Deep, slow, intentional work

Just when some of us were starting to exhale, albeit tentatively and uneasily, with regards to the pandemic, the information coming out about the Delta variant over the past few weeks has been concerning and disheartening to many.

Speaking for myself, my anxiety is way up. I'm back to where a trip to the grocery store feels like a direct channel into all of humanity's hopes and fears, and I'm spending more time than I'd care to admit, or is healthy or helpful, "doom scrolling" on social media.

I am worried about various friends, family and communities, and anxious about what the next school year will bring, especially for my younger unvaccinated child, and all of our teachers and students across the country, not to mention our healthcare and other essential workers who have already been through so much.

I am trying to fight off a quiet sense of despair that we are ever collectively going to get ourselves together to put community needs above individual inconveniences.

I've been holding space for a lot of people over the course of this pandemic and frankly I'm exhausted - and I'm quite aware that I've had a relatively easy go of it. So many of the women I know are exhausted. The emotional labor falls disproportionately on us, and the things that some of us have gone through are not necessarily things we talk openly about because they're not always our stories to tell.

And it's not just the pandemic... it's Haiti, it's Afghanistan, it's climate change, it's voter suppression, it's systemic oppression, it's... all of it.

It's ok to be tired. It's ok to be anxious. It's ok to be grieving. It's ok to be scared.

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown has been bringing me a lot of comfort today. In talking about grief, she talks about how "the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction" and that "your grief is a worthwhile use of your time."

She also says:

"There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.

We need to go beyond having a critique/counter analysis/alternate systemic plan for society—we have to actually do everything differently, aligned with a different set of core principles for existence."

Here's to doing the deep, slow, intentional work of doing everything differently.

Banner photo by Deborah Diem on Unsplash

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