burnt the f*&%$ out
i am writing from the stone house, on a retreat called soul sanctuary. it’s for activists and organizers who are burnt out. it was started like 15 years ago and got its own land in the last few years. it’s quiet here. there are 70 acres. i can wander and do what i want. we are to be silent at least until noon, but you can be silent longer if you want to. there are badges so people know whether or not they can talk to you. our facilitator is an alternative medicine practitioner that does core synchronization and is kind and open-hearted and we can talk to her about whatever it is that we’re feeling. the whole idea of the retreat is that liberation work in this broken-ass world of ours can really take a toll on us, spiritually, and that for us to be able to heal the world we need to be able to be whole into ourselves. so they offer these free retreats, and it is perfect. i have a room alone. i can be as alone as i want and need. i can go down and see people. there is food. i have a chore. there are chickens. there is meditation time.
also, i am sick. i went away to the national havurah committee’s summer institute last week, which gave my burnt-out body enough time away to get sick (remember college? remember getting sick during spring break? exactly). so i showed up here on day 3 of evil cold and am now on day 4, the hacking shit up day. this is what burnout looks like. your body slowly rebells against you – this is the 3rd or 4th time this year i’ve had this same cold. you stop being able to logically process information. my head is hazy even on the best days right now. i have a hard time distinguishing important tasks from less-important tasks. there is a very serious divide between what i am doing with my days and what i want to be doing with my days. and even on my best days at work, i wish to be *anywhere* else.
my job is, largely, a dream job. what trans person doesn’t want a job where they get to work within their own community? but the reality is, it’s a really hard job. there are not a lot of resources. a lot of the resources do exist are leadership-building and organizing resources, not direct services. so you can join movement-building teams to respond to transphobia at HRA, but it’s still monumentally difficult to get anything from HRA. people need housing, food, jobs, health care that covers their actual medical needs. i can give them listening, talk them through strategies for dealing with the bullshit, a sounding board, a buffer. it’s not enough, and i’m left dealing with the psychic fallout from failing to bridge the chasm between what is needed and what i can offer.
this is exactly what burnout camp is for: to give us a space to deal with all the energy we take in while we’re doing work transformative work. because really, i have to go back to my job on monday. and the monday after that, and the monday after that. how do we keep on keeping on when this world is not set up to support us in it? how do we keep our visions for justice and liberation when our hearts are so broken by the struggle itself? i don’t know. but hopefully the space of this weekend away will give a little more mending, and a little more breathing space, and a few more ideas about how to do my work without tearing my heart wide open.
