As we begin our year moving through familiar disparate, dehumanizing territory, we acknowledge it can be difficult to integrate practices of newness right now.  It might even feel selfish, uncomfortable, or even futile to utilize what hope remains to set our navigation tools towards a destination that is ‘better’ than our current.  Focusing our intentions and actions on this new year, cultivating new habits, setting new goals, and pushing towards new opportunities can feel pointless when all around us our minds, hearts, and sometimes bodies are sustaining soul altering, life shattering blows. 

Take heart, you’re not alone in feeling this way. All is not lost.  Our hope today is to offer quiet, steadfast reassurance to our readers and create an opening for more hope to flow through, over, and around our present environment–directly to our commitment to our children and neighbors. How do we show up for the people we love and care about without it costing us our health—or our lives?  As we begin the New Year with gratitude and intention, we must draw on the strength and steadiness of our ancestors as we consider how to care and advocate for members of our community.  

 

Regulate

We can think of no better time than now, and this “new” year to re-visit ways to regulate one's nervous system.  Here are a few techniques to try when you’re feeling overextended emotionally:

  1. Box Breathe
    • This breathing technique is sure to help you allow strong emotions and feelings of overwhelm to pass.
  2. Ground yourself in the present. 
    • Another well known way to regulate yourself is to leverage your five senses to support your nervous system.
  3. Movement and Temperature
  • Releasing stored stress through gentle movement such as rocking, swaying, taking a short walk, or stretching can restore your sense of calm and help you process the emotions you’re feeling. 
  • Running cold water over your hands or on your face can reduce your overwhelm.  Other times, laying down with a heated blanket or a heating pad can ground you and bring you ease.
  1. Self Talk
    • When flooded with emotions, it is difficult to discern what is actually happening versus what is in your mind.  During these moments, try naming what is really happening and identifying things around you that are NOT a threat.
    • “Right now I am safe.” 
    • “Nothing is required of me at this moment.” 
    • “This is anxiety, not danger.
    • “I don’t have to solve anything right now.”

Regulating our nervous systems is not about being calm all of the time, nor is it about permanently preventing overwhelm.  Regulating ourselves helps us to move through our heavy thoughts and emotional responses more quickly, recover from stress and anxiousness faster, and helps us to remain present and grounded when it feels as though the mountains around us are crumbling.  

 

Reconstruct 

Now is the time to rethink how we are caring deeply for the people we love—without sacrificing our own survival. We are not suggesting abandoning our tried and true methods of advocacy and reform. But we challenge you to reexamine, revisit, and re-envision the ways you can show up—mentally, emotionally, and physically—for your community this year.

1. Advocacy through Presence: 

    • Sometimes the most impactful thing you can do for a person or cause it to show up.  
    • Sitting with a neighbor or friend and listening without interruption can provide the steadiness needed. 
    • Also, attend meetings when your schedule allows and volunteer in ways that align with your capacity cultivates resiliency within yourself, as well as throughout your community. 
    • Where can you show up consistently, choose to be that dependable friend or neighbor one can always lean on.
    • Simply put–show up how you can, when you can.

2. Advocacy through Preparation: 

      • Taking time to familiarize yourself with the laws, rules, regulations, and policies governing our communities and schools before bringing your concerns to the attention of our community leaders, teachers, and administrators will give you unshakable confidence and clarity when in pursuit of justice and reform.
      • Understand how decisions are being made by visiting the spaces where they are made. 

3. Advocacy through Collective Care: 

    • Hold others with compassion by checking in on our “strong” friends and also our “not so strong”friends. 
    • Nurture people in your community by sharing resources and checking in on families navigating harder situations. 
    • Support parents whose voices carry more risk and urge them to tap into and share networks (like ours) of care and information.  
    • Be intentional about protecting young children from the chaos of adults, and help older children process their emotions and questions.
    • Take Away: Collective care strengthens individual advocacy.

 

Rest 

Above all else, as you navigate the New Year, carve out time to care for and protect yourself.  Keep in mind that, while you are both intentional and strong, you are also human.  After all, how can one successfully care and advocate for the needs of others while ignoring their own?  

  1. Shut off the news and turn off your phones. Allow your mind and nervous system to have a break from everything that is happening in the world right now.
  2. If your schedule allows, watch an uplifting movie, enjoy a book, or take a well deserved nap.  
  3. Reminder: Rest isn’t a pause from caring. It’s part of it. 

Taking time to honor our own needs, restore our minds, and rest our bodies is one of the purest forms of resistance, care, and advocacy.

 

Closing

Loving people through action, and protecting the dignity of our beloved community members can and will take an emotional toll on us this year. Looking out for the well-being of others –fiercely pursuing justice–requires intense, consistent participation.  As we work to challenge systems that cause harm, we hold on tightly to a vision of a more just, whole, and loving future. 

As you care and advocate for others, take time to care and advocate for yourself. Devote time to nourish yourself as fiercely as you advocate for others.