Hello from A New Place
I'm sharing my fears and hopes amidst current chaos and urging us to find connection and resilience.
Dear Friends,
What a blow right? I gave my anxiety a break on that particular Tuesday afternoon, saying at least there would be some time to process as surely it wouldn’t be decisive. And boy, was it decisive. Americans looked at a racist and misogynist fascist and said:
I want more of that. Give me more of that. Give me prisons and punishment, give me harassment and cruelty, give me toxic masculinity and white male power.
And when they lose their healthcare, their social security, when their child dies of polio or when they are ripped away by a tornado because there is no more NWS, will they still side with cruelty?
It’s scary right now. It’s 70 degrees in Massachusetts in November. And because it helps to name our fears, here are mine:
I am afraid for: my child, my lgbtqia friends, immigrants, people of color, women, and the earth that’s on the verge of collapsing, my body (its health and it as a target).
I am afraid of: white men, violence, policing, guns, the glee in the cruelty, not knowing who I can trust, being suspicious of strangers, my rage not helping anything, mass deportations, helplessness, exhaustion, and how much this will hurt the next generation or two.
There will be more fears – some will grow and others will recede. Still it is in this moment, that I want to thank folks for reaching out and checking on me. This is the community part that gives me hope.
So I am here to share a few things with you.
Name your fears. Don’t let them rattle in your head or press in your chest. Name them and let them go for a bit. Or take a small action that can counter one of those fears.
Be in your body. Take walks, do breathing, get a massage, give a massage, dance to a good song.
Go towards the warmth. Find the collaborators and disruptors, the writers and artists, the lovers and be with them. Refuel.
Keep a low flame. Take breaks from social media, try to limit the damage from the media as they chatter about what went wrong and who to blame.
Find your influence. Your networks are stronger than you think. Every small action counts.
You belong here. You deserve to have a wonderful, joyous, meaningful life no matter who the fuck is in charge of the country.
I am stealing a lot of this from Beth Pickens, who gave a wonderful talk the day after the election and shared a few other resources with us, including this pdf called, Make Art During Fascism. (Reply to this email and I will send it to you!)
It sucks to go back. It really does. Sometimes I don’t think my body can handle the stress of it again.
It feels like the pandemic again — that surge of darkness, the unknowing of the exact damage, but knowing enough that it would be bad. The distrust of neighbors. Who is vaccinated? Who refuses to wear a mask?
Everything shitty is new again.
Then I read this by Kelly Hayes:
If you are hurting right now, remember that the pain you are feeling is a natural consequence of your decency. Don't try to bury that. Nurture the tender parts of yourself. Your capacity to feel other people’s pain is inextricably linked to your potential to change the world. Your grief is bound up in your understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all and that all of our fates are connected. Evading your grief will only compound your angst and isolation, or even increase your tolerance for injustice. We cannot afford to let that happen.
Speaking of Grief
The Notebooks Collective held a reading for Saara Myrene Raappana, who passed earlier this year from cancer. Her book Chamber after Chamber won the Juniper Prize for Poetry, but she died before she could do a tour and she agreed to let her husband take her book into the world.
The reading was beautiful — with Saara’s voice in the room, it was hard to hold back tears. Her writing is honest, vulnerable, and always with a touch of the ridiculous - that whimsy as her husband called it - that prevented anything from ever being too dour.
It is because of her that I started this newsletter up again. I read through our old livejournal entries and I loved the conversation, the random questions, the little bits of poetry we would share.
Until Next Time
I hope to send more frequent updates. Since Tiny Letter was forced to close, I have been sitting with this Buttondown account. Now that I have dug into the backend of this platform, I am more confident about sending newsletters on a more frequent schedule. (Of course, it’s easy to be more frequent than once a year.)
Please share this newsletter with a friend if you care to as I plan to also do mini-zines and other writing styles once I get this initial letter out the door!
It’s hard to end this when one is sitting in the mix of new ventures and grief. Possibility and despair. However, I send you courage. Courage in all the things.