Rain Perry

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

First of all, what a great week for rallies in my neck of the woods! On Wednesday, hundreds of us gathered at the Channel Islands National Park Headquarters in Ventura to support and defend our beloved offshore Park and its employees.

The day before, on Tuesday, there were two! Lunchtime at the Government Center, which was a general protest against the policies of this administration:

And an evening rally in front of City Hall in support of Ukraine:

A Habit of Hope

I’ve been publishing this weekly missive for 14 weeks now. What a 14 weeks it’s been.

What I’m seeing in myself, and in many around me, is that the constant barrage is taking a toll. After one of the rallies this week, a good friend fearfully asked me, “what are we going to do?” Even writers I regularly turn to for wisdom and guidance are starting to sound more distressed. And social media are overflowing with demands that somebody “do something!”

And why wouldn’t we be feeling that way? We are the targets of a shock and awe campaign, designed to destabilize us and render us hopeless.

We gotta find a way to reset.

I read an amazing piece this week called Soft Rebellion, written by an “Animist | Ritualist | Oracular Medium” named Shannon Willis. It was going around on Facebook and I found the full text posted by a therapist whose name I can’t find on his blog! Very mysterious, and if you know me, you know that I am pretty commitedly non-hooky spooky, so “Animist | Ritualist | Oracular Medium” is not my usual wheelhouse. But I urge you to read the piece anyway, because it has a lot of wisdom for this moment. It’s really another way of saying what John Lewis told us in the first essay I posted, which featured the late Senator as our first Person of the Week. (I hereby make him our Person of This Week, as well.)

We’re in this for the long haul. We have to be serious about shoring ourselves up, digging deep, and digging in, so we can prevail.

It’s one thing to quote John Lewis when you’re honoring him for his history of work on behalf of civil rights. It’s another to internalize his lessons for the battle in which you’re personally engaged right now.

So let’s take a fresh look at his famous quote:

I can think of three things that can help us be more like John Lewis right now:

• Regulate our nervous systems — through exercise or mediation or art or prayer…whatever works for you. I’m as guilty of 6:00 am doomscrolling as anyone but when I do manage to start the day with a hike or with meditation it truly does help me cope better. At the bottom of this essay I have a journal you can use for this purpose if you like.

• Settle in for the long haul however you need to. Here’s one thing that’s working for me: have you watched the Big Bear Eagle Cam? OMG, I’m obsessed with Eagle parents Jackie and Shadow and their chicks (two hatched, one almost hatched!). Seeing those majestic birds work together to keep their babies warm and fed in the wind and snow is incredible. They hunker down and do what needs to be done (while looking badass doing it). I’m finding it very inspiring.

• Strategic action — vow not to waste another minute waiting for someone else to “do something.” You do something. Pick an area that you care about and get engaged right now. If you’re intimidated, message me. I have tons of ideas. As I see it, our immediate strategies should be:

  • Preparing for the midterms by supporting candidates, protecting elections, registering voters, etc. We absolutely have to retake the House while we still have our election systems patched together with string and glue. The coming economic chaos will likely assist with getting voters engaged. We must put everything we can into it.

  • We’ve been making tons of phone calls and doing rallies, which is great. Now it’s time to level up our opposition. Here is a list of a whole bunch of vivid creative ideas for taking action.

  • Building community. Block parties, knitting salons, beach cleanups, meals on wheels — anything and everything that strengthens our connections with each other. Extra points for reaching out across philosophical lines, if you’re feeling up for that.

And one last thing: don’t forget to grieve. This whole situation is very painful. It hit me today how sad I am, and for the first time since November, I really cried. Felt good to fall into that emotion instead of holding it at bay.

Music

And sometimes, as Mavis tells us, there’s no time for crying because we’ve got work to do.

A Habit of Hope

Here’s a Habit of Hope Journal. Feel free to download it for your own use in a practice of optimism and joy. And feel free to comment in the chat about how it’s going!

Thank you, so much, for subscribing, and please feel free to pass this on. And if you’re interested in my work as a performer and songwriter, come visit my website!

xo Rain