Stories as resistance, connection as power

With our fourth wave behind us and case numbers low, I find myself in a kind of slow and cautious re-emerging. Many friends here seem to feel the same way, so recently, for the first time since early 2020, I gathered a group of women at my house.

This is something I find myself doing wherever I live - and had been doing it somewhat regularly here in Cape Town until the pandemic. I love connecting people and causes more generally, but the energy in gathering a group of intelligent, self-aware women sparks a specific kind of joy for me. I find so much power in that connection, especially as we begin to share experiences and insights, pain and elation.

I see sharing stories as a form of resistance - it creates a solidarity that makes outside forces (patriarchy, capitalism, you name it) seem less absolute. The other day at this gathering, when we started telling each other things about our relationships, our health, our careers…I sensed our feelings of isolation begin to fade a bit.

Happens every time: we remember, we’re not the only ones with this particular issue. Maybe we’re not so weird to feel that way, to be angered or saddened by that thing. Maybe our current dark night of the soul really will pass, since our friend’s did.

And that’s before we even get to problem solving. Women have a capacity to just listen to each other, to hold space. That in itself is power, and sometimes it’s all that’s needed. But the collective energy of even just a few intuitive women thinking through a problem together - offering advice and shamelessly sharing failures and successes - is potent. It’s also messy, and doesn’t always result in a clean way forward. But that’s life.

I didn’t realize until shortly before I relaunched my website and started this blog nearly two years ago, but this is the same thing I do in my work life. Without realizing it, over the years I have somehow developed a niche as a connector. I never even thought such a thing would be necessary, much less quantifiable as a work product. But it turns out, at least in my experience social justice organizations are terrible at connection and collaboration - internally, and with other groups.

We don’t play well with others due in part to the perverse incentives I’ve talked about on this blog, sure. We’ve got strongly held opinions and, shall we say, robust perspectives about what the issues are and how to address them - also true. But my touchy feely side thinks its at least partly a protective human instinct ; we don’t want anyone to see our mess. Maybe if no one sees it, it’s not real. Or maybe we just believe our own particular mess must be so much worse than everyone else’s.

Which, in social justice circles as with a circle of women, is pretty much never the case.

And if we break those barriers and share more about, yes our successes, but also our failures and errors in judgement, there’s a solidarity that begins to emerge. Particularly for groups working on human rights, who are often at risk - if not outright hunted - this kind of solidarity is not just nice, but necessary for survival.

COVID is helping with this, of course (what a weird phrase to type). There are countless articles about how seeing (through Zoom) our coworker dealing with their screaming toddler at home has helped us develop more empathy, and perhaps become a bit more vulnerable ourselves.

But we need to keep the ball rolling, intentionally. We need to keep those walls down, to keep rebelliously sharing what we previously thought couldn’t be shared, in order to keep building and strengthening movements.

The Powers that Be, Evil, the Man - call it what you want - wants us separate. Isolated we are weaker, more prone to fatigue and hopelessness. More likely to give in. Together, we can take turns, lean on each other, keep the fight going.

This feels even more urgent to me now, as there seems to be this collective acknowledgment that we are heading towards endemic COVID - and the much-heralded “return to normal.” We’ve seen how quickly we left the global solidarity of the first weeks, even months of COVID, behind.

Remember all those virtual benefit concerts? Remember applauding frontline workers at 8pm every night? What happened to that?

Vaccines. And vaccine inequity is what happened to that (I’ve written about this, too, on the blog).

I’m realizing now that’s partly why 2021 was so much harder than 2020 - it’s when the divisions really came roaring back, with a vengeance. But I have some sliver of hope, however fanciful, for 2022 and beyond. I think we, as individual humans, but also as groups fighting for human rights and social justice, can get back there.

And the way back is (re) connection.