"Tell me about despair"

Grieve, gather strength, and lean into what matters most

Nov 06, 2024

Like many left-leaning Americans, I’m struggling today. My friend’s text groups have sent poems and sayings and videos and more, as we try to navigate what the future will hold. We must grieve that America has put its faith in a person who does not respect or value so many of us - those of us with uteruses, melanin, etc.

No matter who won the race, I would fear the bioethical issues ahead. But the fears now for the health of this country have become more specific, knowing who is in power and seeing the profound red-shift in the country’s voting.

Mary Oliver says to us, “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. — Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese

I will do my best to follow Mary Oliver’s advice…

While voting is over, I continue to reflect on NDN Collective’s video on how to vote like a radical. This video, more than any other, captures my feelings on political power and working within imperfect systems.

After the election of GW Bush, Toni Morrison wrote “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear” in The Nation. The quote below is from the essay. Perhaps not today, but someday soon when you are ready, I hope you’ll allow yourself the time to read it.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. — Toni Morrison quote via The Marginalian

I hope you, too, will reach for the artist within you to promote positive change in this world. Each of us is a creator in our own way. Make art, make music, make clothes, make a cake, make a map, make a meal, make love, make joy, make tears.

Make justice.

Make safety.

Make something. Anything.

You are here and you are worthy of love and protection and justice and joy.