On Social Pain
Excerpt from Girl of Light & Shadow: A Memoir of My Daughter, Who Killed Herself (2022), pp. 114-116
IN THE SIXTH GRADE, therefore, Beth suddenly found herself stranded between opposing prepubescent tribes—the fun, good-looking kids with letter jackets and the creepy, bedwetting brainiacs with pocket protectors, who would probably fail to launch, spend their lives eating Cheetos, collecting Pokemon cards, and hacking government servers from their moms’ basements. Or something like that.
This caused her real pain, as we shall see.
But first, let’s rewind a couple years to pick up another thread in the fabric of her increasingly conflicted social life.
Back in the fourth grade, when my rabid little reader wasn’t off in the shade snarfing down a tasty paperback, kickball and soccer were the introvert’s favorite social engagements. Not only did she have a quick mind, but also a quick pair of feet. She lapped up any excuse to run. And, according to the sports desk, she was very fast. Faster than most of her peers. As she recorded in her journal:
I was still the new kid in town, but there was a newer one named Jake. We both liked to race other kids. He was one of the few who could keep up with me. I remember he told me I was pretty fast "for a girl." Pretty much the most annoying thing a boy could say.
That spring, after enduring the sting of Jake’s backhanded gender-biased “compliment,” Beth penned an outraged editorial for class, describing an early experience of social exclusion she had suffered during kickball on a previous playground:
Have you ever been told you can’t do something, just because you’re a girl? When I lived in Houston, there was a bunch of weird, outcast boys who always hogged the kickball at recess. They would fight anyone who tried to get the ball. The outcasts had bruises all over and lived in the principal’s office. However, they weren’t friends. They were more like inseparable enemies who used each other for punching bags. One day, my friends and I were bored, so we asked if we could play kickball with them. They started hollering and spitting at us. We asked them why they wouldn’t let us play. They said, “Because you’re girls!” We finally understood and stamped away.
Apparently, this novel experience—my daughter’s initiation into the cruel reality of gender discrimination (something she would experience again, in quite another form)—had been painful enough that Jake’s insult brought it all back a year later.
Her feelings had been hurt as surely as if one of those weird, outcast boys had used her delicate, developing brain for a punching bag, and left neurological bruises.
I’m not waxing metaphorical now.
Beth endured a garden variety species of what neuroscientists call “social pain,” a deeply aversive emotional reaction to having some aspect of yourself, your identity, your very being devalued or rejected by individuals or social groups that matter to you. This negative state of mind is characterized (to use the high-falutin technical terminology of affective neuroscience) by “hurt feelings” arising directly from “social injury”—discrimination, ostracism, abandonment, even loss.
Grief, too, is an expression of social pain. As least if it’s caused by a social loss.
Not only do people suffering from social absence or exclusion use the same language as they do to describe physical hurt and pain, but two decades of research have proven that social pain and injury leverage much the same neural circuitry—and evolutionary programming—as physical pain.
“Pain,” therefore, is not a figure of speech. It’s real. It lights up identifiable parts of the brain.
I tell you this, at this pivotal point in the unfolding origami of Beth’s life story, because if, indeed, suicide is largely a social phenomenon, then repeated small, seemingly “ordinary” instances of social pain early in life represent seeds that might sprout too many sharp, protective spines in years to come. Fending off friend and foe alike, if they’re not properly pruned.
Paradoxically, then, as social pain becomes chronic, like physical pain, excessive “protection” repels connection, validation and belonging—the most potent, life-giving social painkillers on the market. Thereby feeding a sinister cycle of escalating solitude, social isolation . . . and, eventually, unendurable pain. Possibly suicide.
One way that scientists first demonstrated the neurological basis of social pain, ironically, was by using a ball game called Cyberball, imaging the brains of participants who, like Beth, were deliberately excluded, in this case by a craven computer program masquerading as other online players. Argh.
But why, exactly, is this painful, rather than merely “annoying,” as Beth described Jake?
Simply put: human beings did not evolve to survive alone. Once upon a time, being separated from the tribe or clan for very long—by accident or exile—was a death sentence.
On the savannas of prehistoric Africa, where hominids first emerged from our more ancient ancestors—harking back to those cute, rat-like critters scurrying about underfoot when the sky rained down fire on the dinosaurs, precipitating the prolific diversification of mammals over the next sixty-five million years—we were some of the tastiest McNuggets in the neighborhood.
