“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot in 1922 at the beginning of his classic poem “The Waste Land.” For me, April has always been a welcome month, as friends and family gather for Easter and spring green shoots and wildflowers display a riot of color on the roadsides. A hundred years later, we are haunted by Eliot’s words as we live with a global crisis that seems to have come out of nowhere yet has changed our world completely.

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review titled “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief,” Editor Scott Berinato recounts an interview with David Kessler. Kessler co-wrote with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss. In addition to his research and writing, Kessler has worked in a three-hospital system in Los Angeles, which included volunteering as an LAPD Specialist Reserve for traumatic events and on the Red Cross disaster services team. In this interview, Kessler talks of “the loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

I was glad to hear this feeling put into words. Grief. And now that shelter-in-place and social distancing has been extended for the entire month of April, we must find ways to cope.

How am I coping? I have filled most evenings with Zoom “cocktail parties” with friends and family. I have donated cash to my favorite non-profits who are working on the front lines of this crisis, and have donated platelets at the Blood Center. And I have thrown myself into the work of Impact Austin. A women’s collective giving organization, Impact Austin normally has a protracted process for making hundreds of thousands in grants. Thanks to a quick response by the Board, we turned on a dime, held grant committee meetings via video, and are in a position to get the funds out the door and where they are needed much sooner than scheduled.

In an op-ed which recently appeared in the Wall St. Journal titled “Habits of Kindness That Will Endure,” Stanford Professor of Psychology Dr. Jamil Zaki discusses the fragility of our world. “Disasters rip away the tidy fallacy of self-reliance and lay bare our utter dependence on each other.” Our shared fragility is also our shared humanity, Dr. Zaki says, and the very act of helping is what helps us heal and helps to make us healthier. I believe this.

The CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) was passed into law on March 27, 2020. It contains provisions to encourage individual and corporate giving. Among those is a provision for taxpayers who itemize, to get a special deduction for cash gifts to public charities (but not donor advised funds) in 2020. With this special deduction, donors can deduct up to 100% of adjusted gross income in 2020. Those who don’t itemize can deduct up to $300 in addition to the standard deduction for cash gifts to public charities (but not DAFs).

So, take this added incentive and the advice of experts and donate today. You’ll be doing something to help, and you’ll feel better, too.

Connee Sullivan

Head of Family Office Services