She stepped up onto the stage, placed a binder on the podium, and leaning away from the microphone, sang:
“When it looked like the sun wasn’t going to shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the sky.”
It was April of 1996, and I’d made the trip with fellow classmates from Gannon University to neighboring St. Bonaventure to watch Maya Angelou speak. I sat, oblivious to the discomfort of the wooden gymnasium bleacher beneath me - enraptured by her words, by her voice - her presence - for the next 60 minutes. I wrote furiously in my notebook without looking down. I was simply unable to take my eyes off of her, unable to hear anything else.
Almost 25 years later, I remember little else about the talk. And I can’t refer to those notes because…well…I took notes in pencil back then. I know, rookie mistake. But that first line - her singing of those words - those are seared in my memory forever.
And they come to mind tonight, as I sit here in the darkness of my living room, Vinnie breathing heavily by my side, thinking of what I can say to all of you. I’m honored by the privilege of writing to you, and surprised by how many of you seem to read these. And so I try to search, hard, to find meaning in our reality. Meaning that I can find for myself and share with you.
It’s hard now. It is so hard. Many of us are in what has been called the sixth stage of grief - finding meaning - but the crisis in which we find ourselves is anything but over. So we have been cycling through the stages of grief in varying degrees since March.
Despite being over it , despite what one client today referred to as “pandemic fatigue,” we have little say over the external situation. Only how we respond and manage ourselves in the process. Tonight, as I was looking for some - any - words of comfort - it was the speech from Maya Angelou that came to mind.
But with a caveat.
And that caveat is that while we might be looking for and even seeing rainbows in what has been eight months of varying degrees of darkness, it is okay if we don’t see those rainbows yet.
We don’t have to make this moment or our feelings in this moment any different than what they are. The sky is gray right now. We don’t need to pretend it’s sunny or look for a rainbow.
It is okay to not feel okay right now. It is okay that we are “over” it. It is okay to accept ourselves - everything about ourselves - as we are right now in this moment. We do not need to make ourselves feel any differently than we do right now.
There have been some faint rainbows in these past few months of darkness. And in my heart of hearts, I believe we will find and see more of those rainbows. But if we can’t see that just yet - if all we are capable of is healthy striving - hell, even just striving - then that’s okay.