I turned off my news alert notifications. I want to do this for at least a week.
I will still engage news, even daily, but on my own terms. As we move into the next few days, I think we will see a slew of difficult executive orders that will come at us with a strategy of shock and awe. In the end, not all of them will stick, though some certainly will. They will feel troubling, and we may easily feel overwhelmed.
But we need not be inactive or feel entirely powerless. We’re not: We can care. We can act. We can reach out to one another.
I appreciated this paragraph from a lesson on Liven, a self-care app:
“… coping can be proactive and reactive.
“Proactive coping refers to the strategies we’re using to prevent the stress we experience from affecting us more than we’d like it to. Reactive coping is merely a response to the stress that’s already occurred, and its goal is to help us manage the impact.”
We need both of these, and this might be a good time to build up our strategies for each one.
You matter.
We matter.
You’re not powerless.
We’re not powerless.
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 