This is so good. I am so glad you ended with cultivating joy. It’s so easy to fall into despair and that’s how they control us. When they steal our joy, and dampen our spirits, they win. This is a fight and we won’t give up. ❤️
I’m currently in the beginning of brainstorming a community skills map… 👀 It’s a Google spreadsheet at the moment but ideally will become a paper map that we can offer everyone in town!
I have been thinking about this so much, even in small online communities I'm in, I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to refer people to each other, or trying to find the overlap where we can collaborate. My old Buy Nothing group really functioned as a mutual aid community, especially once the pandemic hit, and some of the other people did some mapping of skills in early 2020. I moved to Shoreline and my new BN group isn't very active and I don't want to be on Facebook, but I do think that hyper-local approach to connecting people could be useful, whether building on existing groups or not.
OMG, this is AWESOME!!!! I have been alternating feeling furious and hopeless, BC it seemed no one was getting where we are, but you NAILED IT! A very sick, destructive paradigm is dying, and the oppressors and those who benefit from it are coming toting themselves to stay in power. They are in the minority. There are more of us, WE THE PEOPLE, and this person DISSENTS, with both middle fingers raised high. #RESIST #REVOLUTION
Thank you so much for this! The deluge of terrible news is overwhelming. I find myself despondent and unmoored. This is the lifeline I needed. I gotta get it together.
" . . . they know those days are numbered . . ." I really appreciated this. If the vote wasn't important, then there wouldn't be such force restricting it. If months-long protests about Gaza are meaningless, then we wouldn't need violence to curtail them. End-stage, indeed.
Thank you so much for this. I had such a bad anxiety attack the other day after the Supreme Court ruling…this article has really grounded me and I’ll be returning to it often I think.
Yes. Yes. Yes. To every single one of these words. Deep bow and big hug for this NEEDED kick in the pants call to action. We can not only survive - but THRIVE when we are grounded in these practices. 🌿❤️🙏
I knew I needed to read this but it took me a couple weeks because, all the shit to get through. Thank you for your clarity. I'm proud to say I'm making efforts in all these areas, but I would be a lot farther behind if I hadn't been reading your work and trying to unlearn white supremacy for the last several years. And I am very very lucky to have the financial privilege to see good therapists, but one of the things that's going to continue to get worse is access to therapy, regardless of insurance and ability to pay (same for health care, if all the therapists, doctors, nurses burn out or become disabled...anyway, I'm thinking a lot about how we handle this part of the collapse as a community without burning ourselves out). I personally need to renew my efforts to limit my media/trauma intake, but it's definitely easier to unplug from the hyperempathy when I can remind myself I helped someone today already, even if it was small (donating to mutual aid, sharing info, distracting a depressed friend...). I'm leaning in hard to building community with other activists, deepening those relationships, *and* trying to bring my non-activist loved ones along so that I don't feel so much cognitive dissonance. And as you now know, because I awkwardly blurted it to you and your sweet husband in the grocery store, I'm very focused on helping people with covid risk reduction and awareness, trying to meet people where they are at...often literally at the grocery store! Talking to strangers about why they mask or don't is really bringing back my faith in humanity. It's a huge pick me up for me even if I feel goofy. I don't just talk to the tall goddesses in red dresses either, lol, but thank you and thank Gabriel too for being so approachable and gracious and I hope I didn't keep you too long <3
argh, what I meant about access to therapy and health care is that lots of people *don't* have it now, but it's already true that even people with wealth and privilege and connections can't necessarily find a therapist, see a neurologist without months wait, etc., and that's another thing that is getting worse fast. I cared about lack of access even when I had better access than I do now, but so many people are about to have a rude awakening that their privilege only goes so far if there isn't any care to access. We gotta figure out decolonized and mutual aid solutions, but it's hard when all the mad/disabled/ND people know how to help each other but we're just passing around the same few spoons!
