Letters

Where is the path to healing?

The ordeal of the election is over. Joe Biden has won sufficient electoral votes, and he will be inaugurated in January, with or without Donald Trump attending. There is even hope of a vaccine on the horizon.

Perhaps the country will be able to exhale again by next summer. So how does this country heal divisions that have been so deeply felt over the past four years?

I know, as a psychologist, that healing and change do not just happen. They are deliberate and hard-fought.

Let me be more personal and specific: How do I, a Trump hater, stop judging those who supported Donald Trump?

Right now, I believe that their values are inferior to my own. As someone who truly detests Trump, as much for the man he is as for the dangerous psychopathology that I know consumes him, how to I find the curiosity and patience to listen to someone explain why they support Trump?

I know that I will need to do this. I need to as much to satisfy my clinical curiosity about what draws a person to someone like Trump, as to heal the breaches and betrayals I feel with friends, neighbors, acquaintances and family. I need to be truly open to their answers and opinions. I will need to listen without judgment, without preparing my retort.

I will need to listen so that I can heal and relieve myself of the anger and fear that has gripped me since Trump was nominated by the Republican Party. It is neither healthy for me nor for those who think differently from I if I avoid this.

So I will do my best, when I believe there is some opening to relax, to actively, deliberately begin the process of healing. I cannot wait for it to happen to me, for others to do it for me. I cannot wait until the time is absolutely right. I cannot tell myself that since he is no longer president it does not matter.

I need to do this because I know it is the correct thing to do for myself, for others. I need to do it because I know, clinically, that healing is necessary to be able to move on, to grow, and to think creatively and openly.

I need to do so because I especially understand that, in this country, when we have resisted healing, it has been dangerous. The unhealed racial, economic and societal divisions in this country have done nothing but weaken us, as people and as a nation.

I must do my part to not let this be yet another division that further erodes our belief in one another.

Paula Angelone, Ph.D.

Southampton Village