Hello from Tenochitlan, my home in Mexico City,
I had a set of difficult conversations yesterday related to money, activism, the financial services industry, and my own sense of power as an individual. I shared with a friend who was in one of these conversations that I feel a regulated nervous system is key to decolonization so that I don’t re-create harmful dynamics.
And it’s so hard to allow myself to feel good when others can’t.
Yet to be part of the solution we must include ourselves in humanity – as someone who has struggled with codependence and was socialized as a woman it can be difficult to remember this.
What do a regulated nervous system and decolonization have to do with money?
Money can be a tool for justice. The Investor Alliance for Human Rights outlines things investors can do to promote human rights through investing choices. The Racial Justice Investing coalition recently sent its members suggestions on what can be done to address the ongoing and escalating conflict in Gaza.
Money can be a reason for violence. I looked up the list of ongoing conflicts and I was both shocked and not shocked to see Mexico in a bloody brown color due to ongoing drug related violence. I’ve been lucky that it’s only touched my family lightly, yet it is definitely part of our collective Mexican psyche. I worry that my proximity to structural violence numbs me.
Author and healer adrienne maree brown says that social justice and collective wellbeing is the work of science fiction because it is not the world we live in today.
When I am numb, when I am resigned, when I am hopeless I cannot imagine a different reality.
The call is to regulate my nervous system. For me that means I limit my exposure to current events, I emphasize mutually loving relationships, move my body, rest, connect with nature, look for fun and pleasure, and ask others for help.
It also means that I cry, scream, and call my political representatives. It means I intellectually look to understand the reasons for the violence. It means I grieve because your pain is my pain.
We are all connected. A regulated nervous system is the right of everyone in this planet – from the most newborn of babies, to free ranging animals in African prairies, to the trees that we share space with.
No one is free until we are all free
Economic reform is part of civil rights. Last month I walked through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. museum in Atlanta and was thrilled to see a beautiful quote that echoes my own feeling that all of our well-being is connected. I loved learning more about his call for economic reform which I would love to see enacted. I also loved seeing the name of fellow Quaker Bayard Rustin proudly displayed as a key figure.
As I wrote back in early 2022 at the start of the Ukraine invasion, my wish for you and my clients is to recognize that in every moment you have agency. Yes, the world is chaotic and violent, yet we have a choice in how we move forward.
Do what you need to do to feel good while acknowledging that no one is free until we are all free. Take action and believe in the science fiction of a peaceful, loving, well-resourced world. For me, it was not until I joined the Religious Society of Friends and became Quaker that I began to feel resourced enough to hear my own inner cry for justice and take action to make science fiction real.
In solidarity,
Diana Gisel Yañez