the day after
notes on feeling our way into this next chapter
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OK, so, yeah. Another deeply brutal lesson in the misogyny and misogynoir of this nation.
Every single systemic failure that has brought us to this moment has been laid bare. Every single corrupt Supreme Court justice that protected their convicted felon, the racist Electoral College, the faults in our voting system, all the ways that, as they say, the system works as designed.
In lieu of our regular Thursday post, I figured I'd share a few thoughts today, while we're all wrapping our brain around this.
I'll be expanding on much of this, probably, in the days and weeks to come.
It's this Sunday, 11/10, 2pm ET/1pm CT/11am PT/7pm UK time
What Now?! Finding Our Place On Deck
We’ll use some sacred lenses to process some of our feelings, and to help us figure out what our (individual and collective) next steps must be now.
So, a few things to keep in mind at a time like this. In no particular order.
Sunday we'll talk more about where we are by then, and start mapping where (individually and collectively) we need to go from there. More specific tools (internal and interpersonal) to come in the weeks and months to come.
Feel All The Feelings
Cry, if you need to.
I have, already, a few times. I don't know why in 2016 my reaction was cortisol and adrenaline and this time I just feel–really, profoundly heartbroken– but my job isn't to understand this right now, it's just to experience it, to be with the misery and loss in all of the ways for the moment.
There may be a lot of ways you might be mourning right now–
for all the ways you and/or people you love may be personally impacted right now.
For the loss of a safer future that we all deserved, a possible alternate world run by people committed to protecting democracy and school lunches.
For the depth of insight around just how profoundly this country hates women.
The likely future deaths and suffering for so many. Some possible futures for the planet. And an awareness of the beauty of this moment combined with deep pain at how much may change soon for so many, a kind of mono no aware on steroids.
Let it flow.
Rabbi Elazar also said: Since the day the Temple was destroyed the gates of prayer were locked... Though the gates of prayer were locked, the gates of tears were not locked. (Talmud Brachot 32b)
Are you angry? If so, that's... totally understandable.
Our culture sometimes tells us that anger is bad or unhealthy. But really, it’s more a matter of how and why that anger gets used.
The 11th century Spanish Jewish philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol asserts that
“anger is a reprehensible quality, but when employed to correct or to reprove, or because of indignation at the performance of transgressions, it becomes laudable.”
Or as the 20th century Black feminist writer and poet Audre Lorde put it,
“Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.”
In other words, if you use your anger, it is not only an effective tool for fighting oppression, but, Ibn Gabriol would argue, a virtuous thing.
So if you’re angry, metabolize it into action. Today, it might be used to do research about what can be done or to make to-do lists, to find commiseration online or with friends or to get better educated on an issue; tomorrow and in the months to come you can use it to fuel action towards making the world more whole, keeping evil at bay, keeping more people safe.
Feel the fear. Feel the grief. Feel the anger. And metabolize it all as next steps. As action. As reaching out to the people in your community. As sending love to the people across communities and figuring out how to support each other. As getting your to-do lists together. As next steps.
It’s also allowed, totally valid to mourn and rage and have all the feelings about all the kinds of projects, the things that you wanted to do and build and enjoy and (whatever) that may not be possible in this new world, or that may get less attention because you’re going to have to be fighting together with the rest of us for everyone's rights and safety instead of (however else you would have preferred to spend your time.) Again, it's allowed, and even recommended for you to feel the things.
There's no wrong way to feel, nothing to feel guilty for, about any of it.
But: Keep Future Events Appearing Real in Perspective
Your fear is legit. This individual has been promising horrific things and we don’t know what of them he will do.
But I remember the terror after Nov 2016, and what we imagined would be, based on the threats he was making during his campaign. And, in fact, some of the things that came to pass were not nearly as bad as what we dreaded might be the case. Of course, some things that happened were far worse– but we couldn't have predicted many of them (global pandemic certainly wasn't on my 2016 bingo card, anyway).
And. Some of the things wound up being better than they would have been because we organized like whoa and fought back.
We will do that again. More on that to come.
Keep planning to care for yourself and others in all the ways that are possible now. Keep working to organize in all the ways you can. That’s all we can do from here.
But we don’t know yet what will actually be. We don’t.
So if you start to get very spun out, please remember that fear is Future Events Appearing Real.
Find your feet.
Find your sit-bones.
Find your breath.
Identify some things you can see, hear, feel, smell, taste.
We are here, now.
We have gotten terrible news but we don’t yet know what it means.
Besides that we have work to do.
Do Something Kind for Someone Today
(and That Someone Can Be You)
If you’re feeling angry and helpless, this would be a really good time to figure out how to offer something of yourself over to someone else, if you can.
It can be a powerful reminder of what you can control, of the ways in which you can be a force for good in the world, and it can obviously be valuable to others.
Can you bring someone a casserole? Buy someone lunch? Volunteer for a shift somewhere? Reach out to someone who’s having a hard time?
Do it, if you can. It will help in multiple ways.
And if you can’t, if you’re too deep in pain and trauma, if you’re triggered or hurting, please focus on kindness to yourself.
Can you offer yourself something that you’d offer to someone else that you love if they were suffering right now?
Whether it’s making tea and watching bad television, taking a bath, snuggling humans or critters who love you, logging off of social media, starting a craft project, or something else, please take care of your precious self.
Be mindful of your own trauma triggers, too. This is eerily like 2016, though not, though kind of like it, though kind of not, and a lot of us are holding different kinds of somatic (or other kind of) injury from then. We may have internal landmines of which we are not yet aware. Please be mindful of their possibility, and be gentle with yourself if you find them.
You matter.
Move Your Body (If You Can)
Especially if you're angry or scared, engaging the bodymind is a good thing to do. Trauma is stored in the body. Feelings are stored in the body. There's a lot that gets rattled around when you move it in some way, whether a walk or a dance-out in the living room or some deep stretching in the places that are stuck or whatever ways moving your body gives you life and possibly even joy. Sometimes when you twist over that one way, you find the place where the thing you needed to release was trapped. It helps.
They want you to feel powerless and surrender and let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.
— Rebecca Solnit/joy is a strategy (@RebeccaSolnit) November 6, 2024
Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.
— Rebecca Solnit/joy is a strategy (@RebeccaSolnit) November 6, 2024
A couple of resources for starting to think through concrete things now:
Daniel Hunter
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
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