Since the election was called for Donald Trump, the collective stress levels have risen so high that the tension in the air is palpable. Two days after the election, I boarded the boat from my island to the mainland and my body immediately went on high alert, wondering, “Who on this island supported this man?” “Are there people smiling at me and making small talk when they hold values that see me as ‘less than’?” Walking on the mainland, I felt the stiffness in my body—tense, ready to react. Ready for a white person to look at me the wrong way. Ready for the flood of racism and sexism—and possible harm.
After two days of a steady social media diet, my mind and body were heavy with fear, anxiety, and tension. Thankfully, dinner with a friend brought my body and mind back into balance. By the end of the night, we had laughed together, cried together, and held space for one another. So much so that the people at the table near us remarked upon leaving that it was good to see people laughing. It was good to laugh.
I returned home that night and remembered that rarely does nonstop fear and anxiety help us. I know this. Hell, I lived this. I have spent the last calendar year since early November 2023 working through the issues that brought me to the brink of emotional and mental collapse. I have spent the last year recalibrating and finding peace but, more importantly, learning to navigate the inevitable storms of life without allowing myself to be pulled under.
It has taken a lot of intentional effort to wrestle the anxiety beast and find forward momentum in both my professional and personal life. Days where, frankly, it would have been easier to skip my daily meditation and gratitude practice and to skip exercising and instead wallow in my feelings. To drown in fearful thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel all the feelings. The difference is that I no longer want to be consumed by them to the point of feeling immobilized by fear. The other part of how I have navigated this past year is building with people, to get on the phone with friends and loved ones, to show up when my fickle mind says the couch is a better option.
So why am I sharing this with you given that Trump won, and America is losing to the evildoers? Because what we really need to move forward individually and collectively will require more than a steady diet of doomscrolling, knee-jerk ally activities, and a daily dose of fear.
While these activities are coping methods as we move through our initial shock and horror, the ability to make long-term plans that involve not rolling over will require clarity, calm, and connection.
Have you ever tried to make decisions when you are stressed to the max, sleep deprived, and anxious throughout your entire body?
I have, and often those are not my best decisions because I am working from a place of high emotionality and often only thinking in the short term. The type of strategizing and community-building we are going to have to do moving forward cannot be driven by our fears but instead by our desire for collective freedom and liberation. It will require seeing our collective brokenness and coming together for the greater good. As a Black woman, while the anger and hurt in this moment is strong and feels personal, it will also require knowing that our coalitions will require white people who want to build trust but recognizing that trust in this moment across racial lines has been damaged.
Friends, there is no doubt that our fears are justified. If you remember just a small percentage of what the first Trump years were like, you know he thrives on chaos and fear. He thrives on governing in a way that keeps our nervous systems out of whack. He’s a chaos machine and he is also not terribly competent and even without the “guardrails” of the first administration he is fueled by ego, which means when the love and admiration from MAGA nation turn on him, as it will, he seeks validation. Doesn’t mean he can’t inflict deep harm on the American people but when you aren’t competent and the people surrounding you aren’t the best either, the harm inflicted may be limited by ego and competency—or lack thereof.
Even with Elon Musk involved, a truly powerful and ego-driven man, I see a lack of competency. These are small people who thrive on ultimately using their power to harm because they seek validation and seeking validation always fails.
In this moment, we have two months before the ship sinks lower and rather than wallowing in fear or operating from fear, I believe it is a time to get grounded, recalibrate for our coming reality, and to start planning. We have enough concepts of their plans to know that it’s probably a good time to draw closer to our communities in our geographic regions. If you don’t have one, it’s time to see how to become a part of one. It’s time to start moving away from social media because if even a fraction of what has been promised comes to fruition, a lot of us online will need to reduce our visibility.
As of right now, I am not planning to stop what I am doing but for my safety, I will be moving more of my work to Patreon and shifting how I post on these platforms. Given that I have been written about in publications and written for publications, I can’t exactly distance myself away from my work. But if you are a civilian, so to speak, it might be a great time to scrub your profiles and go low.
Start thinking about how you might live if money gets tight, reducing expenses, saving if possible. These aren’t bad ideas.
Ultimately though, don’t stop living. Instead, embrace life; embrace your people. In the days since the election, I have gathered with friends to break bread, had numerous long phone calls, and even Zoomed with my sisterhood of Black women. All of which calmed me down and got me back to reality. In this moment, I am okay, I don’t know what’s ahead but if I spend all this moment worrying about what might happen, I am not being present and, frankly, I am missing out on living. If the worst comes to fruition, I suspect I would regret spending our last days of relative peace worrying incessantly, when none of those worries can do anything.
Personally, I think self-care at this moment is reducing your time online. Fear is big business. The number of writers and creators I follow who are feeding us a steady diet of Big Fear has grown and the line between information and preparation and straight-up fear mongering has become extremely thin. Yes, there are historical markers that provide clues as to how this might all go down and being aware of them is useful but consuming them to the point where we are unable to function and plan is not helpful.
History also tells us that while many were lost in the worst of times, people still lived, writers wrote, musicians made music—shit, life was still lived and people found glimmers of joy and hope in the most desolate of times. The human spirit was resilient and as the great great granddaughter of enslaved Africans, I know that the masters’ whips and rules could not kill our spirit or resilience. If they had, I wouldn’t be here. Many of us who are the descendants of people who survived the most heinous acts of humans wouldn’t be here.
The best thing we can do is to calm down and get our bearings, make a plan, be ready, and live.
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