“I’ve never run a cute mile in my life”
That’s what I told the woman behind me as I stretched for the first 5K I’ve done in over three months. Surrounded by strangers at a new running club, I set my expectations to below ground level. I’ve been healing from a gym injury that needs constant care so that I can do daily tasks like walking and bending over. Take that with some anti-depressants, the world news, and a warning from my doctor to eliminate sweets.
The journey just to get to this starting line was not an easy one. Healing in a physical body will really show you how much patience is necessary for any other healing, whether it be emotional or spiritual.
It’s normal to feel anger or sadness when we are unable to do the things we were able to do without a second thought. Reading has helped me slow down and ground myself when I can’t go for a walk or run. I decided a couple months ago that I would read as many book as my age. (Yes I know this will become a challenge in coming years) Right now, I’m almost half way to my goal, and by far a book I would recommend to everyone is “How To Tell When We Will Die” by Johanna Hedva. Recommended to me by my sister. The title seems intimidating, but it covers so many important issues and is nuanced in the way it covers disability, race, class, sexuality and yes, death. Here’s a quote I meditate on.
“Care is always a deficit, access is always insolvent-and that’s the point. This is because the body, by definition, is a thing that needs support—it needs food, rest, sleep, shelter, care. I like to truncate this definition, to make the body simply a thing that needs, period, because what else would support be—but needed? The body’s dependency is its ontology: it cannot survive alone unto itself, even if it wanted to. Yet we’ve been taught that such dependencies, such needs, are abnormal, disgraceful, an index of one’s inadequacy, and to support them is indulgent.”
-Johanna Hedva
As we see all the calls to action and protests due to kidnappings by ICE and family separations, I think about how inaccessible some actions can be to those who aren’t able to get tear gassed or arrested as civil disobedience. There have to be, there must be other ways to do this important work. I shared on Instagram and Tiktok a spirit download and this is a summary of it:
You do not have to be at protests to make a difference. It is important to understand that our intuition, our internal compass, our heart work, our community work, our tears, our joy, our power, inner knowing & wisdom is also so important to continue to cultivate. To continue to feel our way, ground, and center ourselves while we do this work. Fear from institutions who try to blind us from our inner compass is the point, that how they try to intimidate us. That means that our community work is working. Their tactics to make us fearful is their way of controlling the narrative and it is slipping away from them. They are not slick with it. They know our power, they know that we outnumber them. !!Do no give them the satisfaction of living in fear. !!
Here are just a few ways to support those vulnerable in your community:
buy from street vendors, buy them out if possible, so they can go home and not risk working and getting caught up with ICE
join rapid response networks in your area. OCRRN has been doing fantastic work in Orange County.
get to know your local representatives, email them, make noise.
ask restaurants or establishments in your neighborhood if they can support by putting up signs that make safe-zones from ICE. Here is a link to print these signs as well as other resources you can post ILRC Community Resources
fundraise for families, make a raffle or contribute some of of the selling of your art to a trusted organization.
It is okay to walk it out, to sit down, to stretch on this marathon. We only fail when we don’t try. Keep trying, keep showing up for one another. Do what you can with the energy you have at this moment. Make rest and respite a conscious choice. When I said that I had never ran a cute mile in my life I said the unspoken thing out loud. Five girls turned and smiled at me. When I gave myself permission to be a sweaty mess on the 5K, it also gave them permission to feel comfortable in their own selves. For women especially, we’re expected to be submissive, silent, seen but not heard. I know I am breaking cycles simply by speaking up, by trying to go a different path & doing so with some sass, tenderness, and a full heart.
Awesome! Have agreat run!!!