What you pay attention to, grows
March, 2025
The flood waves of shocking, terrifying and horrible news coming from the White House, the halls of Congress and the streets throughout the US asks our collective attention to be stretched beyond what any one person can hold.
Our nervous systems are activated multiple times a day viewing or hearing the newest actions by Trump and his administration. Daily headlines of atrocities being carried out in the name of “freedom” in Palestine, terrifying plans to move migrants to unknown or unreachable places, our Queer and Trans siblings being targeted by policy and propaganda; the list feels never ending.
Author and facilitator adrienne maree brown reminds us in her groundbreaking book, Emergent Strategy, that “what you pay attention to grows”. As we enter into the third month of this presidential regime, we must remember that our attention and our actions can still be strategic and held with care.
It can be overwhelming to know where or how to take action when everything we read causes panic or rage. We also know that some of the shock coming from Washington is meant to stoke the flames of panic and despair, working to override our own capacities and burn us out into complacency or worse, apathy.
We offer this newsletter as a reminder that our attention is a resource and a blessing. When we work to focus our attention to where fascists do not want to be seen, to the places where our eyes and hearts can be of service, we amplify our capacity to hold stronger together.
So, what needs to be grown now? When we are called to react, what is being sown? How can each of our actions and attentions do the work of remediating the poisoned soil that hate is planted in? Where are we tending to the saplings of liberation, the wild forests of care, the mycelial networks of connection and solidarity? How do we nourish our comrades who are being held in detention, or sent to their countries of origin or a country that they have never known? How do we tend to the strong roots of movement & history that calls and works and longs and dreams for a burning of it all down? Of reseeding with attention and intention, with liberation and joy?
In this next month, we invite you to get curious about where your attention is being called and then ask how you’d like to reorient it to feed what you want to grow. Perhaps your attention cannot hold the waterfalls from Washington, but can contain the streams of local or statewide impact. Maybe you’re looking to shine light onto the swampy pools of hidden actions, sharing information with your watershed and tributaries to stop the drowning of those held underwater. Maybe you’re filtering out the silt and muck of gossip, misinformation or paranoia to hydrate your community with truth and calm.
Whatever you can hold, whatever you are tending, growing, nourishing, know that we are holding it with you. Together we will carry through.
With love and care,
Justice for Migrant Families
Written by Emily Terrana