Dear TNP friends, I was composing a post in support of those of us who have been feeling deep anxiety during this post-election season, and then I saw Andrea’s post. Andrea Gabriel is a dear friend of mine, a coach for TNP, and my collaborator on a Tarot deck I’m working on. I love what she’s written here. Could not have said it better. Read this. And go check Andrea out at her website: https://andreagabriel.com/
Like so many of us, I am devastated. I am sad. I am terrified. I wake at 2:37 am every morning considering the imminent harm to so much and so many that I love: people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, wild lands, wild women, mild women, all women. The environment that sustains us, and those brave souls who dare speak truth to power in the coming years. The loss of basic civility and human decency.
My body is physically sick, vibrating with a kind of nauseous anxiety I’ve only ever known when I was young and stupid and mistook mania for nutrition.
I am fortunate, in that I am surrounded by artists and healers—wise women and men who have dedicated their lives to the craft of holding space for others’ pain so that, in the shelter they provide, others might kindle to life and go on to light others. And yet, one by one, I’ve talked with all my dear ones—the lights and shelters of our nation—who call me, struggling, wondering how to hold space for anyone else’s pain as they deal with a grief this big.
How to craft stories, when all around us seems to be crumbling?
My writer friends struggle to make sense of identity in this moment. How to craft stories, when all around us seems to be crumbling? When craft feels pointless, and our energies must be reserved for some as-yet-unnamed act of useful resistance? Indentity crisis in deed: on Tuesday of this week, I was a citizen. Now, apparently, I am “the enemy within.”
It’s not a label I wanted, or agree with, but…okay. I’ll take it. I’ll take the responsibility of the label.
I am nearing the end of The Cuttlefish, a fantasy novel I’ve been writing for the past two years, and the worse gremlins of my nature argue that nothing is more useless than hiding out in a made-up world as my country performs an act of voluntary self-immolation. Out of desparation, I called up the video below—just a bit of frivolous fantasy—and watched it five times, weeping.
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien wrote these words in the shadow of World War II, as all that he loved was obliterated by German bombs. He wasn’t writing of orcs and Sauron; Lord of the Rings was a response to the Nazi destruction of Europe and his own beloved Shire.
For those writers wondering who cares or why it matters in times like these, you should note that this video has garnered hundreds of thousands of views since I watched it just the other day. The comments are littered with viewers who came to this video for the same reason as I did. Tolkien’s words, written all those years ago, and in response to a different existential threat, reach out across the decades to inspire, to light a lamp for the rest of us.
In times like these, every word you write is an act of resistance. You don’t have to change the world with a single line or chapter. You don’t have to write a masterpiece to justify your efforts. Every line of connection, heart to heart, across time and distance, forms a vast network of mycelial intelligence, and when the time is right, it will spring to vibrant life.
So keep going. Write with courage, with defiance, with love. Your essays, fictions, memoirs, poems. Your gritty detective novels. With every page, you’re lighting a lamp for others who seek comfort, truth, and possibility. Your voice matters, your stories matter, and together, we can hold the home fires of a world where kindness, decency, and truth matter once again.
More about Andrea and her work by following the link below:
