#ordering abortion pills is fine but what if I'm overweight and abortion is still banned once they expire

[wrenseyeview]

I truly don't want to be a doomer. I don't want to be exhausted and full of impotent rage. And I think that state of mind is actually solvable, and in great part due to not having any control or options for action. So, why are so many of the calls to action still exhausting and upsetting?

Going down the line:

Vote! - did that

Volunteer for a political campaign! - did that

Email and call your elected officials! - did that

Donate to relevant groups/funds! - did that

Talk to your family to convince them! - did that, wish I didn't, never ends well

Get informed on the issue! - did that, maybe blissful ignorance would be less depressing? (/j... mostly)

Volunteer for local relevant groups! - pin in that for below

Go to protests! - second pin

Okay. So. Out of that list, I've done most of them and try to continue doing them when able, and this general tidal wave of shit still keeps coming. So how about the last two?

Volunteer has a few issues depending on location. Where I am, I'm an hour drive each way from the little LGBT+ center downtown, and it has kinda limited meetings or offerings. I still want to get involved, but it'll take some planning and a lot of effort to make anything regularly when I'm tired after work, and their events tend to be small group meetings to just chat. The nearest Planned Parenthood, also over an hour away, burned down, so.... the next nearest one is at least 3 hours away. Nearly every community impact type of group I've found through local news and bulletins have been through churches or Republican/conservative clubs. The exceptions are an animal shelter and maybe Habitat for Humanity, though I think that one's also managed by churches here. The most I can have a local impact is probably via the Friends of the Library donations or conservation groups for certain strips of woods. None of which help ensure I get to keep legal rights and access to healthcare.

Protest is... so. I just. Really don't understand how it's effective. There have been protests around here of various things, like a group of maybe 30 people stood in downtown in favor of Ukraine. Okay, I guess? What's our city council gonna do about that?? Do they even care about 30 people with some signs standing outside for a few hours? If it gets to summer 2020 levels maybe, though I actually don't know how much actual action resulted as compared to the harm endured by the protestors (not at all to disparage their efforts or their rage).

Ultimately the entire political landscape feels like job hunting. That complete drudge of putting out effort after effort with no indication of reaction or even receipt, just slowly hitting your head against a brick wall at a steady beat for months on end. It's the same feeling of exhaustion and is this even worth it and what if I just disappeared into the mountains and forsook human society and concepts like money or gender and... yeah, not a great thought cycle. With the extra added bonus of having mostly old white men continually spew diahrettic levels of smug hipocrisy while remaining unfortunately out of nut-kicking range. If he wants to legislate my uturus so badly, I should be allowed to kick Alito in the nuts at least once.

Anyway! Yeah, so it feels like the main issue of doomer-ism around all this comes down to lack of options, lack of control or impact. Which is naturally not helped by these measures being centered around taking away control and options. So what are more options besides those usual ones above that either aren't doing much, or at least not much in immediate view?

Well there's the individual self care kind of level, of doing something small and immediate where you can see the impact and feel those good brain chemicals of having influence on your life. This is the step of stop doomscrolling and go sew something, cook something, color, garden, put out bird seed, feel the results of your will in your hands. Be intimately aware that you are not a passive object in your life.

Okay, so now we're a little more present, a little less a disembodied cartoon cloud of rage and despair, we have hands again. Now we can look past individual present to individual future. What do you personally need to feel insulated at least a little from the danger and uncertainty carried on this tidal wave of shit?

Individually, I can:

Have the locations and approximate budget written down for driving to stay with a friend in a state that protects abortion

Research options and potentially order abortion pills now

Ask my doctor about options for a hysterectomy

Any or all of these may not actually be options, largely depending on cost. Hopefully there's actually more options I'm just not thinking of because that's a short list and there's a lot that's left outside of individual control, but at least having the information is a start. Make plans, know where the fire exits are. If we can establish some level of firmer foundation of individual safety, then we can free up some of that anxiety brain space to think more about community and society options.

So after figuring out my fire exits and a few more laps around the self-care track to maybe eventually get more energy for all this, what are some community-level actions besides that first list? What actions can insulate your community from harm imposed by larger society?

Okay. Let's see.

Keep some money set aside for requests for aid from your specific community (narrowed down to your pride center, religious group, dnd group, something small enough to know the people and feel like you are fostering a community that will also support you in turn, reciprocity rather than charity, and ideally in person)

Make a list of who in your small group can offer what kind of aid (who can drive places, who can babysit, who has medical knowledge, etc.)

Meet with the small group on a regular basis. Foster connections, bring food.

Trade favors, establish the gifting cycle among the group, so no one feels bad having to ask for help. Of course we can pool money to help get you a trip a couple states over, because you helped fix my fence because I watched your kids because you brought soup when I was sick because. Everyone should feel important and like they're not relying on charity if they need help.

So all these ideas come down to what ends up formally as mutual aid, but that often feels a little too expansive and hard to get into as a community rather than charity if you start at the "look up local mutual aid groups" level, hits the same problem as the top list in my experience at least. So this is more of a bottom-up approach of turn your friend group into an informal mutual aid network, aka make friends in real life. Which... is hard, it is, but it's gotta be worth the effort and is really the best starting point, and also good for you.

So after all that, it looks like my steps for getting out of the doom cycle are

Stop doomscrolling

Find my hands again by making stuff

Make some emergency plans to file away

Go find some more in person friends and bring food

As much as I am the kind of person that very happily will stay in my house alone for way longer than the average human being, it's fundamentally necessary to feel the support structure of "there are at least five people within a 30 minute drive of me that would not kill me for a corn chip, and in fact would provably prefer that I not be killed" when it feels like the entire rest of the "doing stuff" arm of society would happily kill you. You spitting at the government isn't going to have any impact you can see, but if you make your friend a scarf, he has a scarf now, and he might be the friend that keeps a stocked medicine cabinet.