I’ve been very busy with getting everything ready to release a new book. But I’ve also turned inward since midway last year – doing much pondering, working on my physical health including a pretty big surgery and recovery, and doing my best to show up as a mom and wife/partner as well as a friend and community member.

It seems like every time I sit down to write something, another terrible thing happens on the national stage. I worry nothing I have to say could be helpful. I worry it will be too little. I worry it will be too much.

Years ago, I remember being shaken. Trayvon Martin, a kid, had been murdered, and justice failed. I was shaken again and again when I learned the names of Michael Brown, Philandro Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, and many more because of their unjust deaths at the hands of police.

A couple of weeks ago, I was shaken once more at the death of Renee Good. It shook me because of how much I could relate to her as a mom in a two-mom family, but also because I had been texting with my friends in Minnesota. My dear friends from college who are in the middle of everything going on and who are doing their best to help their neighbors, colleagues, and friends. My friends are Good people.

Then I learned about Keith Porter, Jr. and then Alex Pretti was killed. And there is a long list of names of others who have lost their lives. I cried with rage over 5-year-old Liam being used as bait and have wept this morning over images of him clearly sick and drastically deteriorated in custody.

They are all our brothers and sisters. They are our children.

I contact my senators and even my congress rep who I know is really immovable from his MAGA position. I post and amplify. I share and talk with friends. I try to be present for my kids and be honest about what is happening without saying too much for their developmental levels. I make dinner. I plan a presentation. I finalize my manuscript. I share an original song about justice and calling us to move. I seek local connections and ways to be rooted in community.

None of it seems like enough.

This morning while putting away groceries, I whispered a prayer to the ethos – to my great-grandmother who went to work during WWII, to my grandfather who fought in the war: “How did you do it?”

Then I thought, “I wasn’t made for this. We were not made for this.”

Immediately, a whisper rose up enough to say it out loud.

I was made exactly for this. We were made for this.

I sometimes marvel at what my grandparents and great-grandparents and further ancestors were able to do: to forge life through terrible heartache, fascism, economic collapse, extreme weather events, and other hardships while parenting and showing up to everyday living.

But then I recognize where I am, where my friends and neighbors are, and I see the resilience and power showing up in people choosing to take care of each other even at the cost of their personal safety.

It reminds me of what I wrote about power in my upcoming book Dirt Church:

The same Spirit which breathes inside the lion and the condor and the honeybee resides in us.
The same divine mystery dancing on the wind, rolling in the waves, and stretching through the branches of trees animates our being.
We are made of the same stardust as Jupiter, Arcturus, and Vega.
Our voices hold the power to soothe, to heal, to connect, and to bring down tyrants.
Our siblings are the mighty cedar, the soaring hawk, the rolling river, and the whispering grass in the field.

We are children of the Earth and of the Universe.
We are sacred.
We are wild.

When we recognize our wild selves, we recognize our power: muscle, endurance, flexibility, courage, and strength.
But also wisdom, kindness, kinship, community, rootedness, and warmth.

Wild power is within you and with me – but most effectively: in us. Together.

I’m going to be very honest with you here – I am still struggling. But I also feel something important within myself when I remember our wild power. I feel something akin to hope, but maybe more like resilience, connection, and the resolve to stand and move.

This is the power of soul and spirit care. Not an escape or bypassing or transcending. Just down to earth spirituality for meeting the moment we are in.

May we all remember our wild power and use that wild power to act for justice.

With love,

Charity