Resisting and Grieving

By Elizabeth Mackenzie

I’ve been a child/adolescent psychologist for nearly 30 years. I’ve worked with many

families where the parents were going through separation or divorce. These are times of

loss and grief for the whole family, even when it is for the better. I often tell parents,

“Divorce calls you to be your best as a parent when you are feeling at your worst.”

We have been experiencing grief with Trump’s rise to the presidency, not once, but

twice. These are precarious times for our country, and much harm has already been

inflicted on people, other countries, our institutions, and the natural world.

I belong to a small Buddhist meditation group that has met for a long time. The group

leader is Donald Rothberg, who is well known in Buddhist social activism. During our

last meeting, he led us in a grief ritual, The Truth Mandala, to process the current

situation in our country. (You can read here, on my personal blog.

https://myeyesareuphere.org/2025/08/21/the-truth-mandala/ )

As we know, grief is experienced in different ways and at different times, even by the

same person. There is no lock-step process with an endpoint. When I was engaged in

the Truth Mandala, I later learned that different members of our very cohesive

meditation group had starkly different experiences. Some felt inspired and energized

and others felt despondent and even physically ill.

A lot of us are in the Resistance. We are working toward the same overarching goal. I

have noted distress when others make statements such as “Democracy is over”, “The

only way to save Democracy is using x strategy”, and “We’re fucked.” Although it can be

argued that none of those responses are skilled in respect to activism, they are grief

reactions, and all are understandable. People get mired in grief, when it is not validated

and processed.

I have set the intention to honor all the ways we show grief as we experience these

times of being called to our best when we feel at our worst. When I can act when others

are not, I will try to express gratitude for the resources I have to make sustained

activism possible.

With gratitude,

Elizabeth