Building at the speed of belonging... surviving the speed of catastrophe

A four-step plan for navigating the polycrisis

Sunrise rainbows, over the Dolores River canyon, southwestern Colorado (on a July bike-packing adventure)

Welcome to new subscribers! Normally this is an every 2-4 weeks kind of newsletter, but I’ve learned to trust my muse and the rhythms of life. Thanks to regular readers for your patience.

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In our June gathering for gift subscribers of this newsletter, Alexis Goggans voiced an inquiry (which she subsequently elaborated on here) that resonated in me as the fundamental question of this moment:

How can we move at the speed of trust… when facing the speed of catastrophe?

I want to use today’s post to take Alexis’ question seriously. The good news: I think there actually are answers that are beginning to emerge from the collective wisdom of those movement leaders and practitioners who are laboring to birth this new world we so urgently need. Each of these actions have the dual benefit of helping bring into being the world we long for… while being intrinsically valuable and life-giving in their own right. I think Sebene Selassie has it right:

Belonging is the only way out of our current catastrophes.

TL;DR: The first step must be to calm our nervous systems; to return to center. From that grounded place, we can take longer-term actions. Second, we can cultivate resilience practices to support us amid turbulent times: taking a rest. Gardening. Spending time with nature, art, music, reading. Third: we have to build community, to invest in relationships. Without friendships and social support, almost nothing else is possible. Only with these three tools in place can we return our attention to ourselves, and the deep but essential work of inner transformation. All this work is to move us toward our deepest human longings: for significance and belonging, all the more essential in times of seemingly relentless crisis.

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From burnout to belonging

I’m noticing everywhere in my networks and the world a pervasive sense of stress, overwhelm, and the short path from there to cynicism and despair. The common sentiment in the face of uncertainty and multiple crises: it’s too much, it’s too late, it doesn’t matter what I do. We feel powerless. As Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us in Braiding Sweetgrass:

Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the Earth.

Echoing Alexis, Maurice Stevens frames the question we must face:

How do we access and enact liberation in a social context of brutal oppression that feels ever more resistant to transformation?

All domination systems (white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, etc.) depend on three things to maintain their power: disconnecting us from our selves and our bodies; disconnecting us from each other and community; and disconnecting us from land and other living beings. This sense of alienation perpetuates our sense of powerlessness; it robs us of our agency by telling us our actions don’t matter. But as Ursula Le Guin reminds us (speaking of capitalism, but really any domination system):

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

The antidote is obvious, and available to us. The opposite of separation is connection; the opposite of alienation is belonging. More accurately, the antidote is repair and reconnection, because to reconnect requires repairing the ruptures. Thus the path to building belonging is also the path to healing: to repairing what has been severed. It is also the path to reclaiming our power: to build belonging is to assert our agency, to choose life in the face of systems that deny it.

Alfred Adler said all humans have two core universal needs: significance and belonging. I think they’re mutually reinforcing: it is difficult to feel agency if we don’t feel like we belong. It is difficult to feel like we belong when we feel powerless.

I want to share here four no-regrets steps to building belonging in the face of catastrophe: actions which seek to build our sense of individual and collective agency, and belonging: to ourselves, each other, and the earth.

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1. Calm your nervous system

To be alive today is to be subjected to constant trauma, in small and large ways, at both a personal and collective level. (I use the word trauma deliberately here, recognizing a continuum from stress to trauma). We are all affected collectively by living through a pandemic, an epidemic of violence, widespread economic precarity, the encroaching climate crisis, the assault on women and LGBT rights… and individually in how our identities and circumstances interact with these broader phenomena while we try to manage the daily tasks of living. Our individual and collective response to these conditions is a combination of grief and overwhelm: introducing the concept of “burnout” to our cultural lexicon.

Here’s the thing: while we tend to individualize and pathologize burnout as a personal psychological problem, it’s actually a collective physiological experience. Our bodies react to stress by going into “fight-or-flight” mode: triggering our sympathetic nervous system to prepare us to act in the face of emergency. When the threat passes, our parasympathetic nervous system kicks in to complete the cycle and help us discharge/process the cortisol and adrenaline in our system: the “rest and digest” response.

But when this stress response becomes chronic, when there is no end to the threat… we can get stuck in a doom loop where our body is constantly triggered into fight-or-flight, with no opportunity to “rest and digest.” The literature is super clear on this: we are not our best selves when we are stuck in this place. The first step HAS to be calming our nervous system, intentionally interrupting that fight-or-flight response to allow our bodies to return to a regulated state.

Fortunately, there is a growing recognition of this need and a suite of resources now available to help us return to center, to self-regulate in the face of triggers, stress, and traumatizing events. This podcast offers a helpful overview of key strategies (aptly titled: Self-Regulation Toolkit for Painful Times). The simplest exercise is also one of the most powerful: breathing and breathwork (and its deeper cousins in meditation, yoga, somatics, and other practices that incorporate the body), but even just taking deep breaths can help discharge tense energy.

The key takeaway here: we can’t skip this step. Nothing else is possible until we calm our nervous systems.

2. Cultivate Resilience

Last year I attended a workshop with Staci Haines at the Strozzi Institute on Somatics, Trauma, and Resilience, where she made an important distinction between survival and resilience:

Resilience practices leave us feeling more connected, more open, and with a greater sense of safety. Resilience practices leave us ready to take action toward a better future for ourselves and others. We will have a wider range of sensations and emotions with resilience, like it is ok to feel more and be more alive, rather than numb.

Our survival strategies, on the other hand, tend to leave us more numb, tight or contracted, with less feeling. While these strategies have been smart and this might feel "safe" or familiar, this way of surviving tends to disconnect us, leave us more alone or isolated and feeling less whole.

The point here: our goal is to prepare ourselves to take action in the world, to lead lives of dignity and significance. While numbing/escape strategies can keep us alive, they can’t help us thrive. It’s worth noting that the same strategy—going for a run in the woods, e.g.—can be either: are we running away from something, trying to numb/escape, or are we running to help our bodies discharge tension/trauma, to reconnect to the world around us?

Distilling the literature Staci highlighted five features that help people process trauma in a healthy way and cultivate resilience:

1. Imagination

2. Art, music, and creative expression

3. Nature and animals

4. Relationships and community

5. Ability to find meaning and assert agency

We know this, deep in our bodies: children do this intuitively. This is why we have emotional support animals, or take delight in trees and flowers. This is why we play music, sing and dance, write science fiction. And I would add a sixth thing here: the simple act of resting. It’s revolutionary in the face of a capitalist system that defines our worth by what we produce. Taking a nap. A break. A sabbatical. I love the work of the Nap Ministry here, or the Wildseed Society’s concept of “Revolutionary Aftercare.” You don’t need to justify it, earn it, or deserve it. But if you do, science supports the health benefits of simply doing nothing.

Illustration by Maurice Sendak, in Open House for Butterflies

The invitation here: choose the strategies that work for you, and plan them into your day/week/life. I’ve noticed for myself my sense of connection/agency diminishes on days when I don’t take a walk in nature or actively connect with my loved ones. It requires intentionality. And I still have to fight the inner critic chastising me for my idleness, urging me to get back to work, to be productive.

3. Connect with other people!

This one gets an exclamation point. A couple quotes from diverse sources that help emphasize this point. Trauma clinician Alicia Lieberman summarizes the research:

Relationships are at the core of healthy people.

Or, as organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba puts it:

Everything worthwhile is done with other people.

Isolation and loneliness is a breeding ground for despair and violence. Hannah Arendt remains the most insightful observer of this phenomenon, writing in The Origins of Totalitarianism:

Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other… isolated men are powerless by definition… [Totalitarianism] bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.

We humans are social creatures; we are herd animals. To build community, to seek relationships, is itself a radical act in the face of oppressive cultures and systems that seek to keep us isolated from each other: divide and conquer is the oldest strategy in the book.

We can start with the people we already have in our lives: we can share our longings. We can initiate conversations. We can gather around things we care about. Peter Block believes that all transformation starts with conversations. I still credit friend (and Building Belonging member) Boting Zhang with showing me the power of intentional conversation, when she invited me to a “salon”-style gathering at friend (and Building Belonging member) Mónica Guzmán’s house. We gathered: Bo curated a diverse (racially, generationally, professionally, etc) group. We talked: really, we never made it past introductions. And: it was utterly transformative.

Ultimately there is no substitute for in-person connection, but we shouldn’t discount the power of virtual relationships either. In Building Belonging I feel deep intimacy with dozens of people who I still haven’t met in three-dimensional life. If your place-based community doesn’t feel nourishing… find spaces that do. They exist. Or if they don’t, you can always take friend Semhar Araia’s advice (which ultimately helped push me to launch Building Belonging):

Create the spaces you wish existed.

4. Reconnect with yourself: feel your feelings

Once we’ve returned our nervous system to calm, identified some sources of resilience to prevent us from returning to a dysregulated state, and grounded ourselves in supportive relationships, we can return our attention to our selves.

There has been a long-overdue recognition in recent years that “inner work” matters: that we can’t hope to transform systems without transforming ourselves. Often that insight takes the form of suggesting that we must start with ourselves… I’m not sure that’s right. It’s counterintuitive, but I think the sequencing flows this way: the only sustainable way to transform ourselves is to do it with support from others. And: to then rely on that support to do the deep inner work. I came across this line recently from Kute Blackson, and it landed with the uncomfortable weight of a difficult truth:

We can only transform to the level of the unfelt feeling that we haven’t dealt with.

Ughhhhhhh…. you mean I have to actually feel my feelings? And that if I don’t, my capacity for transformation—and therefore my ability to be an agent in the kind of societal and systems transformation I long for—is forever limited?

This is probably my biggest growth edge right now, and it’s incredibly difficult. And: without deep relational support from loved ones and community, plus professional/expert support (like this hot-off-the-presses episode from Nicole LePera)… I don’t think I’d have a chance.

