Today I’m grateful for spending time in the forest. After a walk shortened by muddy conditions, I carried a lawn chair out into the trees and simply sat for awhile. Wren snuffled around amusing her nose, nibbling juniper berries, playing imaginary games; I sat and listened and looked; I breathed clean spring air.

I got back into the fray today, catching up on Today’s Edition with sound advice for sanity, making calls to my Senators, reading a few specific articles including this one about the thousands who demonstrated at state capitols yesterday across the country. But I paced myself. The day started with a member of Telesangha who lives in DC telling me that most residents in his building are federal employees who are panicking. So I led a meditation in which I repeated some sound advice recently shared with me from a talk by Oren Jay Sofer, on how to deal with news overwhelm:

• 1. Do at least your minimum daily requirement for your body’s wellbeing, including exercise, sleep, and eating well.
• 2. Ask yourself: Am I nourishing myself? This is essential. What gives you joy and replenishes you, emotionally, socially, and/or spiritually? Include this in your life.
• 3. Set limits on your news consumption. (I would add, turn off all news notifications/alerts, so that you choose when you see the news.) Not only set constraints, but take in news intentionally. Ask yourself:
  • Why are you seeking information and what needs are are you trying to meet?
  • What specific areas of news do you need to follow?
  • What sources of news and info are you consulting?
• 4. Action relieves anxiety: so being engaged, taking action in whatever ways are meaningful to us, helps us deal with our angst.
• 5. Practice with Equanimity. Don’t suppress your responses and emotions, but learn how to feel them without feeding them. Your feelings reflect your values, so use those feelings to clarify your values, hold true to your values, and act in alignment with them in all areas of your life.

As I wandered through the woods I thought about how many of the Usurpers’ edicts have already been challenged or held up by the courts, by protests, and by legislators; and, how many outrageous pronouncements have already been diluted or walked back by the Usurper in Chief. We don’t really know what’s actually happening. The sowing of chaos is an intentional strategy to overload our cognitive capacities. As Hubbell writes, “Not everything that Trump and Musk have announced will actually occur or will be easy to implement. And we will have time to resist, fight back, slow walk, and seek injunctive relief from the courts. We can blunt some of the damage but cannot prevent it all. Still, we must do our best to protect as many people and programs as possible.”

In another post he points out, “Do not collapse the future into the present moment. The future comes at us one day at a time no matter how much we worry. The invariant pace of time gives us space and opportunity to plan, react, and adjust. Find community. Support others in distress. Lead by example….” And so in addition to Sofer’s advice on avoiding media overwhelm, I would add, just pause… When you hear or read the latest outrage, pause and breathe. Don’t react from your gut right away: that will quickly wreck your gut. Take a breath, wait for followup information to determine the actual urgency (and truth) of the situation, and then determine whether and how you can in alignment with your values and your abilities. And do not forget to nourish yourself so that you have the energy to engage in resistance.

Rebecca Solnit wrote the day after the election, “They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.“

Joyce Vance writes another excellent newsletter that gives wise and helpful legal perspective and interpretation on the coup and its ramifications, which she ends with the phrase “We’re in this together.” There are SO MANY informed and determined defenders of democracy out there working on the front lines. You and I do not have to know everything or do everything. I am one among many, and we are strong and resilient. More will join us every day as their lives become uncomfortable. Anything we do that is helpful, or kind, or compassionate; that is wise, that is true, that stands up to oppression and corruption, ripples out into the world in ways we may never know. Thinking about this, I recalled a poem I wrote years ago, early in my mindfulness journey. What we do matters.