Spitting in the Wind Part 2, 7.3.22
Shelter from the Storm
Welcome, and newShrink birthday-greetings this Independence Day weekend.
If you recall last edition as Part 1 in a fire-hose of a national news-week, this Part 2 is like the-other-shoe(s)-to drop.
All is of similar or greater magnitude and scope, involving every dimension of American life and democracy.
And all timed at the nation’s birthday, anniversary of our independence.
So this newShrink has similar emphasis on visual images, quotes and news highlights, again needing more of that festering — er, pondering — from perspectives of depth psychology and soul. (At this point efforts to follow many threads of thought still get stuck at “ohhh we are sooooo screwed!”)
For today’s intro in the spirit of newShrink’s tracking the soul of America, first I call on Pulitzer prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, who literally wrote the book on the topic. The guy’s fine mind, quiet depth and gorgeous voice have calmed and talked me down from many news-watching ledges over the past few years. In this year’s pre-July 4th message on Friday he somehow manages to reassure, inform, inspire and challenge all at once.
I highly recommend saving the full 12:38-minute piece for a quiet moment, especially if your July 4th mood this year, like mine, is feeling at best more contemplative or concerned than celebratory.
And meanwhile the week’s stories, ideas and images have begun to organize themselves around a few themes that are presented visually and in some commentary below.
🔷Profiles in Courage — whose faces and voices of late seem decidedly female across the current news-scape;
🔷Oh, Those Romanticized-Paragon (Silent) ‘Ladies’: Liberty, Justice, MotherEarth, Mary.
🔷Toward Healthier Politics, People and Planet: Spaces, Faces and History of the Healer Archetype; and
🔷In the Service of Healing — A special seasonal spotlight and tribute.
The usual navigating details for accessing all links and references on the newShrink website are at the bottom of this post after closing comments. For space and tech considerations links to some additional stories and sources are also at the bottom rather than embedded in the text. All bold or italic emphasis in text here is mine.
In his July 4th reflection above, Jon Meacham describes the principled stand in 1950 called “Declaration of Conscience” by a lone Republican female Senator — Margaret Chase Smith. Her stand was opposition (in vain) to fellow Republican Senator Joe McCarthy whose communist-hunting “red scare” effort was just beginning. The McCarthy communist witch-hunt was a siege of terror that destroyed careers, families and even lives. McCarthy’s power in government, media and public held Republican politicians so captive and paralyzed — including the popular war-veteran President Eisenhower — that it was four long years before bipartisan voices and actions joined Smith’s to stop him.
The term for that kind of stand, and such female examples of it, has been mentioned a lot this week…
Profiles in Courage
#1. This title theme refers to then-Senator John F. Kennedy’s 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning study of heroism.
This was not heroism in wartime, as JFK had experienced, but what he defined as political courage. Here I remind that all human transactions and relationships are political in that they involve relative power and power dynamics. Also, the word courage shares Latin roots and meaning with various words for heart. Courage is not power via brute force, but strength by fierceness of heart… it’s soulful. Despite my ambivalences about the actor Mel Gibson off-screen, in this context I tend to think in terms of “what is the braveheart move?” in a situation.
So, profiles in this kind of courage involve speaking up — not only risking ostracism, financial, political or even all-too-frequent danger of bodily harm. It sometimes can mean just going against the grain of group, family and peer acceptance.
For a lot of us relatively safe and privileged women this can mean daring to bring our deeper, authentic voices forward with one another — because for us the choice of speaking up is a privilege, the risks and potential wounds only social and ego, not life- and liberty-threatening or soul-killing.
Kennedy’s eight subjects in the book were: John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Jouton, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A Taft.
All men. (By the way, that was in 1955 — five years after Kennedy’s fellow Senator, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith, had made her Declaration of Conscience.)
In high-profile news of late, however, the most notable and frequent subjects have been women.
