“Post-traumatic growth” (with Dr. Karla Vermeulen)

Vermeulen headshot in.jpg

Topics Discussed

  • Breonna Taylor Anniversary

  • Moment of Hope: Covid-19 Vaccination Update

  • Dr. Karla Vermeulen

  • Outside of Politics: Courtney Martin

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Episode Resources

BREONNA TAYLOR

Transcript

Sarah: This is Sarah

Beth: And Beth, 

Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.

Beth: [00:00:00] Hello, and thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Pantsuit Politics. We are continuing this week to think about the impacts of living with COVID-19 for a year. And we're excited because Dr. Karla Vermeulen joins us today to talk about the mental health impacts, both of living through the pandemic and transitioning out of it as we start to think about what that process could look like in the coming months. We have loved being featured in Apple podcasts spotlight program for the past month and we're so grateful to the team at Apple podcast. A special shout out to Lita for being so kind and patient and gracious to work with. 

If you're new to Pantsuit Politics, we hope that you'll pull up a chair at our big virtual table as we sit down to think about the news and our responsibilities as citizens twice a week and if you we're loving it here, we have two announcements about how you might get more involved. Okay. 

Sarah: [00:00:50] So we're going to have a Instagram live on March 25th at 5:00 PM Eastern standard time. It's sponsored by [00:01:00] our friends at Caliper, and we're going to have a live happy hour that will function as an Ask Us Anything. We have some questions of yours from the last Ask Us Anything on the show that we haven't discussed yet and then you'll be able to pop up and ask us questions within the event.

Alise will be there to help us keep the conversation flowing and we really can't  wait to see so many of you there. It's going to be really fun. And then of course we'd love for you to join our extra credit book club. Here's Susan, one of our listeners and members to tell you all about it.

Susan: [00:01:31] As an avid reader and Pantsuit Politics listener, I jumped at the chance to join the book club when it started last year and so far, I love it. Every box contains at least one book that I never would have picked myself, but ends up being a five-star read for me. The books cover a huge range of topics, water management, founding of our government, overwork, even a book of poetry with a poem about my beloved Amtrak in it.

Some of the titles are from decades ago, some were published yesterday, but they all, even the fiction tie [00:02:00] in with an important current topic. I was nervous to read the book about pandemics, but I learned so much and it was the perfect read for the moment. With this book group, there's no pressure to finish reading a book by a certain date.

Facebook and good reads groups are ready for your thoughts whenever you are. Everyone's invited to join whether you purchase the books or get them from the library, but I really love getting the boxes from Wild Geese Bookshop, especially the little non-book surprises they lovingly include. 

Sarah: [00:02:27] Susan is truly like so correct about the non-book surprises from Wild Geese and that chocolate from the last time was incredible and all the information you need on the book club will be in the show notes. And you can always contact Megan from our team who leads the book club for more information and her email is Megan@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. M -e-g-a-n  @pantsuitpoliticsshow.com.

Beth: [00:02:51] Before we talk with Dr. Vermaelen about living with COVID for a year, there is another year marker that we need to observe. Especially [00:03:00] since we are here in Kentucky, we wanted to spend some time thinking about the year that it's been since Breonna Taylor was killed in Louisville. 

Sarah: [00:03:09] As most of you know, Breonna Taylor was 26 years old and she was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment on March 13th of last year when white, plain clothes police officers entered her home under a no-knock warrant. Her boyfriend, who was in her apartment at the time, Kenneth Walker, fired a warning shot because he heard people coming into their apartment and the police officers fired 32 shots in return. Walker was unhurt, but Breonna Taylor was hit with six bullets and died on the scene.

According to the police at her home was never even searched and so as it stands here, a year later, the LMPD has fired one of the officers involved and the city of Louisville agreed to pay Breonna Taylor's family $12 million dollars and to institute some police reform practices, which we've seen at both the city level and some, and some state level.

Unfortunately on September 23rd of [00:04:00] last year, a state grand jury indicted one of the officers on three counts of wanton endangerment for endangering Breonna Taylor's neighbors but none of the officers involved in the raid have been charged in Breonna Taylor's death.

Beth: [00:04:11] Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend, who is a legal gun owner and fired a shot appropriately, according to Kentucky's stand your ground laws, was under investigation for a brief time for firing at the officers. Those charges were dismissed. Fortunately, he has now brought a lawsuit in federal court against LMPD and some of the officers involved. He says in the suit that the officers knew the search warrant affidavit had been fabricated, that they had no reason to do a nighttime raid, that they did not announce that they were police and that they used excessive force and response to Walker's valid attempt to defend himself.

And related to that grand jury investigation, there was an unsuccessful effort to impeach Kentucky's attorney general, Daniel Cameron, for a lack of candor [00:05:00] with both the grand jury and the public. That impeachment effort is over. The fallout from Breonna Taylor's death has been painful and difficult on so many levels for so many people for so long and is nowhere near over.

Sarah: [00:05:17] I mean, there has been some policy changes at the city level and some state legislation and definitely increased awareness around no-knock warrants, thanks to the devoted activism of her family and the people in Louisville and people all across the country. I mean, we are talking about the one year anniversary of her death, but it took much longer for this situation to get the attention it deserves particularly on a national level. 

And we have seen, thankfully not just in Kentucky, bigger conversations about no-knock warrants and the fact that it's not just out in public, that black Americans feel terrified [00:06:00] for their own safety. But here in this situation, when Brianna Taylor was in her own home and in her own bed and still lost her life to police violence. 

Beth: [00:06:09] We talked a lot at the time about how no knock warrants, predictably lead to horrific consequences like this. I appreciated that governor Bashir in talking about Breonna Taylor's death over the weekend, talked about how unnecessary her death was just for what, for what has this young woman's life been lost? And that's the truth of so many deaths related to no-knock warrants specifically and while we have seen some good movement around that legislatively, we also here in Kentucky have what is almost certainly an unconstitutional attempt to criminalize insulting a police officer moving through the Kentucky Senate.

I was so disappointed that this bill was out there at the same time as we had some, some well-handled statements about [00:07:00] this marker and we had really encouraging set of demonstrations in Louisville about her death. I was reading one article about how the Breonna Taylor foundation was passing out food to people in Lowville.

You know, there was conversation about how it was not a celebration. You know, it was somber and that there's so much important work to do, but you had Louisville's mayor saying, you know, thank you to everyone who was out here and how peaceful this has been and how appropriate it has all been. You have a lot of conversation around Louisville police department and new leadership there.

