Rest, Refuge, and Mutual Aid

Our nervous systems need each other

Mycelial Threads. Graeme Walker. 2022.

It is easy to feel guilty for resting.

Guilt actually feels like a vast understatement. Rest right now can feel deeply painful.

Especially when there is no end in sight to the things that need to be done, to the ways to plug in, to save lives, or even just do the things that need doing when you have no running water or power.

But our nervous systems need each other. And they need each other to rest.

Some of the chores this week for our household, which is one of the extremely lucky ones, have looked like:

• Figure out how to get fuel (daily)

• Figure out how much water we need for our household & how much we’re using

• Figure out how to get water from the holler in town

• Get/boil/filter water (daily)

• Check on the neighbors (daily)

• Bring/distribute water/food/resources to neighbors and friends (daily)

• Use rainwater to help folx flush toilets around town

• Figure out what to do with trash/make trash runs

• Figure out how to get medication

• Figure out how to store food and what kinds of food to get and where

• Cook for the house & friends (10+ people) & do dishes/clean the kitchen without running water (daily)

• Create a composting toilet

• Create a handwashing station

• Set up rain water collection

• Dig a latrine (every few days)

• etc.

This doesn’t include the other day to day things we need to do to take care of ourselves, our loved ones, and our spaces that we did pre-storm, like childcare and other caregiving, or figuring out how to do them under the current context, or plugging into the mutual aid work happening elsewhere in town.

This doesn’t include figuring out how those of us without work right now will pay rent or bills.

This doesn’t include the meetings and the emotional support we give one another.

And this is not so much at all compared to the many homes that have experienced severe damage from water or trees falling or have washed away completely and are dealing with far more than we are. There are still folx in active search and rescue.

We have had to remind ourselves that mutual aid includes us and includes resting.

I’m writing these reminders because I need them:

We need to rest so we can show up for ourselves and others- even and especially when we are face to face with how we need each other for survival.

When we do community well, we can step back and rest knowing that others will step forward, and that we will be in the dance of taking action and resting. It is another muscle to build, this muscle of resting and returning to the work.

When we do community well, we can also take time to ourselves and come back, weave ourselves in and out, knowing that solitude is also crucial for many of our wellbeing.

When we do community well, we know that our art making is a part of daily life, and that song, dance, poetry, story-telling, and play are crucial, not frivolous activities. They are a part of how we make life in the cracks.

This morning, I am resting at my partner’s house out in the holler (about an hour out of town), which has wifi and power and running water, which I’ll fill up with before heading back in town.

When I got here last night, arriving to my partner and their partner and kiddo all giggling in a powered house in a quiet holler, a wave of deep exhaustion and deliriousness hit that I wasn’t expecting.

This morning, the tears are flowing.

I’m spending the morning writing, remembering again how linked rest and grief can be. It feels incredibly selfish and strange, until I realize how much more resourced I feel and remember that writing has always been part of how I find ground.

Stepping into a space absent of the sounds of sirens and helicopters is deeply relieving to my nervous system, but I still feel uneasy being away from town. I feel stretched across the realms of in town and out of town, with loves in both places.

I keep wondering if being here is a kind of escapism or avoidance, but the taste of my tears, and stories of folx who live here doing active search and rescue work in other areas, tells me something else.

I’m remembering again how “our nervous systems need other nervous systems”, both those who are in the same boat and those who are not, who are experiencing more stability (thanks Kim Wayman for these words) and creating spaces and moments of refuge.

A regulated nervous system is a resource. Finding ways to co-regulate and attune across differences in our experience is a resource. The contact zones between regulated and dysregulated nervous systems are a space of mutual aid.

And regulation does not mean being calm all the time. It means having space to cry and laugh and rest and take action and have conflict and repair.

Especially as we are in the cracks and we are being cracked.

Bayo Akomolafe shares:

“When a crack appears in the mighty wall, the only thing scarier than letting it grow unbridled, the only thing more worrisome than allowing it breathe, is sealing it up – for the thesis of the crack is to call into question the form we’ve assumed, the nobilities we cherish, the stories we assume to be true. The crack is the monster’s gift – a reminder that the fixity of the postures we take on often prove more dangerous than the threats we presume to withstand.”

Kristopher Drummond

who also lives in Western NC shares,

“It’s not an if but when we fall into the crack, and all the paradoxes that live there. In the past week I’ve experienced more authentic human connection than the previous twelve combined. I’ve cried with strangers, and laughed too. I’ve eaten incredible focaccia cooked under a tarp, and woken to the visceral urgency of dying to the promises of ‘progress.’

Right Now: there’s literally nothing better to be doing than connecting, helping, resting, feeling. And maybe what the crack is saying is that there never was.”

There are so many paradoxes in the cracks.

Even as I notice the ways I am resourcing myself by being out of town for a moment, I also feel deeply resourced and in awe of the mutual aid we are witnessing in town and in other impacted places. It is beautiful to witness everyone giving and sharing what they have. ​I made a post on instagram earlier today sharing some of those enchantments in the dark.​

"...the work of caring for one another continues to be done by neighbors, grassroots organizations, small businesses, and activists. It's done voluntarily, with thousands of autonomous actions synchronized through shared solidarity. For a brief moment, the logic of the capitalist market is suspended, care is given freely, and everyone contributes what they can.

It's a strange paradox that the utopia we dream of becomes most visible in the dark." (​Firestorm Co-op​)

As our regions’ infrastructure breaks apart, and our pre-storm dreams fragment, something else is arising, an organism of solidarity across geography that reaches for itself and one another and hikes across broken roads and rows through floodwaters. Our lives and their structures are finding new shapes across space.

Any illusions we had of there being a place safe from climate chaos are gone.

Refuge and sanctuary will be what we create together, within and across the cracks.

Resources & Mutual Aid

Click here for a list of resources & other mutual aid efforts and a regularly updated resource list.

If you’d like to support my friends and I in our mutual aid efforts - you can venmo Mara-Pfeffer with “mutual aid” in the description.

🕸️

Donate to our mutual aid efforts

Subscribe to Grief Spells

Your subscriptions help support my work and help us skirt the whims of the algorithm! As of right now, all subscription tiers (including free) will receive access to seasonal grief spells with audio recordings/ voice overs, which you can listen to like you would a podcast.

By ​becoming a paid subscriber​ to this newsletter for $12-15/month, your paid subscriptions help me so that I don't have to spend as much time marketing, and can instead focus on creating and doing what I love.

Thank you <3