Being real: Moving inward toward social change

Abstract

In late August, Doug Foley sent me your essay, ``Get Real: Representing Reality,’’ and asked me to contribute to a published conversation about it. I tucked it in my backpack to read on September 11 as I ew from Tampa to the Washington Dulles Airport. I was on my way to Virginia to assist my elderly mother, who was to be released the next day from a nursing home. When the news of the terrorist attacks came, my plane was diverted to Charlotte and I rented a car to drive to my mother’s. It’s probably no surprise that I didn’t get around to reading your essay until much later. In the aftermath of the attacks, I was immersed in illness, grief, and terror. I stopped working on anything ± including a book on autoethnography ± that was not directly connected to what I was feeling after September 11. I viewed everything I read and wrote through the frame of loss and vulnerability. I read your essay through the same frame. Shortly after September 11, my mother’s health deteriorated rapidly and my mother-in-law died. I had felt my share of personal loss before but never, as now, in the context of chaos and uncertainty in the surrounding world. I moved in and out of my own grief. Sometimes I experienced my losses as separate from the world’s grief, sometimes as part of the collective grief I shared with others, many of whom su€ ered worse losses than I did. I also experienced intensi®ed feelings of love for the people in my life. In the aftermath of September 11, my husband Art and I grew more loving. Our closeness and mutual experience helped us view being present with his mother until she died on September 21 and care-giving for my bedridden mother as opportunities, rather than burdens. I reached out through emails and phone calls to express my feelings to those I cared about, and I received love and support from many who checked in on me. Like so many of my friends, I listened and counseled others in distress and contributed to charities. I constantly wondered what else I could do and felt whatever I did was not enough. Even now, I don’t feel I have returned to my old self. Nor do I want to if it means going back to the way I was before ± somewhat naive and not much concerned with what happened outside the boundaries of America as long as it didn’t a€ ect me or other Americans directly. I don’t want to go back to business as usual if it means spending more time checking the value of stock portfolios than connecting meaningfully to friends and loved ones. Everyday I try to ask myself, ``what’s important?’’ and ``what’s beside the point?’’. QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2002, VOL. 15, NO. 4, 399±406