Chapter 1: What does it mean to feel overwhelmed in today's world?
Hi, welcome to Hard Things. Hold on the weekend. Emphasis on Hard Things. We can't even.
Was that for you? We can't even. Oh my God. Yeah. Just welcome to Hard Things.
Yeah.
The first thing I want to say is that we have no plan for today. We are in that time. And I don't know, some of you might be able to relate to this where any sort of intentionality or long term planning, whatever creativity requires, which is like no hyper vigilance and sitting calmly is not available to us today.
At this time, we're constantly in response mode and I'm talking about what's going on in the country. Every morning feels like it's just putting out fires and we are not planning a lot.
So we are going to say we we did have a plan. It's like it's the this is even more accurate of the situation is that you have a plan and you're like, here's what we need to talk about. Here's what the people need. Here's what the thing is. And then finally.
30 minutes passes and you're faced with this decision point of do you stay with the plan because that's what you've prepared and that's what makes you feel more comfortable and that's what you for sure thought you should do.
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Chapter 2: How can we stop spiraling in fear during chaotic times?
But then the world seems to require something different. And so I feel like that tension is even more exhausting and more real and like CC marriage and parenthood and everything. It's like you put all the effort into the plan. And you swear you're certain that that's going to save you. And then you get to a point and you're like, if it's just one degree off, the whole thing feels off.
And then is it more harm to go with the plan you had than to just try to stay in the moment and trust yourself to know what to say? which is a big ask in this moment.
It's a big ask in this moment, but that is a beautiful description of how it feels. And I think also fear being matched with all of that, it almost makes you a little bit dissociated. Like you forget what you were supposed to talk about yesterday or you forget. It just feels like a constant landing freshly. I was talking to our son's dear friend, And I asked how they had been feeling yesterday.
And they said, I don't remember who I was before now. I was like, wow, that's a really good description of how it feels to be right now. So what we thought we would do is just still show up and just talk about how we are feeling and what we are doing to stay engaged and to also maintain any level of sanity if we are in this moment. And I think that that's got to be something to do that because-
part of how we're feeling is sort of the plan from the other side, right? To just keep things so chaotic and move and the moving target of everything changing every single day that we are unable to respond with any sort of consistency. But I will tell you this, this is one of my favorite stories in the whole world.
And obviously, you know who tells the story because the only podcast I ever listened to is- Ram Dass.
Yes. Okay. Okay. She'll come home from a walk. I said, how was your walk? She's like, yeah, I went on a walk with Ram Dass. It was wonderful.
And I've listened to every single episode. So I just listened to them over and over and over again because... Some people talk about a way to be, but he's always coming from that actual way to be. Like I can tell he's there. Anyway, whatever.
So he said that at one point Gandhi planned this huge march and all the people like left their jobs and came to this one place for this march and they all went through a lot of hardship to get there. And then that morning some things happened and he was like, This isn't supposed to be happening today. We have to cancel it. And his people around him kept saying, we can't. This is the plan.
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Chapter 3: What strategies can help us stay grounded amidst chaos?
And I unbound by what I thought it might be yesterday when I woke up. Then the other thing that feels very in light of this strategy of overwhelm that feels very comforting and grounding to me, because I think a lot of us feel like we are just kites in in a hurricane and we're trying so hard to like do what is needed.
And I think I am prone to rage and to a lot of like bursts of anger in these moments. And there's a place for that for sure. And the grounding principle is keep your head down and keep organizing. You don't need an individual response to each one of these things if you have an ethos of organizing that you just, when you feel rage... ground yourself in organizing.
When you feel overwhelmed, ground yourself in organizing. It isn't, I can't attend to this thing over here because look, I have to go put out all these fires. If you are showing up in any local organization and getting yourself plugged in, you are doing something about New Gaza. You are doing something about ICE.
You are like, what they want to do is for us to unplug and start swirling in the wind. So I think it's both those two things.
It's grounding yourself in a local organization that may appear to have nothing to do with the fires that are going on and actually have everything to do with it, whether or not they are particularly intersecting or not, and not being religious about what you thought you were supposed to be doing. like you're saying.
