Grief, Hope & Resistance
If you’re wondering what that feeling is, it’s grief. You are grieving for all the pain inflicted, for all the people dehumanized, for all the ecocide taking place, for how powerless we all feel, for not knowing what to do right now. It’s grief.
For possibly the first time in history we are collectively alchemizing pain on a global scale. How can I be removed from someone else’s pain when I can read their stories, I can travel to their hometowns, I can witness their living and dying in social media posts?
We can so clearly see now that a child is still a child, no matter where they live. A parent’s love, an artist’s creativity, a student's desire to learn, a lover’s desire to be by their beloved, a human’s desire to care for and nurture their land and their animals - it is the same no matter what country, culture, religion or nation state they were born into.
We are no longer separate, we are no longer believers in the lie that another person half-way around the world is any different than our own lived experience. This is a huge collective shift, and it’s a good one, but it of course means we must feel each other’s pain, for you and I are no longer different.
Your pain is my pain. Your lack is my lack. To take each other’s hurt into such deep consideration and to share in that experience is how we may begin to counteract those who continue to operate under the old regime of separateness and dehumanization.
Spirituality & Resistance
I continually struggle with doing what I do while fascism, genocide, and war are pressing in from all around us. What is the purpose of this work, and what spiritual “healing” could I offer that would have any positive impact when so much is so wrong? Should I really be spending my energy practicing spiritual guidance & wellness, when maybe the solution is far more practical?
But maybe that is exactly why I need to stay on this path, for I want others to see that love and joy and spirituality are not tools for spiritual bypassing or erasing the pain of this world. Rather they are tools for going deeper within the pain so it can be healed and witnessed, and that hopefully aligned action and aligned living, for all people, can manifest as a result.
I also want to be a spiritual voice that is not afraid to talk about class consciousness, imperialism, fascism, or ecological destruction. These are not topics to be shied away from or ignored, and I do not think I’ll lose any clients or sleep over making my political feelings known.
For the spirituality anyone chooses to practice, or not practice, is a political act in and of itself. Many indigenous spiritual teachers were murdered for their very existence, activists and prophets of every generation have been assassinated for the hope they tried to bring, ancient wisdom traditions and forms of healing have been lost again and again due to genocidal forces. If you choose to help or heal or keep hope alive, there is a good chance that fascism will try to stop you.
My Own Journey
So let me make myself clear, I have hated the warmongering United States regime for a very long time, and Christian nationalism before that. I’m not really sure when my radical views began to form, but I think some of it had to do with my very Christian upbringing.
I read that we were meant to feed the hungry, help the poor, heal the sick, and care for the widows, orphans and immigrants, yet somehow that wasn’t the top priority of the Southern suburban church we attended. And let’s not get started on how the rich apparently can’t get into heaven. I would sit through Sunday morning service like I was supposed to, while secretly writing unhinged manifestos on the provided service program and masking my sadness & confusion that resulted from the hypocrisy I kept witnessing.
And I think I have to credit Acts for the start of my very leftist and often communist leanings.
“No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had… and God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 32-35)
That is a direct example of resource redistribution, collective care, and mutual aid. When the church we were attending raised millions of dollars for a new swanky building, I began to hate all churches that had their own buildings, because I knew immediately they had lost the plot.
Thankfully I discovered some Christian liberation theologians and some more radical spiritual thinkers to temper my anger, but when I finally did “leave the church” it felt long overdue and very freeing, not just spiritually but also moralistically. Of course I do know there are many still within that tradition who are doing their best to bring liberatory justice to the oppressive systems of the religion at large, and I commend though who are still part of that struggle.
My spiritual development of course continued down other paths, as is evidenced by my work now, but even still I am shocked at times by the blatant similarities between the modern spiritual industrial complex and the opulent Christianity of my own experience.
So as someone within this woo-woo world, let me be very frank:
You will never need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to access spirit.
You do not need an intermediary between yourself and spirit.
Many modern day spiritual or healing modalities are just MLM schemes and their teachers are just Joel Olsteens in boho attire - please be discerning.
You do not need expensive tools, rare amulets, or someone else’s blessing to access personal healing.
There is nothing sleek or marketable about true spiritual development.
No spiritual path should ever encourage turning a blind eye to pain, injustice, racism, ecocide, oppression, or hate in any form.
I am sure this will be a longer rant of mine one day, but in quick summary, we desperately need to extract harmful capitalist and imperialistic thinking, and the echoes of puritanical and oppressive religious frameworks, out of spiritual spaces. And I do hope I can continue to be a voice for this process of saving modern spirituality from outdated and harmful ideologies.
To be healers, We Must Be Political Too
My realization that the United States of America was a failed state arose alongside my spiritual explorations. I began to explore revolutionary thought and deconstruct the pro-Western and pro-capitalist systems I was raised within. It has been both hopeful and painful to witness so many now waking up to the destructive nature of these systems, when some of our best minds have been speaking up about these issues, and often being murdered for them, for decades if not centuries.
Yet growth takes time, and we are all on our own journeys of deconstruction. If you’re ready to further challenge your own ingrained beliefs around politics or economics, here is a short list of recommendations to start or continue that journey.
The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980, book) - Shows how labor and leftist movements were systemically wiped out within the United States since its founding. The Nazi’s killed the socialists and communists first, so too did American presidents.
