It’s OK Not To Be OK

I write stories for a living. 

Usually, these stories involve talking to a person or peoples who are experiencing a form of oppression. 

Sometimes, that oppression looks like a polluter attempting to decide the destinies of Black folks whose ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for their right to self-determination. Other times, that oppression comes dressed in robes reeking of transphobia and hate. Often, the oppression that I’m exposing is also coupled with resistance and activism. 

The stories I tell are about struggle, but they’re also about love and commitment and devotion — to this planet, to our collective futures, to a world worth saving.

I’m a climate and environmental journalist, and my job isn’t easy. 

The public depends on people like me to accurately update them on what’s going on around the globe. We read studies and attend public hearings. We ask hard questions of people in power. We try to reach those who need more power. We travel to places where the devastation is raw. We ask survivors, “Are you OK?” 

We write, we edit, and we do it all again day after day — never asking ourselves the same question.

I’ve been covering these topics for 10 years, but the work has only grown more difficult. 

Am I OK? Probably not. 

Hurricane Helene just unleashed madness onto the southeastern U.S. last week. 

The death toll is at least 190 people across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia. Such impact, however, is immeasurable. Numbers can’t effectively communicate the loss of a life. Dollar amounts don’t determine what it’ll take to rebuild. And journalists are often the vessels by which this information comes out. 

Right now, there are journalists on the ground in each one of those states doing the important work of capturing the moment. Some of those journalists may be coping with their own impacts from Hurricane Helene, but if there’s one thing we journalists will do, it’s put the work before ourselves. 

The story won’t wait for us. And no respectable journalist wants to miss a story.

In the aftermath of Helene and the nonstop crisis that is climate change, we journalists are suffering. 

“You're a climate journalist. You talk to people, read information, look at data and science and do your job. But sometimes, the heart just hurts when you look at what climate change does,” wrote NPR Climate Editor Neela Banerjee on X, formerly known as Twitter, when sharing an image of floodwaters leaving only the roof exposed of a Tennessee hospital. 

Her tweet went viral. That’s because she’s not alone; many of our hearts are hurting. 

However, many of us feel alone, and that’s part of the problem. We’re grieving in isolation when we need to grieve in community. 

When folks in the media cover these stories, they can go on to develop PTSD and depression. A 2019 paper published in the journal Journalism Studies found that 20 percent of the 30 local journalists they interviewed who had covered Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dealt with storm-related PTSD and 40 percent had depression. 

Journalists are, after all, people. 

I know firsthand that when I return home after visiting a disaster-stricken place, I’m left with several feelings: guilt, rage, disappointment, disillusionment, and heartbreak. So, so much heartbreak. 

I felt that way when I spent some days in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria decimated the archipelago in 2017. I felt that way after meeting scientists in Hawai’i back in 2018 who were trying to develop super-corals so that corals don’t all go extinct. I felt that way in 2021 when I visited the Indigenous Miskito communities in Nicaragua who were migrating from their ancient homelands in the aftermath of Hurricanes Eta and Iota. And I felt that awful feeling again when I visited Malawi a year ago to witness how Cyclone Freddy decimated mountainside communities.

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