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learning as we go

in the midst of a couple of weeks of turning inwards for reflection, i am becoming aware of the personal lessons of this moment – the movement growing, the overt uberphobic white nationalism normalizing, the mass divestment from the system – unvoting america.

i write this in a country that celebrates the lie-based myth wrapped around our genocidal roots this week, a week which begins with human/earth rights atrocities at standing rock. i will be with my family all week, one of the few weeks where we can all overlap, just holding and loving each other.

it feels faster and faster, the unveiling of the deeper patterns of white supremacy and capitalism which so many of us have been shining our small lights on forever.

there are amazing strategists writing about specific political responses at this moment.

i am grateful for emergent strategy, for learning about the divine force of change and challenging myself to be in right relationship with it.

i am learning more about the ways to be honest with myself in this moment, and yearning for more collective honesty about what we do and don’t know, what we will and won’t do, how to be and where to surrender in the process of letting go of the current paradigm.

i am learning to be with my despair and terror instead of denying or shrinking it. the part of me that feels of-the-planet trembles, poring over potential policy u-turns when we were already moving too slow. my relationships all feel incredibly precious, and my time is more and more focused.

i feel like i am awakening from a dream in which i thought i was already awake, frozen, calling out for help. in the dream i was (we were) waking up from a nightmare. in truth, we are waking up to a nightmare.

months ago i said ‘things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered’, which i still believe. and that statement could use some nuance: depending on the level of illusion and privilege at play in our lives, this time will likely feel worse for some of us as comforts and assumptions fall away, as we lose the sugar cube of a charming black president with a flawless partner and children, and can taste again just how bitter this nation’s contradictions are.

it is always devastating to face the atrocity of the united states, to contort and contort trying to love this bully child.

we are all experimenting, no matter how declarative we are about how people must feel and act right now.

i feel my commitment to justice and liberation, and i recognize that it may not be the fate of humanity to experience that freedom and/or wholeness i long for, at least not at a collective level. i still feel this is the right struggle to be in, i still believe it is the core work of our species – to reason, to feel, to reconcile power and brilliance and compassion, to expand into our miraculous potential.

i am relinquishing whatever illusions make me think i know the future, and making more room to co-create something worth living into.

i am learning to create futures/poems/stories about what i don’t know, what i can’t explain, where i am not sure.

i’m learning to come undone with rage and still act towards what i long for. i will not submit, i will be a transparent and vocal opposition to a government organized around seeing me as inferior, as an abomination – i can’t give that a chance, or wait and see.

whiskey helps my bravado. meditation and centering drop me from bravado into my dignity. and i notice that if i allow myself room for fear and anger, i move beyond coping to healing, at least for a little while at a time.

i am humbling myself in the face of the journey. life moves towards life, even if i can’t always see it. i am softening my peripheral vision and cultivating more sensitivity at my back.

i am leaning into love and pleasure – dancing, generating slow sweet pleasures with others, laughing, singing, reading and finding ways to be warm. forgiving people, being more generous. i am telling people how much they mean to me.

i am learning and remembering de-escalation, self-defense, security culture, so that i can meaningfully stand back to back and side to side with all of y’all and advance, from my heart, towards liberation.

i am redistributing the time i spend critiquing others, putting that time into connections, mediations, love coaching, generating compelling narratives for the future, and supporting efforts i believe in.

i am letting you know: i don’t know, but i will keep learning.