WELCOME!
I’m a big fan of metaphor, so why not talk about planting seeds of light with a sparkler?
I’ll tell you what: you plant those sparkler sparks in the right environment and you get one heck of a wildfire.
All the light we spread doesn’t have to burn things up, but it can absolutely spread. All over the place.
We’re going to need to light up the chaos up in this new era here in the United States. We’ve got a mess. I wrote up a whole “About” post here so I won’t repeat all of that, but I will say again that we have huge potential.
Light spreads. Every damn one of us can bring it.
THE PLAN HERE
This Substack “Light Up The Chaos” is going to be a little bit personal and a little bit professional.
We’ve already got a publication and website for our fierce community nonprofit work over at Shift the Country. This spot here will be a split off of that where I do more personal stuff, insights, reflections, sharing, quirky whatnots, and possibly also super intense things about this era we’re in right now that people may or may not want to think about.
But hey — we bring light to the things.
And that’s the deal. We have absolutely got to bring light to all this chaos that’s going on up in this country.
We can. We have the capacity.
This work here is part of how I’m doing that — lighting up the chaos.
Any one of us can find creative ways to do it. Find you a light, and find you some chaos to shine that light on. There’s plenty around. It might just be in tough conversations with people who aren’t aware of something that’s happening. It might be something huge and dramatic. Whatever it is, we need it all as we’ve got the capacity to bring it. And it’s catchy. The more we do the more we’ll see.
MORE TO COME
This is a beginning. It’s planting sparks.
In the next few days, I am setting up this site and updating the
site, to include domain re-routes and other not-yet-anounced changes.It’s going to be a bit crazy messy for a few days but hey — we do chaos here. That’s kind of the thing.
So I’m going to stop trying to pretend like it’s not messy trying to set up writing and to grow a nonprofit out of thin air in a fast-changing world where various societal and governmental structures are getting dissolved and deleted every day.
Part of lighting up the chaos is seeing the uncomfortable and the awkward.
So hey! Welcome to this page’s startup throes! Soon we’ll get into a nice non-routine of talking about chaos whenever we can get to it in nonstandard, unpredictable ways that work in the moment. We get through chaos better together with agility and flexibility. Semper Gumby.
GOOD IN A CRISIS
I will add this one thing today. I’m good in a crisis, and we’re in crisis. It will last for a long time. You, too, can become good in a crisis. We can figure this out together.
I’m here to help. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, exactly, yet, but I’m creating space for that here. We’ve already been at it over at
but that work is evolving and changing, too, to fit the times. We’ll make an announcement shortly with more evolving over there.I’m also here to say that we can get through.
Humans will get through. The US as a country might just get through. Democracy might well get through.
We have to make those things happen.
We are here in a historical moment. We can help each other get through this. We can also help make it better for those who come after us.
Huge change comes in the midst of chaos. Are we going to drive it? Can we?
YES. ABSOLUTELY.
Also, it’s survivable. No, it won’t be for everyone. One thing is certain and that’s that at least some tragedy is coming. Maybe a lot.
But what are we going to do in the midst of that? In the face of that?
We can light up the chaos. We can bring light to show what’s happening. We can bring the light of love and humanity and grief and pain and loss and joy. We can bring the light of justice and accountability. We can bring the light of courage and bravery. We can bring the light of information sharing and awareness, for better decisions by many.
There are so many things we can do.
So. I’m starting here. I’m planting sparks. And let me tell you something as a former wildland firefighter: firefighters know how to grow little tiny sparks into great big conflagrations.
We can do that together when we light up the chaos. We will do absolutely amazing things.
Be safe and be well.
- Vanessa
