harm reduction starts with self
I’m currently sitting at a kitchen table, having just arrived in Washington DC with a family I love. My child’s family who entered our lives through heartache and remained here with us because of the way opening to unconventional circumstances can lead to love. It’d be hard to believe that incredible things can birth from extreme dismay if I hadn’t lived these moments myself. I am doing a lot of yoga and eating veggies and sitting in dark rooms, rocking my body and releasing my tears. I have been sewing and baking and taking photos of deer beds in the field. I’ve been deepening my education, writing my representatives who forget who they are working for when their wages are paid by our tax dollars, and reposting well articulated instagram shares as means of connecting to my rage and to others in this anguish. Now I’m spending time with young kids and planning to visit museums, and maybe a drive by middle finger to the supreme court building and the white house. The new way of handling daily trauma is through regulation, by strengthening emotional intelligence and moving the body. This is a practice, made more difficult through shame or perfection so let’s leave those behind and just care for and tend to ourselves and those around us.
This week has felt like a similar despair to when a sexual predator took office back in 2016: america doesn’t care about womxn & doesn’t think everyone should have the right to our own bodily autonomy. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I lived under the guise for so long that I was safe enough as a white one. I’d be remiss if I didn’t name here the delusional thinking of superiority that is creating this microdosed hell we are in so we might all be on the same page as we try to move forward into a future we can give to our children. If you’ve been screaming, crying, or emotionally dysregulated this week then you’re likely paying attention. For anyone else joining, these are the systems working against all of humxnity so we know what we are living within and might draw us to becoming experts at undoing.
The dominant narrative of this country is the way history, education, advertising, cinema, and media tells a story through the lens of the dominant culture. How do we identify our dominant culture? I consider the majority of people who have been our elected leaders, who are white, male, and heterosexual, identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth via genitals (cis), able bodied, christian, and wealthy. Maybe some of these align with your experience. Maybe you can identify your own internalized biases when you examine what life might be for someone who has dark skin or is female or trans, experiences same sex attraction, muslim or hindu, working class or houseless.
Thanks to the most marginalized among us, we have names for these systems that prioritize each of these identities. These are words that anyone can google and learn more about: white supremacy or racism, patriarchy or misogyny, homophobia, ableism, classism, and theocracy. These are the psychological systems that leave little to no room or resources for anyone who doesn’t fit into the dominant narrative. Capitalism marries all of these systems together and uses our consumption to perpetuate these unsustainable and inequitable disparities. So ongoingly divesting from the pyramid scheme is part of the work, too.
I am white, female passing, non binary, queer, formerly christian/christian passing, and living comfortably by the extension of shared resources as a housed, impoverished solo parent with some body/mind limitations.
The first discrepancy of this system I remember witnessing was growing up in a predominantly white, small town with many small minds in a house with my japanese hawaiian sister and my under resourced, short haired tomboy of a mother.
The first discrepancy of this system I remember facing was at a seminary I couldn’t become a minister at—deduced to acquiring a MRS degree only—when I reported my sexual assault by another student who got to graduate and remains a minister today.
I’m over this bullshit and I don’t think it’s a measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Respect our existence or expect our resistance. We create care in our communities. We support, nurture, contribute to mutual aid. We stand with the outcasts who are marginalized by the social constructs of this nation. The future we want to collaboratively create is already happening here and now in each of us. Stay gentle with yourselves, tend to yours, and dream up and live out new possibilities. BIG LOVE / LET’S KEEP GOING
The Peace Of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
FIELD NOTES //
1. adrienne maree brown on an on being podcast episode
2. “buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa points out that to ignore someone or something is a willfull looking away, a grave act of denying what is already concious. Trungpa suggests that the willful act of looking away is a crime against the essence of things that costs us dearly. When we find our spirit on the move when we are pretending otherwise, the tension can be ripping. It leave us all with the need to learn how to discern between an innocent not-knowing and a willful looking away. this is an inner knowing that can determine whether we will live like a dog at the end of our leash or whether we will run free through the grasses of life.” Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
3. the eames video reminding us to scale out a bit as a matter of keeping perspective
4. friend pat shared a song by jewel with lyrics that hit, “lend our voices only to sounds of freedom, no longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from"
5. a vegan bowl with kale, beets, edamame, and quinoa
6. my uncle passed away last week. my mom brought me this saint patrick from his house. I read up on his history before I hung him on my wall. He was British, kidnapped at 16 and sold into slavery doing shepherd’s work in isolation. Out of desperation, he began to pray. He had a vision of his escape so he crossed over 200 miles on foot as a fugitiave slave. After some time in recovery, he believed he had a mission to the people he had left behind in Ireland, championing the causes of women, the poor, and other slaves.
7. this is love podcast, episode 41: finding joy
8. another oldie but goodie video on how small we are by carl sagan
9. some music from emahoy
10. I did not want to write a newsletter, my spirit feels depleted by all the hard news. but it’s a practice I am devoted to and it gives me a sense of connection to others on the path of abolitionism. This issue of ALICE is dedicated to the hilarious performer who gives the internet/audiences direct education through entertainment, Amanda Seales. Thanks for reading. <3