The Goldenrod Chronicles, A Small Care Package
postmarked with love
Sending love to you. Grateful for the ways we are all sending love out. Grateful for the love directed toward me (check-ins, hugs, Welch’s Fruit Snacks). Today is not for doing for planning or anything. Neither is the rest of this week or the rest of this month. This time is for feeling, and feeling deeply. Allowing the feelings in - instead of pushing them away.
Here is a small care package to you from me.
When I am in the darkest and most hopeless places there is only on thing I want to listen to. A balm for the most lost times. Find comfort in sound. May I suggest pressing play for background music to this missive.
Milwaukee Organizer | Venice R. Williams
Here’s how we get through the next four years
Sometimes the most heartbreaking words are the words we need to hear most right now because they are facts and truth. And that there is some solace in every hardship. And also some requirement and command to still find joy. To not lose joy.
You are awakening to the
same country you fell asleep to.
The very same country.
&
Continue to be a vessel of nourishing joy.
Poet | Maggie Smith
Good Bones
Serendipisouly this poem popped into my world today, and it’s precise for this moment.
— The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
&
Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
In addition, she composed some early thoughts on the day which are shared here.
Waging Nonviolence | Daniel Hunter
10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won
(Thank you S & L for sharing)
The whole article is one comforting prescription, and worth absorbing. But this is what I needed to hear most today. (And maybe you do too.)
1. Trust yourself
I started writing this list with strategic principles (e.g. analyze your opponents weakness and learn to handle political violence), but actually the place to start is with your own self.
…
Trust-building starts with your own self. It includes trusting your own eyes and gut, as well as building protection from the ways the crazy-making can become internalized.
This also means being trustworthy — not just with information, but with emotions. That way you can acknowledge what you know and admit the parts that are uncertain fears nagging at you.
Then take steps to follow through on what you need. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace with your fears. I can point you to resources that support that — like FindingSteadyGround.com — but the value here is to start with trusting your own inner voice. If you need to stop checking your phone compulsively, do it. If you don’t want to read this article now and instead take a good walk, do it.
Poetry | Any & All
The Slowdown
I suggest full absorption. As in, setting yourself into something - fully. Listening to poetry can do that for me. And there is no better collection of poetry for your ears that The Slowdown podcast - especially the stretch of time when Ada Limón and Tracy K. Smith were hosts. It’s not just poetry, it’s so much more. One poem I am drawn to right now: Out of Some Other Paradise by Alex Dimitrov. Maybe it’s the sense of departure and abandonment and aloneness. I think so many of us are feeling that today.
Then others
just walked out on everything. That was that.
What can be said about what we do to each other.
What street, I don’t remember,
on the way to someone’s going-away,
I saw you, as if in the middle of a sentence,
snow: your new evening clothes.
My world has switched from endless and unavoidable fundraising texts and urgent campaign emails and urgency everywhere. Today was gray and quiet, but also providing and endless barage of messages about how to cope and how to get through this time. (This missive is no exception - except I am writing this for my own grounding). That to say, the world is still yelling at you - even if it’s trying to send some good message it thinks you need today.
All to say - it’s still a lot. We can grieve together, but I know I still need that quiet and slow time to sit alone, feel my feelings and all the fears and see all my fallen-apart pieces - just to know where they all are when it comes time to put them back together again. Find that time for yourself too.
I love you. You are loved. I am praying for your wellbeing, your access to health care, the protection of your trans and queer and cis children, your ability to show up in the world as your truest self, your ability to find & feel peace. My mouse comrade in arms, the newest member of our family (who just skittered along the long wall of the house to return to its home under the kitchen counter) sends you these same wishes - along with magical mouse wishes that we can’t even begin to understand as humans.
With love, compassion, understanding, and space for all feelings,
🤍vanessa