Blowback (2000-2025, podcast) - Each season is a very thorough and well-researched breakdown of different moments in American empire. Honestly Season 4 on the Korean War broke me. We committed a very brutal and un-acknowledged genocide on that peninsula and I will never say a bad thing about the isolationism of North Korea ever again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_(podcast)
Michael Parenti’s lecture at the University of Colorado (1986, youtube) - Parenti’s talk is a classic in understanding past and current US imperialism. This version has restored audio so sharing it over the more loved “Yellow Parenti” version, but anywhere you can hear him speak is worth it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMdaRQvkkJg
Kwame Ture’s lecture at the University of Georgia (1979, youtube) - Another classic lecture on revolutionary theory, Pan-Africanism, and understanding the global struggle for socialism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQpqiktQquc
“Stop Me Before I Vote Again” by Michael J. Smith (2005, uncompleted online blog) - I know, an odd source to share, but it impacted me greatly the first time I stumbled upon it many years ago. If you are still a believer in left vs right politics, or that the Democratic party will at any point be helpful, I think this online & apparently uncompleted manifesto is a very succinct way to explain the problem of the current two-party system and how it will not save us. Voting blue means nothing when every Democrat is also an imperial capitalist. https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/contents.html
The Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engels (1848, pamphlet) - For real, just read it lol. It’s nothing shocking or scary, and is relatively short. I remember being surprised that something that seems so straightforward has been so villainized for so long. And there’s a good chance that if you’re a “bleeding heart liberal,” that you’re actually a communist who’s been lied to all their life.
Of course none of these sources alone have the definitive answer on how to move forward at this time, but there are many who have had and are actively having these discussions and I believe that spiritual people should be a part of that conversation. You might not agree with everything more leftist sources say, and it’s okay to raise questions or concerns during the deconstruction process, so please don’t let that stop you from exploring these topics. It takes real courage to actively consider, question, and re-evaluate one’s cultural upbringing, personal beliefs, or instilled ideologies, and I commend anyone willing to do that work for themselves and their communities.
And if you are just now realizing that the US is an imperialistic, destructive force responsible for most of the world’s ills since its founding, you are allowed to grieve that loss of national identity and security. If you are just now seeing that there hasn’t been a justifiable war literally ever, you are allowed to grieve all the innocent lives lost at the hands of Western narcissistic and colonial warlords. If you are just now realizing that other people in other countries living different lives than you are actually also complete human beings with an interior life just like you, in many ways no different than you, you are allowed to grieve for their pain, even if it is belated, and hold it close as if it was your own.
Ultimately please never stop feeling and never stop asking the hard questions. Why are we like this? Why have we allowed this to continue for so long? And what can we do about it?
Processing Grief Now
Yet most days I am sitting with an even harder question to answer, which is how do we continue to live while carrying this grief? Like all the generations before us, we must find ways to acknowledge the pain, share it collectively, and continue to center our love and tenderness when able.
When we lose a loved one, we cry, we gather and share memories and hurt, and we learn how to continue to love once they’re gone. This process is no different when the loss is that of an Iranian school girl, a Palestinian father, a nurse in Minnesota, or a loss of security or identity or hope in our current systems. Please do cry, please do say their names and connect with others also grieving, and please continue to eat and sleep and hug others and make your art and dance, even if you have to do it with tears in your eyes.
Of course there are some spiritual traditions that may be helpful now, simply to process and sit better within the grief, never to mask it.
Start a personal ritual that helps you honor all the martyrs, whether that is a memorial altar within your home, a prayer said each night, or a peace candle you light when another tragedy is announced. This is a way for you to acknowledge, make space for, and process your pain.
Find a collective way to honor or discuss these events, possibly with a formal vigil or memorial event, a potluck dinner with the intention of discussing and mourning together, or just call a friend. When we can collectively acknowledge our pain, we can begin to show up for each other in ways we often didn’t know we needed.
Process your feelings and emotions through an artistic or personal expression - make that song, draw that picture, release that offering, bake that loaf of bread, plant that garden, kiss that stranger, dance that dance. Or write that blogpost, as I am doing now. Through creation we actively create the possibility of another world that just might exist on the other side of our grief.
And if you need to rest or slow down or take care of yourself, do that. If you need to talk to friends or take time away, do that. Honoring your body and nervous system responses right now is very important, because we need you, love. We need you at your most powerful and most vulnerable and most alive if we are to fight these fascist ideologies together.
I am deeply of the belief that living your most aligned, beautiful, and joyful life is an act of resistance and has the power to threaten some of the most powerful empires known to man. They want you alienated and controllable, when in reality your soul is vibrant, strong, and eternal. In my work I do hope to continue to remind every one of my clients of their uniqueness and beauty, and do what little I can to reawaken within them their inherent connection to the collective, to the land, to the themselves, and to the spirit intelligence that we don’t quite understand yet.
Thanks for listening to my rants and I hope something felt helpful, hopeful, or at least got this grief moving in some way for you.
I also process my own emotions and thoughts through music, so here's a playlist to hopefully give support and encouragement, and maybe a way to recontextualize holding an American identity during this dark time. I intentionally blended current and past revolutionary songs, because I want to remind us all that these fights are not new, many have come before us, and many I’m sure will come after, but may we join in the song of freedom while we are here. You can listen on Spotify or YouTube Music.
With all my revolutionary love,
l.
