|
Hello again, dear ones. Welcome back (or for the first time, for those who have recently joined) to the monthly Resourcing the Revolution newsletter.
As September winds to a close here in the mountains, we’ve just crossed the portal into autumn, that moment in time when light and dark are equally balanced. And yet, summer is still hanging on. We have swings that feel like full-on summer, followed by nights where the leading digit starts with a four. No frost in the forecast… yet.
And the chorus around us has changed character. The late summer drone of cicadas and katydids has mostly gone quiet, while the crickets continue to serenade us. It’s a sweeter, softer sound that carries us into the darker days ahead.
Those voices going quiet doesn’t mean it’s silent in the fields around us, just that the character of it all thins and changes. (Anyone who has ever spent much time surrounded by the natural world can tell you that nature is very rarely silent.)
That same logic of the late-summer chorus is true in other places and spaces, too, including the rooms you inhabit and the systems you navigate. We are nature, ya know.
The other thing I’ve noticed thinning of late is our capacity to keep holding space for whatever the eff is going on in the world at large.
And by “lately” I’m not even sure what I mean anymore. I went back to the newsletter archives and realized that Volume 4 of the monthly newsletter, from all the way back in January of 2025, revolved around the question, “What do we do when the world is burning?” And, well, here we are. Twenty-one months later… still asking variations on that same question.
There was a woman who spoke up during a group call with my teacher last week, and halfway laugh-sighed as she said:
“I can’t be part of a revolution. I’m too tired!”
I can’t see how many of you are nodding along with her right now, but I have an inkling. That’s why this month’s edition goes down the rabbit hole of opting out. What it means, what happens when we start thinking it’s a legit option, and whether or not it’s what we really want to do.
So if you find yourself thinking, every once in a while, “eh, maybe we should just let it all burn to the ground”... (I see you.)
Let’s dive in.
|
|
|
Quote of the Month: Staying Human
Before we fully get into our bigger question this month, we’ll take a quick detour through the body (of course), because it turns out ours already knows something our larger systems keep forgetting.
This piece from Jeff Krasno at Commune Media passed through my inbox a while ago. It was part of a project called The Comfort Trap, where he was talking about how comfort has become the enemy of resilience.
He said:
“This cycle of stress and recovery, of challenge and adaptation, was the essence of hormesis—the process by which low doses of stressors like temperature extremes built greater resilience and promoted health.
For millennia, humans have applied their ingenuity to protect themselves and in the quest of survival. But, as we’re apt to do, we’ve gone too far and created a crisis of convenience.
The cost is disconnection—from nature, from movement and from our biological inheritance. Digital thermostats, central heating systems, and air conditioning, though incredible marvels of human ingenuity, have played a pivotal role in this transition from a survival-based, adaptive lifestyle to one of perpetual comfort, and the unintended consequence of that comfort is the erosion of our resilience.”
Humans going too far to protect ourselves and creating a crisis, you say? Interesting…
|
|
|
Astrology of the Month: Stay for What Comes After
Turns out the sky's been saying something similar, just at a much bigger scale. Wiz is back again this month with our look ahead to what’s being asked of us.
He says:
“The sky never fails, not in the thousands of years we’ve been looking to it for guidance. The trajectory was set at the Genesis Reset, at the ignition of the new age, and it runs through collapse and disruption because that IS the path, and that’s really going to be the story of at least the next five years, until 2032, when Saturn and Uranus move into Cancer and the heart finally gets its hands on the levers. And if you think that’s the end of the story, the sky has more to tell - this transition into the new age will continue beyond our lifetimes. We’re just here for its very first baby steps, and all we have to remember in these difficult years between now and at least 2032 is that collapse is not a detour - it’s the road we’re being asked to walk into the new world.
What the sky IS asking of us is harder, and quieter, and so much more important. It’s asking us to be ready for what comes after them. Because when the old structures finish coming down, somebody has to build what replaces them, and the new world can’t be built by people still living behind the wall, running on the old fuel of fear and fury and villains, because whatever gets built from the old ways of the mind just becomes the next pyramid with new faces on it.
The Age of the Heart needs people who’ve actually done the work, and crossed the threshold between mind and heart, walked past the mind’s border of fear and found their way into the deeper more expansive place, where they can feel what another is feeling and act from that knowing. That’s the building material. That’s what 2032 is waiting for. Hearts that have learned the way through their own wall.”
What comes after? That’s in part up to all of us. We can’t build what’s next if we decide to opt out. But it doesn’t come without a cost.
There are thresholds you can’t uncross (and one of mine started with zip ties and a SWAT officer).
|
|
|
Idea of the Month: Staying Connected
I’ve always been in love with Mother Nature. Growing up where I did, it’s no surprise. Also, probably no surprise, I spent part of my early adult years as an environmental activist.
