self + community care: buzzwords of the 2020s? why we keep talking about burnout.
Over the course of 2020-2022 I’ve been gifted numerous opportunities to hold space (w/ my Rooted and Rising co-conspirators Roxy Cohen + Bella Lyne) around the themes of Self and Community Care. Interestingly, these workshops have been held specifically for young activists in politics, working towards shifting climate policy and activating change from within the system. Most recently, we held a workshop series for GreenPAC, and last year for the sweet crew at Youth Climate Lab, and for (Future Leaders In Politics) at the 1st FLIP Conference. It began in 2020, peak unknown madness of the pandemic, that Bella and I were facilitating care sessions for our Rooted and Rising pilot. Our friend Elizabeth invited us to run a version of these workshops for the Future Ground Network, a hub within the David Suzuki Foundation. Divinely, these groups and spaces keep finding us!
Direct action in politics has not been my personal entry point into change-making work. My artist-activist path brought me to grassroots organizing within the community arts realm, and more recently to sacred decolonizing spaces reclaiming ritual and ceremony. A lot of medicine has found me in sacred circles with other bruhas/witches on the healing path.
I note this to say that holding space for youth steeped in policy work, whose work dictates an intense focus on manifesting outer change, and making progress (like working to halt emissions, or rewriting outdated + harmful environmental policies) challenged me to translate the wisdom I walk with. It challenged me to confront my own insecurities, and see where I’ve been unclear and resisting my own core values and beliefs.
How do I:
compassionately share my belief that in this cycle of Now, our outer work cannot proceed in a healthy way without tending to our inner worlds FIRST?
provoke others to deeply reflect on their own inner foundations?
how to name that becoming aware of our beliefs, thought patterns, and altering the unhealthy ways we speak to ourselves, IS a major part of The Work. Invisible work very often, yes, and so, difficult to pin down, and articulate.
underline the importance of decolonial shadow work, esp in this current cycle,
AND make space for vulnerability and honouring our interconnected pandemic pain + grief?
+++ how to carve space for all that wants to be modeled, and said, within a 1.5-2.5 hr long workshop, online?!!
All the wise 1s I trust say, that if we want to draw that healthy world we so desire towards us, we’ve got to transform ourselves first. We need to become aware of the ways the old energy in our programming is holding our brilliant co-creative manifesting power hostage. We must create space to get clear on our values, and take up the practices that bring us into closer alignment with the type of humans we want to be. We’re here to rewrite the codes!
I’m still learning to embody these frameworks myself. Still forming the right kind of attention that will allow me to show up for the daily acts of care my bodies need from 1 shifting moment to the next.
We have to reprogram ourselves, and delete/rewrite our habitual patterns of thinking, acting, speaking — how does that translate into practical everyday practices? I know self-speak and intention setting are magical tools for manifesting magic. It feels sticky to speak truthfully on these things without embodied storytelling + poetry…
Some questions we shared in our FLIP session w GreenPAC, prompting participants to reflect on the many ways we can pivot towards Care.
𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊
The Story I keep telling —
After doing the MOST in my 20s, feeling like it was my responsibility to “change the world” I experienced cyclic physical/emotional dis-ease, aka burnout, specifically in the Fall.
I know, I know, I’ve written about this before. But youth in climate justice spaces keep burning out (/ all of us under late stage capitalism??), so I keep telling this story hoping my experience might help another!
I know now that the discomfort and dis-ease I experienced during my experience of burnout, was an invitation to move away from my own imbalanced outer focus, and turn within. Burnout for me took on the symptoms of: overwhelm, exhaustion, sickness, resentment towards others, and insecurity as my physical body suffered (inside+out). This is when I learned how to really honour the signals of my body. To heed the no’s as wisdom. I learned about my own rhythms, and how they mirrored the cycles of nature: seasons, astrological cycles, and lunar cycles. I learned to pay deeper attention to my inner cues, and move with more humility (yes, our bodies and minds have limits!) I started understanding how sacred and vital boundaries are.
I remember repeatedly hearing quiet messages from my guides to do less over the years - to drop the pressure I was carrying to show up perfect, and be “good.” To quit that unaligned job, and 1by1 let go of the various little projects I was giving my time and energy to (that Toronto multi-hustle - we glamorized it - aaaand then it burnt us out. iykyk).
While my intent was honourable, and the endeavours/project/work could be explained away as devotional acts of service, I was ultimately committing to them AND in the same breath, ignoring my bodies request to slow down and rest.
Learning how to listen, to change my speed and rhythms, to soften my ego. My burnout experience also marked for me a transition: shedding one identity, to slip into another. My dis-ease was a signal that a cycle, or certain way of being, was ending. And I needed to let go…
I want to give thanks for a moment - to the kin, sisters, guides, mentors, and friends who held me during these seasons of learning. The in-person care I received continuously during our pagtition ng bagong buwan / new moon circles at 187, led by mama jen + community, assisted me on my transformation path with the deepest resonance during my most vulnerable states of death/rebirth. These monthly moon gatherings were a Gift - we could grieve and mourn and be witnessed and validated, in our joy and power, and in our suffering. Here is where I was most held while I was surfing through my own teachings around burnout.
A lot of the medicine I feel personally called to share in these Care workshops has emerged from my experience as a young leader activating in climate change spaces with other big-hearted youth. Trends I’ve noticed while weaving in n out of community spaces, and in and out of my own depths n shadows. These are not new noticings, nor ones that you will find surprising. We are absolutely holding onto, and suffering under learned beliefs / behaviours / thought patterns, conditioned into us through our educational institutions and the disharmony of our broader culture, which is under a kind of spell sustained under the colonial paradigm that is sometimes called the yt-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. These old beliefs are not us, but we continue to make them real if we carry them around past due.
