Love Notes on Liberation l
Knowing & the Unknown
There are things we know and knowing is power, but there is also something women can do that is powerful—we can hold vast amounts of the unknown.
I am balancing these gifts.
On the one hand, I can use my ability to educate myself through research, reading, learning from organizations & great thinkers on liberation. I am familiarizing myself with the right’s agenda so that I can prepare to be the most useful to my community, so I can help protect the most vulnerable. And let me be clear, we are all vulnerable—our precious earth can’t take ANY more time without environmental protections, and no one is free, when the 1% controls our government & resources and is exploiting ALL of us to feed their greed—and that is what this is about: money & control.
I can hold all of the truths about what is happening, and I can also hold the unknown we are stepping into...
I stay with my intuition. I care for my nervous system and my body, I stay connected to Earth, I keep my spiritual rituals. I ask my benevolent ancestors for guidance and listen and wait for the stirring in my spirit that tells me which way to move, where to direct my energy. I listen to those that are channels of wisdom in these times. I keep close to animals and plants and their medicine and I stay with my heart and love as a practice.
Liberation is a sacred calling.
When the election results were final, images of community flashed before me: places I have felt love, care, and purpose. And in the days after the election this deep yearning made itself known in my heart:
I want to be near women, talking to women, holding women, crying and planning with women.
We got so close. Maybe we saw ourselves in her. I saw the warmth in her smile, the way she held strangers as she spoke to them. Imperfect yes, but the closest I’ve ever been to feeling myself connected to someone in her position. And knowing she will not lead us, that the patriarchy will return for another relentless round, makes me desperately need to be around women.
We need to grieve what we have lost. It is the death of a dream for us. It is the end of a promise.
But it is also the beginning of a new way forward, and a promise to ourselves.
The truest thing I know, is that we need each other. We need to check on each other, get together to cry and plan and move. We need to build and strengthen communities starting where we are. Individualism and isolation are a threat to our livelihood. Our strength is in numbers, in mutual aid, in networks of care. We have to protect us.
And this is pragmatic: Our unity is what they have worked so hard to destroy. We must build coalitions across differences and be a united front in the fight for humanity, for earth, and for loving liberation.
So grieve and rage and take care of your feelings, and when you are ready we can balance love & care with action & engagement, together.
∞
Love you,
Emily
Maybe we’ll be running our whole lives. Just keep moving. That would be okay. We’ll have strong legs, keen awareness, and big hearts, keeping ourselves and each other going like we belong to that one-day distant future, when we can look back and say this is how we made it, despite everything.
-Tommy Orange, “Wandering Stars”
Love notes on Liberation - Spiritual & practical nourishment for loving liberation from Autonomous Muse