Step into my office, stop doom-scrolling the news, and lie down on the couch for just a minute (or actually 50). You experienced a traumatic period in your life. As the trauma receded, the first thing you tried to do was to put the whole experience behind you. This repression seems like a good idea on paper, but doesn’t always play out that well in the unconscious. Everything is not OK. You experienced a global pandemic that completely altered your view of health, safety, politics, and just how aggressively you could move to snag the last roll of toilet paper on the shelf. In The Atlantic (Gift Article), George Makari and Richard A. Friedman argue that there’s a reason that America is in a funk. “Unemployment rates are lower than they’ve been in half a century and the stock market is sky-high, but poll after poll shows that voters are disgruntled. President Joe Biden’s approval rating has been hovering in the high 30s. Americans’ satisfaction with their personal lives—a measure that usually dips in times of economic uncertainty—is at a near-record low, according to Gallup polling. And nearly half of Americans surveyed in January said they were worse off than three years prior.” It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Pandemic. And consider our kids, who were stuck home from school, saw their adolescence interrupted, and whose parents could only answer the question, Is it gonna be OK?, with, Kid, I really don’t know. “Four years ago, the country was brought to its knees by a world-historic disaster. COVID-19 hospitalized nearly 7 million Americans and killed more than a million; it’s still killing hundreds each week. It shut down schools and forced people into social isolation. Almost overnight, most of the country was thrown into a state of high anxiety—then, soon enough, grief and mourning. But the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured.” (I’d love to hear more about how you feel about this, but our time is up.)

+ One way to process the most remarkable year in our lives (and to be reminded that just about everything my Holocaust-surviving dad predicted about Donald Trump came true) is by reading or listening to my book, Please Scream Inside Your Heart. (You might want to send a few copies to friends in swing states. Theirs are the memories that most urgently need jarring.)