Welcome to the Shit Show That is Our World
How to take embodied action during chaotic times.
🙏🏾Thank you 🙏🏾
In this newsletter:
🌎 Overview of the current world affairs.
🧘♀️ How to feel your feelings without imploding.
🧠 Quick look at the nervous system and why it’s important when you want to take action towards change.
✨ Creating a brighter future as a collective.
"There's this concept of suffering central to so many of us as activists, organizers, or anyone trying to change the world… so much of how we get pulled into community and kept in community is a solidarity built around our suffering… which is not liberatory. We're not meant to suffer alone. We're meant to experience pleasure and togetherness." - adrienne maree brown, "Pleasure Activism," Chapter: "the legacy of "uses of the erotic."
Dear Diary…
The world is experiencing an unprecedented amount of grief, sorrow, and heartache at the moment.
The attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas left 1,400 children, women, and men dead, thousands more injured, and more than 200+ individuals, including 30 children & babies, taken as hostages. The continued bombing, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military has left roughly 2,500 women & men and 2,500 children dead. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are without homes, food, water, or fuel.
Side note: This was written on October 25th, so many of the numbers above may have changed by the time of publication.
** The death toll of Palestinians has now reached 10,000 civilians lost, and the health-care system is on the brink of collapse.
The war in Sudan has killed 9,000 people and left millions displaced.
There has been a mass genocide and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Armenian people by the Azerbaijan government.
Let alone the murder of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was stabbed 26 times by their landlord, and the murder of Samantha Woll, the president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, who was found stabbed to death outside her home.
Side Note:
We see death, destruction, and grief on our television, the internet, social media, and the radio on a micro and macro level, giving us reasons to fear life and living itself.
We see these images of human suffering and experience many feelings and emotions. We are unsure what to do with all of this energy that seems to build into an unbearable pressure, causing us to implode.
I know this is just the tip of the iceberg. Everything I shared above doesn't even include everything you're going through in your personal life.
I don't share this to make you sad, feel bad, or depressed. I share this with you because this is NOT normal.
Death on this scale is not normal, and we shouldn't accept it as such.
Feel the Feels
Stop.
Check in with your body.
How are you feeling?
I know that was a lot.
Take a second to breathe. Be present with your breath. Your emotions. Allow them to course through you.
If I've learned anything in the past eight years from my embodiment journey, it is that emotions are powerful beyond measure. If we allow them to, they can become conduits for remarkable power and more significant change. If we allow them to, they can show us what isn't exactly working in our lives and society and lead us toward a more fruitful future for ourselves and the next generation.
But because we aren't sure how to channel this energy for our highest good, and because the energy of our emotions can feel intense, we either numb what we're feeling or we try to push it down so far into our bodies, hoping that feelings of discomfort will eventually go away.
But it never does. It usually turns into something else. It turns into anger towards strangers, the ones we love, or ourselves. It turns into frustration. It turns into feeling like we don't want to do anything with our lives. It turns into feeling stagnant, lost, and confused. But I'm here to tell you that wherever you currently are in your emotions and feelings, whether you know why you feel the way you do or not, it's perfectly fine. It's never too late to choose something different. I can't tell you how often I have felt down and out about life, not just my life but our lives as a collective. Because, at the moment, it feels like the world is just one giant dumpster fire with no end in sight.
Feeling the Feels Meditation:
A Big Dumpster Fire
And that big dumpster fire of frustration, confusion, skepticism, uncertainty, and doubt can become overwhelming, overwhelm can turn into hopelessness, and hopelessness can lead to complacency or a cocktail for burnout, and nothing creative comes from a space of burnout.
So, if you're feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, complacent, or burned out, the best way to process this energy and channel it in an empowering way is to Breathe, Move, and Ground
Quick thought on burnout:
The Antidote to Burnout
"Let us honor what is happening to our bodies, the histories of trauma we are holding in our bodies that block us from desire. Whether or not you're telling the story of the healing of your body, that's release. Whether or not you're literally learning-how to make sound with your voice. If you have a different abilities and you're not able to do it with your voice, how do you make shape with your body, that repeats pattern, that can transform pattern into a new metamorphosis?" - Cara Page, "Pleasure Activism," Chapter: "the legacy of "uses of the erotic"
Breathe, Move, and Ground seems simple, right? Too good to be true?
Anyone who knows me knows I am a geek when it comes to the nervous system. After all, I have it tattooed on my arm!
Our nervous system isn't just responsible for regulating how our body functions from day to day; it is also a significant contributor to how we process & digest information.
Quick nervous system lesson.
Our nervous system is broken down into three parts:
Ventral Vagal - System of Connection:
Meet the demands of the day
Connection and communicate
Go with the flow
Engage with life
Sympathetic - System of Action:
Filled with chaotic energy
Mobilized to attack
Driven to escape
Anxious
Angry
Dorsal Vagal - System of Shutdown
Just go through the motions
Drained of energy
Disconnect
Lose hope
Give up
The Ventral Vagal nervous system is all about regulation. When anchored into our ventral vagal, we find ourselves in a state of safety and connection. Once we start moving out of a regulated state and slowly become dysregulated, a plethora of reasons can cause this; our nervous system will first move into the sympathetic nervous system and then into the dorsal nervous system, where we'll find ourselves completely dysregulated and shut down.
