Humans Will Survive (A Reminder)

A stem of fuchsia-colored bleeding heart flowers with a blurred green foliage background. Image by Tania Max from Pixabay.

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This post has now been quoted in full on an Iowa Faith & Climate Network post.

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🌎 Here's a quick note just as a reminder that humans will survive through this. Overall. That doesn't mean it's going to go well for all of us. Yet at least some of us will get through.

So what are we going to do to help the most of us get through who can? What are we going to do to help each other, as everything unfolds?

I don't know the answer to that for you anymore than anyone else does.

We all have to figure this out ourselves. Sometimes we're going to have to figure it out in the moment. ⌛

That's going to work really well sometimes, and it's going to fail big-time sometimes. We're going to get a mix.

There's going to be tragedy and trauma. That's how this stuff goes.

But there's also going to be big heart stuff and deep humanity stuff. And both heartwarming and heart-wrenching things. And big courage. And deep fear. And deep connection. And big sacrifice. And deep loss. Huge joy. Big love. Hard sadness.

And a feeling of incapacity to be able to do more things in the midst of so much traumatic stuff happening.

Yet we will be able to do at least some things.

We have to manage our own capacity and resilience as we go forward. This is going to be long.

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📌 I also offer this...

More of society is still functioning than not. 🔌🛒🚂🏫

There are a lot of people saying everything is falling apart... and yeah lots of things are getting deliberately taken apart and some things are falling apart.

But a whole heck of a lot of our society is still quite functional.

We need to pay better attention to what's working and what's not.

🧩 We need to do more to hold together the pieces we want to hold together.

^^ That's going to become more and more important as this unfolds.

Effects are starting to become more obvious to the general population, but it's still going to take a lot of time for more of the damage to really show up. That's a fact.

Yet we know for certain big disruption is coming. You cannot change so many aspects of government and society and expect that it won't.

For those people paying attention to all of this now, you can be more ready.

You can be more ready to help yourself and to help other people as things intensify.

⭐ You can. ⭐

We all have more strength and abilities than we think.

We're going to learn a heck of a lot more about those as we go.

Get creative. Have tough talks. Let stuff go from The Before Times. Grieve. Process. Be angry.

But also do some things to get more resilient and get more ready.

Big change is here.

Now the question is... what are we going to do with all of this as we go through?

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Fierce Community will be announcing Zooms starting July 28 to help talk through some of this and make actual plans. Those Zooms will be scheduled out through the rest of summer. They’ll be announced both here and on the Fierce Community page by July 22.

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Vanessa Burnett is the director at Fierce Community. This nonprofit work promotes civic engagement through connection, community, creativity, empowerment, alliances, leadership, and resilience in an era of rising instability and societal disruption. Email fiercecommunityteam@gmail.com to set up a conversation.

Vanessa is a social entrepreneur, advisor, and empower-er for doing fierce community in a time of disruption and disaster. Ms. Burnett has a rare systems-level understanding of the pieces and parts that modern society needs in order to survive that can help people and groups navigate this era of fast change and unprecedented challenges. She has over 25 years experience in resilience-building, civic engagement, coalition-building, critical infrastructure, systems thinking, big disasters, catastrophes, wildland fire, emergency management, incident management, land management, park rangering, homeland security, continuity of operations (COOP), continuity of government (COG), technology innovation, public communication, and disaster information sharing.