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Happy New Year and welcome to the new and improved WELLREAD. We’ve streamlined our looks and are providing more NTK content, calls to action and resources to support you in the practice of showing up for the wellbeing of all. Please consider upgrading to paid to help keep us going. We will never put content behind a paywall but depend on the support of our community to sustain us. Thank you!

After five years of writing every week, I took a much needed break this past month to rest and reflect. I didn’t know how burned out I was until I gave myself permission to stop. I realized I have been running away from the fatigue, from the fear that nothing will change, and from the truth that the systems we are trying to save are, in fact, not salvageable.

This may sound depressing, but in fact, arriving at this conclusion - that there is no fixing this mess - has given me renewed hope. By accepting the conditions of our present reality, we become clear in purpose. That our assignment is to care for each other during the collapse of old systems, to reduce harm wherever possible, and to unleash our joy and art and imagination towards new pathways and practices of being.

Perhaps this season of organizing is to rest and reflect on what we have learned. To create time and space to integrate the lessons of our successes and failures. To consider what is in need of nourishment, what must adapt, what is ready to die. And who we need to be together to move through this transition and build a better world.

May this be the year we learn to slow down and prepare ourselves for the work ahead.

Kerri (she/her)

NTK

1. “[Policing] actually makes everything less safe…One of the ways it does this is in how policing has not just colonized our imaginations in the way it has taken over the concept of public safety…it also shrinks the way we move through space.” How Abolitionists are actually realists.

2. For too long, the individualist rhetoric of “self-care” has crowded out our sense of working collectively for shared goals. We need comrades.

3. Ableism has been used for generations to degrade, oppress, control and disappear disabled and non-disabled people alike. Ableism Enables All Forms of Inequity and Hampers All Liberation Efforts.

4. As we do our best to support each other through the urgencies of life, what happens when we make space for harvest? Here are three learnings that emerged during a season of rest and reflection.

5. For years, “losing weight” has been the number one New Years resolution, driven by 60 billion dollar body shame industrial complex. But the “Obesity Crisis” Is a Fatphobic Myth.

SOLIDARITY

Solidarity is a recognition of our mutual responsibility.  It’s not so much a concept as it is a practice. We know solidarity by how we feel. Solidarity is how we cross borders we have not crossed before, how we understand struggles that have not been our own, how we meet people we haven’t met. The word has its roots in the latin word “solidum” which means equally responsible for a debt. Solidarity is not just feel-good ally-ship. It’s mutuality that is rooted in our commitment to give something up for the sake of the whole, for the good of the collective. Unlike individualism which pits us against each other, solidarity understands that we are all needed in the struggle towards liberation and wellbeing; that what is possible can only be revealed in mutual relationship. (excerpt from AMERICAN DETOX: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal).

Each week we’ll provide a call to solidarity and collective action. This week we’re lifting up community safety trainings. Because we know that the safest communities don’t have the most cops, they have the most resources. Check out Vision Change Win to learn the basics of de-escalation from a community safety perspective.

PRACTICING HARVEST

Working with the seasons is one way we can recalibrate away from the manufactured hustle of capitalism and towards our true nature. To practice harvest is to make space for connecting in relationship, resourcing ourselves and one another and gathering wisdom and learnings that can prepare us for what is next. This piece by the Resonance Network beautifully articulated what’s possible when we slow down, listen and integrate.

PS: Check out this upcoming RESTIVAL, a free festival of rest and rejuvenation from the comfort of your home. Featuring 30+ people sharing practices that support your commitment to rest and joy. Join the Restival January 21st - 22nd.

THINGS WE ❤️

This is where we will share who we’re learning from, what we’re reading, watching and listening to, events we are excited about and uplift the words and wisdom of those who are leading the way. This week we’re celebrating the book birth of Are We Free Yet: A Black Queer Guide to Divorcing America by Tina Strawn. This book is an intimate invitation to examine our relationship with liberation and oppression and is available NOW wherever books are sold.

Art by @TinaStrawn

WE-NESS

Beloved community is both our destination and our way forward. Ten Thousand Beloved Communities is a 160 page full-color graphic novel and guide that makes the lineage and practice of Beloved Community irresistible and accessible. The book is for anyone who cares deeply about their community and wants to deepen relationships to the people and places they live. Whether you are a parent who wants to “build a village” for their children and others you know, a community gardener who wants to connect people through land and food, a city council member who wants to lead through relationships, an artist creating community through culture, or movement organizer who wants to do their work in a way that is connected to a long vision, this book is for you. It is unique in the way it explores Beloved Community through a lens of indigeneity and our unshakable belonging to each other. Reserve your copy! Shout out to our friends at Movement Strategy for this amazing movement gift and resource!

By Kristen Lynn Zimmerman and the Beloved Communities Network

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