I thought our governor handled, handled it well. You know, it's just Kentucky contains multitudes like everywhere and I think that if this bill reaches governor Bashir's desk, he will almost certainly veto it because in addition to being just an un-American in, in the way that it is written, [00:08:00] it would be an enormous waste of Kentucky's money to be defending this in court when after case tells us that while we don't like people, people saying disrespectful things to police officers, disrespectful and worse, that is the definition of speaking freely to the state without fear of state aggression in return. 

And I know that's hard to hear for families of police officers. I never want to be insensitive to our officers or to the people who worry about them as they go out into dangerous conditions every day and serve the public and I also think that there is room in this conversation for a discussion of the balance of power and how it's wielded.

 I think you see that in the discussions coming out of the UK, around the protests related to Sarah Everards disappearance and death. You know, that is not a moment of hearing women all across the [00:09:00] UK saying we despise all police officers, it is saying, we need to have a conversation here about who sacrifices what for the public safety and who is told that their safety is prioritized over others.

And it just worldwide, we're looking at a really tumultuous time as it relates to people and power and governments and I, this bill to criminalize insults to police officers is very misguided attempt to address that conversation. 

Sarah: [00:09:31] So this bill was introduced by my state Senator Danny Carroll. I've known Danny Carroll a long time, and I've had almost nothing but conflict with him. He is not a good listener. That's the kindest way I can put it. And it's hard it's like, you know, I think that this is so insensitive and so racially charged, and there's a part of me that wants to just get on here and rail against him cause I don't particularly care for him and haven't, since way before I ran for office or he ran for office and I used to work with him [00:10:00] with a local charity organization.

And also there's just a part of me that's like, because he's a member of my community, it's really hard for me to do that. Just it's hard to articulate. I just don't think anything is served by me just coming on here and hating on him and calling him ignorant. I mean, he took a lot of heat over the weekend because he talked about this bill as like in what got went down in Paducah over  the summer is we had a near riot, which is not true. 

Um, one window in our mall got broken and it like sorta, everybody was kind of making fun of him about that. And there's some part of me that just wants to say like, As a former police officer, what do you think this will accomplish? Do you think there are people out there who wish to harm police officers that'll say, Oh, well, I don't know that if I call them me name, I might go to jail and that, that, that will prevent that. Like I just, there's a part of me that's like, what are you doing? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to intimidate people? Because you're [00:11:00] just gonna make the people you're trying to intimidate even madder.

Are you trying to actually address the massive gulf between many communities of color and the police officers who police them? In what universe working in Western Kentucky, would you have a lot of expertise on that? Like we have a black community in Paducah, but that's the Paducah police department, which Danny Carroll has never worked for.

And so I just, I don't know. It really bothers me. I think it's foolish and shortsighted and. Further inflames conversations and real hurt and real devastation surrounding so much injustice and tragedy that happens in community of color and, and then to come out and say, and not to mention, I don't really think it serves the police community, either. 

Even the ones that are, you know, just feel so insulted and so undervalued and let down, like, do you think this law is going to fix that? Do you think that's going to heal [00:12:00] anything and, and make certain people in your community, all of a sudden respect you because it's illegal to call you a name. Like, I just, there's just so many levels of this that to me are not just bad legislation, but truly bad leadership. 

Beth: [00:12:15] Yeah. I can imagine this legislation landing with police families, the way that a lot of the conversation about the military lands with military families. Yeah. And that is a shame. What a disservice. What a disservice and, and here's the other thing I know that we want to turn everything into a culture war right now, and legislation like this, certainly traffics in that symbolism, right instead of actual governance. Breonna Taylor is dead. This is not symbolic. She is gone and she cannot be brought back and forth that on the one hand and this kind of symbolic legislation on the other, which I don't mean to build into a dichotomy, it is more complex than that. [00:13:00] I'm just disappointed that that's the news out of Kentucky.

I'm disappointed. But what I hope we can do is continue to elevate the good news out of Kentucky and the places where people are having hard conversations and engaging in really important activism and insisting on changes and learning from our past mistakes, because you do see a lot of that. And I hope that you'll take a minute and just check the courier journal link in our show notes for a lot of really detailed updates about how the city of Louisville commemorated this year that has passed without Breonna Taylor.

[00:15:00] [00:14:00] Sarah before we talked to Dr. Vermaelen about the mental health aspects of living with COVID for a year, we thought we could celebrate a moment of hope around just the increasing number of vaccines out there. The sheer volume of vaccines makes me just sign a little bit with relief. 

Sarah: [00:15:42] Oh man, the numbers, especially 65 or older. Oh, I love it so much. I love it so much every time they're like two thirds. Yes. I love those numbers and the there's so many numbers that every time I hear them, I just get a little excited. The over 65 numbers make me really happy. Also [00:16:00] the amount of vaccines per day gets me really excited. Did you hear Saturday's number 

Beth: [00:16:06] What was Saturday's number? 

Sarah: [00:16:08] 4 million. We gave out 4 million vaccines on Saturday alone. I mean, come on. How could that not fill you with excitement and optimism? 

Beth: [00:16:18] As I was sitting down this morning, 69.8 million people had received one or both doses of a COVID vaccine, 36.2 million are fully vaccinated. We've got 135.8 million doses that have been distributed. But of course, by the time you hear this podcast, all those numbers will be higher. And I want to be sensitive to the fact that a lot of people are still waiting and are so frustrated with the systems and have reasons to have been prioritized and were not. So I want to hold that alongside my feeling that this is just an absolute miracle that I'm so grateful for.

Sarah: [00:16:56] No, I feel that and listen, are people on Patreon know, [00:17:00] like I'm keeping a list of whose governors didn't do good enough by y'all and my personal estimation, I call it the crappy governor, crappy governor coalition. And that just, Oh man, I don't like it. I don't like it when they're out there letting you all down.

I really do. But I mean, there's also, again, I mean, I read the New York times on Friday, the pace of us vaccinations have sped up by 40%. And I think that level of momentum is going to even reach the crappy governor coalition eventually and that is my hope. 

Beth: [00:17:29] We will talk more about vaccine distribution and try to answer some of your questions about why it has been so uneven on Friday's podcast with a very special guest Derek Lowe. But for today, let us talk with Dr. Karla Vermeulen, who is the deputy director of the Institute for disaster mental health and an associate professor of psychology. 

