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I’m feeling hopeful for the first time in this election cycle and it’s weirding me out. Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful to be feeling even a glimmer of something other than abject doom, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it. It feels very strange that only a couple weeks ago I was fully resigned to plug my nose and vote for the not-fascist because I don’t want to live in a Project2025 world. And now I get to vote for someone who might actually have a chance to build some cool things for the future. I strongly suspect this is the only way a woman of color could have made it onto the ballot. As a nation we’re probably still too racist and sexist for anyone other than an old white guy to have secured the party nomination, especially right now when people are scared and the future is so uncertain. It was probably necessary for Biden to run all the way through the primaries before passing the torch. It needed to be the only correct logistical option for the party to unite so soundly behind someone so completely different than all the prior presidents. When the news first broke, I was hoping the prospect of getting to help elect the first woman president would be enough incentive for the I'm-just-going-to-sit-this-one-out folks to change their mind and show up on Election Day. And it looks like it is. Miraculously, Biden dropping out and Harris taking up the mantle flipped the blue side of the ticket from elect us to stop the other guy into elect us to move forward into a brighter future. And we all might just pull it off. There are a couple things about this moment that strike me. One is the utter mundanity of being labeled as weird. For those of us who grew up as “the weird kid” we know that small phrase can have enormous social consequences. So I do not minimize in any way the suffering some folks have endured under that label. But compared to all the other things the orange monstrosity has been called, weird is totally tame. There appears to be some magic in that low-grade label. If someone accuses you of a big something, it makes sense for your defensive reaction to also be big. Even a ridiculous, overblown, stop-acting-like-an-infant sized reaction is proportionate to the charges. Even if the accusation is true. Maybe especially if it's true. But when the accusation is so banal and your defensive reaction is still volcanic, all of a sudden it doesn’t make sense and your out-of-control, overblown, extraness is revealed to the casual observer. Maybe that’s why it feels so much to me like an emperor’s new clothes moment. I (and many many many others) have been keenly aware this whole time that a certain rich-guy-turned-politician is a dangerous, child-molesting, rapist who wants to be a dictator just like Vladimir Putin. We have also known this idiot is completely unhinged and utterly detached from reality. But those facts were not enough to maintain the energy in the fight against his efforts (and the efforts of those powerful people around him) to topple democracy in the US. That baffled me right up until now when I am watching the shift happen in real time. There are so many extreme realities right now at home and all over the world. A lot of people became overwhelmed and had no mechanism or opportunity to recover from that burnout before the next wave of immediate-attention-requiring-disaster struck. I see now that folks really just needed a break. Fortunately for all of us, circumstance seems to have provided one in a completely unexpected way. So if this is what it took for you to come back to the table, or to arrive for the first time, that’s great. Welcome. Welcome to the Save Democracy And A Lot of Peoples’ Lives Coalition. We’re so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re here. And for my comrades who have been in it without stopping this whole time, I offer encouragement, affirmation, and a cautionary reminder. Firstly, it’s okay to feel hopeful and also feel weird about feeling hopeful. There are still so many important issue to continue fighting for and a whole system to fight against, that won’t change with a Harris presidency. And I want to remind us all to make space for the disappointment you might feel in everyone else who couldn’t be bothered to show up before. They may have had good reason for their absence, remember the system works diligently to keep our focus on other things. I am definitely equal parts elated that everyone who is now energized and engaged is here, and also disappointed that defeating a deplorable human being running for the highest political office wasn’t enough incentive to show up earlier. So if you also feel that bitterness, please take the time you need to process those feelings. Give yourself space and grace, get a hug, punch a pillow, and talk to a fellow exhausted activist because it’s critical those feelings don’t leak out in the form of activist elitism. It’s all too easy to turn-off a recently activated person by judging them for not already having been an activist. And you know what? It doesn’t actually matter. Whatever gets you to the table, no matter how long it took. As long as you’re here now (and at the polls in November), we can welcome you into the fold and show you what we've been working on so far. Hopefully between now and election day you find camaraderie and community and stick around to continue the fight for care, dignity, and justice for all people that will continue long after November. Information and Inspiration