And part of that, I think, is also the other antidote to swirling around in the wind is they want us to give up not just on paying attention to what's going on, not just on feeling like we're totally ineffective, but also feeling like we're not human, feeling like we are just devoid of any life force. So I think the going back and the grounding and the organizing is also grounding in
things that bring you joy, art that makes you just feel that spark of joy again. Everything that you can dip in to fill back up the sponge is not just something you do so you can keep working. It is work too, because that's what they're trying to do.
When I get really, really scared and really, really desperate and hopeless, I think, oh, I am doing the work for them when I am allowing myself to be that way. And working against it is like, what's going to make me laugh today? What's going to fill me with joy today? What is some small thing I can do locally that will keep me plugged in that is contributing to what will take all of this down?
I think like we should stay there for a minute about the organizing locally. I know we've been talking about this a lot lately, but I think we really need to talk about this deliberately right now because I think it's finally permeating like at least like white lady culture.
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Chapter 4: Why is local organizing essential for real change?
So that night when Rosa Parks sat down, she said, this is the night. And she went overnight, she worked at the University of Alabama, she printed flyers all night long so they could get them out in the community.
20 women came that morning because she had that network already ready and they took all of the flyers that she had printed and they started circulating them within the organizations of the community. And they knew that in order to make that work, which they had already identified because they knew they had economic power because 75% of the bus riders in Montgomery were black people.
It wouldn't have worked if they didn't have the economic power. If we take this down, it will work. They plugged into all those organizations with whom they had been working for 10 years and they set up the structures that would work. You can't just ask people to not ride a bus.
They had whole systems where they had basically like a pre-Uber where they identified the people who had cars and they went to take these people to work. And they also made sure that they had organized groups of people to walk together miles and miles and miles so that they wouldn't face the violence on their way to walking to work. And that's the way that it lasted 381 days.
They hired Martin Luther King after the infrastructure was in place to say, can you run this thing? but it was local on the ground organizations that made that thing possible. So I just feel like if we have a kind of hero idea in our culture that like, who's going to lead us, who's going to, nobody's going to lead us.
It's going to be groups of on the ground, organized, unsexy as hell work to be able to have the infrastructure so that when a moment comes, we leverage that moment because we have the capacity and the organization to do it.
And I think when we say, why isn't anyone leading? What that is revealing is that we aren't in community because there's so many people who are leading and have been leading in our communities for decades and centuries. And they're usually black and brown women. And they are doing the work and have been doing the work forever.
So when we say, oh my God, no one's leading, all we're doing is revealing that we haven't been following. It's not going to be some white lady who stands up and suddenly, that's not it. That's not how this works. So maybe we should bring up the whole freedom fleet again. Like we've been talking about, you get in a boat. The protests are just like the boat parades.
Okay, they're not the work that's being done every day in these boats. And what you do is you just go and you find somebody that's doing good work in your community. Then you show up and you ask, what can I do? And then you humbly do the work that the people tell you to do. And it's not sexy. It's not like you have your Instagram and you're filming yourself being a badass. It's not.
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Chapter 5: How can we identify grounded leaders in our communities?
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Thank you so much. In a way, the way that you guys and your brains operate, it feels like varsity level. And I want to like acknowledge the people to me. I want to acknowledge the people out there who might feel like I don't know all of this stuff and I'm just learning about it. And I feel intimidated about getting active and actually going out into the real world.
And one thing that I've been doing is getting on meetings on my computer and just listening. I'm donating to organizations locally in my community that I think will help move the needle in some way. There are things you can do if you are feeling a little bit like I am in certain moments because it can feel sometimes pretty daunting.
And I'm also experiencing so much rage and frustration and fear and confusion, much like you all are. And so I just want to acknowledge if you are listening and you hear yourself in what I'm saying, like you also aren't alone. And there are also spaces that you can plug yourself into. Thank you so much for having me.
