You came here to help turn off the lights

 To turn off the lights. To dismantle violent systems. To resurrect balance. To create something new. To imagine the unimaginable.

(Quick note: this topic is incredibly complex, and any attempt to capture its multidimensionality will be flawed. It feels important to try, so I can only promise to do my best.)

I'm currently in a somatic training with a group of white practitioners, and we're learning about ancestral wounds, how we perpetuate them, ways to transmute inherited trauma, and how to repair harm.

Today, part of our discussion was about how we're experiencing an unusual "generational moment" where the last few generations seem to be increasing their nervous system’s capacity to hold more complexity, plurality, and nuanced pain/grief. The more grief and pain we can hold, the more transmutation of trauma and forward movement can take place.

No one is totally sure why this is, but from a somatic standpoint, there is a chance that it's partially because these generations are the first to experience enough safety and stability which allows them/us to grapple with things that couldn't be held by those who came before us. Our ancestors likely lived in unconditional survival mode (albeit, adaptively), without access to the physical bandwidth needed to transform inherited trauma. While we don’t condone harmful actions, we do look at the reality of our lineage. After all, we carry it inside of us.

Of course, this is not to say that people haven't been dismantling injustice or creating different ways of being in the past. They have. We offer gratitude for creating a foundation we can build on. And somehow, there is a shift happening in this place, at this time, and it seems to be reaching people in a different way.

All of us here are probably weirdos in a societal way. We've realized at some point in our life that we don't fit into some socially supported ideal and that divesting (consciously or unconsciously) was required for our own survival. Once a person divests from one convention, they often start to wonder what else they can overturn.

None of this means we're special in a hierarchal way, simply that we have a significant role to play in dismantling these crumbling systems and structures. If you're here, it's likely because, on some level, you know that dominant culture (colonialism, white supremacy, and all this includes) is violent and harms everyone. It affects those with marginalized identities even more so. And it must change, so we are changing.

This means that we are learning to live in a liminal space; the in-between place. That we are carrying on the responsibilities of hedgerow tenders in the past. That shapeshifting is required. That endings and death need to be normalized. And even though these asks are vulnerable and difficult, they must happen. For those who came before us, for us, and for those who come after.

To increase our capacity for holding pain, we increase our exploration of pleasure. Joy. Ease. Connection. Relationships. Regenerative experiences and forward movement.

This takes time. It's lifelong work. It’s work that we won't see the completion of.  It's often not public and it isn’t performative. It will likely become more difficult in the upcoming years. And we might feel a need to do it all immediately, even if it means we use a superficial solution. I try to remember that the urgency to fix everything quickly comes from these systems that we're divesting from. When we are programmed to jump into urgency, it feels contradictory to harness our energy intentionally. We can experiment with working at the pace of our biological capacity. We’ll likely find that our capacity increases and deeper + enduring work can happen.

I could be wrong. I can always be wrong. I am often wrong. These thoughts are incomplete and I probably used the wrong words. Even still, they resonate. So I offer you an invitation to continue living, shifting, and growing in these liminal spaces as well.

Chances are, you’re already living there. So we keep going. We support those who have been building for a long time. We help build what doesn't yet exist. We follow our resonance. We continue to imagine the unimaginable. And we turn off the lights one at a time.