Taking stock

Hi, friends—I have to be honest with you, it’s been a hard week.

I know we don’t all live in the same country, and we don’t all vote the same, but if you are a person in the world with a heart and are following reliable news right now, it’s hard not to be impacted by the harm—and potential harm—that is being meted out right now.

And I’ve been feeling like, well, is fun really worth it? Is it even fair? Shouldn’t we all be doing more important things right now? My local food bank doesn’t have baby formula anymore—because the federal grant that paid for it has been frozen by the current presidential administration.

With the painful reality of that, am I really going to talk to you about hula hooping?

But then two things happened.

The first thing is that I realized one of the reasons I have been struggling this week is that I stopped doing my daily fun challenge. Oh, sure—I intended to keep it up. I have some fun things I haven’t gotten to yet and I will. But once February was over, the commitment/pressure to do it daily was off and I faltered a bit. This week made me realize I shouldn’t.

I don’t know if you need to weave delight into your life right now, but I sure do. It won’t change the facts of these times, it won’t take away the struggle, but it will help me navigate through it a little better. As Sarah Von Bargen said when I interviewed her last month, “It refills my cup…it gives me bandwidth to call my representatives…It hugely impacts my life.”

The other thing is that I went back and re-listened to an interview with Heather Cox Richardson, the historian who writes Letters from an American—a near daily synopsis of the news with an historical lens. She’s been chronicling the politics of the country since 2019, when Trump was first being impeached. If anyone understands the weight of these times, it’s Heather.

I had listened to this interview just before the inauguration, a month ago—and I had scribbled some notes about it on the back of a scrap of paper. It was this scrap of paper that lead me back to the interview and to this important section. It was exactly the perspective I needed.

Here is Heather, talking to Katie Paris, founder of Red, Wine, and Blue:

“One of the really important things to remember going forward—as we fear the rise of authoritarianism in the United States—is that authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities and people are acting with joy. You need despair and anger for an authoritarian to rise. Think of the language we hear from MAGA Republicans and how angry they are all the time.

In terms of burnout, it’s okay to say ‘I’m not going to pay attention to politics for a little while.’ But it’s not okay to stop bringing your best to the world. Whether that is gardening, or your job, or caring for your parents—whatever those things are that you bring to the community—do them and do them with joy.

And don’t stop doing the thing you love because you are scared—because that is actually a form of resistance. Showing up and doing the things you love with joy says to an authoritarian ‘You have no place to root here.’ And that is going to be really important going forward.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

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So I am going to keep showing up and doing the things I love with joy—and I hope you are too.

Because, among so many other reasons, we need to not give up.
We need to fill our cups and foster joy.
We need to make sure that authoritarianism has no place to root here.
As Katie Paris says in the interview, “Joy is why we fight—so everyone can have access to joy.”

So, I’ll be back Monday with more—fun, joy, stories, inspiration.
We can do this together.

I hope you have the very best weekend you can.

—Tara

Heather Cox Richardson on Red, Wine, and Blue

Something else to enjoy: my books