For Her, For You, For Us

November 8th, 2023 and a sense of hope and belief in the possibility of change feels so much like the tides of the Pacific, it comes and goes with seasons of highs and lows. There is nothing one can do to alter the nature of the sea, we can only adjust to her changes as they unfold upon the shore.

This is a season of lows, both personally in my own journey and as something I carry into the advocacy work I do. I don’t have hope in the system changing and it is not because people don’t “care” in some sense or intend well, it is just there is no way to do so (or so I feel) within the constraints of bureaucracy. How could a ripple ever become a free born wave with so much interference as to make it obsolete?

As I watch my community suffer, as I watch government and health authorities step away and change roles every 3 months making any progress impossible - as I watch another loved seek peace through palliation… the anger I feel and rely on frequently to spark change feels dim: drowned out by a sense of futility.

I know no one is coming - I think we all know this if we’ve suffered long enough, but sometimes there is still capacity (or energy as I’ll call it) within oneself to cry out at this injustice and demand better because we deserve better.

Where I am reminded of hope is in my community. Like bread, we knead love between ourselves and raise it every day. The world cannot care for us so we care for each other. We deserve more, but our love for each other is endless, without bounds, and absolute. I love and learn from my community and each individual story we write of our healing, however that looks for each of us. Even palliation is a story of courage and hope that only we can understand between ourselves. Everyone’s journey is different, but I love my community. Here is the one place I’m not broken or pathologized. Here I am only accepted, free from judgment, paternalism, and the devastation of being discarded. Here is the only place I believe in change, hope, unconditional love and respect through all seasons.

- S.