New Year, Some of the Same — New Year, Hearts Aflame
We’ve made it through the first days of 2021 and despite our hopes for them to be drastically different from 2020, it hasn’t much felt like the threshold we crossed has made a difference in the challenges we continue to face… Has it?
For weeks and months, we’ve all heard and seen people counting down the days to the new year, when the possibility that things could be different was so very longed for - expected, even. Alas, the hopes we’d pinned on the turning of the calendar page have not saved us from what this time has in store for us. And it’s rough.
Stephen and Melinda certainly did feel some real relief as the votes came in during the runoff in Georgia. We are so very thrilled at the progress we’ve seen largely due to incredible Black and Brown organizers on the ground there. And, almost concurrently, we were reminded of the white privilege that enabled the insurrectionists at the US Capitol to attempt to silence and snuff out the will of the People (however flawed the electoral college may be). Once again, what the eyes and spirits of Black and Brown bodies have seen for centuries became a gruesome display for all of us to witness: white supremacy perpetrates the most outrageous and heinous acts, especially when threatened. That people who feel both grossly un-heard and super entitled can do terrible, terrible things.
Many of our favorite authors, activists, and organizers have written beautiful, gut-wrenching reflections on what we saw at the Capitol last Wednesday. We’ve linked a few here. We are continuously grateful for those we can turn to for wisdom and guidance during these times.
“Um... but what does this have to do with health and healing?”
Everything. Because no matter who you are, you are impacted when other human beings are in peril.
No matter what you “believe politically,” you are affected when another life is threatened, discarded, mamed, or invaded. This deeply impacts us. ALL of us. It affects our bodies. And it informs what we observe in you, our dear patients and clients. Whether we like it or not, we are interdependent beings; we have responsibility to-- and futures bound up with-- one another. As frightening as it can be for our more staunchly independent parts, we actually need one another for co-regulation and coherence, which directly affects health outcomes.
As practitioners, we see the way bodies change in times like these - the way the pulse is impacted, the way that our nervous systems (that can and do take up so much data sans wifi connection) just happen to also flare on days like January 6, or in years like 2020.
We acknowledge that this has not been the beginning of the new year that so many of us had hoped for. And yet, it’s also a great reminder that the calendar isn’t going to change the world for us. The following phrase, shared by Lilla Watson, comes to mind: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
We’re all in this, and we so want you to know it is okay to feel impacted by all that is happening around you, by what you are seeing on TV or hearing on the radio, by the videos you are seeing on your social media feeds. It is merely human to be impacted by all of this, and we are too.
Now, especially, we want you to know:
We encourage you to be informed and vigilant and to explore your own privilege in a meaningful way.
We encourage you to care for yourselves and others in the ways that feel most meaningful to you. And if this means hunkering down and weeping for a night or two so that you can face the following day with an open heart, then that’s part of the work too.
We encourage you to, as our beloved Adriennne Maree Brown says, “center in revolutionary love.”
As practitioners, we’re not immune from this either: we, too, are actively doing this work.
We are here for you.