Radical vulnerability: A Blog On Election Night.

I am writing this as results are coming in and I cannot effectively express my anxiety. 

Deep breaths. In and out. Rising Panic. Focus on the task. Stir the pasta. Read the Readings. Write the Blog. Hide in your bed.  Go vote. Vote. Vote Vote. Vote. Vote.  I voted. I didn't feel better. I feel worse now. I'm terrified. Visions of cars on fire are filling my head. Deep breaths. Babies pulled from their parent's outstretched arms. This isn't real. This is a bad movie. Too heavy handed on the apocalypse themes. A throwback to macho action/sci-fi of the late 80s, I think. Obvious good vs. evil theme. Annoyingly simplistic but still giving me sensory overload. All the explosions. A male power fantasy, both the the hero and the villain. 

Over the summer, I literally thought the government was lighting off fireworks to keep people on edge and direct public anger to BIPOC neighborhoods. I'm still pretty sure that's what was happening. 

Oh right. Healing. Okay. 

My entire life, I've navigated the world through vulnerability. Radical vulnerability, sometimes strategic vulnerability. Being authentic, opening myself up, only finding meaning in my life in the context of a community member. 

Systems don't like this. America doesn't like it. And so I've struggled on that scale, with this approach. As a child, I was sensitive. In adolescence, I had angst. In my twenties I rejected it all through some nihilistic bacchanalian and not washing my hair. 

It has ONLY been in these last few years that I have started really healing and being whole.  The language used in the readings and in the webinar, the frameworks so loudly loudly resonates with me.  It feels like like the language of my soul. The language I've always understood and wanted to use but had no place to practice, no community I could immerse in. 

I think of my teachers of this language- my grandfather, my mom. Sarah. My animals, plants and the moon. Emily, my therapist who heals through seeing and affirming my intentions and experiences. Chanda,  who demands, in the most warm and loving way, that we heal of ourselves and our work. I think of my friend and colleague Elliot, who is more intentional about his healing than any man I've known, which creates an amazing safety.  This class and our community, which challenges me to put into words all the ideas and impulses and intuitions about our field that until now, have only existed in my head.  

Right now, I want to stand in the street and wave my arms and scream that it doesn't have to be like THIS. All the cruelty and fear.  It can be our way! We can heal! We can feel joy and safety! 

I don't want to stop writing because then I'll have to look at more results.