First, the armchair style. And then, once I reached my 30s, more of a skin-in-the-game kind. Local organizing for 350.org, head of an environmental nonprofit in Charlottesville… and I even got arrested and spent three days in jail for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
But now that I have a young kid, my activism has taken a different shape. I’ve shifted my energy from fighting against the system to actively working toward what’s next. (There’s a reason I call this work “resourcing the revolution,” ya know?)
I’ll admit, there are times when I get so tired and overwhelmed (especially lately) that I wonder, why bother?
And in those moments, the allure of opting out sounds awfully tempting. Seductive, even. It sounds sovereign, like I could “take the high road” and just tuck myself back in my rural hollow while the rest of the world burns.
Then I remember the questions the impulse to opt out skips:
Opt out to where? And, especially, at what cost?
In part, because when the people who actually care — about equity, nuance, nervous systems, long-term consequences, human dignity, culture — leave a room, the room doesn’t stay empty. It fills with whoever’s left.
Sometimes opting out is the right choice, for a season or a circumstance that isn't yours to fix.
But when it becomes the default moral posture, it quietly hands the steering wheel to the worst possible drivers. Those who are most extractive, loud, unbothered by harm, incentivized by outrage, and fluent in domination… those people fill the void.
Case in point: Twitter.
(Yeah, yeah. Some rich asshole renamed it. I know. He also helped turn it into the flaming dumpster fire it has become.)
What that platform became isn’t a mystery. When the people with restraint, ethics, relational intelligence, and the capacity to hold nuance decided disengagement was the only moral move and walked out the door, well, I think we can all see what happened.
Looking around at the state of the world — "X" included — I’m left with the distinct opinion that:
Opting out is not neutral. It is a power decision.
“Just opt out” is a dangerous oversimplification, smuggled in under the banner of self-care and withdrawing our energy from the places and spaces we disagree with.
This whole mess has an additional wrinkle, too. Not everyone has the option to opt out. When we add in questions of land, safety nets, community insulation, and the like, whole groups of people get handed a shit sandwich and have to smile and ask for more.
But it’s not just a story of money or land or material resources. There’s quite often a blind spot in discussions that don’t consider things like class or capacity — the very real story of what a body can risk at different points in a life. Parents, people living paycheck to paycheck, folks with chronic illness or disability, our elders… some human beings can’t risk the cost of certain decisions. (I would have to seriously weigh the risk of protesting and jail time these days, since I have a kiddo depending on me at a basic survival level.)
Not to mention, who gets left inside systems they didn’t choose, navigating tools they didn’t design?
At a more basic level, for those of us with the privilege of choosing where our time and attention go, we can start to think about opting out through the lens of where our presence is actually protective, corrective, or civilizing… and where it’s simply depleting.
My take? I think ethical presence is the key factor in many of these instances. Staying with the mess without letting it change us. Learning how to wield the tools without letting them infect us or turn us into mindless zombies. And modeling another way, from inside the system.
The future gets shaped by those who refuse to abandon the rooms we’re already in (not just the people building new ones).
And again, sometimes privilege comes with the responsibility to keep standing in the room that’s depleting, because it’s necessary for the well-being of others who don’t have the same choices.
(Yes, I’m aware that seems to contradict what I said a few paragraphs back. There's no clean binary here. Sometimes the privilege is being able to leave, and sometimes it's the responsibility to stay a little longer, depleted, because someone else can't.)
I guess what I’m offering this month is a call for discernment. To look at where we can choose strategic withdrawal or strategic engagement, seasons of silence or seasons of voice. Where we can band together with like-hearted and like-minded denizens of this wild and woolly world, and make sure no one is standing on their own against the tide.
As you’ve likely gathered, this isn’t just a conversation about social media or activist spaces. It also applies to our physical communities, our political engagement, our friend groups, and even our own kitchen tables. And those things, those places… that’s why we “bother” to show up at all.
|
|
|
Photo of the Month: Why I Stay
|
|
|
Short Practice of the Month: Staying With the Breath
Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the pull to opt out is coming from, or what you should do with it. So next time you feel the urge to bolt — out of a conversation, a room, a commitment, a platform — this month’s short practice is already in your pocket.
This month we’re keeping it simple. Like, ridiculously simple. (Like, seriously? I’m using something this simple here?)
How to do it:
- Stop what you’re doing and close your eyes.
- Notice the pace and quality of your breath (fast/slow, shallow/deep)
- Then take three deep breaths before you do or decide anything.
- On the exhales, notice where the urge actually lives in your body: clenched jaw, tight chest, fisted hands, heavy legs. Don't decide anything yet. Just locate it.
