我们共同经历的伤痛
The Losses We Share
MEGHAN, THE DUCHESS OF SUSSEX
2020年11月26日
It was a July morning that began as ordinarily as any other day: Make breakfast. Feed the dogs. Take vitamins. Find that missing sock. Pick up the rogue crayon that rolled under the table. Throw my hair in a ponytail before getting my son from his crib.
今年7月的一个早晨与每天一样平常地开始：做早饭。喂狗。服用维生素。寻找不知藏在哪里的袜子。捡起那支滚到桌子底下的离群蜡笔。把头发扎成马尾辫，然后把儿子从婴儿床上抱起来。
After changing his diaper, I felt a sharp cramp. I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right.
给儿子换了尿布后，我感到一阵剧烈的绞痛。我搂抱着儿子瘫坐在地板上。为让我俩都保持冷静，我嘴里哼着摇篮曲。这个快乐的曲子与我意识到有点不对头的感觉形成了鲜明对比。
I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.
我知道，就在我抱着自己的第一个孩子时，我正在失去自己的第二个孩子。
Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal.
几小时后，我躺在医院的病床上，紧握着丈夫的手。感到他的手心湿乎乎的，我吻了一下他的指关节，我俩的泪水将它们打湿了。我目光呆滞地凝视着冰冷的白色墙壁，试着设想我们怎么愈合这个伤口。
I recalled a moment last year when Harry and I were finishing up a long tour in South Africa. I was exhausted. I was breastfeeding our infant son, and I was trying to keep a brave face in the very public eye.
我想起了去年哈里和我在南非的长途旅行快结束时的一个时刻。我疲惫不堪。那时我还在哺乳我们仍在襁褓中的儿子，我试图在众目睽睽之下强装自信快乐。
“Are you OK?” a journalist asked me. I answered him honestly, not knowing that what I said would resonate with so many — new moms and older ones, and anyone who had, in their own way, been silently suffering. My off-the-cuff reply seemed to give people permission to speak their truth. But it wasn’t responding honestly that helped me most, it was the question itself.
“你还好吗？”一名记者问我。我诚实地回答了他，不知道我的话会在那么多人中引起共鸣：刚当妈妈的、当了多年妈妈的，以及每个用自己的方式默默地忍受苦难的人。我未经思考的回答似乎给了人们说出真心话的许可。但对我帮助最大的并不是诚实地回答了问题，而是问题本身。
“Thank you for asking,” I said. “Not many people have asked if I’m OK.”
“谢谢你的关心，”我说。“没有多少人问过我是否还好。”
Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine, I realized that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, “Are you OK?”
坐在医院的病床上，看着试图将我破碎的心弥合起来的丈夫心碎的样子，我意识到，愈合伤口的唯一途径从这个问题开始：“你还好吗？”
Are we? This year has brought so many of us to our breaking points. Loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020, in moments both fraught and debilitating. We’ve heard all the stories: A woman starts her day, as normal as any other, but then receives a call that she’s lost her elderly mother to Covid-19. A man wakes feeling fine, maybe a little sluggish, but nothing out of the ordinary. He tests positive for the coronavirus and within weeks, he — like hundreds of thousands of others — has died.
我们还好吗？这一年让我们中的很多人都到了崩溃的边缘。在2020年，我们每个人都被失去和痛苦所困扰，这些时刻既充满了不愉快、又使人身心衰弱。我们都听到了这些故事：一名女子像以往任何时候那样开始了自己的一天，不久即接到电话说，她年迈的母亲因新型冠状病毒疾病去世了。一名男子醒来时感觉不错，虽然也许身子有点沉，但没什么异常。他的新冠病毒检测呈阳性，没过几周，他和其他成千上万人一样死去了。
A young woman named Breonna Taylor goes to sleep, just as she’s done every night before, but she doesn’t live to see the morning because a police raid turns horribly wrong. George Floyd leaves a convenience store, not realizing he will take his last breath under the weight of someone’s knee, and in his final moments, calls out for his mom. Peaceful protests become violent. Health rapidly shifts to sickness. In places where there was once community, there is now division.
一位名叫布伦娜·泰勒(Breonna Taylor)的年轻女子像每晚一样上床睡觉，但她没能活到第二天早上，因为一次警察突袭变成了一个令人震惊的错误。乔治·弗洛伊德(George Floyd)走出一家便利店时，没有意识到他将在另一个人膝盖的重压下咽下最后一口气，他在生命的最后时刻呼唤着他的妈妈。和平抗议转向暴力。健康的人很快成了病人。曾经存在社区的地方，现在出现了分裂。
On top of all of this, it seems we no longer agree on what is true. We aren’t just fighting over our opinions of facts; we are polarized over whether the fact is, in fact, a fact. We are at odds over whether science is real. We are at odds over whether an election has been won or lost. We are at odds over the value of compromise.
