I took a single undergrad class on the social impact of epidemics and I feel like that has informed a lot of how I’ve interacted w/ people about Covid. Understanding how people make decisions has been an important aspect of mitigating my own rage about how this is being handled.

It has helped me keep the focus of my anger on people in leadership and keep my interactions with people I care about informational and mostly warm, and I try try to keep it light with people I don’t know well while maintaining my personal strict boundaries

If someone perceives the fact that I am being really strict with my boundaries as a form of shaming, I can’t make that my problem. Some people perceive it as aggressive but I’m taking care of myself since there is no overall mechanism for collective care in this scenario.

An important thing that has become clear 2me is that just because someone experiences shame does not mean you are shaming them. They might be hurt that you won’t take your mask off but if they are triggered but that I can’t take responsibility for that. That’s not accountability.

I think sometimes when we feel attacked we feel like we have to rationalize our boundaries and the care taking measures we are taking for ourselves and we do that by diminishing another person. So I’m practicing just stating my boundaries without rationalizing them.

People do have the right to assess risk differently than me. If I have influence over other people’s decisions in my life, I would of course like to influence them to stay safe in the ways they can, but I want to do that in harm reduction way

and trust me I have been infuriated with people in my life for putting other people in my life in danger by not taking the pandemic seriously. Im trying to let that rage light a fire under my butt to really get into my disaster resilience classes in grad school.

This sucks and I hate it but I’m learning a lot about how to let go of people pleasing and how to communicate community care

& I think these lessons will benefit me as I learn how to help communities become resilient to the pandemics storms fires and other compounding impacts of climate change that are coming our way

When I start to feel confused, agitated or angry about the mixed messages, the needless death, the carelessness, the hygiene theater, the cruelty— I have been trying to pause and orient around: what do I care about here? What relationships do I want to preserve/strengthen?

& so much solidarity and strength and love to you who are trying to manage this as best you can. This is so so so hard in so many ways.

I would even say it’s beyond hard- it’s often impossible to tease out the double binds we have been put in by leadership (eat in restaurants or YOU are responsible for your favorite places closing)

it’s an impossible situation and we’re in it, trying to assess risk and survive in an individualistic culture when we evolved to address threats collectively.