Episode Details

Still social distancing.

Kyle and Bobby are Classmates of Danielle’s from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. All three were in the Counseling program together.

Danielle met Bobby and Kyle in a Spirit and Trauma Class and shared a research project together.

Checking in with Bobby about how he’s doing and how COVID is affecting his life:

Bobby says truthfully, “We don’t actually know how COVID-19 is effecting us and we probably won’t know for a long time.”

What he’s noticed in his counseling internship is that the gap between the haves and have-nots has is becoming increasingly larger.

As a therapist, Bobby find himself entering sessions with a different mindset – “there’s a lot more case management” happening rather than actual therapy. It’s become more difficult right now to engage past trauma, while living in a current trauma. He finds his sessions are less about trauma and more about just surviving.

With 9 people in his household, Bobby is watching how each kid is navigating the lack of community, social support and social interaction. And when you magnify that with the population of people you work with, there is a diverse reaction to what’s happening.

Bobby says he’s not sure he can do anything more than just sit with people and listen to how their day/week/month has been and not really give much input. It allows them space to share what’s happening in their daily routine, what is lacking. 

Danielle noted that the longer COVID goes on, the larger the gap. 

Bobby had hopes that there would be a hiatus on crime during this season. In the past weeks there’s been an uptick in violence. The media is showing there’s not just more violence on a whole but also more violence being inflicted by law enforcement. 

Bobby is trying to work and everyone should also work on taking a collective deep breathe and try to figure out what the next move is. He’s had a young person that he’s close to that was killed three weeks ago and there is no place for lament or gathering together. 

The gap is widening from economic and racial. The luxury he is given: the ability to lament and give space to lament. For many people that space is decreasing when it should be increasing. Bobby says, when you don’t allow yourself space to lament, it bottles up and manifest in someway other way, shape or form.

Maggie acknowledges that the collective tension is so tight. She empathizes with not getting more space and wishes she has space to lament, not just for herself but also for her kids who hate school online and miss their friends. She says in this COVID environment our friends have become threats and that is not the way she wants her kids to live. 

Bobby says we need to remember that the tension we feel will manifest itself in some way and law enforcement is not immune to that. 

Kyle mentions a book they read for class [My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem] that deals with racialized trauma in our country and addressed police bodies. Kyle watched a recent interaction with an African American man who was intoxicated at a Walgrens. Kyle found himself watching to make sure the man was treated fairly by law enforcement all the while his therapy training running in his head, is he a risk to himself? Is he a risk to others? Then adding to that Menakem’s work he began to wonder, “How is the officer working to deescalate this guy? And if the officer is stressed he’s not going to have that to give.” Kyle thinks Menakem’s work needs to be apart of the conversation on how we take care of the police so that they can practice law. The police is working with new stress, just like the rest of us. 

Danielle mentions that Shaun King, an Activist, has been showing video clips of African American men getting tazzed and tackled by Police just standing there, not practicing social distancing, brutally arrested and charged with police assault. Contrasted to images of