#2. Cassidy Hutchinson Stuns With Testimony About Trump on Jan. 6 (The New York Times)
All the bombshells Cassidy Hutchinson dropped about Trump and Jan. 6: 4 Take-aways (The Washington Post)
“It was un-American,” Hutchinson testified. “We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
Cowardly Mark Meadows let Jan. 6 happen (Opinion: The Charlotte Observer)
We learned a lot about Mark Meadows and his cowardice on Tuesday, but we certainly didn’t learn any of it from Meadows himself. Because while Hutchinson was sharing what she knew, Meadows was hiding. Hiding from the truth, hiding from accountability and, most importantly, hiding from the American public, who deserve the answers he is refusing to give.
So Cassidy Hutchinson — a 25-year-old woman with far less rank and power than nearly everyone she testified about — did it instead.
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#3. Ketanji Brown Jackson Becomes First Black Female Supreme Court Justice
(The New York Times)
Justice Jackson’s nomination by President Biden and Senate confirmation hearing are covered in newShrink editions earlier this spring, including the two-part 4.1.22 and 4.3.22 editions.
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The following was for me one of the most compelling examinations of the Roe v Wade decision. It’s a Guest Essay in The New York Times by Michele Goodwin, a chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.”
#4. No, Justice Alito, Reproductive Justice Is in the Constitution
Black women’s sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black women’s wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen.
Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution…
This Supreme Court demonstrates a selective and opportunistic interpretation of the Constitution and legal history, which ignores the intent of the 13th and 14th Amendments, especially as related to Black women’s bodily autonomy, liberty and privacy which extended beyond freeing them from labor in cotton fields to shielding them from rape and forced reproduction… Ultimately, this failure disserves all women.
Wording of the 13th Amendment
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Wording of the 14th Amendment
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The Court’s next target? Mother Earth, herself…
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Supreme Court Curbs E.P.A.’s Authority to Address Climate Change
(Story excerpts below from The New York Times and CNBC, respectively)
The decision [written by Chief Justice Roberts] was a blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers under the Clean Air Act. It was the latest ruling by a court that has handed down significant decisions on abortion and guns.
#5. Writing the dissent, Justice Elena Kagan:
“Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time’,” Kagan said in the dissent joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor.
“The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening,” Kagan wrote.
She also said, “The majority claims it is just following precedent, but that is not so. The Court has never even used the term ‘major questions doctrine’ before.”
The court’s six-justice conservative majority has been skeptical of the federal agency’s authority to set national standards.
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These are highlights of the heavy-laden batch of national news-bundles landing this news-week, just in time for July 4. The challenge now becomes how to view the nation’s birthday and anniversary of our independence and equality in any deep or genuine way through these cloudy, distorting lenses. Much less celebrate.
Once again familiar and favorite images, ear-worms and quotes have surfaced first. Then thoughts on this have returned to revisit themes touched-on before, such as…
Oh, Those Romanticized ‘Ladies’…
#6. Emma Lazarus and Bob Dylan (Top left and top right)
For some reason, anytime Emma Lazarus’ poem from the Statue of Liberty comes to mind for very long, soon after comes my ear-worm with Bob Dylan singing Shelter from the Storm! (This may be reaction or offset to the rather overblown sentimentality of the Lazarus poem, which we performed as a song in my high school choir, or maybe girls’ ensemble, days.)
In this week’s rather cynical state of mind, following both the poem line and the song lyric I then wonder: and then what?
The Liberty-related images here are (at bottom left and right) part of a January 6, 2022 editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers and photo of the statue during Hurricane Sandy.
#7. “Dearest Friends” Abigail and John Adams
(The top center image and this excerpt are a holiday revisit with a July 4 post last year that was a favorite for a lot of readers and for me, too. This year it’s more than a bit bittersweet, and I can’t decide what I think Abigail might be saying about now…)
Among the amazing cast of characters involved in our nation’s founding, I have long savored the early patriots, second U.S. President John and First Lady Abigail Adams. From a soul-of-the-nation standpoint it’s hard to match their biographical life-stories, profoundly intimate and conscious relationship over time and distance, prolific correspondence, and interface with history (and with other historic figures such as Adams’ fellow patriot, then political foe, third President Thomas Jefferson.) Here’s Abigail writing to John:
”I long to hear that you have declared an independancy [sic]—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors… Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could…but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.”
