Week 8: Better tomorrows

Art note: All of the illustrations this week are by filipinamonalisa’s Instagram; I learned about her via Rookie.

Personal notes:

• Thank you to everyone who replied last week with examples. I will follow up!
• A lot of my writing bandwidth the past 24 hours has been spent drafting a fiery (for me) response to this. I’m not ready to share it in this space, partly because I plan to pitch a short version of it as an op-ed to one of the papers that publishes Dear Abby. Something longer and more personal on the subject of “practical” baby names is simmering, though; maybe I’ll serve it up here soon. In the meantime…

🎵 We can moooove and groove! 🤸‍♀️

In a piece for Vice called A Brief Guide to Making a Better Tomorrow, adrienne maree brown outlines five tactics “to keep yourself moving toward a brighter future, even when things are terrifying.”

Here are a few of her suggestions along with some things they brought to mind for me.

Look Back to Look Forward

brown writes:

One of the easiest ways we can get overwhelmed is by believing that we are doing something original, for the first time, with no guidance or wisdom to call on. We are hopefully evolving, possibly innovating, but we walk in the footsteps of survivors, innovators, and, more than anything else, a lot of lesser-known people whose lives we rarely hear of.

A friend of mine recently organized a group outing based on the Lifting as They Climbed guidebook, which is a publication by Mariame Kaba and Essence McDowell that “tells a story of Black women activists and artists who lived and worked on Chicago’s South Side by taking readers on a tour” of 33+ locations. It was a seriously humbling and illuminating time. Even if you can only make it to a few of the landmarks, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of the guide and visiting at least the South Side Community Art Center if you’re in Chicago or planning a trip.

Respect Your Limitations and Defy Our Limitations

brown unpacks both of these ideas - really, you should read the original piece. For right now I’ll just say that if you aren’t following Trish Tchume on Instagram, you are missing out on some very generous sharing that connects to both of these ideas. Check out the first couple days of her 37-day “active decolonization” practice.

Among other things, Trish’s stories led me to this Alice Walker post from last year:

I have not been this depressed since President John Kennedy was assassinated; no, I have not been this depressed since Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. No, I haven’t been this depressed since Malcolm X was assassinated. No, I haven’t been this depressed since Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. No, I haven’t been this depressed since I realized that when they assassinated Che Guevara they cut off his hands, and he was a doctor. How long is this list! And, reading it, so many other names might be added. So many disasters too, crimes against people and Earth so heinous they are unfathomable to the average mind.

So what to do with the mind that is overwhelmed by grief and disbelief?

Spoiler: She says we should be meditating a ton and learning our news from the comedians.

Which brings us to…

Have a Sense of Humor

brown writes: Relinquish perfection…Laugh at your missteps and mistakes, and then learn and keep playing the game…Use your whole self to shape the future.

Last October, when I was close to my third trimester, we went to see Trevor Noah do stand-up downtown. His set included a much longer version of this bit about tacos. The crowd laughed really hard. It occurred to me that while my little fetus friend, whose growing ears would have been pretty sensitive by that point, had of course felt me laugh and heard the sounds of quiet laughter with some frequency (think: witty office banter, sitting on the couch watching Black-ish, or fake fighting nightly with her papa about the oppressive pregnancy pillow that had taken over our bed), she really did not know much of me belly laughing, let alone the sound of a crowd roaring with mirth. It was all but foreign to her. Every time I go to a live comedy show or a concert, I think, “why don’t I do this all the time?” But this felt like a new, more urgent variation on the theme.

Here are some things for your whole self:

• Brittany Packnett: Joy is resistance (Self.com)

• Netflix’s GLOW

• If you’re in Chicago, Paper Machete

• Daniel Radcliffe, fact checker (New Yorker, via Laura Olin’s newsletter)

• This video:

• Lin-Manuel Miranda and Vanessa Nadal: Honestly, I typed their names without a specific example in mind. But I saw a screenshot from Reddit floating around recently that said “if you’re ever sad, just remember the world is 5.453 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as lin-manuel miranda” and it’s not wrong.

That’s not all.

Have you not clicked through to read the whole adrienne maree brown piece yet? Why not?

And if you have, and you want to mull even further how you can be “using and protecting your time in right relationship to its preciousness,” you can listen to the author herself on the podcast she co-hosts with her sister Autumn Brown, How to Survive the End of the World. I decided to start with an episode called The Impossible Things About Us. It is really lovely.

Is something, anything, big or small, motivating you to stay moving and grooving this week? I’d love to know what that is.

Reminder: If you’re reading this, it’s either because you subscribed yourself or someone forwarded it to you (in which case you can subscribe at julia.substack.com). This is email #8 of 35.