Hope is a heart shaped like a bloody fist

Grieve, rage, sleep, then love/fight like hell

Vol. 52

I don’t have a lot of words today, only the increasingly familiar feeling of deep grief and heartbreak mixed with white-hot anger. 

I hope you are able to take space and time to feel whatever mix of emotions you need to feel today and for however long. I hope the people around you give you the grace to feel those feelings, and I hope you return that grace, even if other people express themselves in ways that you wouldn’t or that make you uncomfortable. For those of us feeling sadness, outrage, surprise, fear, and/or bitter resignation, remember that we all share the same core belief that things ought to be better than this. Hold onto that and to each other.

I will never love a nation or a political party. How could I? They are ephemeral constructs, too often created and maintained by suffering. 

I will love people, messy and frustrating though we so often are, and I will love the flowers and trees and water and air and the heart in my chest that still beats despite the horrors. Yours, too.

Here are some words that are bringing me comfort and/or direction today. Maybe you’ll find something in them for you, too:

“I’m Gonna Love the Hell Out of You” by Garrett Bucks

“Wildflowers” (a poem) by Maya Stein

“To transform our trauma, we must nurture movements for change” by Kelly Hayes

Here’s what I’m telling myself that may be useful for you, too: Feel your pain and then gather yourself and your energy, reach out, skill up, and if you have not already, tap into community and movement building where it is already happening (and it is–most often in the smaller, local groups/efforts). Create it anew where it’s needed. Carry each other. Find common goals and organize around them, even when your tactics differ, even when you fumble and make mistakes, even when you don’t like everyone in the movement–love them, because they are people like you, who believe things can and should be better for all.

We have got to stop letting election day be the beginning and end of civic engagement for so many of us. We have to stop accepting scraps from a two-party system that ignores (at best) and condones (at worst) genocide and oppression and the hoarding of wealth.

We have to love harder, fight harder, than ever before. That is the only path forward through the darkness.

Wisconsin mutual aid and organizing resources:

WMF Wisconsin - statewide abortion fund

Leaders Igniting Transformation - supporting young leaders of color in Wisconsin

Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine

Diverse & Resilient - LGBTQ-run and focused health organization

Voces de la Frontera - immigrant rights/support

Please add others in the comments!

Parting thoughts from other people

From the legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick: “This campaign was run on the explicit promise to inflict maximal suffering on a lot of disfavored and marginalized people. I trust them to keep that promise. Try to keep your heart soft because that will be the work. Take care of yourself because you will do that work again.”

From Ruth Ben-Ghiat from her book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” in a chapter on resistance: “Individual actions designed to be seen by the public break through the screen of official media and offer models of resistance that can be transformative. They seed the terrain for the mass nonviolent protests that can grow in response to state repression … For millions, acts of resistance have been a path to the recovery of the self and the reaffirmation of dignity, empathy and solidarity — all qualities the strongman seeks to destroy in his people.”

Octavia Butler (from 2020) on what to do to fight the slide into fascism: “There is no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

Final Frame.

Witches flotilla 2024 in Madison. Find joy wherever you can.

Happy birthday to my love, C. The world is infinitely better with you in it.

‘Til Next Time.

I love you. Stay here. Keep going.