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Every June I spend a week at the big global anti-fraud conference put on by one of my professional licensing organizations. It’s always an excellent event, with great speakers and tons of sessions on interesting topics. The conference location changes every year, moving around the country, and this year it was in Las Vegas. It’s a place designed for conferences with every major casino offering great deals on venue space in exchange for the influx of thousands of attendees to eat at restaurants, see the shows, and feed money into slot machines while they’re in town to learn or network or be a fan. Vegas is also cheap to fly to from basically everywhere so it’s a win win win. Because it’s such a hub for conferences, I’ve made dozens of trips to Vegas of my career. The town where what happens there stays there also happens to be one of my least favorite places on earth. It’s endlessly flashy, ceaselessly loud, and overflowing with people everywhere at all times of day. The architecture is enormous and every corner, edge, and detail is a spectacle. Everything about the place is Extra. There isn’t a silent hallway or elevator without music. There are no walls without extravagant art or enticing advertisement or both. Absolutely everywhere feels like a party at all times. At best, it’s exhausting. At worst, it’s assaulting to the whole nervous system. And that’s just the ambiance. The other patrons of the place also fuel my distaste for it. Thousands of people thronging together through a sensory overload experience, looking for a place free of the usual requirements of everyday decency. Most people are drunk or on the prowl or both. One year while I sat at a restaurant eating dinner with a colleague I saw a gaggle of fem-presenting humans walk by wearing short skirts and carrying excessively sized (undoubtedly alcoholic) beverages in commemorative cups. A few tables away from me was a pack of masc-presenting humans in Tshirts with popped collars. As the gaggle passed, one popped collar clad individual started barking. Yes, barking. Like a dog. In an attempt to get the attention of the short-skirted folks. I was grossed out to the max, but to my horror IT WORKED. The skirt crew turned around and made the acquaintance of the Tshirt brood. I watched in disgust as the two teams made plans to join forces later for an exciting evening. I’m not sure if any of those folks were conscientiously participating in that misogynistic mating ritual. I assume they were all just playing out a script they thought gave them permission to be naughty for the night. I can’t imagine the short-skirt friend group had a conversation in their hotel room before going out that went something like this: “You know what I want tonight?” “What?” “To be objectified and demeaned.” “Oh yeah, totally, me too.” “Yeah I can’t wait to be used by someone who has absolutely no regard for my desires or boundaries.” Who knows, maybe they did. Maybe they had an entire discussion about consent and safety and aftercare and went out looking for that exact moment I was witness to. I think it’s more likely they internalized the list of ways femm folk are allows to “let loose” as approved by the Patriarchy. It’s okay to be a slut as long as it’s in service of fulfilling a man’s fantasy and you can all go home later to your respectable lives and pretend it never happened. I’m all for uninhibited self-expression and I heartily approve of folks exploring the full depth and breadth of their humanity. I am even in favor of a place available to explore those baser parts of our selves we can travel to and leave behind for the real world. But the thing about this Sin City is it’s really only meant for a narrow slice of the vast vice pie. And entrance to the playground doesn’t include consent or agency. It’s not an escape from default society, it’s a super concentrated dose of it. This year was especially challenging for me due to a constellation of factors. For one thing, my long covid symptoms include increased light and sound sensitivity. Bummer. The timing was also unfortunate because Monday was the second anniversary of the US Supreme Court overturning Rowe v Wade. I wore a red shirt in solidarity with women who went on strike that day, refusing to perform the unpaid and often unrecognized labor they usually do. My wardrobe choice seemed to go utterly unnoticed, so it didn’t feel like much of a statement. The invisibility of my protest against the invisibilizing of the everyday experience of women and other femm folk hit me hard right in the feels. It was also June. So I spent one whole week of Pride month in the straightest, most hetero-normative place imaginable being decidedly gendered as a woman. As a newly out non-binary person it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, but it was grating. Not one person asked my pronouns (or anyone else’s), which was in stark contrast to my usual home city experience. I am extremely lucky to live in such an affirming town, but it does make it harder to go other places. It has taken me four decades to feel like I’m allowed to be myself in ways that don’t conform neatly to societal standards. And I still can’t really exist in my thus-far fullness outside the little bubble I live in. I did well maintaining my constitution with extra doses of self-care and long-distance support from home, but it all finally became too much the second to last day. I was sitting in a session listening to the presenter mansplain about implicit bias and I started to feel out of sorts. I waited until the break and retreated to my hotel room where I discovered I was running a fever. I pumped myself full of infection fighting herbs and vitamins, took a nap, a hot bath, and went to bed early. I slept horribly, awakened alternately by fever, chills, and disturbing dreams. I skipped the final day of sessions in favor of rest and continued consuming medicinal quantities of anti-viral and immune boosting herbs. By the time I was packed, I was feeling much better. Since my malaise came and went so quickly I concluded that I had come down with a case of the patriarchy. On one hand, that’s hilarious because it’s just so absurd. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense. I share this as a reminder that the stress and trauma of our lives has an impact on our physical form. Please be sweet to yourselves in some way each day and take the time to shed the doomgloop of the world in whatever way you need to. We have to the heal the world, and in order to do that we have to continue to heal ourselves. Good luck out there. Information and Inspiration
