08.19.20 Healing, Raging, and Being a Goddamn Adult Inside A Global WTF Moment
What the actual fuck is happening? Actual Jesus! Holy shit. The veil of civility has been lifted and all of us (especially nice white people) seem pretty shook. People around the world are dying from the combination of a deadly virus and ineptitude, classism and racism which is really pulling into sharp focus the reality that many of us are considered expendable for the greater good of capitalism.
“It is what it is” means sometimes capitalism kills people and our leaders are good with it. Some people are less important than other people’s portfolios. Deal with it.
Fuck that.
Also the goddamn planet is screaming in agony.
Also sexism… which, think this is a much bigger deal than we can tell right now.
Ok, sorry, that was too much. I didn’t mean to punch you in the face with your current reality. It’s worth saying though, that if that did not feel like a punch in the face, we gotta talk. I don’t know what is going on with everyone’s nervous systems, but mine is on fire. While this is unfortunate and uncomfortable, I maintain that this is the correct response for the moment. While I struggle through the discomfort of adapting to this authentically shitty reality, I will communicate continuous gratitude to my body (special shout out to my autoimmune and nervous systems) for keeping it real. Also, and not to put too fine a point on it let’s get to work.
What does this mean? Here’s my hot take. I think it means that we adult way harder and better than what was modeled for us. it means that we ground ourselves in truth and sever our connections to situations and behaviors that are strictly performative and ego based. No more doing anything to look good. From now on we are only doing things that are good (I know…”good” is problematic, but hang in there). We are out of time for anything else.
Are you with me? Great.
This is what I am learning right now. Maybe you knew this already….but this is fresh to me…sort of.
Ok, here’s the other and most important part of adulting. Take responsibility for healing your hurts. Don’t do it alone, but see to it that this is an ongoing project.
I have spent a lifetime being shamed out of my power. I have been too young, too old, too shitty at spelling, too female, too fat, too southern, or too weird to collaborate with the powers that be. I am trying to look into this a little deeper. I know I have faced actual real discrimination, but I believe the vast majority of my missing out has been a result of my own believing these internalized messages about myself. I think it’s likely that while I was feeling ashamed, people were out in the world waiting for me to show up with all my power but I couldn’t do it. To be clear, I am in no way blaming myself, just observing.
All right, I have power, it is mine, it is inside me. It would be a capital sin of the highest order to have gotten this far down the yellow brick road of systemic oppression to be able to have this view of myself and not figure out what to do next. I have to be honest, my instinct is to give my power away, but I’mma not do that.
I am going to drink a glass of water. I am going to put my feet on the ground. Im going to listen to my beating heart. I will breathe in and out. I will feel the light on my eyelids and the air on my skin. I will breathe deep and expand in sync with the entire universe. I will inhale and pull the rocky mountains, the Gulf of Mexico, the Amazon rain forest, Iceland, the Ganges and the Milky Way into me and exhale my own light back out into those spaces.
Frankly that is the easy part. It’s just breathing with pictures. The hard part, the adult part is feeling the entire energetic universal truth, and letting it witness me. That means I have to open all the way up in ways that have not felt safe before. That part is new and radical.
Do you want to know the difference between feeling safe and being safe (energy-wise)? I really think it is decision. At least, right now at this phase of my life it is. I decide that things are not what they were. I decide that I have built enough capacity to experience my own power. I decide that my own power is in no way divorced from the universe at large and I decide that I can use my light to clean up the mess without injury to myself.
Ok, so I think thats what we do. And then we organize, canvas, and for the love of everything vote.