Background photo by Joshua Earle

This is where I'm going.

It's difficult to write this week.

It's been a week since... that happened, and my body and mind roils with so much... stuff, I clam up.

I finished up and published last week's post, Moving into the how, just as polling was wrapping up for the 2024 United States presidential election. I learned the results, unintentionally, late that night, Australia time.

Since then, it's been a rollercoaster of emotions. I got over the disappointment surprisingly quickly, but I continue to swing between grief, horror, dread and determination.

Like many have shared on Mastodon, sleep has been difficult. I've observed the reawakening of trauma-survival mechanisms within me that I thought long laid to peaceful rest.

This is particularly harrowing for anyone who has experienced, or is still experiencing, abusive relational dynamics. We are witnessing the validation and celebration of dehumanization unfold before our very eyes.

It is nauseating. Yet, I cannot turn away. I refuse to. For that's what I did during Donald Trump's first presidency. I turned away. I succumbed to exactly what Martin Niemöller wrote about in his 1946 post-war confessional prose, more popularly known as its poetic form of First they came...

We can talk ourselves out of it with the excuse that it would have cost me my head if I had spoken out.

I hid behind my privilege, masked as a holier-than-thou criticism of politics, and I am ashamed that I did. I contributed to the larger problem through my denial and apathy, once. Never again. Better late than never. Better late than digging in.

If I truly claim to believe in and work towards generativity for all, I can no longer afford to entertain thoughts like:

"This has nothing to do with me,"
"I have no voice," or
"I'm just one person."

In conversations with friends this past week, I shared that I woke up the day after with an unexpected sense of determination.

Meaningful or pointless, I can't say, and I don't care. I refuse to sit idle from here on. What to do? No idea yet. Not rushing in. This is long-haul, beyond our lifetime. Every voice counts, however small.

It renders the questions I asked in my last post, Moving into the how, in sudden, stark relief.

How do I want to navigate this space that is the political?
What do I expect myself to do here?
What are the outcomes I want, or dream of?

For I need to do so in a way that's also aligned with my values. My personal conviction is that I can only walk my life, and know that walking is enough.

I refuse to be an authority, expert, teacher or coach. I am here as a peer. A fellow node in this complex web we simultaneously create and are a part of.
I refuse to tell others what I think they should do. We can work towards the same goals in entirely different ways that we disagree with.

How does one simply walk one's life in such a way, and still make a difference?

In the course of yet another nourishing chat with a friend last week, I asked her about this and she shared the following:

It can just be, "This is where I'm going." It's not possible to reject that.

And that is not to say, "You should follow me," or even, "I hope you follow me."

Those who want to follow you can follow you, simply because you said, "Hey, I see a path. I'm going there."

Those were the most beautiful words to my soul. ❤️ To me, her words presented the most reasonable action I could take that balances sovereignty and generativity: To do what feels right for me, and to offer what I have—my lived experience—as a gift freely given.

This is where I'm going, even if I'm still figuring out where I'm going, and how.

I'm walking this way because it feels right for me, and I'm going to document and share this because if this in any way resonates for you, and you would like to know a bit more about it through this one person's experience, then, here is some information for you to adapt to your own experience as feels right for you.

That, to me, for now, answers the first two questions:

How do I want to navigate this space that is the political?
What do I expect myself to do here?

Nothing new, I suppose. Millions of people around the world already do this. But articulating it for myself matters because I need to know why for myself (sovereignty) before I take any steps for others (generativity).

I need to understand my positions, and the whys behind them clearly. For I have learned that, for myself at least, anything I think, say or do from a position I do not clearly understand my why for ends up contrived, hollow, fragile and ineffective, for myself or others.

As for the final question: