Lately I’ve been thinking that I am looking at the world in the wrong way. In one sense I felt it was the world that was slightly off, but I’m recognizing more and more that the world merely is what it is and I am the one who is (more than) slightly off. I pushed towards this topic in last night’s blog, but this morning I had the opportunity to wake up to NPR (the way I woke up to 1010 WINs as a kid growing up in New York with the smell of cooked eggs fresh on my nostrils) and the morning show was talking about how African-American babies die at a rate more than twice that of white babies. This is a significant jump–4.8 vs. 11.7 per 1,000 die within the first year of life regardless of social class and wealth. The report talked about additional research, which suggests this number may be based on the stress (in their opinion, racism inflicted) levels of the respective mothers. That is when it hit me.
I’m completely and utterly stressed out.
The news piece went on to talk about the way stress affects the body and the need for stress relief and a social support network. I sat back and recognized that I have neither. In fact, both are equally associated with the same complicated situation, as I suggested last night. I think somewhere deep in the subconscious this is what I was trying to make sense of. If the primary stress situation in your life is also your primary support structure, that structure cannot be nearly as effective.
And you get what we have here.