WHAT MY MORNING WALK TAUGHT ME ABOUT RAGE...

I went for a walk around our village this morning. There is a loop that takes about half an hour that I used to talk our dog around most days before he died and I miss it, so every so often I will just go on my own.

I wrapped up warm and set off into the wind and rain, hoping to blow away some cobwebs and set myself up for the week.

About halfway around there is a little pocket of land that, when I last did this walk, was wild – it was filled with gorse and trees and ferns and no doubt home to countless insects, birds, and mammals.

I used to love peering into it to see what I could see – sometimes a rabbit, often a robin hopping between branches, or maybe just the winter sun glinting off the morning dew on a spider's web.

But when I walked past this morning....

...it's gone.

There is nothing there now but mud, a big pile of tree stumps and branches, and some litter.

I know the grief I am feeling is disproportionate. I know it is probably linked to losses both personal and global, both old and current, both brutally shocking and shockingly normalised, but I am nonetheless, devastated.

Devastated and furious.

I interviewed Tamu T. last week for an upcoming episode of my podcast about her first book Women Who Work Too Much and there's a quote that I read back to her because it spoke to me so powerfully – and it came back to me in this moment...

"knowing my rage did not obliterate my hope"

I talk a lot about hope, about 'defiant hope' specifically – I sign off every email "stay curious, imperfect and defiantly hopeful." This newsletter is called "Definitely hopeful" for Christ's sake. And sometimes that means I think that I'm not supposed to feel grief or rage or devastation or fury...

...but I honestly don't know how not to.

I don't know how to walk past my favourite little corner of that walk, and see this – in the context of everything that the people with the power and the resources to do so much better are choosing to do to people with less power and fewer resources – and to the more-than-human-world – and not feel grief and rage, devastation and fury.

So today I am just going to sit with those feelings. I am going to allow myself to feel them all. Tomorrow, I will let my sadness give way to anger and let my anger lead me back to action and eventually to hope, because I honestly believe that is the only choice available to me.

Change will not happen unless we make it happen, and we won't make it happen unless we believe we can. So we have to believe – we have to choose to believe.

Just not today. Today, I am allowing myself to know my rage, safe in the knowledge that it will not obliterate my hope. And I'm grateful to Tamu for that.

Stay curious, imperfect and defiantly hopeful, (see?!)

PS The doors to the Making Design Circular membership are now closed, but I do have a couple of 1:1 coaching and mentoring slots available for the New Year. If you are also trying to hold on to hope in the face of grief and fury and want to work with someone who will hold space for all those feelings, find out more HERE >>>> and book your slot now for 15 January onwards.