Here’s a full link to the Abigail letter.
#8. The Ladies Liberty and Justice, The Mothers Earth and Mary
In both the political-public sphere and the intensely personal and even sacred, it’s interesting how so many dimensions of women in America are rendered as idealized, literally-on-a-pedestal in sculpture or in painting: Lady Liberty (modeled on the Greek mythological Athena)… Justice (modeled on Greek Themis)… Mother Earth, Mary.
And silent. Inspiring and beautiful, but only inert and soul-less.
Not conducive to or supportive of life. And certainly not sexual.
Hmm.
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Many, if not all, of these current stories and Court decisions have profound implications and dimensions from the clinical medical and psychological realms as well as the depths of soul.
The archetypal Healer in our politics, people and planet
Stories like the ones below about ethical, professional and moral dilemmas are posing challenges not only for medical doctors, but for those of us in healing professions of all kinds. For example, clinical therapists are licensed by state, in effect are agents of the state(s) in which they hold licenses — states whose laws and requirements are becoming widely disparate. Meanwhile the professions’ standards and ethics are a higher and overarching authority even before factoring-in or considering matters of religious belief. Additionally for depth psychologists, the realm of the soul is the realm of the sacred regarding both people and planet — also a higher and deeper authority.
Another hmm.
Some stories:
For doctors, abortion restrictions create an 'impossible choice' when providing care (NPR)
Physicians face confusion and fear in post-Roe world (WAPO)
Doctors worry gray areas in new abortion bans force a choice between breaking their oath and breaking the law.
Roe ruling an egregious allowance of government intrusion into medicine
(American Medical Association Press Release)
All of which has had me thinking more generally about healing.
#9. “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself.”
This quote from the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has continually resurfaced for me — particularly the phrase “whether (or not) TO bear a child….” The phrase restores an emphasis on conscious, intentional, positive parenthood that I find has been largely lost — even among people who define themselves pro-choice — in what has become the singular focus on restricting termination or contraception at the many stages on the continuum of reproductive process from cell to citizen.
For me this is critically important from a soul and depth standpoint, for without the clear and conscious options of termination and contraception what is and ought to be the most profound, complex and conscious commitment becomes a matter of default, mindless breeding. From a clinical psychotherapy standpoint alone, for me the lifelong damages, wounds and costs of that — for way-way too many people already — are all too common and familiar.
I’m reminded that the idea, and core value, is in Planned Parenthood’s very name — and in its original tagline goal used more often in the past, “to make every child a wanted child.”
RBG’s quote here to me is in the direction of healing, and that always stands in some way between what is life-giving and what is life-depleting. Life and death are not like light switches.
Which brings us to the images depicting the archetypal Healer…
#10. Greek God of Medicine Asclepius, Therapeutae (usually female) “Receivers of the Healing Dreams” and the Ancient Greek Hospitals such as Epidaurus
(Images at bottom left, top center and top right) In ancient Greek tradition Asclepius (also spelled Asklepios) was the son of Apollo (also considered the Physician), was gifted in healing arts that ranged from the physical such as surgery, hygiene etc. and also prophesy, wisdom and guidance from the unconscious oracles. In early hospitals that were tributes to Apollo, Asclepius worked with attendants called Therapeutae. Those with physical or other afflictions would come to the temple-hospital, where they would sleep while a therapeute attended them in order to receive and interpret the medicine of “the healing dream.” (The archetypal roots of modern psychotherapy seem fairly obvious here.)
Three other things I find interesting about Asclepius:
🌀His 5 daughters were Hygieia (Cleanliness/Hygiene); Iaso (recovery from illness); Aceso (reviving from the dead and the healing process); Aegle (beauty and good health); and Panacea (universal remedy).
🌀The original Hippocratic Oath invoked Asclepius and the full text of the oath lists each of the five daughters by name as the fundamental elements of medicine; and
🌀 By many records Asclepius was also a historic figure known for acts of healing, many of them similar to those attributed to the historic Jesus. (The mythological Asclepius was even punished and killed by Zeus, who feared and envied his capacity to have revived people who had died.) As with many of the other key figures of Greek myth, Asclepius’ wise-feminine guide, protector and aide is Athena.
