I hope you have the opportunity to spend time with family, loved ones, and the people you turn to for comfort this week. To center joy and community. To reflect on the work you’ve done and remind yourself that you are valued.

Being part of a community means supporting each other through challenging times. It means giving each other hope that a more just world is possible. And in return, our community is there to remind us that we need to be kind to ourselves and practice self-care.

During the next few days, I hope you are able to take the space that you need. Take a walk around your neighborhood, solo or with a friend. Listen to music that puts you in a good mood. Cook your favorite recipe. Call someone you haven’t seen in a while just to say they’re on your mind.

I want to share a poem with you that I often turn to as a reminder of why we do this work, and that we have what it takes to win tough fights together. I am thankful for everyone who does the work as we take this time to gather strength from each other.

Marge Piercy’s “To Be of Use”

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Here is to all of you doing the work, and here is to this community that I am so I’m grateful for, who shows me that another world is possible, but only if we work for it.

Onward,

Ayanna