Start Learning I’ve been intrigued with what I see at NewStories for some time now. I told them I would also like to see more practical suggestions

For eight years I had been practicing exercises to calm my anxious body. As a result, I have metabolized stuck energy from personal trauma and protective patterns from childhood that no longer serve me, opening up space inside for the healing and growth of my nervous system.

Then I heard Resmaa Menakem (author of My Grandmother’s Hands) on a podcast describing the work I’d been doing on a personal level but through the lens of race. … After listening to the podcast, I knew deep down in my bones that for true racial healing to begin, we must heal our nervous systems and our reptilian brains that react to keep us and our loved ones safe in a society in which bodies of different colors distrust and fear one another.

We are rapidly becoming aware that none of us are going to be left out of the collapse of multiple systems in which we live. Wars may be happening elsewhere, but fires, floods, hurricanes, bomb cyclones, tsunamis, crop failures, earthquakes and now pandemics are all around us. There is no way out of the experience of the collapse. We are already in it. No matter what your privilege, we are still all interconnected and when the food supply runs out, the grid goes down, communications stop, water runs out, and millions have a virus, we will all feel it. It’s essential that we learn how to hospice the passing of the old so it spews as little destruction and death as possible while we also midwife newly emerging patterns of compassionate caring and interconnectedness.

The first thing to overcome with the coronavirus is fear. The virus is certainly dangerous. The likelihood is we will need to learn to live with it. A “new normal” will emerge with its own protocols for traveling, meeting, caring for each other, grieving those we lose, and living our lives. Perhaps there will be a vaccine. Certainly we should do everything we can to protect ourselves. But that is different from living in fear. Hafiz said it well:

Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I’d like to see you in better living conditions.

It has been observed that next to a banjo, the most potent instrument for social transformation is a story—and that the future will belong to those who can tell the best story of the 21st century. Beginning in childhood, stories are how we make meaning of our lives. Stories also shape communities, institutions, and societies. Stories form the heart of a culture