Constitutional Crises v. Your Nervous System
How is everyone holding up after that little constitutional crisis the other day?
I try not to send too many emails, because I am overwhelmed by my own inbox. But I wanted to reach out to our community to share a bit about how I am navigating the current moment and share some community resources for caring for your nervous system so you can take meaningful action in this current political chaos. Then I started typing and this became too long for what I think is reasonable for an email newsletter, so here we are in this rarely utilized blog space ;-)
What happened Tuesday, was not normal. Nothing this administration is doing is “normal” and we can’t allow it to start to feel “normal,” even if it is constant & consistent during this administration. We need to prepare, pace ourselves, rest when we can, and not hesitate to act when necessary.
By early afternoon Tuesday, I had learned of the attempted federal funding freeze, made my calls to my Congress people to ask them to take action to block it, and found & shared some useful information & analysis about the constitutional illegality of the order on social media.
And the immensity and reach of the impacts that order would have created in the lives and livelihoods of almost every person I know and love, made me feel physically sick to my stomach.
I turned everything off and invited my children, who were home due to district in-service days, to go for a walk with me. Two of the three were recovering from a cold and declined the offer, but my 13-yo accepted.
We made a point of trying to find as many beautiful things as we could, as we briskly wandered through the neighborhood and continued towards the river. We made each other laugh coming up with the most “opulent” descriptions we could think of for the smooth pebbles showing through the worn cement in the sidewalk, the verdant green grass, the majestic trees beginning to bloom out-of-season (!), the Willamette river in all of its grandeur and the resplendent sun on our faces.
I felt much more grounded by the time we made it home, and it was a lovely, fun moment of one-on-one connection with my middle child - a small miracle in and of itself.
Printable Know Your Rights Toolkit
As we ate lunch, I made all 3 of my children practice the “know your rights” script for non-engagement with police/ICE officers. They asked why I was making them do this, and I said “because even though I hope you never need it, I want you to be prepared if you, or someone you’re with, or someone you see being targeted on the street, ever does need it.”
We took turns role playing the cops and one who knows their rights. They were mildly annoyed by my insistence, but in less than 15 minutes, they all knew the script: “I do not consent to speaking with you. I do not consent to any searches. Am I being detained or am I free to go?” And then they were finally free to go … back to their screens.
By late afternoon, I learned that the funding freeze had been halted by the courts, and I was able to finally sit down at my desk and focus long enough to get some work done.
When chronic stress and reminders of past traumatic incidents make us feel like we are in immediate physical danger, there are a lot of skills that can help us regulate our nervous systems so we can be more present in the moment and more intentional & strategic with our actions (the Community Resiliency Model is my go-to resource).
The 2-mile walk down to the river, with my daughter, in the cold, fresh air and sunshine was exactly what my nervous system needed to recenter on Tuesday. My ears were cold, my cheeks were flushed, my heart was pumping, my muscles were working, my teen even held my hand which helped my heart to open, and let the oxytocin flush some of the cortisol out of my system.
It is easy, understandable and reasonable even, to feel overwhelmed and hopeless in our current political circumstances. And when we are actually under real threat, as we all were on Tuesday, and as immigrants and trans folx are among the many vulnerable groups being directly targeted daily, we need to take action.
Most of us don’t have the power to take that kind of immediate structural action. If you are not an elected official, tech mogul or oligarch, most of us can be most impactful by finding the small, collective actions we can take to stay grounded in the chaos, maintain clear focus through the distractions, and act when there is something within our power we can actually do.
On Tuesday, what was within my power & capacity was:
Calling my representatives, and encouraging others to do the same.
Sending a quick text to check on impacted loved ones,
Taking a walk to ground & center myself after recognizing my stress responses had kicked me into a panic & frenzy mode.
Finding reliable information about non-engagement with police/ICE, sharing it on social media, and practicing it with my children.
Now, if I had also been ill, or had been scheduled to facilitate all day, (I had blocked the day off to spend with my children), most of that wouldn’t have been possible. And I’m 100% certain my three calls to congress didn’t change how the politics played out that day. There’s no evidence any of my actions created any measurable impact beyond psychological soothing. But as one of many taking those actions on the same day, the impact can be tremendous.
I didn’t write this because I think I have some perfect model to follow, nor as a humble brag to invite celebration, nor to self-deprecate about how I should be doing more, nor to contribute to the discouragement of feeling like our actions don’t matter.
I took the time to write all of this down and share it simply because it illustrates how I am striving to navigate in this daunting time. And because it illustrates how I want to encourage us all to move together.
Some of you are doing way more than me in your professional roles, activism and volunteerism to fight this regime - thank you for all you are doing!
Some of you are just trying to make it through the day and survive - thank you for surviving, that is enough!
And some of you are stuck in the shock & freeze of overwhelm and don’t know what to do. I wrote this for you. Because I have been there too, and these are the strategies that have helped me find my way out of overwhelm & complacency to move towards meaningful action.
There are many valid roles and strategies in this fight, so I am not telling anyone what I think they need to be doing right now. But here are my tips for how I think we need to be moving & navigating this current moment:
Take care of yourselves and honor your limits and boundaries. We all have different skills, talents, limitations & thresholds for action. There is no one right answer and no immediate solution within reach. There’s only the one next best step made we can each take and the unrelenting faith that if we keep taking those steps, something better is possible.
Do not surrender to complacency or despair. Remember the things that bring you joy and hope, and connect with the beauty and inspiration that is still all around us. Make art, make love, watch something grow, marvel at the small miracles, laugh & sing and dance for just one song. Plant some seeds of love and water them with the joyful tears of resistance, solidarity & connection.
Hold the line. Find one thing that is within your power to do. Do it. Invite others to join you so it’s more impactful. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it won’t change the world in a day, but together, those small actions can be powerful enough to defend the territory we have fought so hard to gain in the fight for social & racial justice and alter our current national trajectory.
Writing this reflection and encouragement, and sharing the following lists of community resources and actions, is my one next step for today.
What’s yours?
Thank you for being & building in community with me.
Theresa
Community Resources for Healing & Wellbeing
BIPOC Yoga as Community Practice
Friday, January 31, 4pm PT
In this special edition of The Pop Out with Carlos & Community, special guest Sahar will lead an affinity yoga class for Black, Indigenous and People of Color participants.
United For Healing Gathering - Trauma Resource Insitute
Thursday, January 23rd at 12pm PT.
Led by Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW, and Michael Sapp, Ph.D., these 1-hour meetings are supportive and welcoming spaces designed to help community members who are experiencing the devastating impact of wildfires in Southern California. If you miss this session, sign up for their mailing list, they offer frequent community events.
Intro to the Community Resilience Model
A free replay recording of the Introduction to the Community Resilience Model (CRM) workshop Carlos and I offered in December 2023.
Energy Body Mastery
Sundays, February 9th to March 23rd 2025, 9am PT
Langston Kahn teaches a set of transformational skills to help you cultivate & manage your daily energy, hold healthy boundaries in your relationships, and pull your heightened responses out by their energetic roots so you can be more fully you, each day. I am an associate EBM teacher and may run a study group or help moderate the online discussions at some point during the course. Everyone can benefit from these skills right now.
Yoga Therapy & Acupressure Therapy for Carpal tunnel syndrome
If the doom scrolling and digital activism are also taking a toll on your wrists, arms & shoulders, I found these exercises to be incredibly helpful in reducing my pain without surgery, (along with actively minimizing my screen time).
Potential Actions for Building & Defending Community
I fully support individuals choosing to remove themselves from social media apps to reclaim their time & energy and improve their mental health …and carpal tunnel symptoms. And I am working to build new networks on new platforms as well.
However, I do not personally support a broad user boycott of Meta apps because I think it is an ineffective strategy that disconnects us from one another in a time of crisis when we to need to use all of the communication tools at our disposal.
Encouraging advertisers to boycott Meta until they reinstate independent fact checking and end shadow bans against social justice advocates, is a strategy, with a clearly stated goal, that has more potential to pressure the company to roll back its hard shift to the right.
Voluntarily abandoning the global social networks we have built over a decade+ in those apps, merely to express our displeasure with the founders’ choices, with no clear end goal nor strategy, feels like ceding the virtual public square to the Nazis with no pushback - and, in fact, colonizing public spaces & driving progressives out of them is one of the most effective strategies in the fascist playbook.
Despite the censoring, monitoring and algorithmic manipulation, I still found & shared MANY useful resources on social media this week. Here are a few of them, along with suggestions for how you might consider using them to take action in the coming days.
Calls to action & talking points for calling congress.
Put your congressional representatives on speed dial and call every morning to make sure they know how you feel about the actions this administration is trying to take and that you expect them to fight tooth and nail for our future. You can find your reps’ names and direct numbers at https://www.congress.gov/members.“Know Your Rights” resources, toolkits, instructions & explanations and a lot of press coverage for the Chicago public school who demonstrated how to protect student rights by denying federal officials access to the building.
Take 10 minutes to host an impromptu practice session with your friends, family members and neighbors. Then reach out to anyone in your circles who might be at risk of deportation (or impacted by the anti-trans actions), and offer 3 concrete actions or resources to support their safety & contingency plans. Don’t ask what they need, tell them what you can offer.40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics For Community Activists
Print copies of the trifold to carry with you and hand them to anyone who says they “can’t believe what is happening” or “don’t know what to do.” Take the practical and actionable guidebook to your nearest anti-racist book club or white learning space and turn it into an active anti-fascist organizing space.
Find your people, appreciate your people. Ask them what they’re doing and tell them what you’re doing. Hold yourself and your people firmly accountable with as much love & grace as possible. Fight fiercely for justice and for our collective future in at least one small way each day.
Finally, if you are in need of more community and more practical strategy for managing through this chaos while still trying to lead your organization towards racial justice, please consider joining our Strategic Leadership Intensive. We are halfway through the program, but in response to the current crisis and the number of folks who have reached out to us looking for support, we are opening up a few more spots for folks to jump in now on a heavily subsidized sliding scale.
Strategic Leadership Intensive
1st & 3rd Thursdays
Feb 6 - June 5
9-11am PT