Dr. Vermeulen teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in disaster, mental health, grief counseling, and developmental psychology. In addition to her teaching and [00:18:00] research, she has coordinated the development and production of training curricula for the New York state department of health and office of mental health, the American Red Cross, the United Nations and other organizations.

She is coauthor of Disaster Mental Health Interventions: Core Principles and Practices and co editor of Disaster Mental Health Case Studies: Lessons Learned From Counseling and Chaos. She's currently completing a book on the developmental impact of disasters and other stressors on today's emerging adults.

And she was a true delight to talk with. We are so delighted to have Dr. Karla Vermeulen here. Will you please tell everyone about yourself and particularly about the Institute for Disaster Mental Health? I was excited to know that this existed. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:18:44] Sure. Thank you. So I'm an associate professor of psychology at the state university of New York at New Paltz, which is we're a small liberal arts college located about a hundred miles North of New York city. So we draw students both from the city area and then also [00:19:00] from kind of all around the States and they're kind of mixed population. 

And in addition to my more traditional role as a professor, I'm also the deputy director for the Institute for Disaster Mental Health at SUNY New Paltz and that's an organization that was founded a couple of years after 9/11, actually, so it's been around for six, 16 years, I always lose track at this point, by my colleague, James Halpern, who was a disaster mental health responder with the Red Cross. 

He'd been very involved in the response to 9/11 and he recognized that there was kind of a real gap in training. There are sort of professional trainings available in this field, which was really kind of emerging at that time um, but not much on the academic side. So he founded the Institute, IDMH and basically we have a combination of academic programs. We have an undergraduate minor in disaster studies, but a lot of the work that we do is more kind of externally facing. 

Um, so over the years we've really become the main training [00:20:00] partner in disaster mental health for the New York state office of mental health, department of health, division of Homeland security and emergency services, office of victim services, et cetera. Um, so normally normally what we do is train professionals from various sides or various fields who would get involved in disaster response.

Now, since the pandemic, basically everyone is a responder. You know, there used to be this kind of clear divide between you had your disaster survivors and then you had the people trying to help them in different aspects of their needs. Now, I think for the past year, we're all survivors. We are all responders and helpers.

Um, so the requests that we've received for trainings have just been unbelievable. Um, in the past year, we've trained some of the people you might expect. I mean, people involved in overseeing home health care aids and the service employees union, but also we've trained librarians. We've trained judges. Um, you know, [00:21:00] we keep getting these requests from groups that are like, we are having to adapt to this unbelievably stressful situation.

And so a lot of our focus is not just how do you help other people, primarily psychological first aid but also just maintaining resilience, you know, keeping yourself going through what is not only now a marathon, but, you know, it's, I keep thinking, like we started saying, this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Then it's like, now it's an ultra marathon and now- 

Sarah: [00:21:27] Our metaphors have to keep going.

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:21:29] Exactly. It's like one of those scifi movies where, you know, you have to keep running or you're going to die. So I, you know, and I think we're all just exhausted by that. But in terms of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health, you know, our focus really is just trying to equip people who are going to have to support others, whatever that role might be and yeah, that's the overview. 

Sarah: [00:21:50] I love this idea so much when you said psychological first aid, my nodding, my head off because it feels like this is the next [00:22:00] evolution in our priority as a culture in saying mental health is essential, mental health is a part of everything. Because it's like, we're getting very close to that when things are normal, but when, if they're ever normal, but in these emergency situation, it feels very much like to me, that mental health drops like totally out of the idea of triage.

Well, well, I mean, that's important, but we have to pay attention to the, like the physical reality. When I think to really tackle mental health, especially in a disaster situation, like it has to say present from the beginning of that triage, like, especially in a situation like the pandemic. Like, so your, you talked a little bit about how this is different than other disasters, but in what other ways are you seeing like, Oh, like this changes everything, but also this expands our understanding of why mental health is so important in these situations? 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:22:56] Yeah. That's a complicated question. Um, so I think one [00:23:00] of the biggest, I don't know, evolutions we've had to take is recognizing, you know, with what we're now referring to as traditional disasters or good old fashioned hurricane or tornado, or, I mean, even, you know, a mass shooting or something like that. It used to be that we thought of disaster response in terms of before, during and after. You know, there was a, there was a time before the event happened and sometimes we got a warning period and hopefully we can try to mitigate the damage, evacuate people, help prepare them, whatever. Then there's the impact period.

And then most of the focus of disaster mental health work has always occurred in the post disaster phase, um, which we can break down into sub phases. I won't get into that too in too much detail. What's different with the pandemic is where we're at every phase of that simultaneously. You know, even now that there's kind of a, uh, I I'm I'm, I won't be overly optimistic and say an end in sight, but you know, there's reason for some optimism, for [00:24:00] sure, with the vaccines rolling out and in the ramping up of that progressing so well in the last month or so.

 Even with that, you know, there's still that kind of fear. It's like, we're all in that warning phase where we still have to keep our guard up. We still have to be, you know, having that awareness that something bad still might happen. We still might get sick. Our loved ones still might get sick. So we're in the before phase. We're absolutely in the impact phase for sure where we are living it in this very extended way that is not how we evolutionarily developed cope with.

 And then we're kind of in, I mean, some people are in an after phase. You know, maybe people who've gotten the vaccine. Maybe I think we're gonna start we're seeing these real divides where it's like people who have been vaccinated .There gonna wanna to get back to normal and that's perfectly understandable, but until everyone catches up with them, I think we're going to see these kinds of real divides among the willingness of people to carry on with the changes in our behaviors, the mask wearing [00:25:00] the distancing, all of that.

Um, there's this phrase that I've started hearing of caution fatigue. Different than compassion fatigue, um, but you know, the people are just so sick of having to not see their loved ones and wear the masks and all of that nonsense. So, you know, I think that's going to be something we're going to have to keep fighting so we don't lose all of the ground that we have gained over the last several weeks, for sure. 

Beth: [00:25:25] What can we take from the context of other disasters in terms of that unevenness of experience? That happens around other events, right? Is there something that we can learn from how different people are impacted by a hurricane, for example?