- Then, once you’ve gotten past the “get me out of here” reflex, choose your next move from a place of calm. (Or at least calmer.)
That’s it. The whole thing.
You’re welcome. ;)
|
|
|
Post of the Month: Stay Together
Early last year, I started assembling a resource post for folks wondering what the heck a single person could do in the face of everything going on at the time (and, sadly, still going on).
Among the many authors and articles I quoted in it — there's so much good material there — one part stood out to me: something from a Mid-Month Missive of mine, written shortly before the resource post itself went live.
From the post:
"The magnitude of change happening in front of our eyes has been designed to overwhelm us. To cause us to withdraw. To stick our heads in the sand. To fear. To spiral in anxiety. To sow division and chaos.
Divided, alone, blinders on, we are weak. But together? Eyes and hearts open? We are fucking powerful."
There may or may not be more f-bombs in that post. I was feeling pretty feisty that month. (Consider yourself warned.)
|
|
|
Song of the Month: Here to Stay |
|
|
As soon as this month’s theme popped up as a possibility, I knew I Won’t Give Up by Jason Mraz was going to be the song of the month for this edition.
What I didn’t realize was the history behind the song itself. As I was digging a little deeper, I found out that his “I’m here to stay and make the difference” line is actually tied to his own philanthropy and advocacy (not just the relationship split it’s usually associated with).
He reminds us:
I don't wanna be someone who walks away so easily
I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make
Our differences, they do a lot to teach us how to use
The tools and gifts we got, yeah, we got a lot at stake
And in the end, you're still my friend, at least we did intend
For us to work, we didn't break, we didn't burn
We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in
Bending without breaking sounds good in a song. In practice, it's a skill. (Arguably the whole skill. Ask the trees why.)
So let's talk about how.
|
|
|
Mindset of the Month: Staying Power
Pretty much every time I teach Tree Pose (Vrksasana) in a yoga class, I talk about how trees bend in the wind so they don’t break. A healthy tree has an inherent flexibility that lets it stay strong and rooted during a storm, lean sideways in the worst gusts, and return upright when the storm passes.
And in order for those trunks to stay flexible and roots to stay strong, the root system has to stay healthy. That’s partly aided by mycelial networks in the soil, and the fact that a tree’s root system usually spreads as wide as its canopy. I’m honestly in awe of the whole biology and symbiotic relationships in forests, but I digress…
I’ve heard my mentor Derek (Rydall) teach about how important it is to "give of your fruits, not your roots" on pretty much every call I’ve been on. How many of us, wanting to take care of our families or the world around us, end up chopping up bits of our root system in the process? Instead, he encourages a strong foundation and then giving of your fruits, aka the part that’s actually intended to be harvested.
The fruit is what regenerates and has the chance to come back every season (when conditions are right), and it's what you’re more likely to have a surplus of. Roots are the actual structure that allows that production in the first place. Dig that up, and there’s nothing left to give, even to the rooms that actually need you.
(We’ve been working on this with the kiddo, who has been obsessed with picking flowers since she was little. “Just pick the stem, don’t pull them up by the roots. Otherwise they won’t come back next year.”)
I also recognize the can of worms I opened back in the Idea section: sometimes privilege means we stay in depleting rooms because someone else who can’t leave needs us in there.
However. Even then, there’s a floor. Give from what regenerates, not what you can’t get back.
There’s a way to stand in those rooms, those places where we walk out more tired than when we walked in, without burning ourselves to a crisp. And before you’re fully spent, that’s your cue to ask someone else to tag in. We’re all in this together.
So as we start to wrap up this month’s edition, one honest reflection for you. Of everything that you’re giving, what’s fruit, and what’s actually root?
|
|
|
The Quiet Kind of Staying
As we close, my mind (and my eyes) turn to the trees once more.
This week, the fall foliage trackers have us at about 5% color here in the Appalachians. The trees are starting to pull their energy inward, away from the leaves that are about to let go, down into the roots, where the real work of the coming season actually happens. Going quiet, underground, and tending what makes next spring's blossoms and fruit (or even just next year’s leaves) possible.
If you're feeling that pull yourself — toward going a little quieter or putting your energy somewhere it can't be seen right now — let it be that.
You don’t have to opt out.
Until next time: rest, then rise.
P.S. If you’re feeling that call to draw inward and tend your roots, consider this your invitation to come practice it with me. I'm teaching a yoga class called "A Practice to Balance Light and Dark" this Sunday, September 27th at 3 pm Eastern. It’s a 75-minute virtual class via YouTube livestream, by donation, with a replay available if you can’t make it live.
Come stretch, breathe, and let go of the season the way the leaves are already doing outside your window. Sign up here.
|
|
|