Some sources here: Asclepius Sanctuary at Epidaurus, Greek Legends and Myths/Asclepius and World History/Asclepius
#11. Healer Themes in News of the Day
Images here are across the bottom row — again including Justice Elena Kagan, because of her passionate focus on healing and well-being of the earth demonstrated in her written dissent to this week’s Supreme Court ruling against the EPA and the Clean Air Act.
Other current stories with profound healing themes involve dogs-as-therapists.
After Texas school shooting, an army of therapy dogs arrives to soothe ragged nerves
(USA Today. Photo of Hazel, the therapist-pug, by Sara Diggins of USA Today.)
They look you in the eye. They don’t judge. They have heard more secrets than they will ever know. Meet the therapy dogs that can rise to any occasion.
Comfort dogs have been deployed to Uvalde, Texas, from near and far
(NPR. Photo of golden-retriever therapists at work by Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images)
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Which brings me to a final holiday-birthday tribute.
In the Service of Healing
Again this month and holiday weekend, I mark and honor the memory, love, fierce life-force and ageless wisdom of Claire Elise Miley (July 2, 2004—July 21, 2019), a treasure the world lost way too soon. Daughter of one of the people on the planet forever dearest to me, Allison Rash Miley and her husband Rob, Claire was in a fatal freak jet-ski accident on Lake Norman three years ago later this month.
Some of you may recall reading some of Allison’s generous sharing of her grief-experience and learnings in the January 9 newShrink edition’s focus on depth dimensions of Congressman Jamie Raskin in his leadership roles alongside the tragic death of his beloved son.
From the newShrink perspectives of soul and depth psychology, there’s much about Claire Miley that became inspiration for the blue braveheart in my signature Psyche/Eros newShrink image. At very tender, pre-teen ages she was a fierce social-justice activist, environmentalist particularly regarding animals, sea creatures and the oceans themselves — with parents who engaged and supported her putting her causes into actions as they developed.
Rescue dogs, particularly the toughest-to-place cases, were both Claire’s lifelong chosen pets and a service-passion.
Barely into her teens looking toward a career in psychotherapy, she was already well-versed in self-awareness tools of typology such as Enneagram. She was known as bringer of wisdom and care among a vastly diverse range of friends. (She also did not suffer fools, including grown-up ones, gladly.)
Her 7th-grade teacher in Davidson told me a classic-Claire story. He’d assigned the class to choose a single word and write an essay about it. Seventh grader-Claire’s chosen word and essay topic? Ineffable. (Yeah, feel free to Google and refresh on it; a lot of grownups around here had to.)
This week, once again Allison and I had one of those soul-charged bits of synchronistic timing that has marked our decades-long bond. I just happened to do a check-in by text with her earlier in the week. I’d already planned and put together much of this weekend’s newShrink, and was thinking of what would have been Claire’s milestone 18th birthday yesterday.
It turned out mom-Allison had some milestone news of her own, with a distinct arc toward healing. All came about in a whirlwind of events over only about the past three weeks — things long pondered coming to fruition. As of Friday afternoon at 5 she has retired after 31 years from her senior corporate public affairs job at Wells Fargo. This, from her emailed announcement:
… The work matters, but the imprint we leave on others matters more.
Now I’m off to further my own imprint - the universe has sent us a puppy from therapy dog parents, fortuitously named Clarinet and available on what would be our Claire’s 18th birthday, July 2. We are meeting her Saturday, and I hope to train her to visit hospitals and give Claire’s love to the world.
So today, Allison and I leave you on this note of life-giving love, hope and healing: Claire and Clarinet.
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
•🌀🔵🔷🦋💙
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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Additional links to stories and sources for today’s edition.
Cassidy Hutchinson Stuns With Testimony About Trump on Jan. 6 — 6 Takeaways (NYT)
Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in as first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice (NPR)
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