Vive La Résistance!

Finding a little fighting spirit, even when it feels a bit awful.

Nobody plants a dandelion, but they insist on growing to become themselves. Vive la résistance.

I do not want to be grieving. My brain is unequivocal about this, it will do almost anything to deny myself of my heart’s truth. Being busy is my brain’s preferred past-time. Writing lists which deconstruct the many things to do is my mind’s ideal way to spend time. My brain’s favourite food is, “What could possibly happen next?”

My brain never goes hungry, which means it sometimes forgets that it has got a loss to deal with. No grief, no pain, no suffering, no thank you. Those are all very inconvenient distractions from what must be done. I very much intellectually understand what has happened here. Which means it’s much more effective to be in action, let’s move on, get things done. Rationally and practically my head is in charge. And so, what’s next on that to-do list?

“Vive la résistance!”

This rallying cry is for little victories, it reminds me that I’m fighting for a cause. “La Résistance” was the brave French liberation force, made up of everyday heroes, during WWII. They spied on the Nazi occupation of France and sabotaged them whenever possible. The authority that I’m standing up to is myself. I am a fragile web fixated on overcoming an injustice. The oppressor I suppose is Life.

“Indignation can move mountains.” Agnès Humbert, a member of the French Resistance

The Resistance

While my head is in charge I’m refraining from feeling, but why? I know I can withstand even the very worst of days. I’ve been doing grief for over a year now. Almost nothing could be more frightening than what I’ve already lived through, so what’s the issue?

The truth of my resistance is complex, although its clues are in the mundane. I became curious around the anniversary of my first Substack, I wanted to write but found myself avoiding it. A littler inner flag went up pointing at my fear of feeling. But I was far too busy to do anything about it, obviously.

I had school concerts to attend, groceries to buy, meals to cook, football matches to watch, work to do. My week was over-social, over-scheduled and over-stressed. I pushed my nervous system to its limit, so I wasn’t surprised to find myself crying when someone else’s child began to sing “There Is No Greater Love” in the school concert. This other-child sang it extraordinarily well, I had no choice but to be moved to tears by her voice and those lyrics. Intrusive thoughts are surely normal for someone who’s been through a recent trauma … I justified to myself that it’s part of my role, to model public emotion to my children. Both coping and not coping are needed in their curriculum.

The next morning I began crying at the school gate, for the first time in a year - which as a record in itself is surprising. I found myself explaining to the shoulder who caught me, “It’s been a tough week.” I broke because our son was going away for a rugby tour that evening and Mark should have been there. I was OK to say goodbye to our nine-year-old for the weekend, I was not OK feeling how much Mark would want to go with him. This yield to my heart’s ache made me pay more attention; I rested, read a book, went to the sauna and went to yoga. I thought I was better than my grief; I was ready to withstand another week of life in bereavement. Look at me, learning to cope so admirably.

Then a teenager broke her mobile phone. Quelle horreur! We had concussion, tonsillitis, anxiety and a cold virus in our house for the week. But the show must go on - there were seven more performances, between the three of them, on the pitch and on the stage, for me to watch. Every time I asked, “Are you sure you can do this?” I intentionally reassured them, “You know you don’t have to.” Perhaps I was talking to myself, because each of my little warriors found their own way forwards. How could I not follow them.

The Occupation

My ability to not be adversely affected by my emotions is a requirement of living. Vive la résistance! It’s important that I not be overcome by sadness in every moment. Yet an inability to feel adverse emotion will eventually stop me in my tracks. I’ve learned that grief will ruthlessly break my defences in daily life, impose a shortage of enjoyment and cause widespread bad behaviour. It’s underground guerrilla warfare.

This is probably what was meant in bereavement counselling, when they told me that we’d find a “new normal”. It’s also what I’m trying to express when someone asks me, “How was this week?” And I typically reply, “It was a lot.” I suppose like an occupational sympathiser who understands that they may be overheard, I can rarely find the words in my day-to-day to express the entrapped difficulty of feeling / not-feeling. This is the occupation; the bigger conquest; the battle’s prize.

We must enter our lives, take what we can control within what we love and make it somehow moderately more enjoyable. When my littlest revolutionary came home from his weekend away, I asked him, “How was it without Daddy?” He said it best, “Well Mummy, I decided to have fun. If Daddy was there he would have had fun, so I knew I was there to have fun, and I told myself that’s what I must do. Every time I felt a bit sad I tried to find something fun to do.”

We have to learn to do it with a broken heart - be it in school or paid work, a leisurely way to pass time or a social labour. It’s all a fight for our right to make life OK. Which means whatever we’re doing requires a bit of work from us. This occupation feels like tyranny if our brain is entirely and only in-charge. That’s why yesterday afternoon I lay on the kitchen floor and bawled my eyes out. Because, in case you wondered, I do occasionally feel like doing that, on so I gave into it yesterday (when the children weren’t around).

The Declaration

While all of this “happy” family “normality” has been going on, I’ve also been growing a new story in my work. It became a much bigger task than writing some new spreadsheets, although I did that too.

I cannot tolerate inequality, that’s not new news. But I’ve noticed that it no longer feels like my heart’s core fighting front. There’s a bigger occupation calling me now. I want to ensure that we use our time well, by turning self-knowledge into wider, intelligent action. Balancing what we think with what we feel is what Mark taught me, in sickness and in health. I’m making it my occupation because he’d want it for you too. And it requires courage to trade in the truth, so I’m here for that battle.

At the end of the day I want each of us to feel OK about the decisions we make, knowing we used both our head and our heart to do the best we could. Not because the world is fair but because our time to contribute is finite. That’s not an abstract claim for me.

Vive la résistance.