Written by Ruth Raffle.
The grief of the moment is telling me to rot. To lay my body on the earth and allow
the leaves to fall until my fingertips are no longer mine and my heart has grown cold
and damp. This is the power of grief. It pushes us into the earth and tries to break us
down, to envelop us in darkness.
But this is also where we must not allow them to win. We must wake ourselves up
from the ground after our rest, we must bring sensation back into our fingers and
toes and we must warm our hearts over firelight. We will wake up our siblings from
their slumbers and we will entwine ourselves in embraces, leaning on each other for
our survival. And when we are ready, and the cold is only a whisper in our bones, we
will begin again. The soil will remain beneath our fingertips, and we will see it often.
But we will hope. We will believe. That this is not the end. It is not yet time to rot. It is
time to come together; to act. To be in community and fight for the world we know is
possible.
I began to write this on the 6th of November 2024. I'm sure you all remember what
you did that day. How you felt. I recall an all-consuming feeling of hopelessness. Of
loss. Of grief. And that is from the safety of my flat, across an ocean, many miles
away. The futures of millions of people are laced with uncertainty and fear. Autonomy
and basic rights are in question, from reproductive healthcare to immigration. And
the world feels so filled with hate. But we must not allow this to lead us to rot. It is
vital that in these moments we remember the power that comes from community.
From people coming together and believing that another world is possible.
It is here that I encourage you to act. That action will look different for everyone. For
some, to act is to be disruptive, direct. It is to make people listen, to shout a
message from the rooftop. Behind these people are those who ensure everyone is
safe, who use their knowledge to care for others. There are the people who ensure
everyone is sustained and nourished, cooking in community. Others are teachers,
passing their wisdom to new generations to encourage ripples of transformation.
There are writers, and artists, and photographers to capture the moment. And for
some, it is simply getting out of bed to exist in the world that is the radical act. We must find resistance, there is no longer an option to be complacent.
We must not stop living. We must not stop fighting. We must keep hoping. It is only through standing together in ferocious solidarity that we can create a better world for
everyone. Let us fight back. For,
It is not yet time to rot.
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