I spent part of the Fourth of July catching up on the January 6 hearings. I can think of no greater display of patriotism than the solemn undertaking of the bipartisan commission to uncover and brilliantly explain the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The treachery of Donald Trump, his fellow coup architects, and his vast cadre of GOP enablers is clear. As conservative retired judge Michael Luttig testified, they pose a clear and present danger.

The number of witnesses from the GOP and Trump World implicating the former president and his allies has been riveting and effective. Cassidy Hutchinson especially has torpedoed the whole cabal, including her former boss, Mark Meadows.

Then there are the House commission members themselves. They are to a person solemn, dignified, articulate, and clear, forsaking political grandstanding to build a devastating account of the truth. It is especially heartening to see Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two honorable Republican patriots who have sacrificed their careers to defend and protect democracy. In her opening remarks during the first session, Cheney said:

Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

Cheney has been a guiding light throughout the hearings. So has Republican Adam Kinzinger, who said in Session 5:

A big reason I decided to run for Congress was my motivation to ensure freedom and democracy were defended overseas.

I remember making a commitment . . . that if we are going to ask Americans to be willing to die in service to our country, we as leaders must at least be willing to sacrifice our political careers when integrity and our oath requires it. After all, losing a job is nothing compared to losing your life.

Within the halls of power, in the face of a president, that commitment can easily be forgotten. Presidential pressure can be really hard to resist. Today we’ll focus on a few officials who stood firm against President Trump’s political pressure campaign. When the president tried to misuse the [Department of Justice] and install a loyalist at its helm, these brave officials refused and threatened to resign.

They were willing to sacrifice their careers for the good of our country.

By contrast, Kinzinger noted that Trump “was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency.” He continued:

I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a president. We owe a great debt of gratitude to these men you’ve heard from here today, real leaders who stood for justice when it was in grave peril, who put their country first. When the leader of the free world demanded otherwise, they threatened to resign rather than corrupt our democracy. And thanks largely to each of them, President Trump’s coup failed.

Salutes as well to the many others who did their duty and are too numerous to name. But a special shout-out to Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, two Georgia election workers whose lives have been threatened and upended by the vicious smear campaign against them simply because they did their jobs.

Even Bill Barr and Mike Pence, two of Trump’s biggest enablers, did the right thing when the chips were down. For his troubles, the Vice President was threatened by an angry mob wanting to string him up on the gallows they’d erected outside the Capitol.

Which brings us to the traitors, especially those at the top: Trump, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, and many others too numerous to name. Let’s throw in the non-insurrectionist but extremely dangerous and Supreme-Court-seat-stealing Mitch McConnell for good measure.

I abhor mob rule and the death penalty. Besides, hanging’s too good for them. Instead, there’s the rule of law, hopefully Merrick Garland, and what Adam Kinzinger urged in his closing remarks:

As it’s said, the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is good men to do nothing. Thankfully, there were good people in the Department of Justice. You heard from other good people too on Tuesday. They too defended us. But I’m still worried that not enough has changed to prevent this from happening again.

The oath that we take has to mean something. It has to cut to the core of who we are and be the driving force of our service to this nation. We on this committee, we may be able to shine light on the darkness, but that is not enough.

It’s now up to every American, now and in the future, to stand for truth, to reject the lies wherever we confront them. And our towns, and our capitals, and our friendships, and our families, and at the ballot box, and within our own minds and hearts.

It is up to all of us to be good people who do something. Let’s get to work.

I entered the mental health profession at age 22 with a newly minted BA in English, a job scooping ice cream, no idea about my future, and time on my hands. When I saw a notice seeking volunteers for a local crisis hotline, I thought, “Why not, I’ve got nothing better to do?” 

I loved it immediately: the raw intimacy, the power of connection and presence, feeling like I made a difference. I was in awe of peoples’ dignity and capacities in the face of overwhelmingly grim circumstances.

Scooping ice cream is tasty and fun, but I had found my life’s work. So I decided to go to graduate school to become a therapist. Nearly four decades later, I’ve just retired, and offer these reflections.

As therapists we grapple with the age-old question: “Do people change, or do they remain the same?” Blessedly, we now live at a time when false binaries are called out. “Both/and” replaces the splits of “either/or.” The complexity of paradox is one of the extraordinary riches of being human, and of being a therapist.

A lot has changed in our field. In the extension classes I took to qualify for graduate school, “refrigerator mothers” were still being blamed for autism, with only a hint that perhaps they were getting a bad rap. Schizophrenia was seen in a similar light. Indeed, psychopathology was seen mostly as originating from intrapsychic or interfamilial conflict. Those are important factors, but advances in understanding how biology, neuroscience, trauma, attachment, and systemic social, racial, and economic injustices affect us have shifted the field to a more enlightened position. Intersubjective theory challenged concepts of therapeutic neutrality and the idea that analysts somehow functioned above the messy fray.

My own evolution as a therapist fits the paradox: the more I’ve changed, the more I’ve become myself.  The harsh psychoanalytic jury in my head has given way to greater trust in my instincts and personality. These, of course, are informed by theory and experience, but we fundamentally bring ourselves to the work. It is lovely to know, and appreciate, that self–its pitfalls and gifts. Although I often thought in my role as supervisor, “Do not try this at home” when I was unorthodox with my own clients (such as encouraging them to enlist mental voo-doo dolls as a way of honoring vengeful feelings), I cherished the freedom, authenticity, and confidence that I could tell the difference between acting out and engaging in a way that helped people become more self-accepting.

One of my consultants told me about a revered colleague who shied away from the many opportunities she was offered to teach and present at conferences. She said she didn’t really know that much—all she knew is that she sat and listened to people until she found something about them to fall in love with, and then they got better.

That seemed as wise as anything I had ever heard. The more I was able to do it, the more I was able to recapture those early feelings of intimacy, connection, presence, and awe I’d felt on the crisis lines. Ineffable as our work is, it matters deeply. It changes us, therapist and client alike, as we come to discover and accept who we truly are, and that we are lovable.