Grief, Joy and Action.

An organizer's roadmap to finding solutions in this next season

You know the person that is always saying, “It will be ok,” even when things don’t feel like they will be? That’s me. I’m probably not your first call when you just want to be angry, but I am the one you call when you want to come up with a plan to move through the anger into action. 

My response in many situations both personal and professional is: “We’ll figure it out.”

My upbringing, my ancestors and my career as an organizer have shaped the belief that as long as we work together as a community to solve the hard problems before us, we will figure it out. This belief system generally helps me as an Executive Director, because most of the time we do find a way forward. BUT, 2024 was a different kind of year.

This last year was tough for us as an organization. We had many beautiful moments: we celebrated at our 5 year anniversary party in December with Southside neighbors, we’ve engaged more people in our work, supported youth in creating incredible art in public parks, planted and harvested herbs and vegetables, and advocated for development that does not displace us. We’ve formed a design team focused on creating a space for healing justice work. And revamped our new leadership academy. All worthy of celebration and gratitude!

But there were also some really hard moments in 2024. We have been fighting to bring our vision for the South Richmond Center for Rest & Healing to fruition with a physical space, and have lost some battles along the way. There have been several places where we believed people would put the value of the community over their own profit and egos and we were wrong. We have seen institutions that are supposed to stand for community good, instead ignore the deep needs of the community. It has caused an incredible amount of grief for us. We have not given up, and we’re still in the trenches. But as leader, I can’t quite see the strategy to win yet.

Nationally, there was so much incredibly divisive talk on the political stage last year. And violent acts, in our schools, on our streets, in our homes, and across the world, that reflect a deeply unwell society.

The constant barrage of news coming at me on a daily basis also makes it hard to not worry about the future. For example, I am a proud adoptive mom of a beautiful, smart, strong boy who has a disability. Recently, national lawmakers have floated plans to cut benefits that my son needs in the form of Medicaid for a disability that he was born with, and this brings me a rage and anguish that I cannot fully articulate here. How is it that our elected leaders do not understand the basic tenants that most of us were taught as children? Love your neighbor as yourself and we should treat others how we want to be treated. 

At VACV we take quarterly rest breaks, where we fully shut down as an organization to give rest to our team and allow healing rejuvenation for us all as well as the larger community that we serve. During our Winter break, I typically take time to regroup and reflect on the last year as well as make plans for the new year both personally and professionally. It’s often a healing time for me. However, 2024 into 2025 was different, over our 3 week break I kept trying to map out strategies in my head for the path forward, but I kept getting lost. At times I could see a pixelated picture of the other side of this darkness, but it was still too blurry for me to make out. I struggled to see through the darkness to the light, like I usually can. 

I tried to find inspiration, a silver lining, a bright side. I even flirted with despair these last few weeks, I’ve been tempted to give into jaded hopelessness.

Many people do, deciding that the fight is too hard, stepping back from the community and putting their heads in the sand. Choosing to retract instead of lean in out of fear or uncertainty. And to keep it 100, I’ve wanted that a little too. Wouldn’t that be a sweet uncomplicated life to live? 

However, in my search for the silver lining and relief from this, let’s be honest, torment, I realized that what I had forgotten was to give GRIEF time.

If you are like me, you are asking ok, how much time do I grieve and how do I grieve? I can’t offer answers to those questions, because I am still in the grief stage. I cannot tell you how much time you will need in grief because it is different for all of us, as any of us who have lost a loved one can tell you. However, remember that grieving gives us time to listen to ourselves, to tap back into our humanity, to connect our bodies and minds when society tells us that we have to put our grief aside and just jump into action because it’s the only way to fight. I also know that grief is an uncomfortable stage and as a culture we often put our comfort as our highest priority so we push away the things that don’t bring us comfort. While that might have its place in some scenarios, I think we often lose the transformational insight and strategy that can be gained when we allow ourselves to sit in our grief and connect with our bodies for a little bit longer than we typically want to so we can find our way forward into JOY and ACTION.

An ancient text says, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” There is often a clarity that we get with grief that helps us pave our way to joy. But grief is a part of the process, it is a part of what we need to find our path to joy. Because joy in the midst of hard things is not something that just happens, it is a choice. It is also an imperative step on the road toward action and change.  What we miss in skipping over joy is the sustainability that JOY offers on the journey. 

When I was a young organizer I was trained to ask people the question, “What makes you angry when you look around at the community problems that you see?” I was trained to believe (and still believe) that uncovering what people are angry about helps them engage with their values, confront their world views and gets them to a place where they are ready to take action to bring about the change they want to see. I still agree that anger is a gift, like a fever in our bodies suggests a virus or an infection, anger is a symptom of underlying problems. But if we jump from anger to action, we miss a step, and an opportunity for a different response.

While I am feeling anger about these reckless conversations about gutting Medicaid and I am deeply grieved that the people who have been elected would disregard my beautiful baby boy and so many other children and families for their own political and financial profit… To have real longevity in the fight, I have to find joy on the journey. If I just jumped to action in this story, I would be acting out of anger and frustration, hot anger often gets us to sloppy solutions that lack imagination. In organizing, we use the term “Cold Anger” which refers to the strategic path that we take to get to sustainable community solutions. So instead of responding to the reality of this moment and how it will affect my family with anger and grief, I take a beat to let those beautiful emotions wash over me, and change me so I can find joy, imagination and the strategy needed to achieve actionable community rooted solutions.

I have found joy in connections with my family and friends, watching my beautiful boy really enjoy the Christmas season for the first time and learning all the Christmas songs. Frank Sinatara’s “Jingle Bells” and Mariah Carey’s “Oh Santa” are his current favorites! I have also found joy in planning my spring garden and thinking about all the new things I want to try this year like planting loofah gourds so I can grow my own sponges and planting out way more potatoes this year after having my first successful harvest of them last year! I have also long found joy in the community around me that I am in the trenches with doing the hard work. Thank you for doing the long, often thankless work of justice.

The GRIEF and anger fuel us, the JOY sustains us as we move into ACTION, finding transformational solutions to the problems we see before us. If we cannot engage in the healing relief that laughter brings then our bodies will hold onto the negative knots that tie our minds and bodies to unimaginative outcomes that keep us bound. 

Action in this moment will require radical imagination, it will require us to craft new tools to protect ourselves and our communities on this battlefield, we need to prepare for this fight differently than we have in the past. Before reflexively jumping to action, ask yourself, have we given ourselves time to grieve this problem? Have we set up spaces for our communities to grieve it? Have we found joy on the journey, what have we learned from the joy that will sustain us as we move down this hard road? Finally, where has our radical imagination taken us, what world do we want to live in and how can our actionable solutions push us closer to that world?

Truth be told, I wish this revelation had come to me earlier in my career, I wish I had seen this path sooner, it would have saved me some burnout and pain. But as we approach this next season, I encourage those of us on the front lines of these difficult battles ahead and those who support the work to build in time for grief and joy in your planning before you jump into action. 

I am deeply grateful for thoughtful partners who remind me that I am not alone as we forge the road ahead and are standing firm to fortify our work and collectively learn and move on this journey with care. I find comfort in the fact that the wisdom of those that have come before us is at our disposal as we navigate this next season and we can couple that knowledge with our current resources to develop radically imaginative solutions to the myriad of challenges ahead of us.