What is My Role in the Revolution?
How you holding up? How is your nervous system post election?
It's been a pretty crazy last week or so to say the absolute least.
But I have to be honest........in the days leading up to, during and after the election I found myself mostly regulated, discerning and intentional with my information consumption, energy, actions and people I was surrounded by.
That regulated part might surprise you given what we were all collectively dealing with.
Does that mean I liked what happened? Clearly not.
Did I feel a way? Yes, of course.
But I remained grounded and mostly focused on what I could control.
This is wildly different from my reaction in 2016 (i.e chaotic, scattered and dysregulated)........so what allowed and continues to allow for this shift?
Certainly a deep commitment to more rest (please ya’ll, get into Tricia Hersey’s work if you haven't already), right community, energetic boundaries and nervous system regulation over the last couple of years is a huge component but there was something else.
I have always been someone committed to figuring out how to leave the world a more healed and just place than I found it.
But for the last year, ever since I started seeing the indescribable violence of multiple genocides (funded or supported by the US government) live streamed to my Instagram timeline, something deeper started to awaken within me.
A part of this awakening flame has been stoked by a question I saw last year on someone’s feed that has stayed with me every day since:
What is my role in the revolution?
Every single day when I approach my altar, one of the prayers that I ask my Ancestors and Guides is:
“Please show me my specific role in this revolution. Please show me in a way that I can easily receive and understand.”
And then I listen. And I pay attention to what shows up. I notice the signs and themes that arise day after day.
Asking this question and listening to the answer is one of the main ways in which I got clear that I needed and wanted to cultivate an intentional healing and creative space for myself and others, particularly during election time, so that we could have a different experience.
This, as well as reflecting deeply on the social change ecosystem map and identifying which role(s) I most aligned with.
This was a big part of how I was able to create the 11 Day Everyday Artist Creativity Challenge for before, during and after the election.
Me and other folks came together to emotionally regulate and focus on our creativity - and build creative confidence - in community with one another.
We operated with the understanding that our emotional regulation and creative work not only directly impacted ourselves but had the capacity to impact how we showed up in the world, especially now.
It was an offering to myself as well as to the world and was a direct reflection to that question.
The reason I am so diligent and adamant about asking this and talking about this, now more than ever, is because for those who feel called towards this question - self included - we really have to start getting clear about our answer.
So that we can make the change we want to make in the way that is most appropriate and fulfilling for us (and impactful beyond us) - not necessarily (always) based off of what others are doing, saying or moving.
In a world that is very loud, where social media has given many a platform to speak (often shout) and share voices and opinions, it can be challenging to be clear about our own perspective.
To hear our own voice.
To know what is true and not true for us.
To discern what thoughts, emotions, energy or trauma belongs to us and what does not.
To align with our purpose.
To understand what actions to take.
I’m not sure if you noticed but the last week has been very loud…….and kind of a shit show.
I mean, the last couple of months (years) have been a shit show, of course interwoven with some beautiful moments - but still predominantly a shit show.
And the last week hasn’t been any different - the collective trauma response to the election and post election results has been large, loud and intense.
Staying close to this question: What is my role in the revolution? - and its accompanying answers - has been my north star and knife that cuts through the noise.
The way I see it, this question has 2 distinct parts:
1.) What is my role in tending to myself?
2.) What is my role in tending and contributing beyond myself?
In times where it becomes very obvious how big of a change is needed, It can be really easy to start looking at what our external impact could be and the ways in which we want to publicly contribute.
But the reality is that the easiest and most important place we can start is with ourselves - because that ultimately always impacts how we show up in the collective.
“What is my role in tending to myself?” can be looked at from many angles but I like to filter it to three.
1.) Regulate
Getting emotionally regulated, even if it’s marginally, is my first response for most things because it so often dictates how we show up to conflict, our relationships, our work and to the world.
This doesn’t mean getting rid of our feelings but rather giving ourselves the capacity to respond vs. react.
I don't believe this has to be done alone - my experience practicing emotional regulation in community, such as with the Everyday Artist, was vulnerable but also deeply healing.
What I noticed most about election time and honestly most of social media time is the tendency for folks to blow their trauma through the internet, especially during times of crises (which let’s be honest, is often).
What I mean by this is that as a means of trying to self-regulate, there can sometimes be a tendency to post something instead of processing or simply sitting with the experience.
This isn’t a judgement - I have done it may times as well - nor is it to say that all personal shares or posts are coming from this place.
It is to say that there is a pattern of this happening.
Lately when I have been tempted to post something, I ask myself: am I reacting? Or am I responding? What's the intention behind sharing x,y,z?
..........And then being really f**king honest with myself.
If it's the former, when I have time and space to do so, I give myself the gift of emotional regulation - usually with EFT Tapping - even if it's just for 5 minutes.
This of course, and more importantly, goes beyond social media and into our interpersonal dynamics as well - and the same process as above still applies.
A Few Additional Resources for Regulating During these Times:
2.) Reflect
Post election (and really all the time), in noticing various emotional reactions, I often ask myself (or at times a client):
What emotion or response is this bringing up in me?
When else have I felt this?
What is familiar about this feeling in my own life / experience?
How can I tend to this?
Specifically in the case of the election, we might observe:
What does this anger / grief remind me of?
When else have I felt this?
What is my relationship to power and what am I noticing is being activated now?
Additional resource:
(Via Nitika Raj newsletter): Undrowned author Alexis Pauline Gumbs talks about the first 100 days of finding your own power through Audre Lorde’s bicentennial poem applied to this moment
3.) Release
Once we can get clear on what emotions are ours to own, we can begin to discern and let go of emotional responses that actually don't belong to us.
This is how we can create healthy interconnected experiences with our community or the collective vs. an enmeshed or entangled one.
Especially for the sensitive folks, particularly during intense collective moments or times of crises, not everything we feel is ours.
Additional resources:
EFT for releasing others energy
I don't think the intensity of the moment is necessarily going to let up any time soon (I mean has it even since 2020?) which is why I'm always trying to make note - large and part for myself - of what works.
We are going to have to think different, be different, move different and act different (of course using the blueprints of so many who came before us who navigated the same exact things) if we want to create something different for ourselves and for the future.
Which, to be clear, is entirely possible.
Next week in Part 2 we'll look deeper at “What is my role in tending and contributing beyond myself”