On the evening of April 1st, I was locked in my office staring at an empty Google Doc, trying to squeeze podcast notes for the week out of my brain and into my laptop. Instead, I ended up bursting into tears and typing this:
āAll I have to say and offer is trite and overdone and gaslighty.Ā Iām a broken record. I donāt know how to approach a world on fire with my shot glass of water and ask it to be enough. I also donāt want to keep pushing out content as if everything is fine when we all know thatās bullshit.
There is some role for me here and I must fill it. I must find my way forward.ā
I know Iām far from the only person whoās felt the heavy, cyclical waves of some iteration of those thoughts for at least the past 6 months.
Or the past 4 years.
Or even longer than that.Ā
You know this isnāt the first time Iāve climbed up on my virtual soapbox to address that feeling.
For instance, in my most recent newsletter:
āA common refrain on social media these days is just how asinine it feels to be typing out emails and going to the dentist while the world burns. I deeply relate to and cosign each of those posts. And I also hope that we feel that tension and ask āwhat if it didnāt have to be that way?ā What if the daily tasks of my life felt wrapped up in, aligned with, part of, the humanity I feel roiling in my belly? What if my goals and view of my life started to fall in line with what I am watching the collective crave and need?
We donāt ask those questions because it will be perfectā¦We ask those questions to see whether there is space within our goals and habits to find more coherenceā¦Maybe going to the dentist and caring for our health is a part of defending human life, because we are human, and our health is life worth defending, too. Maybe every meal we make for a loved one can be infused with the passion for each other that we unearthed at the last protest. Maybe our big ambitious dreams for our life start to shift, maybe our career choices start to respond in kind, maybe over time we find ourselves living an existence that makes more sense to us, with fewer moments feeling asinine and dissociated.ā
Those waves, that confront you with the hollowness of our old ways of being, are not trapping you under them. They are a generative current pushing you forward, calling you up, into something new. Asking you to set down what no longer fits and allow yourself to be transformed.Ā
To see your role and then to fill it. To find your way forward.
But like, easier said than done, right?
Most of us can feel the desire, the urgent need, to create a new normal that supports the world we want to live in, and to move away from old routines that only add more dreary inertia to the world that exists right now.Ā
And yet many of us still find ourselves stuck, say, in our office on Monday evenings, crying and confused about what to do next (totally hypothetical example).
Because āfind an existence that makes sense to youā is not necessarily actionable advice. What does that actually mean, like, for today? What does that look like, as a habit, as a practice, as a lifestyle?
Thatās what Iād like to spend April discovering together.
In this monthās book club, we will be reading Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day by Kaitlin B. Curtice.
In this book āKaitlin Curtice reclaims [resistance] as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors' holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together.
Curtice shows that we can learn to practice embodied ways of belonging and connection to ourselves and one another through everyday practices, such as getting more in touch with our bodies, resting, and remembering our ancestors. She explores four "realms of resistance"āthe personal, the communal, the ancestral, and the integralāand shows how these realms overlap and why all are needed for our liberation. Listeners will be empowered to seek wholeness in whatever spheres of influence they inhabit.ā
This monthās book club will be a practice of finding our way forward together.
Trusting the internal tension weāre experiencing - trusting every time a simple work task turns into a teary breakdown - to be a call towards a way of life that reflects our times and feels coherent. We will explore the cultivation of resistance and wholeness through our everyday choices.
Itās important to note that I am not leading this book club as a teacher, an expert, or the person you should look to for guidance on how to live. Certainly not as the person who can tell you how to do resistance correctly. Iām facilitating as someone who is right beside you, sitting with the same questions, feeling the same anxious twist in my chest. Book club is for anyone looking for more camaraderie and togetherness as we all figure it out together.
While (obviously) all are welcome and invited to read the book this month (and to enjoy the knowledge that weāre reading it together), the official book club discussion will be available to paid Substack subscribers. This will occur through the full podcast episodes where I will share my thoughts on each weekās reading, as well as weekly paid subscriber chats (using Substackās threads feature for the first time!) where there will be thought prompts and invitations to discuss together.
This is where Iād usually give you an exact reading schedule for each week, but for this month I feel like trying on more trust and less homework vibes! So read what you can, when you can! Notice when you want to tear through a bunch of chapters in one afternoon and then sit with a single paragraph for two weeks and follow that!Ā
Those who are reading more slowly can model resisting urgency and call us back to marvel at earlier moments in the book we may have taken for granted.Ā
Those reading more quickly can excite us for whatās to come and motivate us to continue.
Those not reading at all but simply listening along can be beautiful mirrors to our shares, taking conversations in directions we never could have experienced if weād only stuck to the bookās guidelines.Ā
Your specific role in the community of this book club will be perfectly unique and discovered through you honoring exactly what feels good to you, and we will all be grateful for it!
My local library had copies of this book and maybe yours does too. If youād like to buy a copy, I encourage you to join me in supporting Paperbacks & Frybread, a beautiful indigenous-owned online bookstore that is dedicated to carrying diverse stories. It has Living Resistance in stock! Dominique of Paperbacks & Frybread even gave me a discount code for book club members to use when ordering (not an affiliate code, I donāt get anything from it, itās just for you) which Iāll put at the end of this email.
I would love to have you join us in experimentation and practice this month. Either way, I hope you know that your existence here is wildly important. Even within the overwhelm and anger and nonsensical corruption of it all, there is something beautiful available to be found, within your relationship with yourself, with others, and with life itself. I hope today meets you with surprising sweetness, and whatever it is you need to keep going and trying and caring.
Thank you for fighting for yourself!
Discount code for those buying the book!
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