Hi, I'm Tired, what's your name?

A confession, a request, and a hopeful look ahead

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I have something to confess to you, dear Soulful Revolutionary:

I am tired.

Much of this state has to do with a whole lot of doing.

For the first two years I was on Substack, I wrote and wrote and wrote. Up until the last couple months, I published an essay almost every week at the intersection of spiritual transformation and social change.

I have been pouring myself out on the page with vulnerability, earnestness and intention. People who know me well know that I choose my words with great care: I once spent weeks agonizing over recovering an idiom that vanished into thin air — words I desperately needed in order to say exactly what needed saying. I have told stories that have had profound impact on personal relationships. And I have also tried to convey the most important lessons I have learned over the last decade from practitioners of nonviolence, in hopes making more people aware of time-tested strategies would make some difference in the struggle for liberation.

Then, in the summer of 2023, I added a podcast. That work was slow going initially, but then I was connected with an incredible production team, and I dove in with over a dozen interviews for this current season.

I have extensively practiced being both storykeeper and storyteller. It has been an incredible privilege to devote substantial time and attention to this work. In the process, I have laid claim to a vocation that has always been part of me but which I hadn’t had the courage to name for myself:

I am a writer.

It also bears noting that I have been a writer while raising young children, planting a new faith community, and co-founding an organization for Palestinian liberation.

All of these new endeavors have been full of joy. They have also been exhausting. It seems superfluous to add that the world is on fire… but I will say so regardless, mostly as an invitation to self-compassion, because it is, and in spite of everything, I am doing my best. I know you are too.

So, I recently gave myself permission not to write a full essay every week, as I am barely managing to keep my head above water while producing the final episodes of A Soulful Revolution Podcast. Removing the pressure of a weekly deadline has been an enormous relief. It has allowed me to write what is wanting to be written as it bubbles up within me.

This is aligned with my commitment to be more attentive to the longings and limits of my beautiful, finite, wildly strong and incredibly vulnerable body. If there is anything I have learned about social change and spiritual transformation over the last couple years of this project, it is that these are communal, embodied practices. We need each other — I need you, dear Soulful Revolutionary, and I hope my work here has been of service to you too.

A podcast guest recently reminded me that the work of justice is not a marathon — it is a relay. So this is me, recognizing that I need to ride in the van for a while. I need to trust my teammates to run the race. I need to ask for help, knowing that my time to be of service will come. I am building up the strength to run the race well by resting.

I also recognize that this sporadic writing schedule is different from the rhythm of production to which I had originally committed. For my paid subscribers in particular: if you’re not receiving my work in the rhythm you had hoped, I will totally understand if you need to hold off on investing your hard-earned wages on this humble publication.

Still, I sincerely hope you will stick around. Because I need you to know: this has all been a labor of love. That anyone at all is reading and listening to my work — let alone over 800 of you — regularly astonishes me. I am truly humbled and deeply grateful. Every new subscription makes my heart do a little happy dance. Every paid subscription, I bow my head in gratitude. Thank you for believing in me, in this project, and in the community of Soulful Revolutionaries we are building together.

If you want to support me in doing this work in this messy, evolving moment, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. If that’s too much commitment, you can buy me a tea (not a coffee drinker, because again, the world is on fire, and your girl gets panic attacks when too much caffeine meets anxiety overload). In this late capitalist hellscape, your financial support sustains me in doing this work (which is currently the lowest-paying of my three jobs). So again, thank you for considering it.

You can also support A Soulful Revolution by sharing a favorite essay or podcast episode with your circles, inviting friends to subscribe, or writing a review of the podcast.

I hope to get back to writing more regularly for this beloved community of Soulful Revolutionaries very soon. Wrapping up the podcast season in a few weeks will make this more viable. I’m also going to be trying on some new, shorter formats, all with an emphasis on less perfectionism, more reality. More wisdom, less reactivity.

And, I hope to share an update with you soon on the exciting direction some of my writing will be taking.

Thank you for being on the journey — both of this meandering epistle and of A Soulful Revolution.

It’s good to be human together.

– Lauren