I don’t want every day to feel like a battle

Today is August 8, 2024. Yesterday I was looking at mia mingus’ instagram and saw that her last post was in 2023, and for a long minute I was completely confused at what year it is. The disorientation hasn’t let up.I started writing through substack earlier this spring and I keep writing about how I’m not ok. And I still don’t feel ok. I haven’t felt ok since october of last year. Whatever “ok” is. My cognitive brain tells me there are a million reasons why it’s impossible for me to be ok - I need to accept not being ok, but my body keeps on telling me that it’s not right. I feel tears welling up right now in admitting it that I don’t feel ok about not being ok.Tiffany’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In the past 6 hours, I’ve ridden the waves of anxiety too many times. Whatever “too many” times means.Back to it being August 8. I read briefly how it’s the Lion’s Gate Portal and it’s a powerful day to set intentions and future visions (I hate the word “manifest” because white women have co-opted the word into a capitalistic privileged yucky thing.) So here I am sitting down to pray.What is my liberatory imagination leading me to call forth?I don’t want every day to feel like a battle.Is it possible to move full body into my liberatory role in the collective and not feel like imploding? Is it possible to find truth and speak truth in this fucked up world and not just fall to the ground from grief? Is it possible to taste the fruit of liberation in this lifetime? Is it possible to witness suffering and pure evil in this world and within me (the evil conditioning from colonialism) without being thoroughly frozen with trauma? Is it possible for me to do what I say is needed for collective liberation?The addiction to comfort under capitalism scares me every time I exit my front door. It scares me to witness it in the masses here in the imperial core. And it scares me to witness it in myself.Is it an intention with a statement that starts with “I don’t want?” Let me try again.I want to feel rooted enough to never see the fruit of my and our actions towards collective liberation and be certain that it’s worth it. I want to be brave enough to show up fully human - contradictions and all - so that I can be alongside chosen family and comrades who also choose to show up fully human. The call is to uphold each soul as fully human and worthy of a dignified life filled with choices and autonomy that isn’t founded on supremacy and exploitation. To be fully human is to fight and demand for this possibility.Recently, I’ve felt so low (like a different kind of low) as I’m witnessing folks engage with the elections. How can we get anywhere when the seduction of fake representation (political black face) and liberation is working? Like we haven’t been witnessing a genocide every day under the same administration. Like we haven’t seen enough Palestinian children heads and body parts blown off.And I get it! It is so much easier to look to the government to say yayyyy or boooo than to look at our personal communal ecosystem.How can we have a revolution when the majority of people are comfortable in their capitalistic roles and with thinking there can be reform in this god forsaken country?Also, am I too comfortable? Or am I deluding myself that I see things with more clarity than others? Also, WHAT AM I DOING?? What am I doing to benefit the community materially? My capacity has been so low from the effects of my personal trauma and witnessing trauma upon trauma under imperial colonialism. The waves keep on hitting and I feel like I can’t catch a break. When I finally do get an emotional/spiritual break that usually lasts an hour or two, the waves of surviving under capitalism shocks me back into reality. (Context: I just quit my very part time job recently.)Ok. It’s August 8, and I need to use it to call forth something good. I cried last night about something good. Things with my boo of 3 months have been changing me and my relationship with hope and what’s possible. Even though it hasn’t been that long, she’s been showing me what I’ve always been wanting in partnership can exist with ease. It can be easy to care for me, to be present, to be self accountable, to be honest. That ease comes from deep work and courage.My intentions and liberatory vision on this day calls forth ease that is rooted in the ugly and brutal and transformative and hopeful truth.I am a truth seeker, truth speaker, truth believer. A truth celebrate-r. I want to be a human that upholds truth at any cost.I’m not there yet I don’t think, but I call forth capacity within myself and within my community.This Sunday, I’m facilitating a journaling + yoga workshop with my friend and comrade Amera called Liberatory Imagination: rooting in faith. I’m so thankful to have friends who can be beside me to practice strengthening true hope. It feels like a miracle that this workshop (or anything workshop/event) is coming into fruition when every day feels like a battle. And maybe that’s how I continue forward…look at the miracles that exist despite the non stop grief and violence. It’s having faith that the seemingly impossible is worth fighting for and looking for.What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?It sparks in me the hope that there will be a season for me where my capacity can hold much more. A season where daily tasks can come with ease, collaborations and relationships can flow more abundantly, organizing and mobilizing will be rooted in purpose and steadiness, and the dance with grief can flow. It sparks in me visions of having a strong core community that can deepen over decades with the unifying struggle towards collective liberation.(ID: my boo and I at Lake Michigan over looking chicago skyline - an activity we do to help get grounded and to receive medicine from the water.)Tiffany’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to LIBERATORY IMAGINATION at tiffanywongart.substack.com/subscribe