Puny, pathetic primates without the speed or strength of our predators, we overcompensated by manufacturing gigantic brains capable of processing gigabytes of social data so that we could efficiently organize, defend, hunt, gather and franchise fast-food enterprises with no nutritional value. To survive and remove hominid-burgers from the local butcher shop, we became the most hypersocial species on the block.
Our evolving neurological wetware quickly flagged wandering off alone in the bush among saber-toothed slaughterhouses as a “social” condition sufficiently life-threatening to require an automated detection and alarm system so loud and aversive that we couldn’t turn it off until we had safely returned to the warm and sacred circle of society.
Pain, in its natural habitat—like hunger, thirst, fever and projectile vomiting—is simply trying to protect us, to ensure our survival as an organism. Why? So we can pass along our designer genes. After that, it’s just fine and dandy if we die. Evolution doesn’t care if we’re happy.
As the ultimate evolutionary tinkerer, natural selection generally uses existing components lying about the garage.
Since even the earliest mammals came with pre-installed neural circuitry designed to alert them to physical threat, danger or damage, the lazy brains of their descendants decided not to reinvent the wheel. They borrowed physical pain to build their increasingly social alarm systems, simply disconnecting the wires that lit up specific body parts, deeming diffused agony more socially stimulating.
To conserve venture capital, the machinery of our forebears’ two overlapping pain systems both employed “endogenous” opioids—the body’s natural painkillers—for fuel. Caring and meaningful social engagement would accelerate opioid production (ahhh), while grief and loss, loneliness and social isolation would shut down the pill mill (argh).
Voila! Social pain was ready to go public. And, in the absence of patent or copyright law, subsequent species plagiarized the specs with impunity.
All that we, bands of entrepreneurial hominids added to the original design—in order to upgrade the intensity, duration and frequency of social pain—were self-awareness, civilization, middle school and, ultimately, Instagram.
This caused her real pain, as we shall see.
But first, let’s rewind a couple years to pick up another thread in the fabric of her increasingly conflicted social life.
Back in the fourth grade, when my rabid little reader wasn’t off in the shade snarfing down a tasty paperback, kickball and soccer were the introvert’s favorite social engagements. Not only did she have a quick mind, but also a quick pair of feet. She lapped up any excuse to run. And, according to the sports desk, she was very fast. Faster than most of her peers. As she recorded in her journal:
I was still the new kid in town, but there was a newer one named Jake. We both liked to race other kids. He was one of the few who could keep up with me. I remember he told me I was pretty fast "for a girl." Pretty much the most annoying thing a boy could say.
That spring, after enduring the sting of Jake’s backhanded gender-biased “compliment,” Beth penned an outraged editorial for class, describing an early experience of social exclusion she had suffered during kickball on a previous playground:
Have you ever been told you can’t do something, just because you’re a girl? When I lived in Houston, there was a bunch of weird, outcast boys who always hogged the kickball at recess. They would fight anyone who tried to get the ball. The outcasts had bruises all over and lived in the principal’s office. However, they weren’t friends. They were more like inseparable enemies who used each other for punching bags. One day, my friends and I were bored, so we asked if we could play kickball with them. They started hollering and spitting at us. We asked them why they wouldn’t let us play. They said, “Because you’re girls!” We finally understood and stamped away.
Apparently, this novel experience—my daughter’s initiation into the cruel reality of gender discrimination (something she would experience again, in quite another form)—had been painful enough that Jake’s insult brought it all back a year later.
Her feelings had been hurt as surely as if one of those weird, outcast boys had used her delicate, developing brain for a punching bag, and left neurological bruises.
I’m not waxing metaphorical now.
Beth endured a garden variety species of what neuroscientists call “social pain,” a deeply aversive emotional reaction to having some aspect of yourself, your identity, your very being devalued or rejected by individuals or social groups that matter to you. This negative state of mind is characterized (to use the high-falutin technical terminology of affective neuroscience) by “hurt feelings” arising directly from “social injury”—discrimination, ostracism, abandonment, even loss.
Grief, too, is an expression of social pain. As least if it’s caused by a social loss.
Not only do people suffering from social absence or exclusion use the same language as they do to describe physical hurt and pain, but two decades of research have proven that social pain and injury leverage much the same neural circuitry—and evolutionary programming—as physical pain.
