And Still We Rise.

Sunset on election night 2020

Here we are, the day after the election that is also not yet “after”… because nothing is concluded. But last night, as I felt my body go into the fever lock of four years ago, a burn of nerves and anxiety, I kept hearing this phrase:

And Still We Rise.

Like a song on loop, I heard this line over and over, a small blue beam calming my nerves. And as I lay awake (and yes, occasionally checked results), it began to dawn on me that this isn’t four years ago.

Things are different. We are different. And here I have to confess - reluctantly but hopefully instructively - the path I went down in 2016.

That night, four years ago - perhaps it’s burned in your body memory too? - I ran out of words, went numb, gave up, fell down and… decided to read the entire Harry Potter series. Reality was intolerable and – I fled. Disappearing into thousands of pages of fantasy, I buried myself in stories of magic while the world crashed.

My husband Jon would needle me, “Where are you? You can’t wallow in this forever.”

And I would bellow, “I absolutely can wallow! It’s called integration!” And turn back to Hagrid petting a hypogriff in the woods outside his hut.

Those first months were like being pelleted in a sandstorm. The oppressiveness of this president – the hot prickling fear of imminent destruction – and all the men he conjured in his wake: the gaslighting, the objectification. The rage, the unfairness. The only way through was down.

“I think,” said my acupuncturist, setting a needle in my forehead, “We’re getting the smallest taste of what oppression feels like. What people of color live with every single day.”

That truth stung. I wanted to lick my wounds and flip the bird to the world at large. I was not, it was true, accustomed to this indignation: How could it be like this? And yet it so obviously was, and had been for a long time. The fact of my shock was part of the problem.

Eventually I began to thaw. I got to the end of Harry Potter and reluctantly left Hogwarts. And then one day my friend Lindsay brought me to a meeting of refugee and immigrant women who met Saturday mornings in a basement at the local university to learn English.

And I went back every month for 3 years.

These women had actually struggled. They knew war and dictatorship and true oppression, and – they did not dwell there. 

On my first day leading a workshop I asked the group to share something that brought them joy and a movement that they felt when they brought this joy to mind. I felt nervous opening with this prompt – was this too much to ask? Would it be risky to move in front of a group? Will this even work?

I had so much to learn.

They danced. They broke into song. We folded over in laughter, shaking our hips, raising our palms to the sky. Why hold back joy? Why not revel in all of it?

C. cracked vagina jokes, M. regularly broke into loud songs of prayer. I have no idea what J. was saying most of the time – she spoke neither French nor English - and yet we grabbed each other’s hands and declared, “Thank you! I love you!”

Together we did stretches and played games, we sewed lavender eye pillows to gift each other at Christmas. We complained about the cold and struggled to pronounce THs and learned the names of body parts, clothing, and basic verbs. 

Slowly, slowly, they wrapped me in something larger and deeper, something luminous and true – not our boundaries but our lives, ceaselessly enfolded together.

M. stood close to me one morning, “Teacher!” She said, “This connection of which we speak –I feel this connection in my HEART.” I felt it too.

Four years on, I am no less petrified or preoccupied by what might happen next.

But, but.

The landscape is larger now, reaching across and between all of us, too grand and expansive to be colonized. And when I feel the sandstorms again, I remember C. and J. and this group of women lighting our way towards something numinous, of which we all are part.

And so, when the phrase comes in the middle of the night, it is the sound of all of us that I hear: C’s mischievous jokes, my daughter’s lilting laughter, our neighbor next door. Calling me back to the truth. And Still We Rise.