SuperWeed

“I can’t believe we don’t have sessions like this at every conference?” I can’t quite capture the tone of outraged incredulity with which this was said by a participant in the “dealing with stress and grief” group at the recent Midwest Animal Advocacy Conference.

Such sessions are always powerful and can be powerfully helpful. Activists do hard work that brings up hard feelings and have the tendency to subordinate self-care to what always seem to be more pressing goals. Over time, pent-up feelings build up, so much so that sometimes people start to cry even before the discussion gets going, just from the feeling of being in a place where it might be safe to say anything. Once it does get going, people have different things they want to hear, different things they want to say, but almost everybody learns the same thing: I’m not alone. Somebody else feels this guilt, somebody else struggles with shame, somebody else feels immobilized by grief or consumed with rage.

Trust me: That conservatively dressed middle-aged lady may be walking around with seething rage she doesn’t realize that you also feel. That young man who looks angry all the time might be longing for the opportunity to ease somebody else’s grief. Everybody’s carrying around some kind of secret sorrow.

How can we unlock the energy in those emotions, freeing up the force we use to keep them down? We have to let our feelings come out of the closet. We have to talk to each other!

Two young women on opposite sides of the country are working right now to get such conversations started in activist communities. As part of the process, they’ve each produced a zine.

One of the great things about writing Aftershock has been hearing from activists from all over the world about their work in similar directions. Sometimes they even send me things!

Thus I come to be in possession of a fabulous new zine called counterbalance, the first issue is dedicated to “thoughts on activism and mental health,” asking the questions: “What sustains us? What stops us?” Publisher Kristi Kenney begins with a remarkable essay on the conjunction of “despair for the world and personal depression” and also contributes reflections on engaging with despair in order to transform it into something that looks a lot like hope. The zine also includes Jenna Golden and Karen Hixson’s practical instructions for “building a culture of connection as activists” and DiY tips for emotional well-being culled from the fabulous Slingshot organizer.

You can get your own copy of counterbalance here.

Also now available: “The Worst” which is a compilation zine featuring stories of loss within radical communities along with DiY tips for working through (or helping someone else work through) grief. Zine editor Kathleen McIntyre says that loss leads “even radicals who see themselves as great communicators, to freeze up, or nervously change the subject” and that she hopes the zine will help to start a dialog. I’m really looking forward to reading it. You can order the zine here. The MySpace page for the zine also has some useful links, such as this list of guidelines for DiY grief groups.

While you’re waiting for your zines to arrive, check out the online resources offered by the Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective.

I wasn’t going to tell you this but, given what I’ve just said, it seems hypocritical not to mention it. Yesterday, as I was working on this post, the eldest cat at the sanctuary — Samhain (Isa’s favorite) — suffered what seems to have been a stroke. I rushed her to the emergency vet last night and conveyed her to her regular vet this morning. I’m waiting on her diagnosis and prognosis but it seems clear, from the extent of her neurological symptoms, that even if she survives and regains a decent quality of life, her days of ranging in the woods and going on dog walks are done. She’s a particularly independent and rough-and-ready cat who came to the sanctuary eight years ago after what seemed like a long time of living on her own. (She had badly-healed breaks on her shoulder and chin as well as a life-threatening internal infection that we were lucky to catch in time.)

After jumping into the truck at the dump, Samhain walked nonchalantly into the house as if coming home after a night out. She was the first to bridge the dog-cat divide, generously allowing dog Dandelion to express her abiding adoration of all things feline, and also started the trend of going along on dog walks, which as many as five cats at a time now do. She’s the quintessential indoor-outdoor cat, loving to sleep and snuggle inside but insistent about spending most of each day outside. All of which is to say, the loss of freedom of movement is going to be grievous for her and I am grieving that today.

I don’t want to forget to say this: My neighbor drove us to the emergency vet last night, so that I could hold Samhain on the way rather than confining her in a carrier, and stayed with me through the tests and the waiting, even though being at such a place reminded her of the many times she has grieved the loss of companion animals. That reminded me both of the ubiquity of our grief and the solace of solidarity.

June 30th, 2008 | Category: Activism, Trauma | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL