Trump voters, third party voters, non-voters, white women? The contempt was and still is visceral.
In the shock following the election, we turned to blaming others. In blaming others we realized that we were blaming people with whom we shared deep, intimate and personal relationships. And since we have always grappled with the complexity of maintaining genuine relationships with people who are different from us—the election results bitch-slapped us into the reality that we have to find a way of sharing a meaningful relationship with those whose differences (political, racial, economic, etc.) stand in direct opposition to ours. The election results bitch-slapped us into resignation, fear and anger. Fear of what will happen to the country that already struggles with and makes frustratingly slow progress on reconciling the many disparities that burden us. And anger at anyone who played an active or inactive role in allowing this tragedy to happen. It was a bitch slap out of sleepwalking through our lives and relationships and out of our “frenemy” complacency.
Complacency had pulled us in closely and swaddled us in false ego-centered security. It told us that we should be content with being good when we have the capacity to be great. Complacency held our hand while we meandered through life taking baby steps when we can take a leap of faith far and wide. And if we let it, complacency will remain by our side and never leave. Now that the “bitch-slap” has awakened us to reality, I see it as both a warning and opportunity in the sense that if we do not change, if we do not put love and wisdom into action, our “frenemy” will ultimately destroy us and we will take the planet with us.
It is also an opportunity to rise to the challenge that this global dark night poses; to dive deeper than we ever have into our relationships, honoring the space between us and empowering each other, not in the service of our “private or individual liberation” but into creating relationships that release ourselves from our self-imposed limitations so we can grow, heal, mature and begin to live life–boldly, unapologetically, and freely—together.
This is an opportunity to continue to hold those who are most important to us closely even if their politics differ from ours. Hate wins if we allow differences to divide us. Therefore, in those instances where we differ, we can cross the bridge into the world of others to listen to them and get to know them in their world. Charles Taylor writes, “This crucial feature of human life is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression…We learn these modes of expression through exchange with others…. We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us.”
The new political administration challenge speaks into the need of our time … it represents a catalyst for a great BIRTHING … into greater transparency, accountability, respectability, justice so that we can experience at a much greater depth than ever the essential transcendent ground of our nature, not to become addicts of power, greed, domination, and negativity, but servants of boundless love and compassion in action in our homes and in the larger world. In my world as an Imago-therapist, these stewards begin with “the couple.” The space between the couple is the birthplace of infinite possibilities, of our highest potential and full aliveness, magnificence and intelligence. I t is also the sacred playground of the children, where they can feel safe, loved and thrive. The space between the couple is where our future is born and grows. Healing during this challenging and sacred time begins with the couple.
Now is the time to Get Real, Get Down and Get Going …Together.
Love in Connection,
Paula