Waking up in Grief and Committing to Act

Post election reflections

Last night, I awoke at 3 am and made the mistake of checking my cell phone. It was hard to return to sleep after reading that the Democrats had lost the Senate. When I got up this morning, sadness and disbelief filled my body-mind upon learning of the presidential election results.

A little over five weeks ago, a climate change powered hurricane devastated my community in western North Carolina. Yesterday, an even more dangerous storm powered by confusion, greed, anger, and fear has arrived in our nation and world. It is up to you and me to do what we can to limit its destructive power while we care for ourselves and others.

Millions of us are shocked and grieving in sadness, anger, disbelief, and fear. We must take special care of our body-mind at this time and in the days, months, and years ahead. We can become aware of distressing thoughts, care for them, let them change, and focus on breathing in and breathing out in gratitude for the gift of life and consciousness.

Now at eighty, I must redecide what I am called to do each day to care for family, community, country, and planet.

What can I do now to help care for my fourteen year old granddaughter? What can you and I do to care for the rights and autonomy of all women and girls in this country?

What can we do to reform and strengthen our electoral process and other democratic institutions so that they will be more responsive to the voices and needs of all citizens?

What can we do for workers so that they earn a living wage?

What can we do to protect the rights of people of color, the indigenous, and LGBTQ?

What can we do as responsible Earthlings to reduce the impacts of climate change and help prepare for and recover from mega-storms, flooding, fires, smoke, damaged infrastructure, and more?

What can we do to protect religious freedom?

What can we do to improve our institutions of public education and public health?

What can we do to provide a universal basic income (UBI) for all people?

What can we do to care for immigrants who are working hard, paying taxes, and trying to make a better life for themselves?

What can we do to care for civil servants in government who are doing their best to serve others?

What can we do to strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?

What can we each do to help our local community be a place of social justice, ecological regeneration, respectful dialogue, and peace?

The truth is that we each have the power to act in each moment. Will our actions flow out of empathy and compassion or out of disregard of others and self-absorption?

Humanity has faced enormous challenges over the past thousands of years. You and I are present at this moment to act in understanding and compassion in the face of challenges of fascism, climate change, wealth inequality, wars, misogyny, racism, domestic gun violence, artificial general intelligence, genetic engineering, and more.

We can do this.

What are you aware of? What are your feelings? Your thoughts? Your decisions to take action?

May you and I and all beings everywhere realize peace, happiness, understanding, and compassion.