Like many professionals I must complete a certain number of continuing education credits each year to maintain my license. Due to a series of unfortunate events I found myself sitting in an ethics class one day last week instead of getting to all the work I had planned to accomplish. In one section the instructor discussed the relevance of appearance and stressed the importance of maintaining reputation. It was good advice because accountants hold a position of public trust, so we should not be entering into transactions that look sketchy even if they are technically allowable. But then he went on to caution against disparaging the work of other accountants by saying "Even if you're right, keep it to yourself because it reflects badly on the entire industry." What?! No. Bad. Where is my spraybottle?! This instructor was actively promoting the accounting equivalent of the blue wall of silence. And I cannot abide the Spreadsheet of Silence. Not even one little bit. The correct response to someone within a group acting out of sync with professional or community standards is transparency; not coverup. Trust is not built by keeping things from people that might upset them. You build trust by being accountable for your mistakes and repairing the damage resulting from your actions. You build trust by airing your dirty laundry and then cleaning it up. It's the exact same undercurrent in every community controversy I have witnessed or experienced in recent years. Like when we had to ban a dancer a few years ago for preying on vulnerable community members. When one impacted person finally voiced their experience, the old guard on the organizing board wanted to handle the matter discretely and quietly in the background, out of the public eye, like had always been done before. The rest of us wanted a completely transparent process. Something the community could see and understand and know to rely on in the future. When some part of the community is harming some other part of the community (intentionally or unintentionally), there's no way around bringing that shit to light. If you pretend it's not happening, then it keeps happening and people continue experiencing harm. If there's no mechanism to raise the issue, or if community leadership actively covers up the problematic behavior when someone does report it, then eventually all the impacted folks and their friends leave the community. It's the same in broader society and around the world. People in power who do terrible things often use their power to shield themselves from accountability. Our pillar institutions in the US were built of and continue to run on various forms of oppression. Harm persists. People suffer. Those of us trying to make a difference get exhausted. Unfortunately we can't just leave Earth. There are currently no other habitable planets in our solar system. And even if there was somewhere to go, there isn't currently a way for marginalized folks to get there. I’m not interested in perfection, I’m interested in accountability. I don't want to hold anyone to a standard of perfection and I don't want to be held to a standard of perfection. I spent way too many years imposing that on myself (it's still something I struggle with). Perfection is not possible. But what would be amazing is for everyone to try their best, recognize when they fail, take responsibility and be accountable, and seek to repair. Then we can all experience something better in the future. Information and Inspiration
Community is vital for human survival. We don’t all need the same volume, frequency, or flavor of social connection, but we all need it like we need water, food and air. For how vital it is, it’s unfortunate so many things get in the way of fulfilling social connections for so many people. Perfectionism, trauma, undeveloped communication skills, the patriarchy. All the things that prevent us from showing up as our fullest selves because it’s not safe or not allowed or not good enough. And even once we work through some of our own personal baggage, we will forever be performing maintenance on our reconfigured systems because we continue to exist in the societal soup of all that same bullshit. Even with as much healing as I have done, I still have to do the math each day on how many and which pieces of emotional armor I need to put on before going out in the world. And when I get home I have to do the emotional labor of taking that armor off. I'm lucky I don't have to leave it all on all the time. It’s really a miracle any of us manage to get together at all, but we do. Despite all the challenges (and often because of those challenges), we gather. We come together and we form community. And that's amazing. It's definitely a relief to be around other folks who have been through some of the same things I have lived in my life. It's healing to experience belonging and togetherness. And it's important to make sure we're working through the collective baggage all together as a group. Otherwise those things we're working so hard to heal in ourselves and actively resist from greater society continue in our community spaces and get in the way of relating to each other. No matter how much we have in common, if I spend time with someone who can't or won't see me as a complete and complex person, that interaction cannot satisfying my desire for connection because it isn't connection. If I have to keep my mask on, it's just hiding in the presence of another human. And while there can definitely be value in being alone together, that's not the same thing as social connection. When I spend time with someone who sees and hears me fully as an entire being, then I feel connected to that person. And that's when I feel belonging. It may sound obvious, but it seems important to note: any attempt to manufacture the feeling of belonging by extracting