This is so good. I am so glad you ended with cultivating joy. It’s so easy to fall into despair and that’s how they control us. When they steal our joy, and dampen our spirits, they win. This is a fight and we won’t give up. ❤️
I’m currently in the beginning of brainstorming a community skills map… 👀 It’s a Google spreadsheet at the moment but ideally will become a paper map that we can offer everyone in town!
I have been thinking about this so much, even in small online communities I'm in, I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to refer people to each other, or trying to find the overlap where we can collaborate. My old Buy Nothing group really functioned as a mutual aid community, especially once the pandemic hit, and some of the other people did some mapping of skills in early 2020. I moved to Shoreline and my new BN group isn't very active and I don't want to be on Facebook, but I do think that hyper-local approach to connecting people could be useful, whether building on existing groups or not.
OMG, this is AWESOME!!!! I have been alternating feeling furious and hopeless, BC it seemed no one was getting where we are, but you NAILED IT! A very sick, destructive paradigm is dying, and the oppressors and those who benefit from it are coming toting themselves to stay in power. They are in the minority. There are more of us, WE THE PEOPLE, and this person DISSENTS, with both middle fingers raised high. #RESIST #REVOLUTION
Thank you so much for this! The deluge of terrible news is overwhelming. I find myself despondent and unmoored. This is the lifeline I needed. I gotta get it together.
Yes, and WE will get it together *together* :)
This is excellent. Miigwech, thank you!
" . . . they know those days are numbered . . ." I really appreciated this. If the vote wasn't important, then there wouldn't be such force restricting it. If months-long protests about Gaza are meaningless, then we wouldn't need violence to curtail them. End-stage, indeed.
Thank you so much for this. I had such a bad anxiety attack the other day after the Supreme Court ruling…this article has really grounded me and I’ll be returning to it often I think.
Yes. Yes. Yes. To every single one of these words. Deep bow and big hug for this NEEDED kick in the pants call to action. We can not only survive - but THRIVE when we are grounded in these practices. 🌿❤️🙏
I knew I needed to read this but it took me a couple weeks because, all the shit to get through. Thank you for your clarity. I'm proud to say I'm making efforts in all these areas, but I would be a lot farther behind if I hadn't been reading your work and trying to unlearn white supremacy for the last several years. And I am very very lucky to have the financial privilege to see good therapists, but one of the things that's going to continue to get worse is access to therapy, regardless of insurance and ability to pay (same for health care, if all the therapists, doctors, nurses burn out or become disabled...anyway, I'm thinking a lot about how we handle this part of the collapse as a community without burning ourselves out). I personally need to renew my efforts to limit my media/trauma intake, but it's definitely easier to unplug from the hyperempathy when I can remind myself I helped someone today already, even if it was small (donating to mutual aid, sharing info, distracting a depressed friend...). I'm leaning in hard to building community with other activists, deepening those relationships, *and* trying to bring my non-activist loved ones along so that I don't feel so much cognitive dissonance. And as you now know, because I awkwardly blurted it to you and your sweet husband in the grocery store, I'm very focused on helping people with covid risk reduction and awareness, trying to meet people where they are at...often literally at the grocery store! Talking to strangers about why they mask or don't is really bringing back my faith in humanity. It's a huge pick me up for me even if I feel goofy. I don't just talk to the tall goddesses in red dresses either, lol, but thank you and thank Gabriel too for being so approachable and gracious and I hope I didn't keep you too long <3
argh, what I meant about access to therapy and health care is that lots of people *don't* have it now, but it's already true that even people with wealth and privilege and connections can't necessarily find a therapist, see a neurologist without months wait, etc., and that's another thing that is getting worse fast. I cared about lack of access even when I had better access than I do now, but so many people are about to have a rude awakening that their privilege only goes so far if there isn't any care to access. We gotta figure out decolonized and mutual aid solutions, but it's hard when all the mad/disabled/ND people know how to help each other but we're just passing around the same few spoons!
Whew! Thanks!