Sunday Shit Talk: On Processing Hope Whiplash

We had so much. We lost so much. And thanks to our favorite "brat," we got it back.

Last week’s Sunday Shit Talk was released just moments before Biden announced he’d step down and anoint Kamala Harris as our Democratic presidential candidate and—hot damn—as it turns out, invoking A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Space Program” did the trick because, within a week, we “made something happen.”

I saw this coming in 2016 when she ran against Hillary (ask anyone who knows me well), but I digress.

Like juniors cramming for finals, Dems, in the words of Tribe, got it together. Those of us who value democracy and human rights found a way to unite behind a candidate who can UNFCK the MUTHRHD. A GEN X, BLACK, AAPI, FEMALE candidate intent on protecting our rights, someone who can take her evil opponent apart in a debate without so much as breaking a sweat or a nail, someone “brat” enough for Gen Z to get behind, someone sane people can be proud of.

With so much at stake, there is no grey area. It’s all boiled down to a fight between good and evil in so many ways. And that precarious balance, my friends, is stressful.

Navigating this type of binary, or all-or-nothing thinking, is a form of cognitive distortion. In other words, when your cortisol levels are amped up to eleven you can’t quite think straight. Constant fight or flight mode is exhausting, and that exhaustion leads to another form of cognitive distortion called hopelessness. Hopelessness preys on physical and mental exhaustion, draining your motivation and your self-esteem. Hopelessness and lack of motivation, if burnt into our brains, can feed into something called learned helplessness, a common trauma response, when you just lay back and let life happen to you instead of getting off your ass and co-creating the life you live.

Being subject to all of this cognitive distortion, perpetuated by rebranding lies as “alternative facts” and relentless abuses of power, is also exhausting. The GOP’s goal is to make us feel so helpless we feel we have no choice but to lay back, point our heels to the sky, and, quite plainly, let them rape our bodies, minds, and wallets.

Since Kamala put on her superhero cape, my butt cheeks have slowly unclenched. My shoulders have descended from around my ears. The corners of my mouth have turned upward. Because a pervasive sense of impending doom is dissipating in the face of hope, there’s space in my brain to resume the details of my life because the soil of futility is coming clean. Like Beyoncé belts out in Harris’s campaign song, the very notion of freedom has cut me loose.

So how do you process it when you go from running on fumes one week to daring to feel a little hopeful the next? I’m not sure what the clinical answer is but I’m trying to take every opportunity I can to reaffirm that hopeful feeling for hope, like despair feeds on itself.

The most hopeful thing I’ve witnessed this weekend was Céline Dion’s triumphant return to the stage closing the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics with a flawless powerful rendition of “Hymne A L’Amour.” (I would’ve embedded the vid but NBC said NOPE.)

Talk about taking home the gold!

A year ago, this woman was heartbroken because she suffered from Stiff Person’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that stole her voice, which she identifies as “the conductor of her life.” It is her purpose and greatest joy. If you take in I Am Celine, her documentary, she felt so helpless but she refused to give up hope. Instead of pointing her heels to the sky and just taking it, she scrounged up the strength, fought for her gift with all her might, and voila! With the greatest performance of her career atop La Tour Eiffel, she gave herself—and us— the gift of witnessing her triumph over what her disease threatened to take from her. HER FREEDOM.

In November, I’d like nothing more than to change the name of this Substack from MUTHR, FCKD to MUTHR, FTW. Who’s with me?

Thanks so much for reading this rant! For more rants, recaps, interviews, and pop culture love through a Gen XXX lens, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber (it’s like you’re buying me half a latte every month), or just spread the word.

Merci! A bientôt!

xx

MF