pebbles №3: a pile of hope

a resource roundup for finding the courage to be uncertain and uncomfortable when that's the last thing you want to be

I’ve been reading a lot.

I mean, I’m always reading—but I tend to dive headfirst into other people’s Art whenever I feel emotionally overwhelmed, and especially when I feel overwhelmed by the world.

I find hope in other people’s Art, and I thought you might find some hope in it, too.

In today’s Pebble Pile, we’ve got resources for:

• when you’re struggling to balance ‘staying informed so you can speak out against injustice’ with the ‘overwhelming urge to look away and numb out’

• when you’re wondering how anyone who lets themselves feel the full depth of their painful emotions is somehow still able to function

• when you worry that no matter what steps you take toward justice, it will never be good enough

• when you fear that your silly little life and your silly little art are irrelevant for making meaningful change in the world and shouldn’t be shared when horrible things are being done to people

• when a) refusing to be a bystander and b) feeling painful emotions instead of numbing them has been c) so overwhelming that you’re not sure how anyone could find hope or optimism in any of this

and

• ‘a Palestinian meditation in a time of annihilation’ by Fady Joudah

“alexis, sorry—did you just say ‘pebble pile’?”

Yep! Some penguins search for the perfect pebble and gift it to another penguin they love. Like many of my neurodivergent friends, I'm a resource pebbler, like: here's this random meme that made me think of you, here's a song I think you'll be into, oh hey I found this cool resource, I'll just leave it here for you... 

*lovingly lays misshapen pebbles at your internet-feet*

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if you’re struggling to choose ‘staying informed so you can speak out against injustice’ over ‘the overwhelming urge to look away and numb out’:

Here’s a 26-minute video of me walking you through one of the most important things I’ve ever read: A chapter called “from bystanding toward engaged witness” that broke my brain (in a good way) when I discovered it 2021.

If you’re not sure you want 26-minutes of reading aloud with commentary (you know, the juicy stuff), here’s an excerpt I’ve highlighted the hell out of in my copy of Toward Psychologies of Liberation:

“While there is a long history of individuals and activist organizations that have compassionately witnessed and taken a stand against oppression and marginalization in colonizing countries, many people have also been deeply socialized to be bystanders, taking retreat in a focus on the personal and a pursuit of happiness carried out within a very narrow range of life with family and friends.

For those raised in educational systems that stress individualism, it becomes difficult to formulate ideas about the way one’s own social environment and those of other’s affect one’s well-being. Many cannot imagine themselves speaking out publicly or rocking the boat by asking painful and difficult questions.

Bystanders may have been taught that protest is ineffective, that authorities know better, that getting to the roots of unjust power is impossible, and that the systems that manufacture injustice and violence are beyond one’s control. Bystanders avoid talking with others with different points of view that might challenge their normalized perspectives.” (p. 64 - 65)

—Mary Watkins & Helene Shulman

You can find Toward Psychologies of Liberation at Bookshop.org or for free on Internet Archive. It’s a pretty dense, academic read, but foundational if you’re interested in frameworks of psychology / mental health that don’t pathologize people.

If you’re not sure what I mean by that (or are liberation-psychology-curious but not sure where to start) I highly recommend reading Sanah Ahsan’s article “I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health” in the Guardian. 😊

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if you’re wondering how anyone who lets themselves feel the full depth of their painful emotions is somehow still able to function:

Ayesha Khan, Ph.D.

reminds us that when we struggle to survive our own emotions its likely because we’re trying to carry them alone.

“Emotions are fundamentally relational, not individual experiences that emerge from within in a vacuum. We cannot truly FEEL anything in isolation. Feelings are the threads that connect us to our ecosystems (other people, beings, the land)- so how can we possibly carry them alone?

Sadness when solely felt in isolation is crushing and hopeless. Grief when carried alone without communal support is paralyzing & unbearably agonizing. The moments when I don’t want to be alive are the moments when I’m most alone. It isn’t the sadness. It’s the loneliness that is crushing. When I truly try to discern what the problem is, I see that grief is not a problem to be solved or a hurdle to be avoided. The problem is the isolation that capitalism inflicts on us. Grief on the other hand is life-giving… if it is processed, navigated & moved through in community. Our emotions are sources of information, critical feedback & pathways of connection that helps us grow, evolve & adapt in community.

When I’m devastated, deeply wounded, crying & wailing on the ground as I’m held by my loved ones, I’m more than okay. I’m hurting, scared, suffering, confused & uncertain. But I want this. I want to move thru the pain, learn the lessons that inevitably come from it & find the hope that is only to be felt alongside it. The tears even begin to feel… good. Cathartic. Necessary. Sacred. Everyone took a piece of the boulder to carry with them so I don’t have to do it alone.”

Read the full essay here:

Heavy, difficult emotions are important to face & only overwhelming when carried alone

What if you told your friends how you’re really feeling?

What if they felt the way you do, and felt less alone, knowing that?