The simple acts of breathing and moving our body can allow us to come home to ourselves, align with our core values, and give us the space to mobilize and get into action.
Breathe, close your eyes, and take three deep breaths. Breathe all the way past your diaphragm, deep into your belly, expanding it as big as possible. Do this three times or as often as it takes to bring you into the present moment and center your energy.
Move your body, the sensations of overwhelm and helplessness can flood your nervous system with hormones that can cause your flight, fight, freeze response to kick in. By moving your body, it allows you to move those responses through your body, bringing your body back to homeostasis, which allows you to act from a space of clarity instead of survival. So move your body, jump up and down, do jumping jacks, run in place, and get that energy moving up and out.
Ground yourself, stand with your feet planted firmly on the ground. I highly recommend you do this outside with the grass or dirt supporting you. Feel yourself being held and supported by the earth. Release sensations, feelings, and thoughts that are not serving you into the ground. And let the earth's energy replenish or energize you with warm and loving vibrations. You are not alone. You are held.
Now, you can act from a place of clarity and heart and mind alignment.
This is mobilization and getting into action.
Action can look like
Choosing one issue that you deeply connect with. Find a reputable foundation to contribute to. Decide what kind of resource you'd like to donate. Is it your time, money, or energy? Decide how much for how long.
Get in community, and invite family and friends to help. Doing this with family and friends can help make sharing resources feel more like a community effort instead of a solo one.
Share, share what you're doing with others, and encourage them to do the same. Perhaps share causes that you deeply care about but don't have the resources to donate at that time. Perhaps this will inspire others to get involved with those causes, too.
Know that however you decide to show up is absolutely perfect.
Don't make yourself wrong if you feel like you're doing too little; doing what you can creates a world of difference.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
If I've learned anything in the past few years, it's that this world is incredibly small, and we are truly turning into a global community because we see things that are happening on the other side of the world and we see how it affects other people, and we see how it changes their lives forever. All in REAL time! And we feel how it changes us forever because we share in their grief; we share in their pain because we understand that these are just other humans trying to do their best to live the best lives that they possibly can. Also, if I've learned anything in the past few years, it's that life is so fucking precious.
And I know that's very cliche, and so many people say that, but it's fucking true.
Life is precious.
I have hope in humanity. We can turn this all around but we can't do it alone; we must do it together.
Though I believe we must go on our healing journeys and find the path toward feeling whole and complete on our own, there is a collective journey we must go on together. One of forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation. One where we let go of our individual stories and realize that we are all one. And not in a woo-woo way, but we must realize that our freedom is tied to one another. If one of us is not free, we're all not free. If one of us is oppressed, we're all oppressed. Everyone's oppression looks different, but we're all in chains. We must realize that our lives are interconnected. What hurts one hurts the whole of us. And until we begin to live this Universal truth, I'm afraid we may be doomed.
But I do believe there is time for us to turn this around. And it begins with taking care of one another, looking out not just for our good but for the good of everyone.
It is time to get our heads out of the sand and face some hard, uncomfortable, and inconvenient truths.
Life is a miracle; it's time we treat one another as such.
🔗Resources:
Gaza Doctor Says Hospitals Have to Choose Who Lives and Who Dies Amid Worsening Humanitarian Crisis
One of my favorites, Lynae Vanee, explaining the war in Sudan
Sudan's war passed 6 months, with much of the world consumed by other conflicts
What Cultural Genocide Looks Like for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh
Wadea al-Fayoume: Last words of knifed US Muslim boy were 'Mom, I'm fine'
Funeral held for Detroit synagogue president as police search for motive
“History repeating itself”: How the Israel-Hamas war is fueling hate against Muslims and Jews
👀Sneak Peak of Thursdays “Shits & Giggles” Newsletter:
“Healing from White Wellness” Excerpt -
I have craved community and a sense of belonging since I can remember. I wanted acceptance with people I felt truly got me, and in many ways, I found that community in spiritual growth spaces. Still, I also felt a lot of times that I had to check parts of me at the door to be entirely accepted into the community, which doesn't work when it comes to healing and stepping powerfully into the truth of who you are. It's hard to heal when parts of those truths are overlooked or unaccepted.
What I have found in predominantly white spiritual spaces is white people bringing their whole selves to the space. They can bring the totality of who they are and be held in that totality by the members of the community, which is often needed when you are on a healing journey. Healing is much more potent in community; in my experience, it's beautiful for others to hold your vision of healing alongside you.
However, I have found that women and people of color are not afforded the same opportunities because we must check our color and the experiences at the door. We have to check our melanated experiences at the door.
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A new newsletter drops every Monday and Thursday!
Monday’s newsletter is the “Welcome to the Shit Show” series. In these essays, we'll be diving into all things political, spiritual, and personal development. My goal here is pretty simple: I want you to discover something new or see a familiar topic in a whole new light.
Thursday's newsletter is all about "Shits and Giggles," where I spill my thoughts on a specific topic. Plus, I’ll be sharing awesome content from creators I adore and am learning a ton from.