Thread by @edyong209

I want to say a little more about this piece, and how I’ve been thinking about my work and journalistic responsibilities over the last 6 months. 1/

https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1514230215110762502

I’m beyond burned out. But the pandemic isn’t over. If I have to keep covering it, I want to spend the scrapings of energy I have left on stories that could do the most good. So I’ve tried to focus on pieces that make people who’ve borne the greatest burdens feel seen & heard. 2/

Like healthcare workers... 3/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

or long-haulers... 4/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

or immunocompromised people... 5/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

or people grieving loved ones lost to COVID. 6/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

The issues vary but the principles are the same. As fully & compassionately as possible, show what these years have been like for those who’ve borne the worst of them. Create a kind of gestalt mirror that reflects millions of individual experiences. Bear witness to suffering. 7/

These pieces have been, by far, the hardest and most emotionally difficult ones to do. They require absorbing huge amounts of pain, holding it, staring at it, making sense of it, channeling it. My therapist notes similarities in our work… but only one of us has training. 8/

I’ve written a lot about the panic-neglect cycle, framing it as a problem for the future: neglect leaves us unprepared. But we also neglect our past, ignoring the *cumulative* costs of these recent years during moments of calm. 9/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Journalism, with our laser focus on the present, is highly vulnerable to this. So these pieces are also a rebuke to that amnesia. To the people I’m writing about, they’re meant to say: I see you. But for everyone else, they’re meant to say: Remember. 10/

That's hard, too. Writing about cumulative costs means there’s no obvious moment for a break. These pieces often get done in lulls between surges; that’s when I have time. It’s also when the problems are salient: Trauma often manifests when adrenaline fades & people exhale. 11/

There are, of course, plenty of journalists who do this too. This thread is partly for them. Stuck on our various treadmills, I feel like we don’t talk enough about *why* we do our work, what our values are, what we hope to achieve, or the costs. In this essay, I will… 12/

The grief piece was hard to a degree even I wasn’t ready for. I can’t keep doing this indefinitely. But I know I can do it for a bit longer. And I'm grateful to my wife, editor, and therapist--the three pillars propping up my mental health. End/

Oh one more thing: I did an interview with Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, author of Trauma Stewardship, about all of this.

Her book is great for those tasked with bearing witness, and she's got a new podcast exploring the issue.

/Actual end
traumastewardship.com/category/futur…