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:25:41] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. I was when I'm teaching students about disaster cycle or disaster mental health, you know, I always point out that even though what makes a disaster a disaster is generally that it occurs at this collective level. You know, you can we think about sort of everyone in a community being impacted. However, of course, that [00:26:00] doesn't mean they're impacted to the exact same degree. People had different resources going into the event. They had different experiences. They certainly have different recovery resources and that's not just financial resources. That's also things like, do they have a solid social group that they can turn to, or even just one reliable person they can turn to for social support, because we know that's the most important thing that, you know, that's the most protective aspect of life people can have.

Uh, so, you know, that leads to all sorts of conflicts because you get these sorts of disparities where we can sort of recognize some people kind of had it worse from an external perspective. I mean, I always use the example like, well, you know, I lost my pet in the disaster, but my neighbor lost his house and, or lost a loved one. You know, we would all sort of, kind of agree that it's probably worse to lose a, you know, lose a human than a pet, but you still lost your pet. 

Um, so I think that's the thing that's been really tricky with this, like the, the suffering, the stressors on people throughout the [00:27:00] pandemic so wildly disparate and of course, it's the people who were at least advantaged to begin with as always who suffered the most. I mean, the people who lost their jobs, the people who had to keep doing low wage jobs just to survive that expose them to higher levels of risk. Yeah. The people with young children, you know, all of these factors, um, yet even the more privileged people had losses.

 They missed experiences. They had stressors. So you can kind of get into this friction, both directions. Like why is this person complaining when all they missed out on was, you know, their graduation ceremony or being able to go on vacation and I'm struggling to survive. And then the people who may be recognized feel like they can't they can't acknowledge that well, I'm still suffering. I'm still stressed, even though I know, you know, I feel like I can't acknowledge that. Um, so that leads to stress as well. So 

Sarah: [00:27:53] how do you train people and workers in these disaster situations to deal with that? You know, I have a phrase I go to and I don't quote him [00:28:00] often. In fact, this is the only time I quote him, but I heard Dr. Phil one time say if you're in a hospital bed with a broken leg and the person next to you is in a coma, it doesn't make your leg not broken. It's not like a, doctor's going to look at that person and be like, well, you're not in a coma, so you don't really need a cast.

So how do you train helpers to deal with that psychological response we all do, which is somebody has it worse and help people deal with their trauma when there's all other, there's so many levels surrounding us, especially in a pandemic. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:28:29] When we train people in psychological first aid in particular, there is always this kind of balancing act of, um, you know, very much part of it is training people to validate the suffering others are going through. You know, giving them that permission because if you downplay it, if you don't acknowledge it, it's going to come up at some point, you know, it's going to fester and you're going to have to deal with it later. 

Um, so we also very actively, you know, we have the here's what to say and here's, what's not, here's what not to say. Um, and one of the things not to say [00:29:00] is, well, it could be worse or, well, at least you still have, you know, anything that's kind of trying to distract people, change the subject, kind of bright side them, like force them to, you know, only look at the positives at the cost of not acknowledging the negatives.

That's just not helpful um, or, you know, saying it was God's will, or, or just the generic things. Everything will be okay. We don't know if it's going to be okay. You can't say that that is not helpful. Um, cause you know, it's just anything jumping aside, you know, another thing that I often do when I'm training people is encourage them to think what if the roles were reversed.

Um, you know, disasters happen to people largely through no fault of their own. So if you are helping someone and maybe you're, you know, having that kind of judging them. Thinking, well, they should have behaved differently or why are they complaining about this? Or why can't they handle this? You have no idea typically what this person was [00:30:00] dealing with before the disaster. Um, you don't know what they're feeling right now, so don't say I understand cause you don't. You know, anything like that, that sort of has that kind of minimizing effect. We, we really actively steer people away from. 

Sarah: [00:30:14] Well, isn't that what's so hard in a pandemic though? Like I learned as a rape crisis line operator, you can't judge someone in a crisis because you're not in the crisis, but that's what hard about right now, we're all in the freaking crisis. So when you say like, don't judge, you don't know there's a part of people's brains are like, I know I'm living through the pandemic too. That's, what's so difficult. 

Beth: [00:30:31] And we have learned, we went so quickly from what is Coronavirus to all believing that we can accurately assess what behaviors puts you at risk and what behavior keeps you safe. And so I think unlike other disasters, we have a sense that there's fault. I mean, we have a judginess about it in a lot of ways. I wonder if you can talk a little bit, help us. Please just do some therapy for it, as what we're saying. thank [00:31:00] you.

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:31:00] Yeah. I mean, this is incredibly hard and you know, Oh my gosh, of all the times that this pandemic had to happen, it had to be 2020, right? Like any other administration, um, any, even, even like that was sort of the apex of the insanity of this administration and trauma. Trauma and misinformation, just information, all of the you know. 

Sarah: [00:31:23] And it's not like the natural disasters took a pause either. Absolutely. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:31:27] Those kept happening. And then you got in these really complex situations where, you know, normally for natural disaster people get displaced from their homes, where do they end up? A shelter, red cross shelter, whatever those are not safe now, so that's been a real issue in the sort of traditional disaster response field. How do we how's people, provide shelter that's not in a congregate setting where you have everyone together in a gymnasium spreading the virus. Um, so it's just complexity on top of complexity.

Um, but back to the question about, you know, that [00:32:00] there is sort of legitimate blame, I don't know, I'm sorry. I don't have an answer for that. If I did, I would have tried to get it out there to the world a lot sooner. Um, it's infuriating and now, I mean, I think we're seeing, you know, I'm sure there's still some resistance to mask wearing. Hopefully that's reduced at this point, but now that kind of lack of what it's easy from the outside to see as, lack of rational thought, lack of understanding, reality, that has, I think sort of shifted to the vaccine hesitation or vaccine refusal among, you know, probably a lot of the same people who were refusing to wear masks are now saying I'm not going to get the vaccine.

And it's so hard. I mean, I find this myself to not just have that knee jerk, but it's science, you know. There have now been, I can't remember how many hundreds of thousands of people who have received the, the different forms of the vaccine and they're fine, you know, there aren't the side effects. Um, but it's, I always, I really have to talk myself down [00:33:00] from that kind of automatic um, you know, why aren't you listening to reality? Why aren't you listening to the science and try and do that perspective taking, because I think there's kind of a parallel in some ways, um, Going back to traditional disasters where people do receive a warning. You know, there's always people who don't follow the warning.

Sarah: [00:33:19] That's what I was gonna say. There's always different responses. Even when people, you know, everybody doesn't respond to a crisis the same way they never have, and they never will. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:33:27] And so much of that, I mean, thinking in particular about after hurricane Katrina, you know, in new Orleans, there were mandatory evacuation orders. People were told it was going to be bad. They were told they had to leave. Well, it was the end of the month. A lot of people didn't have transportation. They didn't have funds. Transportation was not provided for them. They many people have had evacuated in the past and had it turned out not to be necessary.

You know, there's this false alarm effect. Um, so people base their decisions on information that is rational to [00:34:00] them or sources that they trust. The problem is when that ends up being a misperception or they are trusting sources of information that they should not be, um, because those sources are inaccurate or maybe pursuing their own agendas, whatever.

Um, and so again, you know, I think one of the things we always look at is how do you frame a warning so that it catches people's attention? So that they don't just tune it out or immediately so that they are actually thinking and thinking about the consequences of what's going to happen if they don't follow the warning. 

You know, not just, there's a big, scary hurricane coming cause you can't do anything about that, but you can do something about here's what my family is going to be exposed to if I don't get them out of this area. Right. That's what really tends to appeal to people. It's a little trickier to figure out how to apply that, that kind of motivation to the vaccine beyond you can go see your family again, once everyone gets vaccinated.

Um, but if people have, you know, [00:35:00] even before this pandemic, we've recognized in the field for a long time, that there's something about illness, there's something about, you know, that kind of idea of, uh, have I taken something into my body that is going to harm me. Um, and, and it's really tricky, you know, w this was obviously one of the issues with COVID is, there's an incubation period. 

You know, if we knew right away that we had been harmed, you know, if, if you're in a, you know, you're in a tornado and you break your leg or your house is destroyed, you know, the consequences right away. With this, there's this kind of delay and then there's that uncertainty and then there's those behaviors that people enact during that delay. Um, so I know I'm jumping all over the place, but it's so complex, but I always try to bring it back to people make the choices they make for reasons that make sense to them and trying to understand their reasoning is absolutely essential for trying to maybe change their perspective [00:36:00] on things.

But I mean, I know you guys have talked about this on the podcast previously. How do you do that? How do you even kind of find that little, you know, chink in the armor where you can start to insert a little bit of, I won't even say rationality because that's my own judgment, obviously, um, but open up that conversation, um, when people just get, you know, people we doubled down when we have beliefs, especially beliefs we know are controversial in some way and someone challenges those, you know, we are not great at reaching across the aisle and listening to other perspectives. So that's always really hard.

Beth: [00:36:36] I think you're so wise to point out that the way we take things into our body puts us in a totally different head space too. You know, we tried from the beginning to say like getting COVID is not a moral failure. If you took a risk somewhere, or didn't even know you were taking a risk. If you contracted COVID, that it does not make you a bad person that does not mean that you were foolish and [00:37:00] disregarded. So many people have gotten this when they've done everything right according to the guidance. So no judgment about that.

We've tried to be really honest about the fact that a lot of the advice has shifted. We've had different understandings at different times about managing risks. We were just having a conversation before we started talking with you about vaccines and about how the ways that States are administering this process differently is opening up a whole new opportunity for judgment and comparison and anger and trauma.

You know, since both of us have had an opportunity to get our first dose, which we've gotten because of volunteer work that we do, we've tried to be transparent about that. We've gotten a ton of questions that are like pretty pointed, how did you get this? And I was thinking about, I was surprised to be able to get it because of this volunteer work. I anticipated being in the next class based on physical needs, like actual risk to my body.

And I was imagining [00:38:00] someone who doesn't host a podcast being asked pointedly, how were you able to get this, someone with an invisible kind of auto-immune disease? And like, what are we really saying to each other? When we say, how were you able to get this? And isn't that a new opportunity to sort of judge well, like you're weak or you're overweight or you're a smoker, or let me do like a moral inventory now on your reason for getting the vaccine and have a new thing to be mad about. I just feel like our friend, Megan Devine uses the phrase, the grief Olympics, and I feel like we are in an unending cycle of grief Olympics around a new topic every day.

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:38:38] Yeah, I think that is so true. And we're just so we're just so agitated. I mean, we've been functioning at this ramped up stress level for the past year and the past four years, depending on which source of stress we're looking at. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, I, I always use this analogy of, of, you know, we're are quite good at dealing [00:39:00] with acute stressors typically, where something happens, you respond to it, you come back to your baseline level of functioning.

We're okay at dealing with chronic stressors, we're kind of your, your baseline keeps getting kind of inched up a little bit, but you get to adapt gradually to that. We're not great at it. That certainly does take have some long-term consequences on health, wellbeing, et cetera, but we can manage it even though it's not the best thing for us.

I feel like what we've got now with COVID is you've got the acute on top of the chronic so each time there's a new thing to be afraid of, you don't come back to your previous baseline, that then becomes like another source of chronic stress and then the next thing happens. And so it's like we just keep getting ratcheted up higher and higher.

And it's going to take a long time, I think for a lot of us to come down from this. I mean, even once things are safe, you know, I can take in the optimistic assumption that someday we'll have herd immunity and it will be, it will become a controllable threat, even if it doesn't go away altogether, just the changes in [00:40:00] behaviors.

You know, we've all been living a very different way than we're used to for a full year plus, however many more months are ahead of us. Um, What's it going to be like to go eat in a restaurant again, wearing a mask? Um, I think we're going to see a lot of real sort of difficulties of people transitioning back to, uh, things that they totally took for granted. Um, now on the positive side of that, I hope we will have a whole new appreciation for things that we took for granted, like being able to go to a restaurant, being able to spend the holidays with our families. Um, so I think there is some room for post-traumatic growth coming out of this as well. 

Sarah: [00:40:34] Ooh, post-traumatic growth. I like the sound of that. Well, and it seems like you've offered us a little bit, bit of a roadmap. I was struck when you said we know what helps people's mental health and that is each other support. Yes. We know that we need each other. We can, that's not up for debate and the act, we all need to be affirmed instead of, you know, constantly going through a judge, people need to have their feelings affirmed.

I see that you feel this way, and I see you. I'm not going to try to argue out of [00:41:00] the way you feel. I think that that's like a good roadmap to start with and I love the idea that, you know, we will have a deeper appreciation for things that we haven't been able to do.And what we've been thinking about is things that like, we don't want to bring back.

How does that post-traumatic growth as we look at other natural disasters include like real progress? Like we're not going to pick this unhealthy habit back up. You know, I think a lot of people, you know, everything from silly things to like, I don't ever want to shake hands again. Let's stop that. That was gross. Great to like-

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:41:34] blowing out candles on a birthday cake? 

Sarah: [00:41:35] Yeah why are we spitting all over the birthday cake before we will eat it. And also just like the pace of life. I think there are a lot of people that were like, everything was moving too fast. And I went along with it because I didn't feel like I had a choice. But now that I see the alternative, I don't want to go back to that. Like how do we really incorporate some of that in our post-traumatic growth? 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:41:55] That's a great question. And it's, it's an interesting one because we've never kind of, [00:42:00] we've never seen it at the level of this enormous natural experiment we're all living through right now. Um, I mean, I think the way that it's been measured post-traumatic growth, um, previously, and this can be not only as a result of a disaster experience, but something like a serious illness or even experiencing a crime or, you know, basically it comes from anything that just shakes your foundations so much that you really reevaluate what matters to you.

Um, so people who go through a disaster often end up changing careers. That was my path. I lived through 9/11 and I stopped being a magazine editor and I went to graduate school and now I'm at disaster mental health specialist. 

Sarah: [00:42:44] Can I just, I'm gonna interrupt you one foot trip cause I think that's really important. In 9/11, one of the saddest things I saw as a young person, and hopefully this will give you an opportunity to talk to us about your book, but I, it felt like we missed that chance. Like it, I know that happened to one area, but it also [00:43:00] happened to a certain level to everybody in America. And it felt like, you know, we adopted changes like to our security, but there was an opportunity for cultural post-traumatic growth that just was not taken advantage of. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:43:12] And if anything, it was, it was taken advantage of in the negative sense. I mean, all of the, you know, the hyper patriotism, which was then translated into it is unpatriotic to question whether we should be getting into Wars in areas that had nothing to do with the attacks or the vilification of Muslims, um, and you know, anyone brown or anyone not from here. Um, so yeah, that was a really unfortunate incident.

Um, and you know, this is another example. Well, I guess this is a positive thing, just in terms of timing, you know, even though the pandemic began under the previous administration, the fact that we'll be coming out of it, knock wood, under the Biden administration, very much hoping that that will lead to just some ability to reconcile [00:44:00] and to not have it be politicized.

I mean, this is natural disaster at an Epic scale. Why should this be a political football? And it's, I'm not sure. I mean, it will be really interesting to see how this shakes out in terms of the sort of collective societal level post-traumatic growth. Um, cause we've tended to think of that as an individual experience, you know, you go through something very difficult, it shakes your world up and then you hopefully ultimately have some level of growth in, I won't be able to remember the five realms, but it's spirituality, meaning in life. Um, there's a bunch of others that I'm not recalling offhand. 

It'll be really, I don't know, amazing to see how this works out. Um, and you know, disasters is such a cliche that, you know, disasters equals opportunity, but it, but it does. I mean, if you think about, yeah, Hurricane Katrina, you know, absolutely devastating for New Orleans and the rest of the region but people in new Orleans took that as an opportunity to [00:45:00] completely revamp the school systems and healthcare systems. And, you know, we can critique aspects of the way that that worked out. But when we've all been totally knocked off our foundations, maybe we have a chance to rebuild in a different way. Um, yeah, but who gets to decide how that rebuilding is going to occur?

Sarah: [00:45:18] Well, and I do think there's an opportunity there because I, you know, the family member or friend or community member who you are most frustrated with, who just refuses to wear a mask, who pretends it doesn't happen. They are still affected by this trauma. There is not an American, there's not a member of our global planet who has not been affected by COVID-19. I don't care what they say or how they act.

 The fear of a pandemic on this level, like everybody had fear and anxiety work on them and yeah, absolutely. And you know, like that is like, so there, there is a common experience there. Now our [00:46:00] reactions were anything but common and the same. Absolutely no doubt about that, but that fear and anxiety that you might die, even if they never articulated that, or they showed it in very different ways was present for everything. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:46:14] Absolutely. 

Beth: [00:46:15] I appreciate how careful you've been about that timeline and not segmenting us into a clean after, because as optimistic as I feel about what's happening right now, I also do maintain maybe what could more broadly be described as a pessimism. It's really not pessimism, but I just think that maybe in my lifetime, it's not going to feel like there is much of a foundation again. 

I feel like, especially for people younger than I am, there, isn't a sense that things are baseline okay. And then something knocks us off that course and then it becomes baseline okay again, and you seem like the most qualified person I could ask. Am I right about that and if so, [00:47:00] how can we adapt to be people in a context that has less of a foundation than previous generations experienced? 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:47:09] Great question. And yes, this is segwaying to my developmental psychologist hat, um, which is kind of the focus of my own research. Um, yeah, I mean, as a developmental psychologist, I'm always thinking about not only what is happening, but what period of life are, is each cohort, each generation at when it happens. Um, so for me, I mean I'm 51 years old, so I was 32 when 9/11 happened so that gave me one perspective on it. I think you guys are a decade or two younger than me, so you would have a different perspective, but it very much, this was kind of the focus of this book that I have coming out later this year.

That today's emerging adults so, um, people who are currently 18 to 29 years old, this is that kind of transitional generation that really never knew, uh, [00:48:00] before 9/11. Uh, you know, the foundation of the society they grew up in was very much shaped by the attacks, by the political effects of them, by the Wars that we got into, by the recession and then certainly all of the other simultaneous factors like school shootings that they grew up with. I mean, literally attending lockdown drills from kindergarten on. Um, and then you've got climate change underlying all of that. And then you've got now a pandemic on top of it. 

Um, so you know, the pandemic it's, it's terrible for everyone obviously, but it's terrible in slightly different ways, depending on the age that you are at this moment. So I think it's particularly terrible for older people who may feel that they literally will not live. I mean, even if they survive the pandemic, they will not live to see that, you know, that return to some kind of new, normal, whatever that might be.

 On the other side, you know, very difficult for young children. Um, I'm particularly worried of course, about the impact on [00:49:00] academics and, and socialization. You know, the stuff kids normally get in school, getting them back on track with that but I think for preadolescence, they will have enough time, you know, it might be, they're very resilient. They are, I mean, provided that they have appropriate caretaking and that they do again, get access to those things we view as essential, like being able to socialize with friends.

