Like so many others, I spent the final week leading to the election in a nauseously optimistic state. I am not going to stir the pot of emotional soup that nearly everyone I know is stewing in right now. Because I have something else to say and I think that it is worth it. Especially for those who are feeling it hard and heavy. (Of course, feel feelings. Take time and take care. And then, please take action – for that, read on).

I remember 2016 on physical level. The sick feeling. The absolute dread and despair. The lack of sleep and the morning after in my neighborhood. Those conscious memories helped me understand the body-based nausea that I experienced leading up to election day (my implicit memory of 2016). I have three reasons why I’m pretty sure I wasn’t completely flattened by disappointment 8 years hence. Here they are in order of significance:

I no longer live in a blue bubble, and I began preparing for that before I arrived in my new purple state home. Whereas I used to be pretty sure how everyone around me voted and it didn’t really matter because we were solid blue anyway, now I have no idea. I see plenty of yard signs and full-out displays that make it quite clear where I’m at. The thinking of Heather McGhee and Anand Giridharadas helped me with a shift in mindset before I moved. Just this week, I’ve signed up for the daily Tangle news-letter because it’s clear that I need to get more savvy at neutral language and a deliberately unbiased newssource is a great support in that which brings me to point two…

I’m parenting a hot-tongued teenager who also recently relocated to a purple haze state after living his first 12 years in a deceptively blissful blue bubble. I slept more than most on election night and while my son’s loud and dramatic exclamations didn’t bring me to waking, I still had to get out of bed quickly and attend. He was quite upset, there were tears, curse words, and grandiosity. I needed to calm him down quickly and effectively. I do not need him running off the little snippets of in home conversations out of context and in the wrong company. We need to be smart and savvy. Always, but it’s much more critical now.

One and Two are big factors, so to say that Three is biggest is significant.

My personal education in social justice thanks to finding my political home in SURJ is huge. Here’s a key rule in organizing that I employed even before I realized it – we, the 99%, do not turn on each other. (Yes, of course I get annoyed and beyond at people in my life who do not see and act as I do because I think that I’m in the right and they are in the wrong. I process those feelings in safe containers and I’m grateful to have the compassionate and empathetic support that I have.) When it comes to arriving at a landing place of understanding, a party line, a final analysis, a platform for communication with a broader audience, I hold to solidarity with the people who share my general condition – we are not rich and we never were. There are other understandings that I have honed thanks to my time in SURJ that help me with a basic understanding of this moment so that I am not despairing but ready to act. Links to my SURJ community, back on Ohlone land, here in Waawiyatanong, and across all of Turtle Island, bring me comfort and a sense of accountability that feel very relevant in this super-charged moment. I’m clear on what we are up against. Clear that I am part of a resistance that spans back to the very beginning of the US. Clear that I’m part of the small number of people who have opted for reason and truth in the face of extreme violation of life-centered, humanist principles. I’m thinking here of the genocide and chattel slavery that are foundational to the United States of America and ever-present realities remaining to be addressed. And clear that there are many more people to bring into the fold of collective understanding and action. There have always been more of us, we are the 99%. The strategy to keep us from usurping the 1%’s position to continue extracting and gaining has been division and it’s remarkably effective. That is why we must reject the bribes, come together, and carry forward in formation. (If you’re looking for more explanation on my language here, I highly recommend Scene On Radio)

There is always something that can be done – folx have been answering the call to act as long as there has been one. Please consider joining me. We need every person in this.