Donna Hayes

I've been visiting Donna Hayes each day, and it seems to me that she's slowly improving. She's been diagnosed with "conversion disorder," after having stroke-like symptoms. She has paralysis on her left side. She can use her left hand slightly, though it's weak, but her left leg is completely unresponsive, and there is no physical explanation for it. Apparently when people experience terrible grief and trauma, and when this grief and trauma continues over time, they can develop these symptoms. 

Donna had an especially close relationship with her grandson; he was her first grandson, born when his mother was very young, and Donna was his primary care-giver. "He was my heart." Donna was swept up in the movement to expose police brutality after her grandson was killed, and she has become an activist, serving as peer counselor to other women who have lost sons and grandsons to police violence. She takes calls at all hours of the day and night from others from all over the USA whose children have been killed by police, and she grieves with them, comforts them, and cares for them. Last week her body signalled that she can't go on. The work she does gives her a feeling of purpose and connection with others, and she is unwilling to stop or step back. But her body is shutting down. Tomorrow a trauma counselor is finally going to see her, and perhaps at that point she can begin to learn the new skills she will need--both to regain the ability to walk and use her left arm, and to go on doing the work she feels is absolutely necessary.

She talked with me today about how poisonous secrets are: how important it is, she feels, to share our experiences, our truths. "Secrets separate people," she said flatly, "we need to tell each other the truth, because you never can tell when your truth might be some use or some help to another person. To me, the whole idea of privacy is just a way to make people distrust one another. Privacy is another word for secrets, and I don't want none of it."

She's writing a play she calls "Silent Voices," in which all the dead children speak--to their mothers, to those who loved them, to those who killed them. "Because our children have another story than the one that they call the 'official' story. I want to hear what our children would say, if they could still talk. I want to hear what our children would say about how they died, and why they died. They can't speak, so I'm going to speak for them."