Mornings after
Grief, anger, and what we do now
Hello my friends,
Here’s a note I wrote not because I’m particularly wise, but because so often I write what I need to hear. Maybe you need to hear it too . . .
Yesterday, the day after Donald Trump was declared president elect, like many of you, I was in my feelings. Most of the day I felt a deep grief under a weighted blanket of numbness as I ran through the implications of this regime change, which not only have disastrous, deadly implications for many within the U.S. borders but for the whole world, thanks to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mandate, his history of impeding vital climate action at every turn. Just a couple weeks after a UN report that suggested we’re on track for a catastrophic 3.1 degrees warming by the end of the century, the majority of Americans voted in favour of mass death and climate chaos, amongst other horrors.
I was texting with my friend Jess about waking up in “the darkest timeline” as she called it, and then to perk me up, she asked if I’d like to help her plant a garden in her new apartment’s yard come spring. (If you ask me this, you should know the answer is always yes.) Jess has been going through her own very challenging time, and one way she’s dealing with it is improving her rental apartment. She said, “I have the skills and tools and a bunch of free stuff to make it a little better for the next person who lives here.”
And, guys, if that isn’t a metaphor, I don’t know what is.
I abandoned my silly little work tasks, went outside into the 21 degree Celsius November weather, and immediately winter-sowed seven jugs of native plants for Jess and for whoever else wants them. Because I needed to affirm that something good could still come out of a dark day.
And standing in my yard, soil under my fingers, unseasonably warm breeze on my skin, sun beaming warm light through the mulberry tree, I felt, suddenly, other emotions enter the chat: responsibility, tenderness, love, capability.
Also a little momentum. After planting the seeds, I harvested other native seeds for saving and sharing in the co-op seed library, and then I harvested some chard and hot peppers, and later, when my good friend and neighbour told me she was also in the bell jar, I invited her on a walk to drop off the harvest at the community fridge — which is part of a system outside capitalism, outside philanthropy, a mutual aid effort in which we show up to meet each other’s needs.
Which is one thing, in these next years, we will be called to do if we want to challenge the forces of selfishness and extraction and domination that are embodied in the Trump regime (and the very likely Poilievre one coming our way north of 49).
So, yes, grieve, scream into the night, sob until you’re a heap on the floor. But then get up, dear one, take some breaths, and let those feelings be a wayfinding tool. There is always something you can do to make Planet Earth, our temporary home, a little better than you found it — and the amazing thing is that these acts of care are self-care too. You’ve helped address one small problem today. These acts are your passport into a world of kindness and care and restoration and renewal because you are building that world act by act, brick by brick, seed by seed.
“Our choice is to build,” said patron saint of digging in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in an Instagram live yesterday, offering a good reminder that the most effective acts are ones we do together. And luckily, there are people doing this work already, and they need help more than ever. They are sending abortion pills from Mexico, running community fridge networks, establishing gender-neutral bathrooms, raising bail funds, supporting candidates in by-elections, writing letters and making vats of food and taking to the streets and and and . . . There are opportunities everywhere to be part of movements for care, compassion, and justice.
In a recent Anne Helen Petersen newsletter, she interviewed Hahrie Han, the author of Undivided, a book about an anti-racism program at an American church. This was the part of the interview that stuck out to me:
In Undivided, I witnessed people engaged in real struggle around the question, “What do I believe?” Not everyone asks themselves that question, but it is not that rare to find someone who does. What is more unusual, I think, is the next question people in Undivided asked themselves: “Because of what I believe, what must I do?” The people in Undivided engaged directly with the question of what their faith called them to believe, but then also what that meant for how they must behave in a complex, messy world.
“Because of what I believe, what must I do?” That, I think, is the question at the heart of this terrifying time. Which is not only a question to help address some of the great problems of this world, but the chasm of anger and sadness and fear in ourselves.
If it helps, write out a few of those core beliefs, the ones that are so painful right now. “I believe in caring for all the beings of this planet,” “I believe in reproductive rights,” “I believe civilians should not be bombed.” And then add another list of actions those beliefs require. You likely can’t do them all, but you can do some, and the world will be better for it. You will be too.
I started this newsletter in the thick of the first Trump presidency, another truly terrifying period. And yet during that time, many of you stepped up to do things that made this world a bit better. “You could make this place beautiful,” says the last line of Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones,” which went viral during that last dark regime. Maybe beautiful is too much to ask, given what lies in front of us. Not all of our actions will yield beauty. But the key part remains “You could make this place.”
And with whatever we do or don’t do, we are making this place one day at a time.
Parting Wisdom
“We all have gifts strategies insights and challenges that are going to manifest in this life in this body in this time in this place for a reason. And I believe that if this country really is a house on a fire, we chose to live out our lives here because we are water. We are here because we have a gift for saving our selves and each other.” — Saeed Jones
“Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively. Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lies dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modeling its opposite. Cynicism often masquerades as nobler faculties and dispositions, but is categorically inferior. Unlike that great Rilkean life-expanding doubt, it is a contracting force. Unlike critical thinking, that pillar of reason and necessary counterpart to hope, it is inherently uncreative, unconstructive, and spiritually corrosive. Life, like the universe itself, tolerates no stasis — in the absence of growth, decay usurps the order. Like all forms of destruction, cynicism is infinitely easier and lazier than construction. There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincerity and acting from a place of largehearted, constructive, rational faith in the human spirit, continually bending toward growth and betterment. This remains the most potent antidote to cynicism. Today, especially, it is an act of courage and resistance.” — Maria Popova
Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, my friends. In fact, care is the word I’ve been carrying with me like a talisman, and I’m working on another letter for you all that gets into the how of it. In the meantime, it’s always a good day to plant a seed.
xo
Jen
Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by Crissy Boylan. Photo by Niklas Ohlrogge (niamoh.de) on Unsplash.
Still avoiding the news and in denial…