Returning to joy in a time of breakdown

Hey, this is is Karla Morales-Lee, founder of The Warrior Women Network. I've remembered how much I love to write and how little I've been doing of it, so expect to see more occasional truth speaking from me here.

Given that one of the most common things I felt in 2021 was that I do not have enough time, I can no longer justify handing so much of it over to mindless scrolling on Instagram. On Dec 27th, we broke up. I'm hoping it's forever, but it was a toxic relationship, so I'm taking it one day at a time.

Since giving it up and as the weeks have gone on, I’ve realised it wasn’t just my time I was losing. It was joy.?

When scrolling Instagram I am overwhelmed daily by the injustices in the world. Sexual harassment, rape, murder, floods, fires, all in the time it takes to fire up an app and make a cup of tea (and sometimes even before that, accompanying my first morning wee).

Turning off from this news feels like something that a women of my privilege doesn't have the right to do. I have never been raped or experienced domestic abuse. I am living in a place where climate change seems like something others experience. I could go on.

Not engaging on social media feels like not caring.

Author of Pleasure Activism Adrienne Meree Brown calls this, “activist guilt”.

“I don’t avoid the “activist guilt” that’s tied to devoting yourself to justice but... I certainly examine it. I believe it's tied to the truth that, as an individual, I can never do enough in the face of all the intersecting injustices of my life and time. But I sometimes look at how far I've come, in my lifetime, in my lineage. How much repression I have cast off, how much oppression I have negated, how I went from homophobic to pansexual, from military brat to post-nationalist/post-capitalist. I feel free a lot, I surround myself with good revolutionary people...and I think, ok padawon. This may be an insignificant life in some grand epic scape, but in the scale of my life, I am doing my best and really getting a lot done for a lazy weed lover.”

In just two weeks, tuning away from the world wide web and intro REAL books on change and feminism, I see that things ARE changing.

I learn the WAY things are being changed.

I connect with the fact, that never before has there been a time like this.

I feel excited to be alive in what is being called “the great turning”.

Social media platforms profit from grabbing our attention.

In 2022 I choose to give my attention to DEEP learning, connection and sometimes doing absolutely nothing at all without feeling guilt.

As always, no one says better what I want to say than Audre Lorde:

“It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.”

The erotics of power

Join slower, considered, connected conversations on change by joining The Warrior Women Network.

Go well. Karla x