Notices by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ (bethsawin@spore.social)

I've been posting some about my November ankle fracture & the lessons that have come along with with it. (Here's a snapshot: no more cast & I can take the "boot" off when sitting down"🎉). It's interesting to me, how the lessons percolate into my awareness their own time.

One lesson I just wrote a little piece about for next week's "letter from the director" email, about how you can't rush the healing of a fracture, whether its your ankle or the division between society and nature or climate and health. Sign up 👇🏻 for that https://www.multisolving.org/#newsletter

Then this morning, stretching the injured joint gently, I had a surprise, a visceral flash of the moment of the break, something I somehow haven't *really* revisited. And I was struck with such grief it took me by surprise.

Not grief for myself or for this long recovery or for the things I haven't been able to do, but a more metaphorical grief (?)...

...or maybe grief for a bigger whole. "This is catastrophic collapse" said the voice in my head. This is what it *feels* when you push a system beyond its tolerance. When the foundations go out. I remembered the popping sound of the break.

Of being suddenly on the ground. Of the living structure that has held me up for more than five decades floppy at the end of my leg, unable to respond to the commands of my brain.

Ankles break, foundations of things have been going out underneath living beings on earth as long as there has been life. As my friend says, babies cry, people die. Species come to ends. Homes burn. But not at this rate, not at this pace, this pace which part of us knows is only getting started.

I wish I had some clear "and therefore" for you, some practical lesson for myself or for you, but I don't, for now. I just have this body sensation, a new knowing to my mostly healthy body. There are limits. Things collapse beyond them. The foundations can go out on a sunny day.

The snap happens in seconds. The recovery, if there is one to be had, takes much longer.

I don't have a practical step for you, but maybe I do have something. A wish or maybe it is a prayer:

May the breaks be survivable, may the lessons be headed, may we help each other through, and may we find the collective strength to stop the forces pushing us beyond, ever beyond, the safe limits, the livable tolerances. May we bolster the foundations.

I keep thinking about all the ways to be soft and tough at the same time. Water over rocks. Green rushes in the wind. Vines curling around obstacles and through cracks. Opening and softening to give life.

As so much that is centered gets fast, brash, and mean I wonder what plants, compost, water, and circles of mending are doing just beyond range of the spotlight.

Surely those are too tender to stand up to the onslaught, to hold together against the chaos, I hear you say, but haven't they, always, at least a little, at least enough to save enough that life is still here?

Democracy has been mismanaged putting all sorts of obstacles in the way of marginalized people (who also tend to be climate action supporters) exercising their civil rights.

Global climate diplomacy has been mismanaged, including by allowing massive power differentials between the countries bearing the costs and countries with historic responsibility.

Philanthropy has been mismanaged, favoring narrow technical solutions instead of going whole heartedly into challenging narratives and supporting the long-term work of coalition and power building that grapples with historic inequity.

The political process has been mismanaged, allowing fossil fuel company wealth and power to influence policy.

The economy has been mismanaged allowing a few to profit while the many bear the costs of the burning of fossil fuels.

The news media has been mismanaged, starved of resources and the power to counteract disinformation from vested interests, and too often treating a stable climate as something "scientists want" instead of something everyone needs.