What to Do about the Anxiety of Now?
By Katthe Wolf, President and CEO, Be Strong Families
I have been really disturbed by recent events to the point of hopeless confusion verging on paralysis. I rarely go on social media and my news-following is seriously limited, but still, stuff creeps in. My list of examples:
Texas: another mass murder at an elementary school with the story unfolding now as this goes to press.
Buffalo: An 18-year-old, upper-middle-class, white male, with mental health history drove 200 miles to shoot up a supermarket in an African American neighborhood with his legally purchased AR-15. Why? Apparently due to his (and apparently somewhat widespread) acceptance and promulgation of racist, debunked pseudoscientific cultural theories.
The Supreme Court seems to be looking to restrict individuals’ rights to privacy and exert control over women’s bodies and choices and 28 states with white-male-Republican-led legislatures are queued up to end abortion. I’m old enough to remember when it was Republicans who wanted to get government out of people’s private lives and bedrooms...
People seem to be voting in primaries to sustain patriarchal white supremacy in multiple places in this country and persist in spreading the myth that the 2020 election was stolen.
Inflation.
War in Ukraine.
Daily stories of mass shootings. Regular incidents of youth violence and shooting deaths in downtown Chicago.
Destruction of the planet via climate change.
Your list may be different, but equally long and distressing. The consensus, no matter which side of political and ethical issues you’re on, seems to be that the forces of evil are winning. So what to do when the darkness seems to be consistently overwhelming the light? Remember Einstein saying: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We need to transcend.
In broad strokes, now is a time of coming into consciousness that the racist, patriarchal cultural system we are living in, that we and our ancestors have co-created, is not working on a global scale. The opportunity here is to co-create a life-affirming paradigm to replace the modernist paradigm that currently prevails. I encountered this framing via a wonderful podcast featuring Dine elder Pat McCabe aka Woman Stands Shining. So, in addition to speaking out about dismantling white supremacy and white organizational culture and to building racial equity, we can also point to the future we want to create together, the stage beyond eradicating what is unjust to describing what liberation would look and feel like. In any transformational change effort, "anti”- anything only gets us part of the way. We must also attend to the how of liberation: a danger is that if we use the same tools, the same logic, the same methods used by the systems we hate to tear down what is not working, what we will replace it with will not be significantly different. Remember Audre Lorde saying, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
We need to remember as we move forward that the world is teeming with beautiful, brilliant, creative, loving, kind-hearted people and animals. We can connect with each other, join hands, live our values, share our pain and nurture the spirit of family. We can promote our own and others’ well-being with rest and relaxation; nourishing food and conversation; by making art and cultivating real joy (not manifesting fake positivity); by creating safe, caring communities that promote true healing. I once heard (being blasted over the sound system at the gym I used to attend pre-COVID) “Being healthy is a revolutionary act.” How true is that in these times?!
So, disrupt the status quo and let’s be healthy together!
Be Strong Families’ strives to co-create an equitable, diverse and inclusive community of like-hearted people bringing out the best in each other, living our values of: family, authenticity, liberation, vitality, collaboration, excellence, love, and spirit. We’re the Café People, so join us in continuing the conversations about being the parents and people we want to be and then let’s commit, individually and collectively, to putting those ideals into action. Join us by coming to a webinar or a Friday Taste of Café and let Be Strong Families be your ‘island of coherence’ in the current ocean of chaos.
Image from https://www.islandsofcoherence.network/