it from others will always fail. Unfortunately this is a mistake I keep seeing communities make, including communities of people routinely othered by greater society. When default society spaces have no room for you, it's important to find or create a space that feels affirming and safe. To be safe it often means some demographics must be excluded from those spaces, and that's perfectly fine. It becomes a problem if the only glue that holds your group together is being better than someone else. Deriving your value by comparison to a "less valuable" version of person or lifestyle or hobby is no value at all. That's not healing from the wounds of society constantly saying you aren't good enough or rich enough or smart enough or beautiful enough or normal enough. That's just passing on your trauma to someone else, and it perpetuates all the problems you were trying to escape by creating that new space in the first place. Recently I have witnessed a group of folks wade into a new practice of non-monogamy without doing the prerequisite community emotional labor that creates a solid foundation of trust to build other relationships upon. These otherwise level-headed folks bought into a nonsense belief that having multiple romantic connections somehow eliminates your responsibility to tend the connections with those people. It's like they think detaching from the societal expectation of monogamy detaches them from responsibility for how they impact the people around them. In case you're wondering: it doesn't. It also doesn't make you a more evolved human or get you any closer to enlightenment. Practicing non-attachment with people is more about not attaching your expectations to those people; not shirking all responsibility for your friends and fellow community members. That’s just accountability avoidance. I can have as many emotional, physical, and/or romantic connections as I have availability in my calendar and it doesn't negate my need to occasionally rely upon others and be reliable for others in-turn. It doesn't have to be my partner's fault that something they said triggered me, they can still listen to my hurt feelings with compassion and offer me care as I do the work to heal from that wound in my past. There is no shortcut to healing. You just have to do the work. We each have to tend our inner selves and we all have to tend the physical and emotional spaces we share together. Community is a mirror. Looking into that mirror allows us an opportunity for recovery. A chance to confront and reconcile with our inner demons while being held in loving support by our fellow human beings. Incorporating more pieces of ourselves into the whole is how we heal. Detaching from people won't get you there; all it does is allow you to hide from yourself. Information and Inspiration
Some things just happen. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the ocean's tidal rhythms. The earth orbits the sun and spins on its axis, and we experience day and night. Other things don’t just happen, like war, poverty, and the criminal justice system. People in power start wars, communities fail to provide resources to people without resources, and societies deprive some people of their personal liberty to offer the illusion of safety to others. Lately I’ve been hearing this kind of human-created circumstance discussed in the news as if these things just… happen. Like fixtures in the landscape we need to work around instead of the result of all our collective participation in societal and global social and economic systems. On one hand I can understand that perspective for things that have existed for generations. The telephone, for example, was invented long before I was born, so to me telephonic communication definitely feels like an immovable fixture of modern life. And if it isn’t causing any problems for me then I might not bother to consider where and when it came from. Which is why it’s so critical to make sure everyone's voice shapes our institutions and governance policies. We need to hear from every kind of someone that something we’re doing continues to serve all of us so we don’t just keep doing what we’ve always done because that’s how we’ve always done it and nobody in charge noticed it was a problem for somebody else. On the other hand is what confounds me about the framing of our present moment: these things are causing problems. Obvious problems. Well known and highly documented problems. Smart, qualified, and credible people are talking about the problems with the war on Ukraine and the siege on Gaza. Smart, qualified, and credible people are talking about the detrimental impacts of poverty and the criminal justice system. Smart, qualified, and credible people are talking about our dangerous reliance on fossil fuels and the resulting impending climate catastrophes in our near future. But the folks who can do something about it don’t seem to be listening. And now we’re talking amongst ourselves as if nothing is being done because there isn’t anything that can be done. And that’s dangerous. It means we’re not holding the people who run our systems accountable for how things are running. The US presidential election is still 9 months away. Someone could conceive, grow, and birth an entire human before we all cast our vote. But we already know which two candidates of which two parties we will need to choose between on this year's ballot, even though most of the primaries haven’t taken place yet and nobody seems to want what we’re apparently going to get. So we should do something about it. It’s hard to know what to do, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The US government isn’t a democracy machine; it’s a government machine. If you feed it democratic policies and practices, then you get democracy. If you feed it fascist policies and practices, then you get fascism. The fates are not handing us a Biden vs Trump election, we are creating that future inevitability by not doing something else. I see the same resignation in much of the discussion about AI. AI isn’t a force unto itself. It didn’t arrive from another galaxy fully formed and ready to take over the fun parts of our lives while we work dead-end jobs that barely cover our rent. We created it. Humans made (and are making) AI. It’s not just an alien invader as Yuval Noah Harari described it; it’s a version of ourselves we ran through a machine. The call is coming from inside the house because AI is only the result of exactly what we put into it: us. We are here in this moment with these challenges because this is the reality we have collectively crafted. Fortunately, that means we can make it into anything we want as long as we make it into something on purpose. Last year’s tax season was brutal for me. But everything that made it a bummer didn’t just happen; the bummer is what happened because I didn’t do something else. So this tax season I’m doing a few things differently. I could have resigned to a repeat of last year, but I don’t want that. So this year I’m crafting a completely different experience. I want us all to do that in every way we can because we need to craft a brighter future in order for it to happen. Information and Inspiration
There are a whole lot of things that currently need work. In the world, in our society, in our communities, within ourselves. One of the major challenges to doing that necessary work is knowing where to start. With so many squeaky wheels, it's difficult to know which to prioritize first. I have learned that what I tackle first matters a whole lot less than just getting started with any of them. Picking one and getting going creates a helpful momentum for all the others. It’s easy to become paralyzed by the need to tackle the correct thing first. Luckily once you just pick something and start doing it, you will soon discover if there is something else you need to do before you can fully accomplish that thing. That’s true for house projects, work projects, craft projects, and personal work. I started picking apart my tendency to take responsibility for things I shouldn’t and discovered I first need to address some long-standing trauma of a different variety. So I redirected my efforts to healing that trauma and hang out with that process for a while. So it goes. Another thing that makes doing the work extremely challenging is a lack of clarity on why we’re doing it in the first place. There are some challenges I take on just because I like a good challenge, like trying a new sport or learning a new skill. But when it comes to resolving societal ills or personal challenges, I don’t just want to do something difficult. I’m doing this work because I want a better world for me and everybody else. My ultimate desire is a world that takes care of people instead of pitting us against each other. Our current systems and institutions don’t support that. That means I also have to think all the way outside the box to come up with new things to try and new ways to engage myself and others. I need to find the other people and organizations who are doing things differently and support those efforts. And I have to be willing to fail a lot and try other approaches. At the beginning of December I heard a news story about the Sackler family's bankruptcy case before the supreme court. The Sacklers made a fortune creating and distributing one of the drugs that fueled the current opioid crisis. Of the probable outcomes, one commentator said "We have to deal with what's possible." Meaning: we have to settle for what’s possible. To which I say: No. We have to use our damn imagination. Of course we must work within the system we currently have because that's what we currently have. But most importantly: we have to do that while also making sure it doesn't limit what we imagine we could have instead. As I reflect on what was my 2023 and imagine what I would like from my 2024, I’m trying to remember that just because I don’t know how to accomplish something doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. It just means I don’t yet know how to make it happen. Lucky for me, none of us exist in a vacuum. So there’s bound to be somebody I can ask. And if they don’t know, they might know someone who knows someone who knows. We’ve got the whole year ahead of us and we can make it into anything we want. It all starts with just a little bit of imagination. Happy New Year. Information and Inspiration
Human beings are incredible and resilient. We are adaptive. We persist. There are so many amazing stories about people who persevere through challenging circumstances, ultimately succeeding, often against all odds. These stories are captivating and inspiring. Like Daniel Kish, the blind man who developed a kind of vision that has nothing to do with his eyes which allows him to navigate the world independently and successfully. Or Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. These stories are truly incredible, and they offer us more than just inspiration. They also offer an opportunity to overcome something within ourselves if we're willing to confront it. For Daniel Kish, the absence of people in his life treating him like he couldn't allowed him the freedom and space to try things and fail enough to figure out whether he could. His story offers each of us the opportunity to examine our pre-conceived notions about who is able and identify how those beliefs seep into our actions and shape the world around us. For Elizabeth Blackwell it was incredibly difficult to accomplish what she did in both academia and her subsequent medical practice. A whole lot of people tried quite actively to prevent any of it from happening. And yet she made it. She even created a place for other women to learn medicine and cultivated opportunities for those graduates to also do their residencies. Her story offers us all the opportunity to reflect on our modern health care and education systems, to sniff-out where commonly held beliefs about certain kinds of people are resulting in the same kind of exclusion