How can we make sure our actions serve Ukraine?

In this article you will learn to feel, commune, and then act to serve Ukraine effectively. And your actions can be inclusive and ensure you don't burn out in the process.

Yesterday I was wandering through Berlin with my teen sons and a friend. And out front of the Brandenburg gate in?#Berlin?was this couple with their young daughter standing there on a Monday in the middle of the day in silence holding signs in support of Ukraine, against the war. There was a gravitas to the slow, still, stance they were taking.

I had a wave of feeling take over.

1. Pride in them.
2. A gut-punch of grief in my stomach, tears falling down my face, seeing this family and imaging so many other families and the long-lasting impacts on children.
3. Terror at the rise in populism and authoritarianism and the easy social media marketing tools enabling its spread.
4. Powerlessness at how to make this kind of power abuse stop.
5. A full belly scream of rage meeting my limitation.
6. Longing to digest the complexity of all of these with other people sitting in a circle just listening to and holding these feelings without engaging in a plan of action.
7. Desire to avoid and turn all the feeling off and float away on a blissful cloud of spirituality.

What feelings are you holding sitting with this war in Ukraine and how are you tending them?

When gun violence followed by alt-right movements became the norm in the United States I found my own socio-cultural training and my nervous system's knee-jerk reaction to "get busy" and do something take over. My Black girlfriends quickly pointed out that my frame as a white person, the top of the social structure in the US, had me acting without including. They inspired me to slow down and really get clear and intentional before jumping into action. Now I ask myself "who is not included in this conversation?" as a matter of course. How many Ukrainian organizations am I consulting before getting active?

Sensorimotor psychology calls the immediate almost reactive response to hardships the "industrious over-focused" response. The nervous system mobilizes into action. Or extreme feelings of existential isolation that pop up in response may also have us engage in an "attention-seeking" activism as a way to bring in close the emotional supports needed. (A disclaimer...my ethos on therapy is to not take these frameworks and use them to shame or suggest you need to sanitize these reactions but become conscious about them.) My hope is for empowerment. My deep desire is the very way we engage in activism is, itself, not perpetuating the dominance and control we so dearly want to eradicate.

Sometimes our old injuries give us superhuman capacities to rise up and act with fervor. Other times our injuries block us from seeing broader context that has us unconsciously harm in our attempts to serve.

Let's feel before acting, embrace the complex rather than the simple, and lean on community to help us act clearly.

The social context that I was confronted with leading Sidewalk Talk are two:

1. A class and race-based savior in me that disempowered the very people I may have been trying to serve. The seven years I spent leading Sidewalk Talk taught me so much about slowing down. I got caught in acting like a do-gooding savior, without context awareness that my do-gooding may have been my own kind of abuse of power. I like this piece by a non-profit on how they confront saviorism in their work and include the constituents they serve. I left a nonprofit last week because this blind do-gooderness was the norm. My hope is right now we include Ukraine people and what they are asking for before we act.
2. That I am not all good in my "do-gooder" and my efforts can be more effective if the darker aspects of myself are also included. A part of me bristles after confronting this in me. When I see a meme about kindness I hear something almost religious "cleanse your psyche". When people, during crisis, post memes about kindness, peace, greater good without leaving room for fully embracing dark feelings too, it scares me. It can feel as totalitarian as some of the folks we are fighting. We are full of complex parts and our unwillingness to meet our own inner dictator, inner violence, and have the audacity to believe we could psychotherapize away, meditate away, trauma regulate away our shadow drives me nuts. I hold the belief that in addition to actions "out there on the street" so much action "in here in us" to meet our violence, our power monger, our avoider as well as our peacefulness, our lovingness, and kindness is the transforming power of inner growth. The ever-popular growth mindset is about embracing shadow, IMHO.

How can we make sure our actions serve Ukraine?

1. Feel all your feelings. The full range. Your shadow and light. Take the time you need and get support for your rage and violence, not just the cuter feelings.
2. Listen and be listened to in the community. There is magic in circling with other humans to hold the potent raw emotions that arise in response to war. I have found being held in community around these feelings is often a missing link. We spring into action to not feel. Feel with that community first.
3. Slow down and listen to expert sources in your area before reinventing your own non-profit or starting a thing. For example, reach out to local refugee shelters. Ukraine organizations. Support them.
4. Check in about what the intentions are for your sharing and posting on social media. What is the intention in your post? Is it to avoid the darker parts of this crisis? Is it to get attention for a tenderness in you that needs support? Is it to show solidarity? Is it to find community? Other intentions? My intention in sharing this was to make space for more holding of all of our feelings so we could all move through this with more capability and resilience.

1. Sit with the information you have gathered and listen inward to what feels like a way you feel called to serve. What do your feelings tell you about your capacity to serve? It is easy to leave our own well-being by the side of the road and give so much we do violence to ourselves. Go slow here and hold yourself and the other equally in your care.
2. Continue to be in community sharing and holding your feelings. If you know of circles simply holding space for feelings, please put them in the comments. If you would like to start one, also put that in the comments and I can help you get the word out.

Finally, thank you to so many dear ones in my community.

I am an American living in Germany and the calls and texts of solidarity from the US have been meaningful to my heart. My sons go to an international school with several Ukraine friends. They are shook. This war has me shook.

I have been protected, as an American by distance from wars in the past. I can feel the proximity of this one. I had a friend on the way to Romania to go camping needing to change his plans. Women in my town are organizing taking in refugees because soon thousand will be arriving looking for shelter. I met a Ukraine girl on the train to Berlin crying as she left her country.

Add to this the still processing of an insurrection and dictator-like activities in my own country and a global pandemic for which my therapy caseload doubled, community has been so important and necessary for me the last 18 months. I am in a lot of groups right now, holding these feelings in community, and doing less nonprofit stuff. The last two years has helped me feel equipped to serve Ukraine more skillfully and I am reminded the collective is where the power of not only healing but also activism resides.

May we all find our way to feel, commune, and serve Ukraine effectively.