Um, so, you know, I think that the little kids will be okay ultimately, it's the adolescents and the emerging adults who I think this is very hard for, I won't say hardest. I won't get into comparing. I think I already did. Um, but you know, for them they're missing all of these developmental milestones, which, you know, no, it's not, I don't know, learning to ride a bike or whatever, but the sort of individuation process that is part of adolescence and emerging adulthood, there are people who are just not able to do that.

I mean, I'm a college professor, so I work most directly with people sort of [00:50:00] on the younger end of emerging adulthood. You know, most of my students are 18 to 23 or so. Um, and a lot of these students are in, at my college a lot of them are first-generation in their family to go to college. Um, you know, they fought really, really hard to get to this point. And now all of a sudden and midway through last spring semester, they got sent back home to their childhood bedrooms, and for some of them, you know, I'm sure we're all familiar with some of these issues, but you know, just inadequate access to high speed internet when all their classes went online, um, loss of all the socialization.

Um, I had one student who talked to me about returning to her toxic household that she had escaped and now she was back in, you know, back to an environment of, you know, abuse and negativity. So I just think we need to kind of validate, even though it, it's, it goes back to what we were talking about before with this kind of spectrum of [00:51:00] stressors or spectrum of losses.

Like yeah, you can look at a young person from the perspective of a couple of decades on and say, I'm sorry, you missed your college graduation ceremony. That's really unfortunate for you. Think back to being the 22 year old, who, you know, worked so hard to get to that um, and, and then not only that, but then now they're graduating into, again, a horrible economy, a horrible job market.

They've missed opportunities to do the internships that are now kind of a requirement to get any kind of decent job. You know, it just, it's this kind of cumulative. It's not just the social stress. It's not just the fear and anxiety, but as a young adult, kind of just missing those normal things that are kind of the rewards of reaching that stage typically.

Sarah: [00:51:50] You know what I see, and I'd love to hear your feedback on this. As a person who was in college during 9/11, I, when you say that individuation, [00:52:00] you know, that's not a universal development across the globe. There are societies that are much different than ours with a much bigger emphasis on connection and community.

And what I see in my generation is like these disasters chip away at that cultural narrative of like, this is what it means to become an adult. And it feels like we're shifting away from that individual culture. Like what, what I mean is, you know, I grew up in the eighties watching, like Working Girl and all these movies that said, like that set up, this is what success looks like right. And then you have 9/11 in college where it's like, Oh, wait a second. Then you have the recession that's like, Oh, Right. And then you have student loan debt and the student loan crisis and people are like, so this go to college, get a big job in the city and earn all this money and that's, what's going to make you happy.

Like you have all these disasters that chip away at that narrative. Right? Yeah. And I wonder, I think about this a lot for my like 11 year old or from the kids in my community that are in high school. Like I wonder if we're [00:53:00] just all these disasters and I fully expect this to be true with climate change, chip away at that narrative of like, you know, to be successful, you have to be an individual.

And I wonder if what they're taking in through all these crisises is like what we talked about. Like, we need each other, like, you're never really an individual. Like you're always connected to other human beings. Sometimes you don't want to be because it's a toxic environment. Sometimes it's your chosen family that like, you do not want to be, or your, you know, your, your biological family that you're like uh huh.  

And you see it, I think too, with the shifting narratives in like millennials and gen Z about like purpose driven work and like, they want to be a part of something. They don't want to be out on their own. To me like that seems like the impact on these disaster generations is like, they're, they're taking that crisis and writing it into the narrative of like what success means and what it means to be out there in the world.

Right. And I, I even think about like the, how the great depression affected my great grandparents and like that, that [00:54:00] narrative of what they learned that like, there's not always enough, was so key to what they wrote into the narrative about like what success looks like and what it means to be a member of the community or out in the world.

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:54:12] Yeah, definitely. And, and I think I'm just looking at rear expectations in particular. Um, it's not good for emerging adults now. Um, for this book, um, I did, in addition to just, you know, talking and doing surveys of my own college students, one of the criticisms of research on emerging adults is it tends to focus on college students because they're easily accessible.

So I commissioned a thousand person survey that was nationally representative in terms of racial background, um, or, you know, racial diversity, but also I over-sampled, um, uh, young people who had not attended college to make sure that I was getting that perspective as well. And what I found was just this incredible divide in expectations for career [00:55:00] success.

Um, one of the questions I asked, well, a few questions was compared to previous generations, do you think your generation will be able to find a successful or a rewarding career, buy a house, retire comfortably? And there was this tremendous divide and it was absolutely linked to education. Wow. But even among the people who did have a college education or were in college now, a lot of them were also commenting on the devaluation of a college degree because now it's the norm.

 You know, it used to be exceptional to have a college degree or a bachelor's let alone a master's. Now it's like, you can't expect to do any kind of decently paying work. You are doomed to, you know, the gig economy or other jobs with no opportunity for advancement pretty much if you don't have at least that college degree. It's just, it's just upsetting to me. Um even asking, you know, [00:56:00] 18 to 29 year olds, if they thought they would be able to retire, like even with that extremely long timeframe, you would think, you know, you think maybe, okay, we're going to be struggling for a few years as we establish our careers, that's kind of natural, but they were, you know, at age 22 thinking I'm never going to be able to retire.

Sarah: [00:56:18] And I believe that that doesn't surprise me at all. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:56:20] It is really dire. Yeah. 

Beth: [00:56:22] Well, as we wrap up and I am so grateful for your time and expertise today, I'm thinking back to one of the first things you said about how we are now all survivors and we are all helpers. If you could leave our audience and us with one thing that trained helpers learn that the general public seems not to know that might help us be better helpers, even as we are survivors, I would love to know what that one thing might be.

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:56:51] I mean, I'd say if there's one thing and I know this is going to sound, we've all heard this before, but genuinely practicing self [00:57:00] care is essential because you cannot keep going yourself, you certainly can't take care of others, you're going to end up harming others, potentially, if you're not looking out for your own needs. And so, yeah. I think self care has often been viewed as kind of fluffy or a luxury or, you know, take 

Sarah: [00:57:18] a nice bubble bath. That'll just be the pandemic. Yeah. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:57:21] Um, and I think cultivating different forms of self-care or different things that keep you resilient is really key. You know, mindfulness and yoga. Fantastic if those things work for you, they do not work for me. I am a failure at those, even though I have full respect for them. For me, what works better is taking a much more cognitive approach to stress management, um, and really kind of, you know, this idea of stress, inoculation of kind of thinking through, okay, what am I anxious about? Is this something I can control or not?