There are (at least) two components of individual transformation: reconnecting with our selves, and reconnecting with our bodies. I want to name them both because I think different skill-sets are required. The first I think of as reclaiming those parts of ourselves that we have denied or alienated: I find the work of Internal Family Systems really powerful here. It’s a way to acknowledge how we have adapted to survive in the face of trauma (individual and systemic), and to show self-compassion for those adaptations. The second is reconnecting with our body. In a dominant culture that privileges the supposedly rational mind, this is about re-integrating our heart, our sex, our sense of spirituality. It’s about re-learning to feel our bodies, to live into the obvious truth that we move through the world as embodied beings, and that our bodies are our first and often best source of wisdom.

Let me repeat: to do this work we need support. We have developed these survival mechanisms to protect ourselves. To even contemplate relaxing our defenses we need to trust that we will be safe. And here’s the rub: to ask for the support we need is itself an incredibly vulnerable act. In a recent conversation with ALOK Menon on their must-listen podcast, Prentis Hemphill observed:

It is harder to say I need you than I love you.

Oof. Truth (at least for me!) This is why I think we need strong relationships before we can brave the difficult work of continuing our own transformation. An important note here on “safety”; I love this definition from Dr. Holly Richmond on the Pleasure Mechanics podcast:

Safety is not the absence of threat. Safety is the knowledge that even if there is a threat present, I have enough self-resourcing, enough agency, enough empowerment, enough choice to take care of myself.

(And I would say those tools for self-resourcing include other people! A supportive and loving community). ALOK agrees:

I really believe friendship is the answer to most of the existential questions of the world.

“Catastrophe” is a turning point

Thus far I’ve been talking about strategies for building belonging. And yet, the world continues to unravel around us: what about that? I want to offer a couple thoughts here, starting by reframing what this moment is actually about.

Etymologically, many of the terms we use to describe this moment have something in common: they remind us that we have choice. “Catastrophe” derives from the Greek for a sudden turn or reversal; “crisis” too is about a turning point; “apocalypse” means to uncover or reveal; “chaos” is about a void, emptiness, uncertainty.

Which is to say: nothing is fated. And even where harmful changes are inevitable (current rates of carbon in the atmosphere locking in a certain amount of species or habitat destruction, etc.) we still have a choice in how we navigate that loss. Kute Blackson again:

All lessons are repeated until we learn them… all feelings remain present until fully felt.

Meaning we can’t fully emerge from the grief and sadness of being alive in this time until we allow ourselves to fully feel that grief. How many of us dare allow that?

He offers a neat distinction: the goal is to surrender to the lesson, not the situation. We don’t want to succumb to our feelings; we need to feel them. We don’t want to surrender to the climate crisis, or rising authoritarianism, or racial violence, or the pandemic, or… Rather, we need to understand what these phenomena are trying to teach us (hint: it’s all the same lesson). We have the agency to choose how we engage, and what lessons we learn: it is that choice that creates the possibility of the futures we long for.

I think there is something here in choosing what we pay attention to, and what we engage with. Agency is our felt sense of our ability to act on what we know, to exert power and have impact. For most of us, we can’t meaningfully have an effect on far-flung events: in a real sense, we have no agency there. To cultivate agency is to take action where we can have an impact: that usually means closer to home, or at the scale you can access.

Yes I think we have a responsibility to face the world and its multiple truths; no I don’t think humans have evolved to absorb the world’s troubles all at once. This doesn’t mean we turn away from the war in Ukraine, or floods in Uganda: it does mean we choose what to do with that information, and seek always to connect our inputs to our outputs. It is also a reminder to focus on the good, to amplify that which we want to see more of. As adrienne maree brown reminds us: what you pay attention to, grows. Here’s Howard Zinn (quoted by James Clear);

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

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I want to close here, as always, with an invitation to practice. Practice offers us the delight of experiencing our own capacity for transformation: as we do something, we build capacity; we become more capable. We heal: we experience our mind’s neuroplasticity, our body’s remarkable ability to re-wire itself as we cultivate the tools to liberate ourselves from past trauma. Practice is an action: it’s an exercise in agency. As Mariame Kaba reminds us:

Hope is a discipline; it must be practiced.

What do you want to practice? Which step is calling to you in this moment? Do you want to start with a nap? A phone call to a friend? A walk in the park? Playing music? These are all acts of resistance, and acts of creating the future we want. Attuning to pleasure, and to our bodies to help us discern survival from resilience. Turning to our friends and loved ones to help support us when we stumble, and to inspire us to keep going.

I’m curious how others answer Alexis’ question: what feels essential to you? What’s missing here? How do you practice resilience? As always, Id love to know what resonates, what doesn’t, and where you find yourself in inquiry.

I’ll be traveling—and hopefully offline!—for much of August, and look forward to continuing this conversation upon my return. I hope to see many of you in our subscribers’ gathering on September 9th!