Tomorrow We Talk About What Makes Us Feel Big

A piece about the space between mourning and movement.

From 2022

Dear Friends,

She lay on the floor, "mama, I feel small."

"Sometimes, I feel small too," replied mama.

Perplexed, daughter looked at mother, "what makes you feel small?"

For in the eyes of a child a mama is always so big.

"Well, there's good types of small, and then there are types of small that don't feel good. I feel small when I stand next to trees and mountains and oceans, and this is a beautiful type of small… But sometimes people can make you feel small, and that's the type of small we must stand up to."

Her daughter is four, and bright eyed she thought about the words of her mother, and then turned and said, "okay mama, next time, we will talk about what makes you feel big."

My friends, this is the story my sweet neighbor told me, as I handed her a shot over the fence, to mourn today's monumental decision.

And today, I feel very small.

But make no mistake, my feelings of small will dissipate in a way my anger will not.

Today, I will sit in my feelings of small.

I will take my martini extra dirty.

I will talk to my people about my feelings.

I will sleep in my pain.

I will wake in my power.

I will remind myself that gentle too can be the giant we need.

But make no mistake, tomorrow I will say my prayers, I will remind myself that gentleness is not synonymous with 'soft,' and I will get to work.

For we know no fury like a tender heart hell bent on change.

Today we will mourn what it means to feel small.

But my daughters, tomorrow we will talk of what makes us feel big.

And we will get to work.

Today

Here I am, three years later, and the work feels different than I expected.

Because what we're facing isn't just one decision. It's the voting rights and education funding shifts. It's seeing reproductive and comprehensive healthcare changing for vulnerable groups. It's books being challenged and removed from school libraries across the country and environmental regulations being rewritten.

This isn’t fate. These outcomes need accomplices.

How quickly we went from feeling like we were building something to watching policy after policy chip away at what we'd fought to protect. The whiplash alone could break you.

I keep thinking about that little girl on the floor. About the difference between good small and bad small. Because what's happening right now—when families have to drive three states over for healthcare, when teachers are afraid to teach, when kids can't see themselves reflected anywhere in their curriculum—this is the bad kind of small.

But here's what I keep coming back to: we've been here before. We know what it feels like to watch progress move backwards. We know how to organize around kitchen tables and find each other at community meetings. We know that feeling small can be the beginning of something, not the end.

And it’s the small stuff that helps conspire in favor of the big stuff.

Here’s what we are going to do:

We are going to the community meetings.

We are getting to know our local leaders. They are our first line of defense.

We are donating the price of a coffee to a local organization that is working on your behalf.

We are turning towards our leaders - the unlikely ones, the ones who don’t hold official seats - and we are speaking kindly to them. We are following their lead. In communities. In our interactions. We are expressing our faith in them.

We are speaking up when we disagree.

We are asking people on the street how they are doing. We look them in the eye while we do it.

We are shopping locally.

We are staying engaged, just enough to know the world, but not long enough to break our own hearts.

We are buying a little extra to give away.

We are having good days on purpose.

We're not the same country we were before. We've seen too much, learned too much, connected too much to go back to sleep.

So yes, today we feel small. Tomorrow we remember what makes us feel big. And then we get to work—not the work we thought we'd be doing, but the work that's actually in front of us.

The real work. The hard work. The kind that changes everything.

Yours in Sincerity,

Taylor Patrice