 If it is something I can control, how am I going to do that? What am I going to change about it, to [00:58:00] minimize that stress? If it's not something I can control and there's a lot we can't control right now, then how am I going to cope with my feelings? And sometimes that is not going to be making myself feel better or getting rid of the negative feelings. Sometimes that is just accepting that yeah, I'm not going to be happy about this for awhile and yeah, I'm just going to have to-

Sarah: [00:58:19] or sharing it with another human. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:58:22] That is great. Or, you know, for some people writing is productive or screaming into a pillow or, you know, whatever it takes. And for some people, you know, exercise is a great way to kind of burn that off. So, I mean, that guess, I guess does kind of go back to the mindfulness in the sense of learning to accept your feelings and not judging yourself for them. But I think doing that in a really active way can be helpful for some people, um, rather than just kind of thinking, Oh, I'll get to that later.

 Um, so we, when we're training helpers, we really try to frame that as an ethical imperative. You know, it's not a luxury, this is part of your job [00:59:00] description, because if you don't do this for yourself, you are going to burn out. You're going to develop vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue. You're just not going to be able to keep going. So I think applying to allege ourselves as you know, private citizens, as well as helpers is maybe going to be, you know, it is necessary not easy to do for sure though.

Beth: [00:59:19] You said this very casually, but it jumped out at me because the new piece to me in that message is ,if you don't do this, you could harm someone. And I think that we have not thought of ourselves as citizens, as helpers, in the sense of, if I don't tend to these needs, I will harm someone. And I think that's what we're doing right now. We're harming each other in ways that we don't even recognize. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [00:59:40] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And maybe that's behind kind of the agitation and the blaming that you brought up earlier. Like of course I'm going to be snapping at someone because I, you know, I I've got all of these emotions. I don't know what else to do with them. So I'm going to shout at the first person who I see not wearing a mask or who I say wearing a mask or whatever, you know, we have this need to kind of [01:00:00] resolve that conflict. So we're, we're going to pick a fight in that way. 

Sarah: [01:00:03] Well, and I think the part of this that we are victims and survivors and helpers all at the same time is one of the, you know, biggest mental health breakthroughs I had is that the stages of grief are so helpful to think through. And also we think we move through them and then some sort of like lockstep order, like I have completed step one, I am done. And now I have moved on to step two in grief. And that's not how it works, man. Like you're like moving through at the same time. 

And so, you know, that self care as an ethical imperative, as we are simultaneously victims and survivors, like that is huge to me, like just giving yourself a break. Sometimes you're going to be in the acceptance phase and the next day you'll be back at anger. And like, just to being able to like, recognize that and like give yourself some space and give those around you space as they hop around in those phases is so huge. 

You know, I was a victim of a school shooting and I think [01:01:00] that just claiming that, that word as victim, because we, we want people to be survivors and we're like, people say like, Oh, I'm not a victim. No, you, you are a victim. Like that's okay. Right. It is, we are a victim of this pandemic. It was not our choice and it happened to us. And even as we move out of it, that is still true. And there's no shame in that. There's no shame in being a victim of something you had no control over. And I think that that's just real, that's really, really hard. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [01:01:30] So it is. Yeah. But also we do have control over our own behaviors and our own choices. So, and if those behavior, I mean, I'm not just talking about mask wearing behaviors, but behaviors like choosing to take care of ourselves and you know, and that can include, take a break. I mean, I'm a big believer in distraction. You know, distraction is different than avoidance. Yeah, it is absolutely fair to, you know, give yourself a little recess. 

Sarah: [01:01:55] Watch that Ted Lasso. It is a gift to humanity. It is a gift to [01:02:00] humanity, that show. 

Beth: [01:02:01] Well, thank you so much, Dr. Vermeulen for your time and your expertise and for acknowledging how hard all this is. I really appreciate it. 

Dr. Karla Vermeulen: [01:02:09] Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Sarah: [01:02:21] We are so, so thankful for this conversation. We hope that all of you were served by it as much as we were, and we look forward to continuing to process and have this conversation with our community as we continue to deal with the fallout of this global pandemic.

Beth: [01:02:39] And outside of politics today, continues this theme of dealing with the fallout of the pandemic. I reached out to Courtney Martin to share with us at the end of today's episode. She is an author, entrepreneur and facilitator who's written five books and has wildly popular Ted talks. She is in my life as the author of The Examined [01:03:00] Family, which is a weekly issue newsletter. It goes to the top priority in my inbox, as soon as I get it.

And last week, she wrote some questions to consider at this marker in the pandemic that were so beautiful and were framed in such a rich way that I asked if she'd be willing to share them here in her own voice and that we are so honored. Here is Courtney Martin.

Courtney Martin: [01:03:27] Here we are one year after the words Coronavirus and social distancing first entered our lexicon. One year after fear of touch and breath and each other first flared across our nervous systems. One year after our worlds shrunk and cracked open simultaneously. Who are you now? Or let me put this more variably. What small corner of your home or neighborhood have you learned to see a new this year?

 What person have you fallen in love with? If you could only pick one emotion to [01:04:00] symbolize the majority of your state of being this year, what would it be? What grief has threatened to sweep you away? How have you stayed here? Have you learned about your relationship to risk? What have you learned about your relationship to limitations? What have you learned about America's fragility and strength?

 How will you feed the institutions that keep us safe, honest, together? What small weird project has given your life meaning this year? How have you asked for help? What do you need to never forget? And for me to you, way to hang in there, way to stay together. Humility and resilience look beautiful on you.

Beth: [01:04:53] Thank you, Dr. Vermeulen. Thank you, Courtney Martin. Thank you Sarah for our conversation. That was helpful to me and I hope [01:05:00] all of you have the best week available to you. We'll be back with you here on Friday.

Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.  

Sarah: Alise Napp is our managing director. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth: Our show is listener supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Sarah: David McWilliams. Ali Edwards, Martha Bronitsky, Amy Whited, 

Janice Elliot, Sarah Ralph, Barry Kaufman, Jeremy Sequoia, Laurie LaDow, Emily Neesley,  

Allison Luzader. Tracey Puthoff,  Danny Ozment, Molly Kohrs, Julie Hallar, 

Jared Minson, Marnie Johansson. The Kriebs! 

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