How NOT to Get Swamped by It All
Welcome to your Sunday Love Letter by Kelly Diels.
I send these every Sunday by email and publish a few of them here, on my website. If you’d like to get ALL of these doses of radical encouragement, you can subscribe, here.
Copywriting for Culture Makers is now enrolling.
This week. It felt like an assault.
So many of my clients cried during calls. What can one person do?
We Pick Our Tools and Our Spots on The Wall and WE SHOW UP
I think of our oppressive culture, the one we’re trying to change, like a massive, thousand foot cement wall. Or maybe like a Game of Thrones ice wall.
I’m not a rock climber. I’m not a soldier. I’m not an engineer. I don’t own any sticks of dynamite. The usual methods for getting over that wall or blowing it up are not available to me.
But I do have tools. I do have something to contribute.
I can use my chisel (my writing, my connecting-the-dots analysis, my self-development and business-development work with clients).
I can pick my spot on the wall (the intersection between culture and marketing aka The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand and Culture-Making).
I can show up at my spot on the wall every single day. I can take my chisel and pick away at the same spot over and over again.
Now, if I am doing this by myself, I am doomed to failure. I might make a tiny, tidy hole but that thousand foot wall will not come down because of my committed chiseling, alone.
But I am not alone.
Other people — you! — are showing up with their tools and taking their spots on the wall, too.
Some people are showing up with barbecues and bread. Some people are twisting balloon animals for the kids (and for the kid in me, ‘cuz I love a good fete). Musicians are keeping us all lifted and inspired and soothing us when we’re tired. The massage therapists are kneading sore muscles and preventing injuries. There are people singing and stilt-walking. There are artists painting what it looks like on the other side of the wall – we can’t imagine, but they can, and that keeps us going — and painting all of us so we don’t forget the power and magic of this moment. There are people setting up tents and others making sure the elders are laughing and loved and taking their meds on time. The accountants are making sure we’ve got coins in the coffers for the next supply deliveries. Someone’s coordinating those deliveries and logistics and making sure we’ve got enough portapotties.
We all have a place at the wall.
We need each other to take it down.
We don’t only need activists and politicians and political strategists and fundraisers. We need food and love and logistics and music and water and caregiving and vision and commitment.
And portapotties.
And money.
(Portapotties cost money.)
So if you’re feeling overwhelmed at the scope of the need and how EVERYTHING needs to change —
Please know this: no one person can respond to ALL of it.
You’re not responsible for it ALL.
You’re responsible for sharpening your tools and showing up to your unique place on the wall.
That thing you do that’s so easy for you and so hard for the rest of us — painting, massage, coaching, making vegan cosmetics, writing TV shows, live-tweeting Scandal and live-tweeting presidential debates —
is your best place on the wall. That is your tool and your place and your contribution.
We need everyone at the wall. The FB posters. The writers. The artists. The architects. The jugglers. The chefs. The painters. The protestors.
We need all of our collective gifts and talents and contributions and we need money and resources.
We need those resources and we need each other at the wall.
So let’s get them. And let’s gather.
Because that wall is coming down.
And together we rise.
love + justice,
Kelly
PS I teach a course on Copywriting for Culture Makers, but really it’s new-world guide to building audience, power + livelihood, online — without using exploitative marketing tactics. Check it out?
