Like a Fool

On Setting Out Like the Journey's Completely New

The Fool is a card of new beginnings, opportunity and potential…Even though you don’t know exactly where you are going, you are being called to commit yourself and follow your heart, no matter how crazy this leap of faith might seem to you. Now is a time when you need to trust where the Universe is taking you. - Biddy Tarot

Wow, y’all. It’s April already. I can feel the change in season today, at least partially because it marks the beginning of National Poetry Writing Month (#NaPoWriMo), which I’ve participated in for the last several years through collaborations with my friend, the poet Samantha Wallen. By this point, I have sense memory of early spring being coupled with poetry. But this year, I’m setting out on a different kind of journey.

When I launched the Election Year Support Group for white women that I’m leading throughout 2024, I knew that - as females, prone to society’s expectation that we endlessly care-take everyone around us -  it needed to be grounded in nourishing our own nervous systems and determining what is uniquely ours to do. I realized that that had to apply to me, too, of course. 

For a long time now my partner and I have dreamed of going to Europe together but the pandemic, the climate crisis, and other responsibilities have kept us from doing anything about it until now. Crazy as it may sound, we have decided to spend a year abroad, living and working remotely from Europe. Wild.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “How can this be? I thought Michelle was serious about preventing another Trump presidency?!” And, in fact, I am. My Election Year Support Group will continue. And I still plan to vote by mail, participate in phone banking, and donate money to the organizers working to get out the vote in the most contested races, just like I would’ve done from my home in California. I’m just going to be doing these things from a bit farther away. 

I feel clear that it’s simultaneously time for me to hunker down and organize my butt off to defeat rising fascism, and time to quit playing this rigged system’s games and instead begin living my life like the world we’ve long needed is already here. Working to be as powerful as I can be in the outcome of these elections insists that I not put off going for the life I want for myself.

The work I think we’re being called to do this year is bigger, wilder, more complex and alive than simply out-organizing our political opponents, though we’ve *also* got to do that. We’re being invited to let Spring’s energy be a regeneration of our very love of life, our wildest hopes, and yes, even our foolishly large visions for what’s possible. Tinkering around the edges won’t do. There’s a challenge, implicit in this year’s elections, to admit the ways we’ve become jaded in our thinking and to reclaim the beauty of our right to vote, and its radical promise. I already see people using the Democratic Primaries as a way to creatively push for a ceasefire. There are so many ways to act powerfully this year. What paths do you feel beckoning to you?

I’m inspired by the All By April movement which is bent on making sure the nonprofits that fight for us to have a functioning democracy receive the funding they need in time to do their work most effectively. One of them writes, “Many donors do not realize that supporting democracy in an election year requires donations by the spring, not the summer or fall.” So I will be making my election-related donations by the end of April, and I will be fundraising from others in my community, asking them to do it with me. 

There’s a particular kind of gold that resides at the intersection between our oppression as women, and our privilege as white people that I think we get to learn how to leverage this year. You could even call it “Fool’s Gold,” AKA Pyrite: a substance that is common, widely distributed, and useful for sparking fires. What if we white women really rose to the challenge this year and helped to start little fires of funding everywhere for the grassroots organizers who are ready to win governing power that can be responsive to our movement’s visions?

The Fool lifts his chin and gazes upward. Risking foolishness beneath a bright sun, with a lightness of step, he approaches a precipice he may just fall into. He is hopeful: more interested in potential than guarantees. With a white rose of innocence in his hand, and a small bag slung over his shoulder, he expresses a pared-down sense of enoughness, and a willingness to GO. A little white dog plays at his feet, up for the challenge, excited to accompany him, wherever they are headed, together. 

My partner and I are setting off for parts of our motherlands on April 30th. We’ll spend a large portion of the first half in the UK where most of my ancestors come from, and then much of the second half in Italy where half of his ancestry hails from. We hope to visit ancestral graves, and meet some living relatives if we can find them. This too, is a part of how I’m acting powerfully this year. Reclaiming and getting to know who my people are. I think the two are related. I intend to return home next year, having grown - all of us, I hope - a quantum leap forward, towards a future that can sustain life. At the very least, we will be somewhere entirely new. And fertile because of it. 

I’ll be leading an Election Year Support Group throughout 2024. You can register here.