today, and to figure out what we can do differently in our lives to make space for others to succeed. Mental toughness is a common theme in these and many other perseverance stories. Grit is certainly one of the ingredients in my personal and professional successes. And here is where I'd like us to just pause for a moment and consider where all that mental toughness comes from. Mine is born of tough circumstances. Of course that isn't true for everyone; it is prefect possible to develop mental toughness through practice that isn't also traumatizing. But for me, there were periods of my life I couldn’t escape from, and I either had to give up and stop living or grit my teeth and get through it. Like a lot of people faced with similar circumstances, I survived. And in so doing I developed the skill of surviving shitty circumstances while maintaining the outward appearance of having my shit pretty well together. I do not enjoy that I had to learn how to keep it together during extremely tough times. I don't wish that experience on anyone. And I am also grateful for the skillset of not-completely-falling-apart-in-crisis. It's been quite helpful in dealing with my present post-covid situation. I’m in an interesting place because I spent the earlier part of this year in the process of deconstructing all my long-standing coping strategies and personal survival protocols. Then Covid came along and has changed my brain and body in such a significant way that I have now also been forced into deconstructing my schedule and all my hobbies and social activities and rebuilding the very structure of my entire life. It's quite a challenging process and also a very emotional one. Between personal self-work, emotional regulation, body discomfort and healing, I don't have much juice left in the tank for anything else. Even thought it sucks, I'm going to make it through just fine. Due in part to my mental toughness and in part to the access I have to the incalculably valuable resource of community support. Lingering Covid effects are one of those challenging circumstances that aren't currently preventable. But my perseverance story shouldn't be discounted as having no other lessons to teach us. If we had a better health care system and a real social safety net, I could take the time I need to focus all my energy and effort on healing. As it stands now, I've still got to get all my work done so my family can continue to survive capitalism. Of course surviving capitalism isn't easy for anyone, and it's especially challenging for anyone who didn't start out with access to a pile of money. The people who eventually discovered the MRNA vaccine were initially discounted by the rest of the medical science community. That means they didn't have access to as many grants or other resources necessary to perform their work. But they stuck it out and continued their efforts, eventually making it possible for a covid vaccine to be created in record time. At which point, we all celebrated their achievement and praised their determination. Why do we continue to venerate that aspect of these tales? I think we offer extra praise points for extra suffering to avoid doing the hard work of actually fixing the things that make it so dreadfully difficult to succeed if you're not already successful. Changing the system to ensure future scientists have access to adequate resources sounds like far better thanks than some kudos for discovering a wonderful thing in spite of all the societally-erected barriers. What if these eventual Nobel Prize recipients had support from the beginning? How much less suffering could they have gone through and how much sooner could society have enjoyed the amazing finds they discovered? I feel the same way about almost every story I hear about an oppressed person rising above their oppression to open doors other people get to walk through just for existing. I recently read about Allyson Felix, a many-medaled Olympian. When she became pregnant, Nike drastically cut her endorsement. So she created her own brand of running shoes, overcame adversity, and went on to win more medals. All of which she could have accomplished without persecution. These survival and perseverance stories each have a double lesson available for the taking. One thing I'd like us to take away from all of them is: it doesn't actually have to be so damn difficult. The people who persist and resist and break through barriers definitely deserve appreciation, acknowledgement, and accolades. And also, can we please stop making some people's lives so fucking hard? Imagine the possibilities if all these amazing people could focus their grit and their determination and their creativity on just the thing they're trying to accomplish and not also on surviving the process. Information and Inspiration
Tragedy is part of the human experience. We have all experienced a personal tragedy, a community tragedy, a national tragedy, or a global tragedy at some point. Sometimes all at once. They can be caused by natural disasters or take the form of human constructions (sometimes both). The tragedy of October 7th that sparked the current Israel-Hamas war is entirely human in its creation. And while the event itself was horrifying at the time for the people who lived through it, the aftermath has been horrifying to me. There's a particular flavor in the way that attack on that date is being discussed by some media outlets and many Israeli mouthpieces which is both incomplete and dangerous. To hear some folks explain it, the events of October the 7th were a completely isolated incident that came out of nowhere. As if nothing came before which might have contributed to its occurrence. It is also the same way the news frames almost any riot or violent protest demanding police accountability or human rights: completely without regard for any of the tragedy that came before. It feels especially important to discuss this framing phenomenon during this week because it is Feast Week in the US. The official name