There are a lot of moms that are listening to this that are like, I can barely keep my head above water because I'm dripping with children and trying to get them to school and trying to pay my rent. And I don't have any extra time to spend and do this. And so I just want to say, I hear you and I see you.
And I think it is important that you still are included in this in whatever ways you can plug yourself into.
What do you think when you hear that, Sissy, about parents with little ones right now? I mean, I just can't imagine. I have big ones and I'm struggling remembering their names and to look at them and like to be present with them because I'm so scared of the world I'm leaving them in that I'm just leaving them now. So do you have any thoughts about that?
I mean, I think that's what... I have so much empathy for that. I think that's what they're counting on. Our capacity and the way that life has been set up is so that there is not a margin to engage. If you're dripping with children because you have to work the long hours and you have to pay for the childcare and you have to do... Yeah, that's part of the problem, right?
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Chapter 6: What role does community play in overcoming individualism?
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Chapter 7: How can we shift from fear-based thinking to collective action?
Look at what this administration is doing. Look at that even our, you know, friends like Democrats who needs enemies, when the seven Democratic Congress people vote for additional ICE spending when my own Senator Tim Kaine just last week voted to confirm Kristi Noem. And that's not even to mention the Republicans, right?
So when we look and say, those are our leaders, we should be rightly terrified. And the change is, find new leaders. And not necessarily electing new leaders at this point. We'll get to that. But find for yourself new leadership. And that means getting plugged into a group because you need the kind of leader that is sane.
And it doesn't matter that that leader is not your senator or your Republican. It can be your Leslie. Like you need someone who is a sane, wise, disciplined leader. knowledgeable leader of integrity. So then you switch it to say, this person in my community is my leader. That's right. That person is my government. Okay.
And then you use the leadership and the organization to change your government. But that's not, that was never your leader.
No.
Trump is for the billionaires and he's for himself. The only reason he's there is to stay out of prison. The only reason Donald Trump is the president right now is because the cowards in Congress refused to impeach him and make him ineligible for running for the presidency again after he exercised a coup and insurrection on the government. It is your Congress's fault.
And it is the only reason he personally wanted to be president was to stay out of prison and to pay off his debts. That is not your leader. That is your government. That is the regime. So we are going to need to find new leaders in order to change our government, not wait on new governmental leaders to change our government. This is the Minnesota model.
This is what that for generations they've been doing in Minnesota. Minnesota is the only democratic structure that their party is actually not called the Democratic Party. Their party is still to this day called the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. And the reason they did that, they didn't just look for a third party candidate and vote for them.
They had years and years of identifying and connecting immigrant workers' rights with indigenous rights, with anti-war movement leadership. And they connected that entire group and found a leverage point, which was the economy of Minnesota, right? Like they didn't merge with the Democratic Party.
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Chapter 8: What practical steps can we take to engage in local activism?
Do we care about children? Do we care about voting? Do we care about the climate? Do we care about queer kids? Do we care about housing? And we find the group in our community who's doing that work. And we find a leader who speaks and our body says, that's it. I'll follow them. And we do what that person says. And then suddenly and magically, we find ourselves with a worldview.
We don't feel shocked by ICE, actually, because we know this is just another manifestation of the slave patrol. This is just another group that is morphed to protect white supremacy. Suddenly nothing feels like surprises because we've been in circles where people are talking about this stuff and educating each other.
Suddenly we don't feel alone because we have phone trees and WhatsApp groups full of people we've met at these places who are taking care of each other. Suddenly we can go to this meeting because somebody's like making casseroles for the kids there.
Suddenly we have this situation where we actually have community and our terror of survival inside of individualism and exceptionalism diminishes while our community grows. Eventually, these government leaders who are not leaders, who are followers, cave to the real leaders who are in our communities and the new world is born.
And in the meantime, we give to Caesars what is Caesars and we vote and we do all those things that we need to do, but we have no faith in that system. Our faith is in the people who every day on the ground in these communities are building the new world. But until it's born, we keep one foot in each. We love you. Go find a leader.
We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram and at We Can Do Hard Things Show on TikTok.
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