最糟糕的是，我们似乎不再认同什么是事实。我们不只是争论我们对事实的看法；我们在事实是否真的是事实上两极分化。我们在科学是不是真的这个问题上意见不一。我们在选举中谁赢了、谁输了的问题上意见不一。我们对妥协的价值意见不一。
That polarization, coupled with the social isolation required to fight this pandemic, has left us feeling more alone than ever.
这种两极分化，加上遏制这场大流行病需要采取的社会隔离，让我们比以往任何时候都感到更加孤独。
When I was in my late teens, I sat in the back of a taxi zipping through the busyness and bustle of Manhattan. I looked out the window and saw a woman on her phone in a flood of tears. She was standing on the sidewalk, living out a private moment very publicly. At the time, the city was new to me, and I asked the driver if we should stop to see if the woman needed help.
我不到20岁的时候，有一次，我坐在一辆出租车的后座上，在曼哈顿的繁忙和喧闹中穿行。我从车窗向外看，看到一名女子正在眼泪汪汪地打电话。她站在人行道上，以非常公开的方式经历着一个私密的时刻。当时，纽约对我来说还很陌生，我问司机是否应该停下来，看看这名女子是否需要帮助。
He explained that New Yorkers live out their personal lives in public spaces. “We love in the city, we cry in the street, our emotions and stories there for anybody to see,” I remember him telling me. “Don’t worry, somebody on that corner will ask her if she’s OK.”
司机解释说，纽约人都把私人生活放到公共场所来过。“我们在大庭广众下恋爱，我们在街上哭，我们把感情和故事流露给这里的所有人，”我记得他这样告诉我。“别担心，街拐角那边会有人问她是否还好。”
Now, all these years later, in isolation and lockdown, grieving the loss of a child, the loss of my country’s shared belief in what’s true, I think of that woman in New York. What if no one stopped? What if no one saw her suffering? What if no one helped?
现在，这么多年过去了，在隔离和行动限制中，失去一个孩子的悲伤，失去我们国家对什么是事实的共同信念的悲伤，让我想起了纽约的那名女子。要是没人停下来问她怎么办？要是没人看到她在遭受苦难怎么办？要是没人帮她怎么办？
I wish I could go back and ask my cabdriver to pull over. This, I realize, is the danger of siloed living — where moments sad, scary or sacrosanct are all lived out alone. There is no one stopping to ask, “Are you OK?”
我想回到那个时刻，让出租车司机靠边停下来。我意识到，这是“高度封闭生活”的危险——生活中的悲伤、恐怖或神圣的时刻都是独自度过的。没人会停下来问，“你还好吗？”
Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few. In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.
失去一个孩子意味着承受几乎无法承受的悲痛，很多人都有过这种经历，但很少有人会说出来。在失去的痛苦中，我和丈夫发现，每100名女性中就有10到20人会经历流产之苦。然而，尽管这种痛苦惊人地常见，但这个话题仍属禁忌，充满了（不必要的）耻辱，让一个在孤独中哀悼的循环持续下去。
Some have bravely shared their stories; they have opened the door, knowing that when one person speaks truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same. We have learned that when people ask how any of us are doing, and when they really listen to the answer, with an open heart and mind, the load of grief often becomes lighter — for all of us. In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing.
有些人勇敢地分享了自己的故事；他们已为人们打开了一扇门，因为他们知道，一个人说真话，是允许我们所有的人说真话。我们已经知道，当人们问我们是否还好时，当他们真想听我们回答，并以开放的心态和头脑来听回答时，悲伤的负担通常会减轻——对我们所有的人都是这样。在应邀分享我们痛苦的时候，我们正在一起向愈合的方向迈出第一步。
So this Thanksgiving, as we plan for a holiday unlike any before — many of us separated from our loved ones, alone, sick, scared, divided and perhaps struggling to find something, anything, to be grateful for — let us commit to asking others, “Are you OK?” As much as we may disagree, as physically distanced as we may be, the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of all we have individually and collectively endured this year.
因此在这个感恩节，当我们为这个不同于以往——我们中的许多人不能与所爱之人在一起，许多是独自一人，有人生病、处于恐惧之中，国家两极分化，许多人也许仍在努力寻找一些可以感激的东西，任何东西——的感恩节做计划时，让我们承诺问他人这个问题：“你还好吗？”尽管我们可能有如此多的不同意见，尽管我们身体上的距离可能遥远，但事实是，因为我们已在今年单独地、集体地忍受了所有这一切，我们比以往任何时候都更紧密地联系在一起。
We are adjusting to a new normal where faces are concealed by masks, but it’s forcing us to look into one another’s eyes — sometimes filled with warmth, other times with tears. For the first time, in a long time, as human beings, we are really seeing one another.
我们正在适应一种新常态，尽管人脸在新常态下被口罩遮住，但这迫使我们彼此看着对方的眼睛——有时充满温暖、有时饱含泪水的眼睛。很久以来第一次，做为人类，我们正在真正地看到彼此。
Are we OK?
我们还好吗?
We will be.
我们会好的。
