I was lying in bed this morning when I had this thought:
“My body wants to freeze, but I think I need to fight.”
I suppose multiple things brought me to this moment at once. I’ve been processing some grief and challenges this week, so that has been with me. But in this precise moment, I had just looked at my phone. I saw the many emails asking me to take action in a variety of directions as people’s lives are upended and many are fearing rollbacks of civil rights. These are the kinds of things that can feel heavy enough to make us want to just lie in bed. By the way, sympathy for us in this desire. There are reasons our bodies feel heavy in the wake of such large needs. This is a reaction to collective trauma.
That’s when I had this thought.
“My body wants to freeze, but I think I need to fight.”
I was thinking of the fight, flight, or freeze reactions that our bodies tend to take in the wake of trauma. I began to wonder, are there ever moments of collective freezing, collective fleeing, and collective fighting?
While we’re all feeling affected by these actions and large-scale challenges, it is crucial, of course, to say that some are directly impacted by harm, while others are more distanced from that harm.
Yet the multitude of directions of harm can cause us to shut down.
So I said,
“My body wants to freeze, but I think I need to fight.”
Fighting sometimes takes big, energetic striving. No doubt. But sometimes, it’s the simple, but immensely impactful question of, “What can I uniquely do?” and then doing that consistently. It has an enormous impact.
Where am I positioned? What’s my calling? What is my skill set? With whom am I connected?
Smuggling Grace 