On Collective Power and Responsibility

Hey y’all,

I am fucking exhausted to be honest. After a week of feeling particularly lethargic and out of it because of the eclipse in Pisces, I resolved to sit at my computer today and be productive. I exercised, made a full breakfast, meditated, and grounded before facilitating a wonderful session. With my heart a glow from being connected to my purpose as a wellness practitioner, I absentmindedly got on Instagram. And I was reminded of the fact that Marcellus Williams is due to be executed in just a few hours for a crime that he didn’t commit. I was reminded that Israel killed hundreds of people in Lebanon over the course of a few days in addition to the people that they have continued murdering in Palestine. I was reminded that Apple just released it’s new iPhone while the humanitarian crisis in Congo is worsening. I was reminded that the people of Sudan warned us about an impending famine that could kill up to 2 million people this month and the month is almost over. Then I was met with a familiar thought as all of the exhaustion came flooding back to my body that I had worked so diligently to keep at bay this morning: “I can’t do this.”

With that thought usually comes a wave of hopelessness and despair as the election draws nearer and nearer and I feel less and less prepared for all the hell that’s about to break loose. “I can’t do this.” The thought that usually leads to a whole thought process around not having the energy to show up for this moment in time and quite frankly not wanting to. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to witness so much pain and suffering and choose to sign endless petitions and spend time making calls that seem to go into a void when we are almost a year into a genocide? Why would anyone choose to fix a clearly broken world that they had no hand in creating? As my downward spiral of thoughts comes to a close, I am reminded that I would. Because it’s my responsibility to the collective and myself. Lately that answer arrives pretty quickly because this is something I’ve been thinking about throughout the month; this relationship that I have with responsibility when it’s much easier to check out and disassociate.

On a personal level, I have a mixed relationship with responsibility as someone who was a parentified child. I’ve been responsible my whole life and it has burdensome in many ways. On the surface, sometimes it feels like it’s done nothing but exhaust me. Part of me wonders that if I truly had had the opportunity to be a kid and not worry about adult issues, then maybe I wouldn’t be resistant to being an adult now. But at the end of the day, I can’t change the past and my experiences have made me who I am today. The reality is that not taking responsibility for myself and embracing being an adult has only harmed me. So I made an active choice to be more responsible over the past couple of months, particularly in terms of my finances, because I want to be able to produce certain things in my life and that requires power in the form of money, energy, and stamina.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase from Uncle Ben in Spider-man, “With great power, comes great responsibility” a hundred times, if not more. In the context of Spider-man’s story, it makes sense that suddenly being able to do superhuman things would require him to wield his power wisely. However, I’ve been thinking about it in the reverse. What if taking responsibility is the path to gaining more power? What if deciding to commit to caring for ourselves and each other is what will magnetize the right resources towards us and give us the stamina needed to create the world we want to see? I will say for myself that choosing to take responsibility for myself and embrace being an adult has already made me feel more empowered and less victimized by life. It has made me feel prepared to make more money because I trust myself to show up to the table and steward it. So my hope is the same can happen on a collective level.

As exhausting and heartbreaking as it is to bear witness and take right action in response to the injustice and violence in the world (especially for a world we didn’t participate in making this way), the more we decide to commit to this path and take responsibility for the well-being of the collective, the more our power and resources will expand to help us create something new. If we keep turning a blind eye, if we keep disassociating, if we keep expecting someone else to save us, we’ll never be free.

I know this is a heavy message but hopefully it resonates. I recently contributed to a free Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Library through Maryam Hasnaa to provide tools to support all of us in navigating the intensity of this moment so definitely check it out if you need support in staying grounded and present: https://www.maryamhasnaa.com/Free-EFT-Video-Library

Thank you so much for reading as always ❤️ 

With gratitude,

Paula

P.S. I’m holding space for free energy work sessions for the next few months while I focus on developing other projects. Click the link to sign up for one here: Book your free energy work session

P.P.S If you enjoy my work, please share it with a friend or buy me a coffee here.