ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 56
I’m currently struggling with the idea of “one step forward and two steps back”
progress. And the reason that I’m struggling with it is as a female body about
to give birth to another female body in a country that is overturning all these
things. With pregnancy being such a difficult experience on my body and my mind
and my soul. I feel the visceral effects of what a forced maternity could be,
where although I wanted this and imagining if I didn’t, how much I would resent
this being and in my situation. And so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what
happens during retrenchment and during backlash, and really leaning into the hope
that comes from knowing that progress isn’t linear. The fact that bad progress
sometimes is better. And that as things fall, there is opportunity for things to
be built back. But that really our role shifts as progress crumbles to palliative
efforts. We’re forced to construct and build because that’s such a capitalistic
thing. Like if we’re not producing and building then we’re not doing things of worth,
but there’s huge value in making the crumbling more palliative. In other words,
as we lose our rights, we have the opportunity to make that shock
less painful to our communities. And in
doing that, take the time to actually
reimagine what we want to build.
So, I’m trying to lean into that
invitation that comes from seeing
something you thought wouldn’t
crumble, fall apart. And that’s
been very humbling throughout
this pregnancy. And I think that
there’s a lot of power there to have
us not lose sight of what can be done
in the moment, to reduce suffering, to
lick our wounds, and decide what we want
to do from that point forward. And to acknowledge
that in this time, we’re not going to build, we really are
just going to reduce suffering. And then we’ll figure out what’s
next when we have the opportunity to figure out what’s next.
You know what I mean? Like reducing the sense of
urgency to rebuild right away.
—Adriana Loson-Ceballos
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Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper