Finding Resilience and Strength

This last week has been deeply heavy, with some big shifts in our political world, it can make things feel overwhelming or out of control. We may feel grief, anger, sadness, betrayal, uncertain or hopeless about our external world. I've had multiple people comment on how they don't know what to do, or they feel like their efforts are useless in a fight that seems too big or too much to handle.

So how do we find a sense of resilience and strength during trying times?

When things fall apart how can we pick up the pieces?

First we FEEL, we feel all the anger, the grief, the sadness, let it move through your whole body so it doesn't get stuck and bottled up. Allow yourself to cry, to yell, to journal, to move, to chant, anything that helps you move through what you are feeling. And while we grieve we work to find a healthy balance of FEELING into it, AND also continuing to move through our daily lives, finding healthy distraction, continuing to move our bodies, continuing to work, to spend time with our beloveds. This balance helps make it so that we don't get stuck our grieving, which can prevent us from mobilizing.

Then we can start small, one step at a time, to take back control, and find our own power. In a group that I attended earlier this week, a fellow teacher shared a simple chant that has helped carry me through this last week, which goes:

We will not, we will not

We will not be controlled

I am sovereign in my body

I am sovereign in my soul

A reminder of our own strength, our own power, our own resilience.