“Pain,” therefore, is not a figure of speech. It’s real. It lights up identifiable parts of the brain.
I tell you this, at this pivotal point in the unfolding origami of Beth’s life story, because if, indeed, suicide is largely a social phenomenon, then repeated small, seemingly “ordinary” instances of social pain early in life represent seeds that might sprout too many sharp, protective spines in years to come. Fending off friend and foe alike, if they’re not properly pruned.
Paradoxically, then, as social pain becomes chronic, like physical pain, excessive “protection” repels connection, validation and belonging—the most potent, life-giving social painkillers on the market. Thereby feeding a sinister cycle of escalating solitude, social isolation . . . and, eventually, unendurable pain. Possibly suicide.
One way that scientists first demonstrated the neurological basis of social pain, ironically, was by using a ball game called Cyberball, imaging the brains of participants who, like Beth, were deliberately excluded, in this case by a craven computer program masquerading as other online players. Argh.
But why, exactly, is this painful, rather than merely “annoying,” as Beth described Jake?
Simply put: human beings did not evolve to survive alone. Once upon a time, being separated from the tribe or clan for very long—by accident or exile—was a death sentence.
On the savannas of prehistoric Africa, where hominids first emerged from our more ancient ancestors—harking back to those cute, rat-like critters scurrying about underfoot when the sky rained down fire on the dinosaurs, precipitating the prolific diversification of mammals over the next sixty-five million years—we were some of the tastiest McNuggets in the neighborhood.
Puny, pathetic primates without the speed or strength of our predators, we overcompensated by manufacturing gigantic brains capable of processing gigabytes of social data so that we could efficiently organize, defend, hunt, gather and franchise fast-food enterprises with no nutritional value. To survive and remove hominid-burgers from the local butcher shop, we became the most hypersocial species on the block.
Our evolving neurological wetware quickly flagged wandering off alone in the bush among saber-toothed slaughterhouses as a “social” condition sufficiently life-threatening to require an automated detection and alarm system so loud and aversive that we couldn’t turn it off until we had safely returned to the warm and sacred circle of society.
Pain, in its natural habitat—like hunger, thirst, fever and projectile vomiting—is simply trying to protect us, to ensure our survival as an organism. Why? So we can pass along our designer genes. After that, it’s just fine and dandy if we die. Evolution doesn’t care if we’re happy.
As the ultimate evolutionary tinkerer, natural selection generally uses existing components lying about the garage.
Since even the earliest mammals came with pre-installed neural circuitry designed to alert them to physical threat, danger or damage, the lazy brains of their descendants decided not to reinvent the wheel. They borrowed physical pain to build their increasingly social alarm systems, simply disconnecting the wires that lit up specific body parts, deeming diffused agony more socially stimulating.
To conserve venture capital, the machinery of our forebears’ two overlapping pain systems both employed “endogenous” opioids—the body’s natural painkillers—for fuel. Caring and meaningful social engagement would accelerate opioid production (ahhh), while grief and loss, loneliness and social isolation would shut down the pill mill (argh).
Voila! Social pain was ready to go public. And, in the absence of patent or copyright law, subsequent species plagiarized the specs with impunity.
All that we, bands of entrepreneurial hominids added to the original design—in order to upgrade the intensity, duration and frequency of social pain—were self-awareness, civilization, middle school and, ultimately, Instagram.
Excerpt from Girl of Light & Shadow: A Memoir of My Daughter, Who Killed Herself (2022), p. 304
[Beth speaking:]
WHICH, IN A NUTSHELL, is why I went back to Africa. Seeking social support. Ironically, after two weeks in Mozambique, I felt lonelier than ever . . . and withdrew, to brood and tend my wounds, again. A habit I well knew.
Yet loneliness is a strange and steadfast amiga, who’s just trying to help. If we but listen.
As John Cacioppo and William Patrick write in Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, “physical pain protects the individual from physical dangers. Social pain, also known as loneliness, evolved for a similar reason: because it protected the individual from the danger of remaining isolated” from the tribe or clan, the sacred circle of society. As they explain:
Our forebears depended on social bonds for safety and for the successful replication of their genes . . . Feelings of loneliness told them when those protective bonds were endangered or deficient. In the same way that physical pain serves as a prompt to change behavior—the pain of burning skin tells you to pull your finger away from the frying pain—loneliness developed as a stimulus to get humans to pay more attention to their social connections, and to reach out toward others, to renew frayed or broken bonds.
But why and how, exactly, does loneliness “hurt”?
Jaak Panksepp, a luminary in the neuroscience of emotion, figured out forty years ago that when social mammals, isolated from their caregivers and other protective attachments, suffer from “separation distress” (a primal form of social pain, a component of normal grief), neurologically the process is mediated by endogenous opioids—the brain’s natural painkillers.
Matthew Lieberman, author of Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, explains:
Panksepp noted that . . . separation appears to cause drug withdrawal-like pain, whereas reconnection appears to act as a painkiller . . . [which] fits the description of addiction.
Quite simply, we’re addicted to people and social isolation depletes our natural opioids, so we go into withdrawal—and we hurt. All over. As I did, in Malawi. #stressedthefuckout. Withering away. Descending into Hell, day after day.
That’s when one [part of me] started contemplating other ways to kill the pain.
WHICH, IN A NUTSHELL, is why I went back to Africa. Seeking social support. Ironically, after two weeks in Mozambique, I felt lonelier than ever . . . and withdrew, to brood and tend my wounds, again. A habit I well knew.
Yet loneliness is a strange and steadfast amiga, who’s just trying to help. If we but listen.
As John Cacioppo and William Patrick write in Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, “physical pain protects the individual from physical dangers. Social pain, also known as loneliness, evolved for a similar reason: because it protected the individual from the danger of remaining isolated” from the tribe or clan, the sacred circle of society. As they explain:
Our forebears depended on social bonds for safety and for the successful replication of their genes . . . Feelings of loneliness told them when those protective bonds were endangered or deficient. In the same way that physical pain serves as a prompt to change behavior—the pain of burning skin tells you to pull your finger away from the frying pain—loneliness developed as a stimulus to get humans to pay more attention to their social connections, and to reach out toward others, to renew frayed or broken bonds.
But why and how, exactly, does loneliness “hurt”?
Jaak Panksepp, a luminary in the neuroscience of emotion, figured out forty years ago that when social mammals, isolated from their caregivers and other protective attachments, suffer from “separation distress” (a primal form of social pain, a component of normal grief), neurologically the process is mediated by endogenous opioids—the brain’s natural painkillers.
Matthew Lieberman, author of Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, explains:
Panksepp noted that . . . separation appears to cause drug withdrawal-like pain, whereas reconnection appears to act as a painkiller . . . [which] fits the description of addiction.
Quite simply, we’re addicted to people and social isolation depletes our natural opioids, so we go into withdrawal—and we hurt. All over. As I did, in Malawi. #stressedthefuckout. Withering away. Descending into Hell, day after day.
That’s when one [part of me] started contemplating other ways to kill the pain.
Excerpt from Girl of Light & Shadow: A Memoir of My Daughter, Who Killed Herself (2022), p. 329-331
[In a parallel universe:]
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, while she and I are cleaning up the family room, setting up a circle of chairs, I ask, “So, Beth, what are your best hopes for this crazy group thing we’re about to do?”
She scrunches up her lips. “What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say five months from now, you look back. What’s different? What’s better?”
She snorts. “That’s easy, Dad. Life doesn’t suck anymore!”
“No suck,” I pretend to write with an invisible pen on my palm. “What else?”
She thinks for a moment. “I’m no longer trapped in this stupid cage.”
“No cage,” I scribble on my palm. Wait to see if she’ll elaborate.
Beth stares off into space, visualizing something.
“You know about Pavlov’s dogs,” she says, out of the blue. I nod. Classical conditioning. Ring bell. Feed dog. Ring bell. Dog salivates. Don’t feed dog. Ring bell. Dog salivates anyway. “What about Seligman’s dogs?”
“Refresh my memory,” I say, pen poised in the air. Curious to see where this is going.
“Psych 101,” she begins. “In the 1960s, instead of conditioning dogs with a bell and some tasty snacks, Martin Seligman conditioned them with a cage and a nasty shock they couldn’t escape. Then he’d plop one of those poor dogs into another cage where, again, the floor was electrified—but only on one side. All it had to do to escape was jump a little wall, to the other side. Easy.”
“Seems like.”
“Well, sure, a dog that had never been conditioned would just hop the partition. But dogs that had been shocked too many times—kinda like me, recently—would just give up, lie down, and twitch helplessly till Seligman turned off the juice. Bastard.”
Her lips curl back like a snarling dog, just thinking about it. “Learned helplessness, he called it. Those dogs ‘believed’ nothing they could do would stop the pain, so they didn’t even try—even though freedom was, in fact, inches away.
“That’s the stupid cage I want to escape,” she sighs. “In five months. Or less!”
“Helplessness,” I repeat, just to be clear.
She nods, wearily.
“Do you remember how those dogs unlearned their helplessness?”
“Yes,” she replies, gazing meaningfully at the circle of chairs we’re setting up.
“Seligman and his silly ‘circle’ of sadistic scientists were shocked to learn”—she smiles, despite herself—“that they had to pick up the poor things, move their legs for them, mimic jumping that barrier between pain and freedom--repeatedly, as I recall—before the dogs started to ‘realize’ they could do it themselves. I guess that’s what I need, Dad. A circle of (nice!) people to prop me up until I can stand on my own. Till I can believe in myself again. I’m so exhausted.”
“Of course.” I’m impressed by her perspicacity. “It takes time to rewire your brain.”
She looks at me, curiously. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“You’ve been traumatized,” I state, simply. “Over time. Shocked by things you can’t control. Your nervous system has adapted, incrementally, to protect you from social threat and pain.
“‘Dysregulated,’ as they say.
“Seligman’s goons didn’t just teach those dogs to unlearn their helplessness—abstractly engaging their canine cognition—no, they actually had to touch them, tenderly, I imagine, to get them back on their feet, one small step at a time, after all that shocking trauma.
“Which inadvertently spritzed their doggie brains with small, repeated doses of oxytocin, dopamine and endogenous opioids, anesthetizing their frazzled nerves, clearing away debris so their frontal cortices could rewire, reconnect, and regain a sense of hope and possibility.
“The solution--like the problem—was social, after all,” I conclude. “Dogs are social, too.”
“Yeah,” Beth says, her face alight. “That makes sense.”
“Your dog story,” I add, “reminds me of a workshop I attended in Boulder, a couple months ago, by a neuroscientist and trauma specialist named Bruce Perry, who wrote a book about a boy who, apparently, was raised as a dog. Talk about abuse.
“I guess trying to help that poor kid recover taught Perry a few things.
“For example, he said the best way to defuse the stress response system of a traumatized child (or a dog, for that matter)—without the ability to ‘reason’ with them, like an adult—is through numerous, small, positive, non-threatening interactions with other people, ideally throughout the day. Like you and I have been doing this past week.
“Like we’re planning to do in your ‘Seventh Circle’.
“No therapists required.
“What’s so cool,” I roll on, undaunted, “is that, for these sorts of social interactions to have ‘therapeutic value,’ Perry said they don’t have to last longer than a few seconds or minutes. We’re talking eye contact, a smile, a pat on the arm, listening, playing, joking. A hug!
“Why is this so healing? Because simple acts of social contact reaffirm our ‘place in the family of things’, to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite poets. They reestablish belonging—and safety. As Perry put it: ‘Humanity’s most fundamental unit is not the individual. It’s the clan or tribe’.”
“In America,” Beth interjects, with a smirk, “it’s a mob.”
I laugh, breaking the spell of my didactic interruption. “Okay, so, where were we?”
“I was trapped in a stupid cage, like a dog,” she reiterates, grinning now. “Helpless.”
“Poor puppy. Mind if I ask one more nosey question?”
“Shoot.”
“Assuming you escape from your cage, what do you hope to do with your ‘freedom’?”
Without missing a beat, she responds: “Set other puppies free . . . before they die from shock.”
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, while she and I are cleaning up the family room, setting up a circle of chairs, I ask, “So, Beth, what are your best hopes for this crazy group thing we’re about to do?”
She scrunches up her lips. “What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say five months from now, you look back. What’s different? What’s better?”
She snorts. “That’s easy, Dad. Life doesn’t suck anymore!”
“No suck,” I pretend to write with an invisible pen on my palm. “What else?”
She thinks for a moment. “I’m no longer trapped in this stupid cage.”
“No cage,” I scribble on my palm. Wait to see if she’ll elaborate.
Beth stares off into space, visualizing something.
“You know about Pavlov’s dogs,” she says, out of the blue. I nod. Classical conditioning. Ring bell. Feed dog. Ring bell. Dog salivates. Don’t feed dog. Ring bell. Dog salivates anyway. “What about Seligman’s dogs?”
