I read the news, then I cooked dinner

I’ve been thinking a lot about collapse again.

Not in the abstract way I once did, when collapse was an idea I could research, name, or argue about. But in the way it lives in the body. In the way it shows up while packing my daughter’s lunch, or dutifully hanging dry the house woolens, or trying to decide what actually matters before another day slips by.

I’m pregnant. I’m raising a young child. I run a farm. I live in a country whose political climate feels increasingly hostile to care, tenderness, and truth. I read the news and feel my chest tighten. I scroll and feel myself go numb. And then all of a sudden it’s time for pickup, or to prepare dinner, or another conversation about the coming week and who does what.

Italian Mother, 1923 by Robert Austin

There is a particular kind of dissonance that comes with living through massive cultural unraveling while your life remains stubbornly domestic. The world feels like it’s coming apart, and still, there are snacks to prepare. Still, there are animals that need tending. Still, there is a body growing another body, asking for steadiness, nourishment, continuity.

I understand the temptation to escape. I don’t judge it. I take refuge where I can in books, imagined worlds, stories where things resolve neatly and love wins in the end. During sickness and exhaustion, those escapes have kept me afloat (I’m looking at you Heated Rivalry 😘). I don’t believe rest or fantasy is the problem.

But I do feel the difference between rest and leaving.

Between taking refuge and checking out.
Between recovery and withdrawing completely.

And I know, in my bones, that my time is not meant for disappearing. Not now - not when my life is so insistently rooted here.

Collapse, when we live inside it, has a way of overwhelming the nervous system. Everything feels too big. Too broken. Too far gone. Responsibility becomes abstract and infinite, which makes it impossible to hold. So we freeze. Or scroll. Or numb. Or tell ourselves that someone else (someone braver, louder, less tired) will figure it out.

What I’ve been practicing instead is something quieter. Smaller. More human.

I’m not talking about productivity hacks or supplements that promise to conjure energy out of thin air. I’m not talking about optimization or heroic fantasies of saving anything.

I’m talking about activation—the kind that settles into the body and says, I am here. This is my life. This is what I can actually tend.

For me, that has meant shrinking the scale of responsibility until it becomes real again.

Not the whole world.
Not the entire future.
But this land.
These people.
This season of life.

Collapse thinking pulls us into abstraction. Activation brings us back to relationship.

Who are my people?
What place am I accountable to?
What is close enough to actually love?

Pregnancy has made these questions unavoidable. My body is not speculating about the future - it is actively building it. That changes how theoretical everything becomes. I cannot fantasize my way out of this moment. I have to stay. I have to choose what I am willing to be responsible for, and what I am not.

I’ve also noticed how much energy gets spent on information without initiation. We know so much (too much, maybe, for our mammalian brains to handle). And so many of us feel stuck, isolated, or unsure how to translate care into action without burning ourselves out or replicating the very systems we’re trying to resist.

The next world will not be built by awareness alone.

It will be built by people who know how to stay present in discomfort. By people who can gather others without collapsing under the weight of it. By people who can hold small rooms, tend conflict, feed bodies, mark transitions, and keep showing up when it stops being novel or inspiring.

These are not glamorous skills. I’ve noticed they don’t trend well online. They are learned slowly, through practice, through failure, through relationship, through being changed by responsibility rather than avoiding it.

Motherhood has clarified this for me in ways I didn’t expect. Not the romantic version, but the real one - the endurance, the boundaries, the long view, the refusal to abandon what is vulnerable simply because it is inconvenient or exhausting. There is something profoundly civic about that kind of care. Something deeply political, even, in choosing continuity in a culture that rewards disposability.

I don’t know exactly what the world is becoming, but I am certain it will require people who are willing to be formed by this moment rather than anesthetized by it.

People who don’t just see what’s breaking, but who are practicing how to stay human while it does.

That is the work I’m orienting my life toward now. Slowly, imperfectly, with a growing belly, a messy house, a tired nervous system, and a steady sense that escape is no longer the answer (even when it’s tempting).

What comes next will be shaped by those who stay.

For those who feel ready for sustained practice rather than more information, I’ll be opening an apprenticeship later this summer focused on land-based, community-centered leadership. I’m gathering names quietly now, for people who want to learn alongside me over time. You can add yours here if it feels aligned.