by the pricking of my thumb...
something wicked this way comes
Well, shit.
It sure has been a terrible, no-good, very bad week for me and everyone I (think I) know. Actually, it’s likely I know more than one person who voted for a different major party candidate for president than I did, but I don’t know who they are. I’m also pretty sure I know some people who voted for a third party candidate or didn’t vote at all, but I don’t know who they are.
I’ll come back to that.
I don’t have anything especially original to say, but those of you who subscribe to my newsletters presumably do so because you care what I think about and what I’m doing, so I owe it to you in this moment to share that stuff with you.
Here’s the tl;dr if you’re in a hurry:
I think we are facing a very difficult time (which was already true, but now with more difficulty). I am feeling a lot of fear and grief and rage over this. I also think that reacting hysterically in this moment is a waste of my precious time and energy, and that what I’m called to do now is pretty much the same kind of thing I was called to do before the election: be Present. from presence: make art. speak truth. love on my people. do the needful.
What’s the needful? What is needful for me and what is needful for you might be different. What was most needful for me last week and what is most needful for me in this moment also different. The needful is responsive, not reactive. The needful is what adrienne marie brown calls “the next most elegant step”. (and you can read about this in her book Emergent Strategy and AK Press is currently offering the e-book free).
On Wednesday, what felt needful was inviting folks to drop by my apartment for junk food and alcohol and commiseration. A few folks did, throughout the day. Come 6pm, I found myself sitting around my dining room table with Max, our younger child, and three women I’ve known for a while but who’d never met one another before. Max made Negronis for the adults. There was kettle corn. We felt better. Less alone. People who didn’t know each other before now knew each other. I put a few more stitches in the web of connections I have here in this place I call home, and I have come to realize, recently, that knitting that web is part of my work, a needful thing.
I didn’t worry that my apartment is too messy to be ‘hosting’. I didn’t worry that what we had in the way of food was sloppy. I just wanted to sit with people I care about and feel our feelings together. Grieve.
On Thursday what felt needful was to keep working on my book about my thru-hike and to go to therapy. Also a friend asked for a recommendation for a lawyer and so I asked around so I could provide that. ( One thing I love about not being an executive at a tech company anymore is that I have slack time to respond to requests like this. Not unending slack time, but more than I ever had when I had a full-time job managing engineering teams. )
Also, I called my mom and texted a bunch of friends.
On Friday we had an important meeting at our kid’s school and we spent time with my brother.
On Saturday one needful thing was to make some art, so I picked an outfit including a sparkling “Abortion Forever” t-shirt a friend gave me a couple years ago, and I went to my art studio and did a photo shoot. What I like most about this photo is that I look like I’m singing or praying in support of my own and everyone’s bodily autonomy, in a combination of grief and joy. It’s an almost religious moment for me, in light and in shadow.
What was also needful was to show up for a friend’s birthday party and dance with them.
At the birthday party I ran into someone in Somerville politics who knows someone I know from Brookline politics. Mostly we talked about rat birth control, but it was also adding another stitch in the web.
And so it goes.
There will be other needful things. I think I should pay more attention to our public library. Town Meeting is coming up, and, among other things we gotta ban rodenticides to protect the raptors and do some zoning stuff so we can have more housing. I have some vague ideas for small-scale participatory art projects that I can do in my new studio space. Again, what I need to do and what you need to do will be different. None of us can do all the things. But assuaging loneliness, leaning into connection, will be important for us all. It is the only way we will not just survive, but resist.
Here’s a couple things I found useful to read this week:
If you want to address your grief:
i know that grief is not comfortable. i know that action is a very good antidote to helplessness, and it might feel more urgent and "productive" to jump straight into movement. but i also know that ignoring grief means that it emerges as anger or rage, deep sorrow, depression and anxiety, exhaustion, illness, loneliness, hatred. i also know that dismissing grief denies us the chance to embrace our humanity, to acknowledge that things are deeply broken and difficult. i also know that avoiding grief limits our capacity to rely on others, that in sharing our emotions and needs we deepen intimacy and strengthen our capacity for vulnerability.
and ignoring our grief is a great way to burn out entirely. we need you for the long haul, friends, not just for right now.
If you want to dig into practical next steps, 10 things to do if trump wins (updated for the reality that he did)
If you’re feeling apocalyptic and like you might as well die rather than face the next several years: Devon Price on saving each other
The future that we expect is just a fiction we tell ourselves, and it has never been guaranteed. And so, when some dramatic change comes, we can focus not on the loss of certainty, but on the practicalities: finding shelter, getting fed, and keeping the people around us as safe as we can. This is already what life is about — and we’re all more practiced in survival than we might think.
Here’s a small iphone data safety tip, courtesy of a commenter on 404 media: “Holding lock and volume (to show the power off slider) also disables biometric ID until passcode is entered” Why would you want to disable biometric ID? Because you are legally entitled not to enter your passcode into your phone when asked by law enforcement, but you are not legally entitled to refusing to show your face for Face ID.
Finally: I know lots of people won’t be with me on this, but I’ve decided not to waste my energy on hating everyone who voted for Trump or didn’t vote or voted for a third party candidate. People in the United States are not the only people in the history of the world to make horrible choices in leadership. Anger, yes. Grief, yes. But I’m not going to waste time hating 74 million people for filling in one bubble I think was a very bad bubble to fill in when there’s a handful of billionaires who funded and planned and propagandized and therefore bear far, far more responsibility for this outcome than any one of those 74 million individuals. I hate the ideologues at the Heritage Foundation and the people who worked on Project 2025. I hate the propagandists like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson who convinced people Trump would be better for them. I hate Elon Musk, a lot, and Trump, a lot. That’s a plenty long list of people to hate. I just cannot hate 74 million people. It’s too many. I would curdle under the weight of all that hate, and how is that useful?
I will not be shilling for my own stuff this newsletter. But Abortion, Every Day (reproductive health) and Erin in the Morning (trans issues) are good newsletters to support and The Guardian is a good newspaper to support.
xo,
amy