for this holiday is Thanksgiving and it's origins have been used as a mechanism to whitewash the American genocide of native people. The context-free discussions about the October 7th violence are identical to the way some sections of US American Indian history is told. There are plaques around the country commemorating the deaths of white American settlers at the hands of vicious Indians. Never mind these incidents happened after and in response to brutality and settlers forcibly confiscating and setting on native land. I have re-shaped my November harvest feast holiday to include truth, acknowledgement, and activism. That's not the prevailing practice, so I put in deliberate effort to choose a different kind of participation. I had to acknowledge the complete horrifying history to fully see the through-line in today's societal systems which continue to cover up what really happened. It's not in the interests of capitalism or the status quo for people to opt-out of the chummy, white savior first thanksgiving narrative. But it is necessary for healing. My own healing, community healing, and healing the world. Another opportunity for reflection this week was Monday's Trans Day of Remembrance. Losing a friend or loved one or community member is always sad. Losing someone you care about because they couldn't find a way to keep on living or because someone else didn't want them to exist is nothing short of tragic. A lot of things coalesce to create these tragedies. They are not isolated incidents. It's critical to look beyond the incident itself and identify its roots. That's the only way we can hope to create change. So as you roast your turkey and mash your potatoes, or while you ignore the holiday and do literally anything else with your Thursday, please take a moment to consider everything that lead up to this moment in time. Remember it is possible to both recognize your own pain as well as the acknowledge the suffering of others. Figure out how to cultivate empathy and understanding for oppressed people lashing-out instead of judgement or reproach for desperate people employing desperate measures. Learn about the suffering other people experience. Read a book, watch a documentary, talk to a friend. Then decide how to live differently now that you know what's still going on for someone else. Information and Inspiration
I found myself incredibly busy over the summer. Not regular getting out in the nice weather while we have it busy, but extremely and unrelentingly doing ALL THE THINGS busy. Every moment on my calendar was full and every time slot assigned. I went on work trips, I went on vacation, I visited family, I went camping with friends, I helped family navigate illness and treatment, I played in sports tournaments, I attended memorials. All while maintaining my regular workload and teaching at the dojo when I was in town. I'm lucky my work is portable enough I can do it from almost anywhere. I enjoyed all the things I did and the places I went, but the immense volume of coming and going was decidedly not enjoyable. It was out of control. Once I finally stopped moving, I could reflecting on all that action. I realized I have had a long-standing practice of doing only the activities or projects I could justify as necessary or important. I can't just go putter around my garden because I enjoy it; I have to make time for weeding the garden because the garden needs to be weeded. Weeding is sufficiently important and therefore spending time in the garden is authorized. Recently I have been working quite diligently to liberate myself from productivity based value and other societal bullshit I picked up by living and working in our modern world. All the while laboring under the unfortunate falsehood that I still had to justify everything I was doing. That belief was so deep I couldn't see it lurking under the surface and soaking into everything else I was thinking and doing. No wonder I couldn't imagine a way to function in the world other than the self control and containment strategies I've been employing for decades. I'm glad I finally could see it, even if it took overdoing it for almost this entire year to finally be able to look at it. It was a painful realization and I tried to go easy on myself for having bought into the lie for so long. We collect the baggage we accumulate because it helps us survive. However uncomfortable the process of unearthing and examining it, I had to see the narrative running in the background before I could choose something different. And I needed to select a new base program to move forward and build the life I want Future Me to live in. And now my entire existence has been reshaped by the after-effects of Covid. I can’t participate in many of my regular activities because my body physically can't do them. For the first few weeks, I just didn't do those things. Like I was on vacation from regular life and would be returning at any moment. I haven't wanted to replace those hobbies, outlets, and events with new things because I want to feel like I will get to go back to my regularly scheduled programming at some point. But while that helped me maintain a certain volume of hope for a full recovery, it is also another kind of idling. It allowed me to temporarily avoid processing all my disappointment in my current circumstance as well as my feelings of inadequacy and incompleteness. Being physically strong and agile is an enormous slice of my personality pie. Suddenly loosing that capability has been devastating, and finding new outlets for my need to move my body and sweat has been a challenge. I feel like a completely differently shaped person. I'm ready to find out just how many amazing things this new body can do, I just need a little time to settle in and understand who is this new me. Information and Inspiration
