Weekly frameworks and practices to help you take meaningful action in impactful and sustainable ways.
It is not too late – but we must become embodied commitments now: The Wednesday 1-2-3
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Hey Reader, In the conversations I've had with friends the last couple days, there has been one prevailing and overwhelming theme: This week has been emotionally brutal for many of us. I'll just pause and speak from my experience here: since watching the attempted assassination of former President Trump, I've felt myself in a space of sadness, frustration, and – more than anything else – anxiety. It feels like a heaviness and a dread in my chest that just won’t let me go. And given my background both as a history teacher and as an activist, the likely political consequences of this event, the recent immunity ruling from the Supreme Court, the fervor and excitement of those at the Republican Convention, and witnessing what feels like absolute directionlessness from the Democratic Party…I’m deep-in-my-body scared. Recognizing that discomfort inside me, I've been asking myself what I am prepared to do in the coming days and weeks and months ahead. (Which I wrote more about here.) If you are feeling something similar, I invite you to sit with and move with the following invitation from Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents: We in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now. And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands. In the days ahead, I invite you to become an embodied commitment to resistance, justice, and healing in your community. The resources below have a few good places to start. ❓ Questions
🧰 ResourcesNote: The book below by Resmaa Menakem is, I believe, one of the most important books any of us can read in this moment. It is filled with tangible, tactical guidance on how to temper our bodies and understand the road ahead.
👉 Recommended Next ReadWith love and care and tension-filled hope, but hope nonetheless, |
The Gentle Change Newsletter
Weekly frameworks and practices to help you take meaningful action in impactful and sustainable ways.
Hey Reader, A quick request: as we come to the close of the year, I have a reader survey for you! It’ll only take a couple minutes and will help inform what The Wednesday 1-2-3 looks like going forward. 📝 Please complete this short 2024 Reader Survey (And in case it helps: there's a cute tardigrade gif at the end of the survey 😂) Last week I was talking with a friend about burnout – specifically “activist burnout.” He mentioned how folks who engage in activism often go full-speed ahead until...
Hey Reader, At the bottom of today’s email is a free 25-minute mini-workshop I recorded for you. It’s all about how we hold the charge of this moment – the heaviness, fear, unease, and discomfort of it all – in a gentle and intentional way. Just wanted to make sure you saw it 🙂 Alright – onward to today’s prompt: A couple weeks ago, I wrote that we are collectively living in the midst of a disillusioning moment. I defined this experience as: A moment when the illusion of “how the world works”...
Hey Reader, With Thanksgiving Day tomorrow for those of us in the United States, I thought it would be a good time to bring back the Consent/Closeness Matrix, which I first shared about a year ago. Designed by my colleague Catherine Quiring, the Consent/Closeness Matrix is a tool for helping us understand the stories we carry within us and their origins. (If you can't see the image above, you can view it here.) As you look at the matrix, you’ll notice two axes: Low consent - high consent...