What if they were grateful to hold you in your grief, anger, frustration?

What if you weren’t supposed to feel all these things alone?

In another excellent piece (and related to our topic of bystanding), Khan writes:

“Mainstream mental health systems will urge you to do the impossible—care for yourself by looking away from someone else’s distress.”

You can read that here:

Community helps us get un-stuck & turns grief into action

I highly recommend subscribing to

Cosmic Anarchy

, if you haven’t already!

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if you worry that no matter what steps you take toward justice, it will never be good enough:

Murphy

reminds us that:

“We don’t get to care in silos. Our ripple effects are too powerful for isolationist thinking. Our devotion is a sacred choice. However, we do have to choose the corner of the world that we work within. We can’t dedicate ourselves to every issue that compels us. When I try to work in every direction at once, I get lost and I get ineffective. I get tired, and I get hopeless. […]

The most effective way to do nothing is to try to do everything.

If your brain starts to try to deceive you into believing you are not doing enough, trace the work you do back to collective liberation. We are all bound up together, and the corner you’ve chosen is yours to make as free as you can. We can’t all work together in one corner because our true freedom takes all kinds. We need the growers, the feeders, the organizers, the deliverers, the designers, the builders, the writers, the loud ones, the shelf-stockers, the swimmers, the runners, the yellers, the singers, the sweepers, the visionaries, the destroyers. We need each person in their corner. Devoted to their corner.

Your corner might change over time, and that is right and good and important. Your corner might be taken over, and I urge you to shimmy around until you can reclaim your space within it. This is something that can’t be taken from you. This is the collective work that will set us free. We need you to know and love your part of the work, recognize its place within the collective work, and honor its importance in transporting us to the world we know is possible.

How we do anything is how we do everything.”

Read more of this beautiful piece and subscribe to

Our Medicine

here:

Hold tight to your corner of the world.

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if you fear that your silly little life and your silly little art are irrelevant for making meaningful change in the world and shouldn’t be shared when horrible things are being done to people:

Grace Lee Boggs reminds us that revolution means reinventing culture.

“…[W]e have to think seriously about values and not just about abuses. We need to understand that we are one of those turning points in history where we need revolution—and revolution means reinventing culture. (p. xvii)

Every crisis, actual or impending, needs to be viewed as an opportunity to bring about profound changes in our society. Going beyond protest organizing, visionary organizing begins by creating images and stories of the future that help us imagine and create alternatives to the existing system. My friend Wayne Curtis calls this creating “a whole new culture.” (p. xxi)

Still, it becomes clearer everyday that organizing or joining massive protests and demanding new policies fail to sufficiently address to crisis we face. They may demonstrate that we are on the right side politically, but they are not transformative enough. They do not change the cultural images or the symbols that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are. Art can help us to envision the new cultural images we need to grow our souls.” (p.36)

—Grace Lee Boggs in The New American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

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if a) refusing to be a bystander and b) feeling painful emotions instead of numbing them has been c) so overwhelming that you’re not sure how anyone could find hope or optimism in any of this:

Angela Davis reminds us that if we can’t tap into optimism, it might be because we’re thinking in individual terms, rather than collective ones.

Frank Barat: “Do you think that we should remain optimistic about the future?”

Angela Davis: “Well I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. What has kept me going is new modes of community. I don’t know whether I would have survived had not movements survived; had not communities of resistance, communities of struggle survived. So whatever I’m doing, I always feel myself directly connected to those communities. And I think that this is an era where we have to encourage that sense of community, particularly at a time when neoliberalism attempts to force people to think of themselves only in individual terms, and not in collective terms. It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”

—In Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

And in We Do This Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba reminds us that hope is a thing we choose, not a thing that happens to us.

In a 2014 essay in the book about ending oppressive policing called “Whether Darren Wilson Is Indicted or Not, the Entire System is Guilty,” she writes:

“To the young people who have taken to the streets across the country and are agitating for some “justice” in this moment, I hope that you don’t invest too deeply in the Ferguson indictment decision. Don’t let a non-indictment crush your spirit and steal your hope. Hope is a discipline. And frankly, the actions you have taken and are taking inspire so many daily.” (p. 56)

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and

“I now pause for a brief moment of silence for the murdered Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. And for all the murdered and maimed everywhere, civilians or not. Imagine extending this equal humanity to everyone, every time. It’s what oppressors fear most. Because they are invariably the greater victimizers.”

—From A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation, by Fady Joudah
[and introduced to me by

Sebene Selassie

in November Quarter Connections]

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[…]

Hope is a discipline.

Optimism is an absolute necessity.

The most effective way to do nothing is to try to do everything.

Revolution means reinventing culture.

The burden of painful emotions is meant to be carried with others, not alone.

Numbing to injustice cuts us off from ourselves; engaged witnessing brings us back into community.

May I have the courage to be uncertain and uncomfortable in the pursuit of liberation, safety, and dignity for all people.

Anyways,

Alexis