The rage I carry threatens to eat me alive.

This March, I jumped into leading protests in response to the hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center’s leadership and quickly learned that I can’t give 25 hours of free labor weekly to organizing the dance community. On one hand, taking rage-fueled action invigorated me with purpose, clarity, and courage. On the other hand, I was working on the protests in the nooks and crannies of free time wedged between work commitments and parenting. My phone went off at all hours with text messages, emails, and phone calls from people wanting to ask questions, help, or complain. Participants had privacy and safety concerns; it was my responsibility to navigate their questions, permit our activities, and get answers. And, as we were performing a dance as protest, we held zoom info-sessions and rehearsals. By the end of the second one, which included national and international sister protests, I was fried. For me, rage plus exhaustion equals self-inflicted melancholy, detachment, and stasis. And, constantly fighting can be a distraction from building the future I envision–a future focused on cultivating joy. After taking a beat to reset, I’m focused on what I can do: I trained with 5051, FreeDC, and as a Safe Passage volunteer for my kids’ school. Becoming a volunteer in these networks allows access to their organizing tools and expertise while taking on less personal exposure and risk. With what I’ve learned from these organizations, I feel less burdened by responsibility and more free to engage with focus and sustainable energy. Stay tuned: we rise with the fall.

Attention is an invaluable resource for ourselves, our community, and our impact in the world. And, we give it away freely. When I was organizing protests, I gave limitless attention to the cause and the people involved. It wasn’t sustainable, but it was worth it. I can’t say the same for the time-suck of social media and the ceaseless cacophony of traumatic news stealing my time. There is a meaningful difference between creating and consuming content online, I am very aware that lately I consume far more than I create. I’m launching a book to the world that is a movement-based invitation to practice paying attention to where and how we spend our limited time and focus. Ironically, the publisher expects me to become a menace on social media focused on selling books. I want people to buy this book to have an exponential capacity for impact on the lives of those who use the material. Holding this contradiction, I will continue to engage online–with boundaries. I want women, including myself, to purposefully reclaim our attention as an act of defiance against the disinformation fed to us by the fascist dictatorship currently occupying the White House. We must refuse loudly (and quietly) to let our time and attention be stolen by this regime of billionaires. It’s going to take practice, commitment, and companions to reclaim my attention. Turning away from the digital landscape and toward my internal and external landscapes feels defiant. Defiant and healthy.

Questions abound: How do I spend my time? Am I taking actions online or in reality? Answering my own questions, this fall–in addition to protest organizing, amplifying, and attending–I am offering the book. It’s part research, memoir, and workbook. A quick start guide to practice. To begin again.

To begin again is grace in action. All of this tension and rage is a reminder and a calling to myself and the community. A calling to give ourselves grace, dust ourselves off, and get back to it. I can’t share my work if I’m not practicing what I preach. So, back to root practices I go. If I don’t write, dance, and meditate every day, in short order I am more anxious, stressed, and unfocused than I am when rooted by these daily practices. When I am over-extended and hyperfocused–like I was organizing the dance protests–I tend to drop my root practices in favor of the call to work. In the coming months, I must build my interior fortitude, resilience and reserves, skills, research, and collaborators so that together we can impact ourselves and our community; and, with great luck and timing, the world. Choosing where my attention goes is an initiation point: taking stock and noticing: How do I spend my time? Am I taking actions online or in reality? My root practices give me direct action to practice attention. I offer them to you: take five minutes to write, dance, or meditate. Take some notes about how you feel after. Do it again tomorrow

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