Life is hard. All kinds of challenges show up in all kinds of places with all kinds of faces. I have lived through and overcome many in my lifetime so far, and I expect challenges will continue trending as long as I exist on this planet. To make it through the worst of times, one method I have relied on quite heavily is the “push on through” method. And while a dose of grin and bear it has always gotten me through to the other side of struggle, I never arrive unscathed. I show up with all the bruises, scrapes, and scars, emotional or otherwise. I was witness to an interesting example recently. My friend is having a challenging time right now, their spouse having recently been diagnosed with a deadly disease. I went with them to run an errand and on our way out of the parking lot they hit a bedraggled chair that had been left on its side part way into the lot’s exit. My friend kept going, despite my announcement about the chair, which got stuck in the wheel well. About a block later my friend finally pulled over, obliterating the chair into a hundred pieces. Later they couldn’t explain why they didn’t just stop the car. It was like they couldn’t even hear the rest of us making that very suggestion with rapidly increasing urgency. I think that moment is an analogy for how they have been trying to cope with their spouse’s death sentence diagnosis. It was unexpected news and nothing like anything they have ever experienced before. They are frightened and sad and confused and they don’t really know what to do. But part of their lizard brain knows they need to keep going, so they are pushing through it to survive. And while the pushing will probably get them through it, they might break some stuff along the way, including themselves. If one of the major flaws of pushing through is all the collateral damage, the other barrier is that sometimes you just... can't. I haven't been the same volume of capable since I had Covid. I can't just push through things I might have had no trouble with only weeks ago. My body is simply not capable of doing the same things. Neither is my brain. I can’t just emotionally armor-up and charge-in. If I do that for this challenge, the collateral damage is gonna be me. And all I will have accomplished is lengthening my recovery time. So I've got to make a new plan. Somehow I’ve got to adjust. Life keeps relentlessly occurring and we've all got to adjust to all kinds of things. Mental, physical, emotional, and practical. Sometimes it’s exactly the right moment to push on through. Other times it’s the moment for pausing to reflect and recalibrate. And still other times it’s time to call in reinforcements. Humans are a community-requiring species. The good news is humans are also very adaptable. I helped someone I didn’t expect adjust their perception of people who don’t have indoor housing. During a group discussion one person said, “Aren’t we really talking about two types of homeless people? The ones who are down on their luck and just need some help, and the ones who just want to lay around on the sidewalk and do their drugs?” “That’s a myth.” I began, and went on to explain that nobody wakes up one day and decides their life’s ambition is to become a drug addict who sleeps outside without access to sanitation, privacy, or stability. That’s nobody’s first choice. And people don’t go from healthy and functional to sidewalk drug stupor in an instant. It’s a process that starts with being "down on your luck" and the longer you spend without community support or access to resources the harder it is to escape the tragedy of your own circumstances. "I hadn't thought about it like that before," they said. Many people who are currently without stable housing or who have been housing-insecure at some point freely share their stories for anyone to read and listen to. Stories of circumstances that deprived them of housing in the first place. Stories of what it was like to be seen as less than human by everyone else walking by averting their eyes. Stories of how they made it off the streets (for those who are so lucky). These stories are devastating and not always easy to read. And they are also important for everyone to know and understand. The incredibly preventable suffering from a lack of housing is important for everyone in our extremely wealthy society to witness. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to want to keep on living each day while public officials and your fellow citizens spend time and money making sure they don't have to look at you or know you exist instead of helping you out. If we as a society agreed that we should instead take care of people as a basic number one priority, losing your housing wouldn’t be devastating to the rest of your life and livelihood. People can get through really challenging situations, including having no place to live, if they are otherwise cared for. I think back to all the times I have pushed through tough times when I could have chosen another way to cope. I made that choice in those moments because I felt alone. I felt like nobody else knew or understood what I was going through, and I often felt like I couldn't ask for help (which is almost always untrue). Humans are amazingly resilient, we can survive just about anything. And it's a whole lot easier with support from each other. There's a lot going on in the world right now that's challenging to deal with. Racism, misogyny, war, climate change, capitalism. Bizarre and vitriolic politics. I see a lot of people using the push on through method, putting their heads-down and just trying to survive until the danger passes. But all the big existential issues we have to sort out as a society don't actually have an end... they just keep going. So we can't wait until they pass, we have to solve these things now while they are still happening. The good news is we have to do it together. So let's do it. Together. Information and Inspiration
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AuthorJaydra is a human in-process, working to make the world a better place. Sharing thoughts, feelings, and observations about the human experience. Archives
March 2024
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