People are feeling pressure from everything. Fires, shootings, disasters; the list is long. So, how do people cope? How do people deal with tragedy?
When my brother died, I was 16. My mom withdrew, I didn’t see her cry even though I’m sure she did. I coped pretty much the same way. I shoved my grief into a closet and never opened the door. But I also baked. I baked desserts and ate them. I also didn’t care about high school any more, I just wanted to have fun. Thank goodness for my English teacher who steered me through my senior year by allowing me extra time to complete assignments when I had originally refused to do them.
I asked Dr. Google how to cope with stress and the answer was long. One way is to connect with people.
In Sri Lanka, where I lived for 14 years, I learned to meditate from Buddhist monks, which helps stress.
The tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, killed my Sri Lankan friend Chaminda’s wife and twin 4-year-old daughters. We would talk but I didn’t know how to help him except to listen. I did take him to see the chief monk at the Buddhist temple nearby and the monk told Chaminda that he needed to earn “pin,” which are merits; beneficial and protective forces that accumulate as a result of good deeds, acts, or thoughts. The monk told Chaminda he needed to be a good son, brother, neighbor and friend, to earn pin for his deceased family’s afterlife.
That advice gave Chaminda focus on doing good instead of focusing constantly on his grief. Chaminda did grieve but he helped his parents and sister, all of whose houses were damaged by the tsunami. Chaminda’s house was completely destroyed and eventually he was able to rebuild it. He also eventually remarried and had more children.
Another way to reduce stress is to take breaks.
My friend Rose’s husband had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and besides running a business in San Francisco, she cared for her husband until he died in 2024. Caregiving someone with ALS, plus running a business takes a tremendous amount of time. Rose would often take her husband to a nearby beach until he was unable to go. Rose recently called while walking up and down her San Francisco neighborhood hills. “I just had to get out and breathe,” she said. She’s a firm believer in walking and breathing; bringing the air in, pushing it out.
My young neighbor, “Britney,” lost everything thing in the Sept. 8, 2024 Clearlake Boyles Fire. Her firefighter husband was off fighting the Coffee Pot Fire in Tulare County. Britney managed to get her two children and four small dogs into her car and drove through all the first responders’ vehicles and lookyloos to a hotel in Clearlake, where she could actually see the carnage of her neighborhood from her third-story hotel window.
How did Britney cope? “It was easier when my husband joined us, but then he had to leave again back to the Coffee Pot Fire. To work through the stress, I spoke to a school counselor and my therapist. I had to accept our situation, that wasn’t going to change. I had to get busy finding a place to live.
“Once we found a place, FEMA, Red Cross, Clearlake’s Mayor Russell Cremer, NCO, Redwood Credit Union, the teachers from Lower Lake Elementary School, all helped with money and gift cards to get us back on our feet.”
Her new landlady fixed the leaky roof but refused to get a second PGE meter to separate the front house from the back house (meaning separate bills) and told her that Britney could move out if she didn’t like it.
That raised my stress level!
What’s a girl to do?…write about it!
To contact Lucy Llewellyn Byard, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
