Beyond Hope

It’s been a long time Dear Ones,

I’m not going to apologize for my silence. It’s pretty new, but I’m in a practice of radical self loyalty. This means I’m releasing some of the expectations I hold for myself, I’m letting myself write whenever the hell I feel like it. Today I feel like it. 

Thanks for being on the receiving end of this. 

It’s been rough around here. The outdoor school I’ve worked with for two decades experienced a fatality in the field last week. Grief is manifesting in different ways. There is some kind of trauma response happening for a lot of the people I see daily. Broader than my immediate community, the intensity out in the world is high. I went into the field twice in the spring, both times I came home to learn about racialized mass shootings that happened while I was offline. Roe v. Wade was overturned. Our local school board voted to remove discrimination protections for queer, trans and non-binary students.  31 members of a white supremist hate group were arrested at a Pride celebration in Idaho. We are in unprecedented times, and also totally predictable times. 

It’s 2.5 years into a pandemic. Our nervous systems are governed by trauma, loss and fear. We’ve been disconnected and afraid, we’re moving deeper into Us against Them space. We’re hardwired to try to survive, and these deep divisions are simply about doing what we think we need to do to protect ourselves. In the US, the primaries are coming up. The deep divisions are evident in the political fliers promoting hate that show up in my mailbox, and the signs for those candidates on my neighbors’ lawns. My nervous system is telling me the world is dangerous. I’m always prone to withdrawing, but these days it requires more and more effort to stay anchored and connected.

The culture that raised me trained me to plug on and numb out. I learned how to say I’m fine from a young age. Grief floods me every now and then if I think about the families in Buffalo. But then I press on. White supremacy asks that I override any feelings I might have about the brualization of Black or Indigenous bodies around me. I’ve learned to stay separate, compartmentalize, and put on a hopeful face, even in, especially in, my organizing work. 

A friend said to me recently “you are on such an uphill battle” referring to my LGBTQ+ organizing here in rural Wyoming.  I actually believe the opposite. It’s no longer uphill for the work of social justice. We crested - probably a while ago. What’s happening now is the slide down the other side, into the unknown territory of late stage capitalism and civilization collapse. The seeds of the collective crisis we are in were sown a long time ago. Dominance and oppression are woven into our political and social systems. The trauma of genocide and slavery is carried in our bones. What’s been happening all along, and the acuteness of what is happening now - with climate, with the pandemic, with racial injustice, is the natural consequence of those seeds. 

I don’t believe in pedaling hope. We’re past that point. 

So what’s the point of showing up then? I came across the term “hopepunk” recently in conversation with some climate activists. It’s been stirring in me, helping me resist the urge to roll over and pull the covers over my head. 

“Hopepunk isn’t pristine and spotless. Hopepunk is grubby, because that’s what happens when you fight. It’s hard. It’s filthy, sweaty, backbreaking work that never ends.”  Read more about Hopepunk here 

And then hopepunk slapped me in the face one evening during our Pride celebrations in June. Our scrappy little organizing team pulled together the first ever drag show in Lander. The morning of the show I felt apprehensive. Our community has been really shitty lately with more unapologetic hate showing up at community events. Sure enough the cops called that morning to let us know there would be some protesters. A team of allies assembled to act as security. 

Yes, there were protesters. Maybe 10 people. They held signs with confusing messages - one that equated men in dresses to pedophelia. A man yelled loudly trying to drown out the performance. 

And what actually happened was that hundreds of people showed up to support the show. The cheering was loud enough to hear 5 blocks away. It was radical and revolutionary and gorgeous. The performers left everything out on the “stage” which was a little patch of grass with some not-quite-loud-enough speakers. It was entirely DIY. I watched someone I know and love, who has struggled in deep ways with their identity, strut proudly in front of the crowd, gorgeous in their makeup and dress.  A brilliant Two Spirit water protector wearing a rainbow ribbon skirt, dropped lyrics about colonization and land back that the whole world needs to hear. The crowd roared their love.

I cried the whole time. 

There is NOTHING that can undo celebration, resistance and love like this. We know the highest court in this country isn’t going to protect us, much less the local school board. And what I learned that night is that the power of our pleasure, celebration and resistance is stronger than anything else. Our love can make the ground shake. 

I am trying to open into the space beyond a contained and sanitized vision of hope. I’m digging into “hopepunk” and all the scrappiness that entails. If you know me, you know I’m neither punk, nor scrappy. I’m not getting any new piercings or tattoos. But I am inviting these energetic qualities. I’m trying to stay in my feelings more - to get raw. To stay with rage. It helps if I can stay in my body and be with the uncomfortable sensations, not try to escape right away. I’m trying to let despair soak in my heart. I’m trying to let it all feel impossible. To not say “fine” in response to a question. Through this, I keep reminding myself that my heart is big enough to hold all of it.  

Meg Wheatly’s book “Who Do We Choose to Be?”  offers me some solace and sense making for these chaotic and uncertain times. She posits that we are beyond saving the world, and suggests we hone our skills as leaders to create humane islands of sanity inside the collapse.  I also recommend Education for Racial Equity’s Foundations in Somatic Abolition training. This workshop and the rest of Resmaa Menakem’s work have supported me as a White bodied person to imagine what it is to build a radically different culture, one that invites us to pause and really reckon with ourselves. These are some of the offerings that have sustained me in the last year. 

What is here now for you? What rage or pain do you need to let be noticed? What helps you stay scrappy? And where, if anywhere, are your moments of pleasure, resistance and power?

With love, resistance and pleasure, 

Liz