Oof. Compassion Fail.
In which I really screwed the proverbial pooch. But learned a lot. Cue Alanis Morissette’s “You learn…” from white gal Gen-X standard, Jagged Little Pill. (Part 2 of "Why Court Accompaniment?")
Here’s the story I left out from my last post, Why Homicide Court Accompaniment? (if you want to catch up, it’s here).
One day I came home from court particularly exhausted.
Horrible, heart-crushing afternoon in court.
Something I’ve learned: real-life security footage of shootings doesn’t look like a scene from an action movie.
Instead, it’s often in black and white. Often grainy. Laggy. Often silent.
The person who shoots, and the person who is shot, are usually much standing closer to each other than in movies.
You might see a few flashes of light. You see someone crumple like a falling Jenga tower. People run. And someone is dying.
It never doesn’t make me nauseous.
And so I can’t even IMAGINE how the families feel.
(Sometimes we sit with them outside the courtroom, in the hall, instead of watching.)
Break for an important side salad: It’s crucial, vital, super-allycahoopter important when talking about violence of any kind —structural, generational, interpersonal— to center the folks who are most impacted. Learning from them, listening to them, coming alongside them, is the focus of my engagement in court companionship and restorative justice. However. I am very mindful of not sharing painful details of folks’ lives. I do not want to exploit their pain for my gain. This is why I focus in Unruly Quaker on my own experiences of these practices. Sometimes I might not thread the needle perfectly, but that’s where I’m coming from.
So. Sad day in court. I get home that particular day and I want nothing more than to pour myself a Tami Taylor glass of $12.99/bottle Sav Blanc and sit with my dog on the porch, where we can stare together at the sky.
I step in the house and Teen comes at me like a Tasmanian devil, spinning in upset: crisis at school, worried about a friend, term paper due that I promised to look over for misspellings and typos, why am I so late getting home. You know the drill. He needs help and he needs it now, Mom!
Oy. I pour that jam jar of wine.
Ugh, the kitchen is an unholy mess. Deep breath.
Teen is stomping around, complaining at me - in my direction - as I not-gently load the dishwasher and toss milk cartons into the recycling bin.
Husband walks in the door. He’s uncharacteristically crabby, having had a truly difficult and heavy day at work.
Last night’s dirty pots need to be cleaned before he can start making dinner.
I suds up the sponge. Teen is all up in my grill, still full of complaints.
I grit my teeth.
I listen.
And then I get real tired of listening.
Just done.
I turn from the sink, suds flipping into the air, and I say, “You know what, kid? You think you got problems?
“Tell that to the family I just spent the day in court with.
“At least your family is alive.
“You? You’ve got it made.”
He blinks slowly. He slinks away.
If he had a tail, it would have been tucked between his legs.
And Lord, I feel righteous and good and justified for three glorious seconds.
And then I feel terrible.
While it’s important for Teen — for anyone — to keep things in perspective, responding to one person’s struggles by comparing them to other struggles is not compassion.
At least it’s not the kind of compassion I want to cultivate.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:
How we be is how we be.
How we are is how we are.
What is the point of spending an afternoon in court companionship if I come home with no space for being compassionate with my nearest and dearest?
What lesson does that teach Teen?
That he is less important to me than strangers are?
That serving in a way I feel spiritually led will necessarily mean that I have less compassion for him?
That love is a limited commodity? A zero-sum game?
That when it comes time for him to serve, he will need to choose: either be kind to his family or be kind to strangers?
No.
I want to be able to be compassionate in court, come home, and have just as much compassion for Teen, or Husband, or Mom, or Friend’s hearts and struggles.
Not to mention have compassion for myself. For my tender little heart.
Turns out that comparing traumas is a sign of compassion fatigue.
And that is no bueno.
The cure for compassion fatigue?
Care. Self-care and mutual care.
Self-Care, baby.
Self-care has been so co-opted by late-stage capitalism that it feels gross to me - like it means a RHONY-level expensive spa day and mani/pedi treatment.
I’m not anti-massage, but that’s not necessarily the self-care I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the kind of self-care that doesn’t cost a thing. Sometimes it simply means acknowledging to myself that THIS IS HARD AND SAD.
And doing something intentionally that day - setting my yoga app to Restorative instead of Ashtanga.
Allowing myself to -gasp- spend 20 minutes reading a novel in the middle of the work day. (I know! Unbelievable!)
To linger on the front steps with my dog.
And I’m talking mutual care, too.
Mutual Care has its own history
And you know I’m a history nerd. But here I’m talking specifically about —
A cup of coffee with a friend when we’ve both had rough days.
A gentle reminder to Teen that this might be a hard day and how we can together plan some space for that.
An intentional text debrief with a bestie.
An extra squeezy hug from my husband.
It doesn’t have to be a big deal.
Just the acknowledgement, the stopping to breathe a little, the expression and reaching out, is usually enough.
And when it isn’t?
That might signal I need more of a break.
Like I took last week, not going to court.
Which was hard to admit I needed to step back from. But the response - was full of loving care and life-affirming support from the folks I volunteer with.
That’s care. That’s mutuality.
It makes a huge difference in scary places like on the precipice of overwhelm and depression, or in the oppressive machinery of a courthouse that often leaves people bereft and alone.
And you know what?
That’s the why.
That’s the answer to “Why court accompaniment?”
Care, mutuality, relationship.
It’s kind of small, when you get right down to it.
But small things add up.
What if care, mutuality, relationship - what if they were the seeds of new systems? Better systems? Systems rooted in and grown from … well, you know.
What would that add up to?
That would add up to love, and belonging.
And to me, that (re)generates hope.
Which my parents gifted me with as a middle name. So I’d never lose it.
Hope.
As Jyn Erso says in Rogue One*, “Revolutions are built on hope.”
Y’all make me hopeful.
Let’s build a revolution. Together.
Thanks for reading.
XOXO
* Rogue One is possibly my favorite Star Wars movie? Maybe tied with Empire. And side salad: OMG isn’t the Ahsoka series so good?
P.S. It’s been a hard couple of weeks here but you know what’s NOT hard?
You can even select your own membership level under Founding Member.
For those of you who are already paid subscribers: y’all ROCK. That is some world-class care and support. THANK YOU.
I love your posts. You’re striving to put yourself in context with the wider world and then your own smaller orbit. Sometimes you’re a planet, sometimes you’re sad little Pluto (Pluto was robbed!) and sometimes you’re the sun itself.