Some insights, affirmations, and reminders that have crossed into my awareness while hearing from youth engaged in climate change/movement work (that I see applying widely across the spectrum that is The Human Experience):
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We all desire to feel validated in our work
We want to feel helpful
We need to be seen and heard, in our various states of feeling & being (validated by self and/or validated by others)
We long to be held in our grief
It feels good to be held silently as we cry
We crave elder guidance and mentorship
We are grieving for the loss of guidance / wisdom / eldership in our lives - this loss is a direct result of colonial violence
We crave rites of passage
We need each other
We each carry our own wisdom
We learn through our relationships with others
We’ve got to curb our addictions to overconsumption
We are part of a lineage of activators/healers/resistors who have come before, and will come after us
Others can be great mirrors for the shadows we are meant to face and transform
We each have our own unique gifts and ways of connecting to Source
We are too often blind to the power of our unique gifts (bc of capitalist conditioning, & the thief of comparison)
It is difficult to sustain energy and focus when results are invisible, or intangible
Healing is long-game work; it requires our daily awareness, commitment, and devotion
Moving into more harmonious states of being asks for our diligence and practice.
We collectively need to unlearn our ideas of leadership - esp cultures’ perpetuation of (yt)martyrdom
We thrive when our gifts are encouraged and given space to play
We dream of simple pleasures: time spent with family or chosen fam, outside, with snacks & maybe some four legged creatures. Playing, musing, teasing, eating, listening to each other, doing nothing!
We often feel guilty about resting, receiving pleasure, or receiving/asking for help
Fun + play are medicine, but we often deny ourselves these experiences b/c we think our work is very urgent, Serious 😤 , and of the utmost importance (OR we go too far in the other direction — greed/selfishness/overinguldence/irresponsibility/hedonism)
A lot of us are afraid to dream / don’t think our dreams are possible / have forgotten the language of dreams
We doubt that another world is possible because (we think) we haven’t seen it yet
Is it "See it to believe it" OR Believe it to See It?
As Paco said in a newsletter I read today:
“you can’t expect to change anything outside of you if you aren’t willing or able to change yourself from the inside first.”
In my understanding, “self” and “community” care are interwoven. I cannot show up wisely for my outer work, if I’m burnt out. I can’t serve others if I’ve depleted myself.
❂
Soooo lately I’ve been out here, in the solitude of the woods, giving this self permissions to dive into my own Inner Realms. There is maaagic and wisdom here within. And there is much pain, doubt, suffering, anger, and sadness here too. I am re-membering how to call on my guides + wise ancestors in all moments - whether in gratitude, or sorrow. These angels, guides, and wise ancestors who have always been with me (whether I consciously knew it or not).
In my solitude I can dance with my shadows. I’m learning how to feel with them with just the right amount of attention, so that they can release and transform out of my bodies.
I choose to believe that we are each, as human beings, single cells part of a whole and shared earth body. In this worldview, cultivating our own peace, joy, health and wellness does = more peace, joy, health and wellness available on earth. I think working to cultivate our own health (especially during this manic pandemic) creates more available energy that others in our collective earth body can tap into. We need more joyfully alive, well resourced human beings!!! This starts with sensing into what our bodies (physical body, mental body, emotional/feeling body, etheric body) need from us from moment to moment. Sometimes what our bodies need, is to share physical space with the presence of another — Community is immunity as they say.
I want to acknowledge here for a moment that any insight I have gathered and share comes from a combination of deep self study, and medicine gained in relationships + community. I am part of a lineage! & so are you.
All this ^ to say: it often feels difficult to translate the lil insights that have supported me on this journey so far. I wonder if maybe it might be helpful to see some experiences of burnout like an initiation — an opening, or invitation, to listen more deeply.
I wonder again:
How to translate effectively, that this intense focus on the outer work, has to be balanced with making room and space to do our own inner work. healing is moving towards balance. Since our current paradigm is obsessed with external domination, comparison, competition, greed… to create a new paradigm, we must start by going within (yinward)
Let’s say we agree that we must face our old outworn programming, so we don’t show up and make the same mistakes that got us into this crisis moment. How do we loosen the grip and let old identities / thoughts / patterns fall away? Where are we resourced? When should we call in support from trusted kin, humxn and more than?
How do we teach our young elders, that we are each divinely led, unconditionally loved, and so powerful! How do we create spaces where we can practice directing our unique gifts + Co-Create with Source/God? We were robbed of these foundational truths under the brainwashing and mis-education of our current educational institutions. These guiding principles should have been affirmed in us from the jump, since we were little ones, bbs/kids. We are here now to reclaim these ancestral truths, tools & re-memberings.
Again. (repetition for ritual). It has been a challenge: to find clear, resonant ways of sharing wisdom that has assisted me on my personal* path of embodying a more caring, whole way of being. In the midst of translation- many Shadows arose for me. I witnessed my own insecurities around my approach to transformation + healing, which in this current cycle is very focused on assessing my own foundations (inner work!). I am seeing what ideas or beliefs have been implanted or learned, and am trying to be diligent in committing to practices that help me strengthen + re-imagine my foundation. I am re-enlivening this self, so I can be a healthier cell on this shared earth body! A wise guide for future descendants, an honourable living ancestor.
This pattern of burnout across the board, is a signal that there is an imbalance in our culture, asking us for our attention. Calling for our care. Our inner work is just as important as our outer work. In my eyes, they are one and the same. Perhaps this perpetually extended pandemic moment can be seen as an opportunity for us to really spend time with ourselves, and look within. What energy are you here to transform? Maybe imbalance is a provocation. A gesture, asking us to Change.