“Refresh my memory,” I say, pen poised in the air. Curious to see where this is going.
“Psych 101,” she begins. “In the 1960s, instead of conditioning dogs with a bell and some tasty snacks, Martin Seligman conditioned them with a cage and a nasty shock they couldn’t escape. Then he’d plop one of those poor dogs into another cage where, again, the floor was electrified—but only on one side. All it had to do to escape was jump a little wall, to the other side. Easy.”
“Seems like.”
“Well, sure, a dog that had never been conditioned would just hop the partition. But dogs that had been shocked too many times—kinda like me, recently—would just give up, lie down, and twitch helplessly till Seligman turned off the juice. Bastard.”
Her lips curl back like a snarling dog, just thinking about it. “Learned helplessness, he called it. Those dogs ‘believed’ nothing they could do would stop the pain, so they didn’t even try—even though freedom was, in fact, inches away.
“That’s the stupid cage I want to escape,” she sighs. “In five months. Or less!”
“Helplessness,” I repeat, just to be clear.
She nods, wearily.
“Do you remember how those dogs unlearned their helplessness?”
“Yes,” she replies, gazing meaningfully at the circle of chairs we’re setting up.
“Seligman and his silly ‘circle’ of sadistic scientists were shocked to learn”—she smiles, despite herself—“that they had to pick up the poor things, move their legs for them, mimic jumping that barrier between pain and freedom--repeatedly, as I recall—before the dogs started to ‘realize’ they could do it themselves. I guess that’s what I need, Dad. A circle of (nice!) people to prop me up until I can stand on my own. Till I can believe in myself again. I’m so exhausted.”
“Of course.” I’m impressed by her perspicacity. “It takes time to rewire your brain.”
She looks at me, curiously. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“You’ve been traumatized,” I state, simply. “Over time. Shocked by things you can’t control. Your nervous system has adapted, incrementally, to protect you from social threat and pain.
“‘Dysregulated,’ as they say.
“Seligman’s goons didn’t just teach those dogs to unlearn their helplessness—abstractly engaging their canine cognition—no, they actually had to touch them, tenderly, I imagine, to get them back on their feet, one small step at a time, after all that shocking trauma.
“Which inadvertently spritzed their doggie brains with small, repeated doses of oxytocin, dopamine and endogenous opioids, anesthetizing their frazzled nerves, clearing away debris so their frontal cortices could rewire, reconnect, and regain a sense of hope and possibility.
“The solution--like the problem—was social, after all,” I conclude. “Dogs are social, too.”
“Yeah,” Beth says, her face alight. “That makes sense.”
“Your dog story,” I add, “reminds me of a workshop I attended in Boulder, a couple months ago, by a neuroscientist and trauma specialist named Bruce Perry, who wrote a book about a boy who, apparently, was raised as a dog. Talk about abuse.
“I guess trying to help that poor kid recover taught Perry a few things.
“For example, he said the best way to defuse the stress response system of a traumatized child (or a dog, for that matter)—without the ability to ‘reason’ with them, like an adult—is through numerous, small, positive, non-threatening interactions with other people, ideally throughout the day. Like you and I have been doing this past week.
“Like we’re planning to do in your ‘Seventh Circle’.
“No therapists required.
“What’s so cool,” I roll on, undaunted, “is that, for these sorts of social interactions to have ‘therapeutic value,’ Perry said they don’t have to last longer than a few seconds or minutes. We’re talking eye contact, a smile, a pat on the arm, listening, playing, joking. A hug!
“Why is this so healing? Because simple acts of social contact reaffirm our ‘place in the family of things’, to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite poets. They reestablish belonging—and safety. As Perry put it: ‘Humanity’s most fundamental unit is not the individual. It’s the clan or tribe’.”
“In America,” Beth interjects, with a smirk, “it’s a mob.”
I laugh, breaking the spell of my didactic interruption. “Okay, so, where were we?”
“I was trapped in a stupid cage, like a dog,” she reiterates, grinning now. “Helpless.”
“Poor puppy. Mind if I ask one more nosey question?”
“Shoot.”
“Assuming you escape from your cage, what do you hope to do with your ‘freedom’?”
Without missing a beat, she responds: “Set other puppies free . . . before they die from shock.”
