“The language of our moment is a gasp.”
-Bayo Akomolafe
We are facing a great deal of uncertainty at the moment. I’m left with far more questions than answers…
Innumerable climate disasters constantly change our landscape. A looming midterm election, voter suppression, violence, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-trans attacks, ableism, sickness, disease & exhaustion from three long years of a disabling and deadly pandemic. We’ve lost millions of human lives - friends, family members, teachers, beloveds. The constructs of white modernity erase mass death and disability from public view.
Millions more ecological systems have been eradicated. Collective dissociation from climate realities mimics the lack of care and concern from our leaders, our governing bodies and from “imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy,” as bell hooks would say. This can be a cold reality. We are finite and tender. We can only do so much when we’re up against giants and their murderous machinations.
We are all surviving late-capitalism. Many have lost or left jobs; many work to the bone only to be paid less than the cost of living; our infrastructures & institutions are failing us; people with uteruses are being forced to carry pregnancies; bodily autonomy and consent have been abandoned. Fear, hatred, terror are on the rise. Fascism has come into fashion (again, as it always does.) Collective policy around public health is lacking. Eugenicist ideologies flourish. Forces of disruption render us powerless on a regular basis. Yet, here we are - living, breathing, gathered with shreds of hope and love as our guides. We are gathered to acknowledge shared realities and to turn toward ourselves in times of great urgency.
"Survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change."
- Audre Lorde, “Sister Outsider” (1984)
Undermining oppressive systems requires us to turn inward, to get smaller, to “right-size” ourselves, to pay attention to the unseen, the unknown and the unacknowledged. Undermining these systems requires a willingness to grieve, to stay present with ourselves and to develop practices of curiosity rather than certainty.
Some questions I’ll be troubling with this week and beyond:
How can we develop practices of competency in uncertainty?
How can we allow ourselves to sink into the uncertainty of these troubling realities? How can we rest with what is, even if just for a moment?
How can we shape-shift toward tenderness and softness? How can grief and hopelessness become forces of liberation?
How can we practice curiosity & imagination in a culture that force-feeds us false hopes & narratives of certainty?
I don’t have any advice to offer today. I do have a ton of gratitude that I would like to express. I’ve met so many people this week who are all, in their own ways, struggling through the muck and seeking support. Gathering together with shared goals and open hearts is incredibly relieving to me. A big thank you to my fellow, finite, tender hearts.
I hope you all find moments of respite and sanctuary as we navigate through the next week.
Stay nimble,
elena
Beautifully put and so so needed! Thank you Elena! So glad to have found you! And thank you to Martha Crawford for the connection(s)! Looking forward to traveling together down these uncertain roads in these (what seem like more than ever but not really, when you think about it) uncertain times.