Summer of that’s not how this works

competing at an Olympics stripped of its usual fans and family supports.

But she refused to play along with a fantasy that would deny her the right to feel things. So did Gonell and Dunn. So do the others who are helping us know the truth about what they endured on Jan. 6 and beyond.

What they’re saying instead is exactly what we need to hear: I am not OK. What I’ve been through is not OK. To pretend otherwise is a disservice to humanity — mine, yours, all of ours. To pretend otherwise doesn’t heal us, and we don’t recover until we heal.

I hope we can mostly receive these reminders — these brave “I am not OK”s — as invitations. To listen. To learn. To grant ourselves and our people the permission and grace and time to recover at a pace that feels true, rather than scripted.

Particularly when the coronavirus, the tragic thread woven in and out of every event of the past year and a half, is still very much with us. Some 164 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID19. But that only represents about half of the population, and the delta variant is blazing an awful trail through the unvaccinated and, on occasion, those who’ve received their shots.

Recovery is in our DNA. Resilience is in our DNA. We want to rebound from our traumas, and we should and we will. But we can’t abandon our humanity in the process. We can’t leave each other behind in our rush to a better place. People don’t heal when we’ve decided they should. They heal when we address what’s harming them.

That can be a slow and emotional process, but it’s an essential one. And aren’t we lucky to have brave, generous souls, speaking the truth, leading the way?