Thread by @LauraJedeed

What do you do, at the end of it all?

When the last chants of "we do this every night" fade out?

When the rains come and nothing's really changed except for you and everyone you know?

What do you do when you've run on adrenaline for so long that you can't remember how to cook food or work out or whatever normal stuff you used to do before the fires, before the feds, before the chanting of the names?

When normalcy feels like a betrayal, a broken promise?

What do you do when you give a cause your all, shed blood for it, drip sweat and tears and trauma, and it doesn't succeed?

What next, when you swore you'd never stop fighting and then the fighting stops?

Anger, I think. Anger is what comes next

At others, for not finishing it

Or the system, for its indifference

Or at invisible enemies within who sabotaged victory

Or, most dangerously, yourself. For failing, for not knowing how to bring a better future into the present

The group that marched as one and stood up against the feds and stayed together and stayed tight, it splinters

Isolated, lonely, traumatized, mourning, furious

Searching for some path forward

Lost in the woods

My favorite book, Deep Survival by Lawrence Gonzales, talks about getting lost

How one of the biggest dangers is that we won't admit we're lost until it's too late

"Bending the map," he calls it--shifting our perception of reality until it matches the place we thought we were

The first step to not being lost anymore is to stop bending the map

Acknowledge that you don't know where you are

Take stock of what you have. Try to stay as warm, fed, rested, and hydrated as possible

Them you formulate a plan. Any plan is better than no plan

And you move

"Be here now" Gonzales says, which is hard when here is so bleak

When hope falters. When the fires have gone out

I don't really have a lot of hope right now, so faith will have to do

Belief, without evidence, that better is a place that exists beyond these woods