I started this blog back in 2018 as a means to share a bit of my own experience with my fellow activists and organizers. I wanted to create a space that would encourage sustainable activism and a sense of a caring community. I hoped that it might help us all grow a bit stronger in the face of struggle.

On Labor Day of this year my friend and fellow activist and organizer, David Keith Cobb, ended his life. Today, I need to write in honor of David and in recognition of all of my fellow activists and organizers who’ve struggled and are perhaps continuing to struggle right now with depression, burnout, all the pain, sadness, anger, and fear that come with caring, and who have or who maybe are considering that same path that David took.

There’s so much going on here. It’s difficult to figure out where to start. We’re in a time of some of danger. The democracy that so many of us were raised to believe in has been bought out and is crumbling. We look around and see environmental destruction, racism, poverty, homelessness, and hatred everywhere we step. It’s continually piped in to our minds through the cultural story-telling of our lives whether that be social media, mainstream press, advertisements, music, or whatever else. Joy, peace, happiness are all discouraged.

Then there are those of us with strong, beating hearts and courageous souls who want something different for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, and on and on, who dare to do something who, in fact, can’t see ourselves not acting to make the world a better place.

Sometimes we get stuck. For myself, it looks like this. I started out speaking out in my teens and really began to identify as an organizer and activist once I got to college. My world began to open. I started to see what was happening and that I couldn’t not act on. I got involved first in environmental activism, then social justice work, then came to the point of seeing it was all the same, all connected.

Over the years I’ve been a part of multiple movements and organizations working to protect the earth and her inhabitants. I’ve helped coordinate democracy teach-ins locally and nationally, organized protests, led campaigns to protect the lands and waters, worked on the electoral campaigns, and stood on the front lines facing the police. I’ve taught and supported a lot of others the fundamentals of the work. Sometimes we won and sometimes we lost.

Now, after some thirty-plus years of doing the work and seeing some of greats, like David, be overcome and facing my own need to redefine who I am and how I identify in the world, I am finding myself reminded that being an activist and organizer is an adrenaline rush. For many of us our lives are defined by the work that we do. That work almost always has us backed into a corner fighting giants. We’re standing there with our toothpick swords fighting against the monsters.

Adrenaline isn’t a bad thing, but pumping through our systems day in and day out can’t work. We can’t be in the eternal fight or flight and not expect to wear down. That’s why my world has changed. It’s an odd moment now to see me standing at the microphone. I still give what I can to making the world a better place. I still show up sometimes to the rallies and marches. But now, my way to change the world might be this blog or talking to someone, or maybe its just holding a child that needs to be held.

I don’t want to sound like I’ve figured anything out. I haven’t. I miss fighting the fight in the old ways that I used to. I miss the microphone, the rallies, being the one who cheered us all on to keep going. Now, however, I look at what wore me down. I see the allies fighting each other, the meetings that were mostly about seeing who could talk the longest and the loudest, and being in that continual fight mode.

Yes, we need to keep doing the good work, but it doesn’t need to always be about fighting against the bad. We need to also be creating and growing the good. Reach out and care for your fellow activists. Reach inward and care for yourself. It’s may be cliche, but we need to be the change that we want to see. What is the world we want? How do we make it real? Unless we do that kind of caring the work of all those burned out people who’ve left the movement and the lives of all those Davids who’ve left it all become nothing. Our way to honor those we’ve loved is to create the world they dreamed of.

Now, I ask that you care for you. Step back and breathe. No saviors, no martyrs, no need to die from the pain. You are loved. Hold on to the community and be real and loving with each other. We will create that world that we dream of.