‘Show An Affirming Flame’
We borrowed our headline from a
poem by W.H. Auden. As we consider what lies ahead, may we all show an affirming flame.
December 26, 2024
By Courtney Wise
Greetings, MindSite News readers.
In today’s Daily, we borrow our headline from W.H. Auden’s poem September 31, 1939, which reflects the poet’s horror and resolve on the day that Nazi Germany invaded Poland. As we consider what lies ahead, may we all show an affirming flame.
At MindSite News, as we wind down and look toward 2025, we’re revisiting an original MindSite News post about how people, amidst stress and uncertainty, continue to feel hope.
If you have the holiday blues or are hungry for a quick slice of hope before reading further, revisit this podcast I recommended a couple of years ago. Zak Rosen’s The Best Advice Show is a pandemic-era creation that’s still going strong. Most episodes are short sound bites, 10 minutes or less, featuring regular people like you and I sharing the tips that help them navigate life. Themes revolve around hope, forgiveness, why carrying your own hot sauce is necessary, embracing your weirdness, extending grace, and resilience.
Plus, a list of some favorite stories from MindSite News’ parenting newsletter and three more current news bites to carry with you into next week.
In perilous times, fighting hate mail and racist text messages with hope (reprint)
(This is a shortened version of my post from November 27, 2024)
Hope is one of the most powerful tools in a human’s arsenal. It’s the inner sense that there’s a purpose in our pain, or at least something good beyond it. So what’s a parent to do when their child tells them their hope is lost? Tech executive Clare Miller and social worker and professor Danielle Davis are still figuring it out. Their 10-year-old daughter, Camille, said her hope went away on November 6th.
Like her parents, Camille expected Kamala Harris to ascend to the nation’s presidency. When that didn’t happen, it opened a flood of questions about our world and the people in their own community. For an interracial gay couple raising a biracial child in Northern Virginia, Harris’s loss implied that the world is more tenuous than steady, more quicksand than solid ground.
Many of the candidates supported by almost half the nation are categorically opposed to their family’s existence. Might it be the person stopped at the traffic light next to them? Or the neighbors they see every morning while walking their dog?
Then Camille heard about a slew of anonymous racist text messages, some claiming to be affiliated with Donald Trump, that were sent to Black children and youth across the country. The texts, which targeted Black children and teens, Black professionals and students at three historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, referenced slavery and told them to “report to the nearest plantation.” The FBI and Justice Department is investigating the source of the racist mass texts.
A little more than a week later, similar mass texts went out to Latino and LGBTQ+ people, threatening deportation or “reeducation” camp – a barrage of online hate the FBI is also investigating.
“It was just really scary for her, really all of us, to think that we’re all in a new era,” Davis said, “that just like that, overnight, this is the changing of the world.” Forget hope – where does one acquire resilience in such a place? How do you counter the fear and intimidation?
For Camille, her favorite place to turn is her competitive cheer team. “They’re not (just) my friends; they’re my sisters who I can talk to about anything,” she said. The trust they share is both implied and explicit. “I just have to count on them…Our coaches always say, ‘If you are going to drop someone, remember before you do, that you are holding someone’s life in your hands.”
In these past few weeks of frustration, Camille’s sisters have held onto her. And, she told me, they need us as adults to tap into our hope instead of focusing on our worries all the time. That’s what we tell our kids to do – focus on what they want more than what they don’t want, right?
“Just be faithful for the next point and look forward to the bright side, because you always have something to look forward to,” Camille said. As parents, Miller and Davis are committed to giving Camille their best. In the weeks since the election, the affinity groups they would typically turn to for support haven’t yet gathered; people are using time to let their feelings breathe. Meanwhile, Miller said they’re actively seeking the fleeting joys life can offer us.
“I’m behind on doing our family Christmas card, but there’s a commercial now that talks about how you go to a mailbox and it’s all bills…but later on when you reach in, there’s a little piece of joy. You get a card and you see somebody’s family,” Miller said. “That one thing can change the way that you think of things, or help you appreciate the little things that are happening in your life that are magical. We can notice those little pieces, you know, every day.”
A round-up of other parenting hits from 2024 and beyond
Here MindSite News editors revisit some of our favorite feel-good or provocative stories in the parenting newsletter. Here’s a roundup that some of our brand-new subscribers might especially appreciate:
– PBS Kids debuts its first autistic lead – a cartoon raccoon named Carl. New America discusses how this could normalize autism for the upcoming generation, and on top of that, the series is sensitive, instructive and funny. What’s not to like?
– And while we’re talking about PBS Kids, here’s a gentle satire of Daniel Tiger for those excruciating moments that make parents want to hide under the bed.
– How art connects with mental health: Morgan Breon is on a mission to connect heads to hearts through art. “Art really gets to things on a very soul level,” said Breon, an artist, playwright and teacher. Find out more about her play, The Danger of Hope, and her work with educators and clinicians to help children work through trauma.
– Ok, this isn’t entirely feel-good, since it’s also talking about our kids’ stultifying screen-based culture, but “What Was Lost When Kids Quit Playing in the Streets” offers a compelling blueprint for real social interaction – outside the house and away from the cell phone.
– “The Toughest, Most Rewarding Job I’ve Ever Had” – Vivek Murthy on parenting. We wish he could be Surgeon General for at least four more years.
– And from our earlier years: Often a parent’s hugs and magic touch is more calming to distressed young children than words. Building a safe haven for students in a school in a Philadelphia neighborhood under siege. A Netflix series explores preschool Rx for lonely elders (welcome to the delightful, charming, and poignant world of the Australian-made series“Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds” – you can watch some YouTube clips here if you can’t still find it on the web.) Dr. Barbara Greenberg’s advice to a mom on how to control the anger she feels toward family members who don’t help with the chores. Plus, a group of grandmothers reimagine mental health care in Zimbabwe.
– Finally, for years we wondered why our post on the mental health message of the song “Boys Will Be Bugs” from the Gen Z band Cavetown was so popular with readers, even years after its publication in 2021. Turns out most people found us by searching on the term “what is the meaning of “Boys Will be Bugs?” If you don’t know, just click on the link to find out.
In other news…
Her writing career grew out of a need for survival. Today, North Carolina’s first African American poet laureate writes of her joy: Jaki Shelton Green, 71, has written 8 books of poetry, receiving national recognition for her work from the Academy of American Poets. A writer her entire life, she began doing it seriously as a way to preserve her life during an unhealthy marriage. “I turned to writing,” she told the Washington Post. “Writing was a keyboard instead of a switchblade to my wrist…this tool, almost a weapon for me in terms of how I insulated myself.”
Writing provided Shelton Green a release for her mental and emotional anguish. Sharing it extended that refuge to other women, who like her, she said, were hiding the harsh realities of their private lives. But as is wont to happen, given the gift of more life, came healing, understanding, and greater grace. That’s what her work reflects now.
Thanks to the love and teachings of her family, “I’m very service-oriented,” Shelton Green said. “I also feel that as creative makers, creative beings, we are all making those bridges where people can get past all their otherness and differences and connect through the writing. They see themselves, they hear their humanity. It’s the humanness that connects us inside of that language.”
Nurturing empathy in children: Little kids are total egomaniacs. It’s normal for them to start life that way. We parents need to accept that fact. We also have to accept and enact our responsibility to teach our children empathy so that they grow into people who care about the world and are capable of fostering healthy relationships with others. To that end, the HuffPost spoke with child and psychology experts about what parents and adults can say to children to ignite and nourish the empathy within them.
California schools can no longer force teachers to “out” LGBTQ+ students: The passage of AB 1955, bans the “forced outing” policies enacted by more than a dozen California school districts. Those included school boards requiring teachers and other staff to tell parents if their children identified as a gender not on their school records. It’s a good thing for the wellbeing of young people, LGBTQ+ advocates told CalMatters. Such policies violate students’ privacy and could potentially harm students whose parents disapprove of their identity. This law “could not be more timely or necessary, and LGBTQ+ students across California can breathe a sigh of relief,” Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, said in a statement. “LGBTQ+ youth can now have these important family conversations when they are ready and in ways that strengthen the relationship between parent and child, not as a result of extremist politicians intruding into the parent-child relationship.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.
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The name “MindSite News” is used with the express permission of Mindsight Institute, an educational organization offering online learning and in-person workshops in the field of mental health and wellbeing. MindSite News and Mindsight Institute are separate, unaffiliated entities that are aligned in making science accessible and promoting mental health globally.
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