There's no singular solution.

if only it were that easy...

Your LGBTQ+ friends in the US might be living their lives in joy, but you need to know it’s taking all of our tools to do it. Unless you’ve actively withdrawn yourself from society, you know that things are rough for marginalized communities in the US. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you. Maybe you’re a person who is largely impervious from changes that the new administration is making. You’re waiting for the price of eggs to down. You’re enjoying the ‘return to traditional values’ being touted. You live in a home that you can afford to pay for with children you wanted to have and a spouse that supports your work optional decisions. Maybe you take a family vacation every year to Branson to spend time in your timeshare with the other families you’ve met there. Your children are getting ready to go off to college and you’ve saved a little nest egg to help make that happen. If that sounds like you, I am so happy for you and your stability. I am happy that you live a life in which the only calamities you’ll endure are those brought by severe weather and the realities of life like losing loved ones.

There are other stories, though. Stories of the six Texas children aged 11 and under that went out of state to get abortions in 2023. Whoever got them there might have also participated in their harm.

There are stories of the leaders of the First Nations — the indigenous people of this land — telling their tribes what to do when and if encountered by ICE. People who have lived on this land for hundreds of years are thinking through deportation scenarios.

There are the stories of LGBTQ+ people rushing to get their affairs in order. In fact, my wife and I just discussed getting a Texas marriage license in order to have legal protections in this state if federal ones create more chaos and undoing of marriage equality. Bonus, we might have two anniversaries.

There are stories around leaving — an intellectual and cultural exodus — as serious conversations are happening around what the country is becoming… or rather returning to. Because separate but equal, seeing people as chattel, re-segregation, women not having claim or agency over their bodies, and enshrining practices that protect some folks while creating and widening a underclass is nothing new.

There are stories about building something new, great, different. And there are doubts that it could happen for a country founded upon the principles of pillage.

There is no singular solution.

Some people will leave—maybe for four years, maybe forever. Many will suffer. There will be numerous returns to old coping mechanisms for some and a discovery of new ones for others. And all this will happen as a handful of people march towards trillionaire status while profiting off of the despair of communities that are already marginalized, and communities, nations, and entire ethnic groups that will never see true freedom or wealth in their lifetime.

We won’t think it away. We won’t pray it away. We won’t spiritually bypass it away. We won’t astrology it away. We won’t yoga it away. We won’t even community it away.

Community is the healer we’ll need for respite from witnessing acts of inhumanity. But it will not be the only answer.

Joy is the medicine we’ll need to disrupt despair so that we may continue living and thriving in spite of and alongside structural harm being promulgated through systems. But it will not be the only answer.

Faith is our superpower to continuing moving forward, to continue organizing, to continue living in pursuit of happiness and true freedom. It will take faith because, though we may have had glimpses of it, we’ve never actually seen all of those things. But it will not be the only answer.

There’s no singular solution. But there may be faith, community, and joy. There will be habits and skills built to make us more resilient beings. There will be a plethora of opportunities to examine how we want to live and who we want to be. Doors will be opened by those who previously gate-kept. There will be new thought leaders and change makers that shift society into something new and fresh. And there will be a swing back, because this pendulum is as far to the right as the string will go.

While there is not just one way of collective repair and liberation, if we lean into the medicine of community, faith, and joy, and listen to and learn from nature, I believe we will prosper.

Take some time today to sit in silence. Listen to that still small voice within that will tell you how you envision moving through this year. And in March, we begin to sow.