I have worked from home since 2004, so when I learned that grand jury duty meant getting up, getting dressed, commuting into Washington every weekday and reporting for service for five weeks, I was resistant before I even started. My sister drove me to the Kiss and Ride every morning. Temperatures were in the 90s, National Guard troops were around Judiciary Square, and Washington was loud in a way I had forgotten: traffic, construction, sirens, trains and people everywhere. I had also forgotten how much energy it takes just to commute. Before you do the thing you actually left home to do, you have already gotten yourself out the door, made the trip, navigated the station, dealt with the heat and noise, and arrived carrying part of the day with you.
Then came grand jury service. I served as Deputy Foreperson, and if you have never served on a grand jury, you may think I am exaggerating when I say it was heavy. I am not. CBS News correspondent Major Garrett also served five weeks on a D.C. grand jury and later talked publicly about the experience. When I watched him describe it, I recognized the weight immediately.
Major Garrett reflects on grand jury service:
I cannot tell you about the cases. That is the deal. I can tell you what it is like to spend day after day concentrating on material you cannot discuss when you leave the room. There were transcripts, live witnesses, questions and deliberations. There were things that made you think and things that stayed with you longer than you wanted them to. We did not always like the law, but liking the law was not the assignment. Our responsibility was to understand what we were being asked to do and do it. And Lord, we asked questions.
Our jury looked like Washington: federal employees, lawyers, Hill staff, IT professionals, entrepreneurs, parents and, yes, lots of lawyers. One thing people outside the system do not always understand is that occupation does not automatically get you excused. My Swede found that fascinating. D.C. Courts has said in its public guidance that residents are not excused from service based on occupation, and D.C. law likewise provides that no individual or class of individuals may simply be exempted from jury service outside the rules governing qualification and excusal.
D.C. Courts jury information:
https://testweb.dccourts.gov/jurors/about-your-jury-duty
D.C. Code § 11-1908:
https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/code/sections/11-1908
So there we were, people who probably never would have met one another otherwise, sitting together for five weeks because the city said it was our turn. Some people were happier to be there than others, some personalities were more special than others 😂, but nobody caused trouble. We disagreed sometimes. We deliberated. We listened. I respected everybody in that room, and I respected the people working throughout the building too. You could tell they were a tight crew. Security was high. One day the U.S. Attorney was in the building, and we still went outside on break in the heat because we are Washingtonians after all.
I also liked watching all the young lawyers moving through the building. There was so much ambition walking those halls, and I found myself wondering who was going to go all the way in public service and who was eventually going to hop off and make big money at a D.C. firm. During downtime, I encouraged people to run for public office because apparently I cannot help myself. There was even an unofficial no-divorce policy in the jury rooms, but that story can wait. 😂
The five weeks were not only heavy. They also put me back inside my city in a way I had not experienced for a long time. I was not driving in for one appointment or dropping into Washington for an event. I was living in it every weekday. I started knowing the baristas at the coffee shop and the folks at the French bakery. I tried different restaurants. Friends met me for Happy Hour. I bought publications from unhoused people selling them and had conversations with them. One of my besties happened to be serving in the room right next door. During breaks and lunch, I found places to breathe: the MLK Library, Navy Memorial, a hydro massage chair, a book, a walk.
Sometimes the city surprised me with my own history. One morning around 8:30, I was waiting for my Croque Monsieur at a coffee shop near the courthouse when a man walked up and asked if I was Adrianne. Thank goodness I recognized him immediately and remembered his full name. We had dated when I was at Howard. He had lived near my bestie’s dorm. And listen, we both still looked good. 😂
Another evening, at the end of a long day, I was sitting on the subway when a tall man came right up to me, bent down close and asked if I was who I am. After a full day of grand jury service, that will wake you up. Again, thank goodness I recognized him immediately and called him by his first and last name. He was an old neighbor who had been part of the unofficial welcoming committee when I moved into the neighborhood at 13. My new neighborhood came with lots of boys my age. Girls too, but apparently I noticed the boys first. 😂 And yes, he still looked good too. Grand jury duty gave me those moments, and Washington kept reminding me that I had a history there.
I also saw the green Reflecting Pool, visited the museum beneath the Lincoln Memorial, and found my father’s name on the temporary USAA memorial honoring 250 years of American military service. I stood there looking at his name knowing that none of those things had been on my calendar before jury duty. I would not have done any of them if I had not answered the call to serve.
That is why I am still a little dismayed when people ask why I did not get out of jury duty. Why would I? I was called to serve. It was inconvenient, exhausting and disruptive. It rearranged my life for five weeks and exposed me to things I would rather not have had to hear. It also introduced me to people I never would have met, dropped me back into a city I had stopped experiencing every day, reminded me of my own history there, and gave me a front row seat to one small part of how our civic system actually works. I cannot imagine why I would have wanted to get out of that.
I did, however, make one mistake. I thought I could come home and work.
I could not.
Grand jury service was the work.
By the time I got home, I had spent the day listening, concentrating, processing, commuting, navigating noise and heat, and absorbing things that legally had to stay inside that building even though my nervous system had still experienced them. I tried to stack my regular work on top of all of that anyway, and then I got a stomach bug and was down for two days. I cannot prove that trying to do both made me sick, but I know what I learned from it: after some days, you do not need another task. You need a purification ritual.
I had already started creating one without calling it that. I did Chair Yoga in our jury room. I tapped and practiced breathing exercises on the train. I did Yoga on the train platform. I read books while we were waiting, went for hydro massage, walked, met friends, ate somewhere pleasant and let my sister help me get there every morning. Eventually I stopped pretending that I should come home and begin another workday. I needed to come home and recover.
By the end of the five weeks, something funny had happened. I had resisted this new routine after more than twenty years of working from home, then I adjusted to it, built little rituals around it and, when it ended, actually missed it for a minute. 😂 Almost immediately after that came another feeling: freedom. I did not have to get on the train. I did not have to be anywhere at a particular time. I did not have to absorb another day of heaviness. I could exhale.
Now we are moving into the part of the year that has its own version of accumulated stress: Homecoming, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, travel, family, cooking, shopping, hosting, expectations, memories and grief, plus the people we adore and the people we love better from across the room. 😂 Many of us will make the same mistake I made during grand jury duty. We will absorb everything all day and then expect ourselves to just keep going. We will say yes to one more thing, stay a little longer, cook one more dish, answer one more email, attend one more event, carry one more person’s mood or keep one more tradition we are too tired to enjoy. Then we will wonder why our bodies are saying enough.
Grand jury duty reminded me that stress is not only about whether something is good or bad. Service mattered to me. I am glad I did it and I would answer the call again, but it still drained me. The holiday season can work exactly the same way. You can love your family and need five minutes alone. You can be grateful for the invitation and still need to leave. You can enjoy Homecoming and need quiet afterward. You can love Christmas and still grieve. You can be happy to host and still need somebody else to wash the dishes. You can be surrounded by people you love and still need to come back to yourself.
So this year I am carrying one lesson from those five weeks with me into Q4: build the purification ritual before you need it.
Maybe yours is breathing in the car before you go inside, tapping in the airport, Chair Yoga in the guest room, a walk after dinner, ten minutes with a book, calling the friend who lets you say exactly what you need to say, going home early, or doing absolutely nothing. The ritual does not have to be impressive. It just has to help you come back to yourself.
Grand jury duty taught me that, and I am very glad I answered the call.
If stress tends to build as the year gets busier, my on-demand conversation 👉Why Stress Keeps Showing Up is one place to begin:
