31. Speaking Up - And the Hidden Cost of Silence

It's all just heavy right now. And unstable. Chaotic. Overwhelming. 

It's hard to keep up with everything that's happening. For a lot of people, the easiest response is to shut down -- not because we don't care, but because caring feels like too much. 

But that's the point -- the shut down, the apathy. When we check out, harmful systems advance. 

This episode takes a grounded approach to the hidden cost of not speaking up -- what it does to the body and nervous system when we repeatedly override our truth, suppress our voice, or disconnect from what we know deep down is not okay. We'll also cover how to break the cycle and start (or continue) speaking up. If you've felt overwhelmed, confused, numb, angry, or frozen - these are normal responses to prolonged uncertainty and collective stress. 

But the way through this is by going through it. Not around it. 

This isn’t a call to panic or perform. It’s an invitation to slow down, get regulated, and reconnect with what you stand for. To remember that using your voice doesn’t have to look loud or confrontational -- it can look grounded, intentional, and rooted in love. We talk about practical, sustainable ways to engage: speaking up in small moments, modeling values for our kids, building community, and choosing participation over apathy.

Most of all, this episode is a reminder that you are not weak for feeling this. You are not broken for needing rest. And you are not alone in the tension between wanting to stay safe and wanting to stay true. When we tend to our nervous systems and align with our values, using our voice becomes less about fear -- and more about integrity, care, and connection.

If you’ve been feeling the weight of the world and wondering what to do with it, this conversation is for you.

If this episode spoke to you, it would mean the world if you took a moment to leave a review or share it with a friend who needs it. And make sure you hit follow so you never miss an episode of Conditioning to Consciousness.

You can connect with me on Instagram @jesscallahan_, join my Substack community at conditioningtoconsciousness.substack.com, or explore more of my work at jesscallahan.com.

My Back in the Body Nervous System Healing course is now available! Find it here.

Thanks for listening — I’m so grateful you’re here.

Transcript

Jess 0:01

Hey guys, welcome back. So, okay, today I want to talk about the like the hidden costs of not speaking up, not using your voice, not expressing your truth. I think like at times when the world feels, you know, shaky and there's things that are just going wrong, you know, there's there's things that are just like not sitting with us well, and we have this choice of like, do we speak up, do we not? I think that whether we're thinking about it consciously or subconsciously, it's the hidden cost of speaking up that really like weighs the most heavily on us. And unless we've really consciously thought about it, I think it's the cost of speaking up and maybe the hidden fears that come along with it that really, you know, win at the end of the day. So today I want to talk about the actual, like the cost of not speaking up. And, you know, I'll I'll talk a little bit at the end about what we can do to use our voices right now to stand up for what we believe in. And, you know, just how how I've done that on my own journey. Um, this podcast has been a journey of healing my own voice wound, of figuring out how to express myself in a way that feels safe. And, you know, it's really brought me back to to who I am more fully. And, you know, just interacting with people, being in community with people who have shared how much this space has helped them, you know, find their own voices has been like deeply meaningful to me. And I don't know, I feel like there's just a couple of pieces that I've sort of missed over the episodes, over the weeks, over the months, that I want to just talk about this, I guess, a little bit more directly. So um, you know, I think that each of us has unique gifts and perspectives. We're not here, you know, on earth right now to be the same, you know, to be the like cookie-cutter molds of each other. We are here to be beautifully and uniquely ourselves and to figure out, you know, what our gifts are and and what our voice really like sounds like and feels like. It's it's an inner journey. It's a journey inward to figure out who we are and what we believe in and what we stand for. Um so I don't know. I think I I would argue that it's more harmful than anything, like for ourselves and for the collective when we don't find our voice and use it. Um, you know, right now the world is it's chaos. And I think, you know, there's this whole idea that like when you when you podcast, you're supposed to make it sort of evergreen so that people can come back at any point and find value. And I weigh that often because there's so much that's like alive and happening now, you know, for a podcast like mine, it's not a news podcast. So is there more value in this podcast being able to like pop up a year down the a year down the line and somebody finding the same value in it? Um, but for me, what feels most alive right now is really just like talking about the world as it is and you know, talking about why it is more important now than ever to to use our voices. Um in this episode, I think that I want to come from a place of regulation and grounding because there's just so much heaviness in the world. There's so much going on. It it's chaos. And if you try to follow what's going on, you either really have to be like tuned in all the way to really get it, because you know, the the news cycle is like minute to minute, really. Like if if you're following it that closely, you know that like something that's 12 hours old now is like old, which is insane. Like that is so much information and it's like not like it's all bad news, really, right? Of course, you can find the good news moments, but like it's a lot for anyone to carry. And and if you're not fully tuned in, it's really hard to be fully tuned in. If you're not, it's it just feels like madness, and it's so much easier to tune out. It's just, it's so overwhelming. And I think I just want to start by naming like how normal it is to feel overwhelmed right now, confused, frustrated, like um, even just like the frustration of not being able to like turn on normal news outlets and trust that anything that they're saying is actually like true. Um it's just it's not realistic right now. You can't, if you want to stay truly informed, you can't rely on any main news outlet, which which is frustrating and overwhelming in and of itself. And so, you know, I think that I think I want to just start, I think, from this place of of overwhelm and heaviness and you know, in naming that it's normal, but also in naming that it is by design. Like the goal here is that we shut down, that we revert to our own like frozen caves, our own like little cocoons where we can tune the world out so that everything else can just happen at lightning speed. And before we know it, if we don't step into it and stand up for what we believe in, the world shifts around us. We are standing at this moment where, you know, there's I think that I think that like the US is really broken into maybe like three major groups of people. And one group is just blindly following a cult leader. It is, there's a lot of like similarities to um to like what's happening now with like actual cults. And so there's a lot of people who just like they've spent so much time being invested in this ideology, and they don't have the space to maybe like actually see what it is that they believe. They're just regurgitating talking points, and they've built this like momentum within them that is really hard to interrupt. And so it's just this like perpetual cycle of like nothing that you can say to me is going to make me like second guess my allegiances to this like authoritarian leader, right? And then you have another group of people who is like for the most part fully tuned in and watching all of these things happen, knowing it's chaos, having a really hard time living in normalcy because you know, we're watching the fall of our democracy, like that is not hyperbole, like like in real time and watching like all of the people who are getting who are going down with it. And just like the gaslighting, the lies, like if you have any history with like understanding, you know, emotional manipulation or anything like that, like you're probably someone who is tuned in because that's what's happening on a national level right now. Um, and with it, you know, is the fall of our democracy, which it like isn't a joke. And so you've got that group like screaming into the void, just shouting from the rooftops, like, pay attention, pay attention. And, you know, it's a a lot of times it's really emotionally charged, and like that's also overwhelming to hear, to see. And then I think you have this other group of people who like is just sort of stuck, not knowing what the right thing is to do, not knowing how to even like enter the scene, maybe not fully knowing what they believe in or what they stand for. Not in an intentional way, but just because that's sort of like the world we live in. That's like we have not our programming doesn't support the inner journey of like really deeply knowing ourselves. And so a lot of times that leads to like overwhelm and freeze and numbness and uncertainty. And so there's you know, there's all these people that maybe want to speak up, maybe want to use their voices, but can't because they're they're just living in a state of freeze. And so I don't know. I mean all all of these, all of well they're they're all real, they're true, they they are all happening. Um I'm not gonna give any like thought or talk time to the people in the first group who are just blindly following, you know, an authoritarian leader, because that's not my um I just don't want to spend my energy there. But but for everyone else, you know, who's screaming into the void, who's watching democracy fall, who's watching the rules change minute by minute, watching the rules only be applied, you know, when it's convenient. I think there's a few things to say here. Like, as a as a white woman recording this, like I'm very aware of the fact that like the people of color in our community have been saying this for decades, that the rules only apply when, you know, they they benefit you. The rules are only, you know, are only good. The the rules are only working when they benefit you. Like they've the rules in our country have long been manipulated to support different groups. And so none of this is new. It's just this moment where I think so many more of us are really living into the knowing that we need to do more, that we have to speak up because everything is at stake, everything's on the line, and you can't just like love and light your way out of this. You can't just rest on sayings like this two shall pass because like that's I don't think that's true this time. Like what's happening in Minnesota right now and now Maine is it's just going to spread until the voices of opposition get louder and louder. And that's that's where I think like this conversation comes in, and just like figuring out how how can we comfortably in a way that feels safe and aligned, like use our voices to speak up. What can we actually do to make a difference? And why does speaking up feel so hard? Um you know, I think staying silent is a choice, and like any other choice, it comes with a price. Um you know, I think that there's there's so many reasons that we that we do stay silent. So, you know, maybe we stay silent because we're worried about what other people think, you know, in our in our society, like we've been taught that offending someone, like we don't ever want to offend someone or impose discomfort on someone. We don't, we fear judgment, we fear what other people will think, we fear altering or losing relationships, we fear difficult conversations, we fear, you know, maybe on social media losing followers. We fear this whole idea of like having to pick sides. It feels divisive, it creates inner conflict. Um, but also a fear of speaking up lives in us biologically. So, okay, think about behavioral conditioning that's passed down through your upbringing, how you're raised, and also epigenetics. And if you're not familiar with that term, basically, like science now proves that the trauma of past generations lives in us. It is passed down generationally and biologically in the expression of our DNA. So it's not actually shifting our DNA sequence, but how our DNA is expressed. Um, so like the trauma of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who were silenced through um, you know, institutionalization, medication, they were medically experimented on. They were separated from their children if they were being irrational, like long-term separation. And before that, you know, like the witch hunts, you know, hundreds of years ago, but like um people burned for and hung for staying connected to their intuition and expressing emotion, they were irrational. And any type of emotional expression now is is bad, right? Like if you're a woman, it's irrational or hysterical. And if you're a man, that's just like strictly speaking on those ends of the gender spectrum, but um, it's weakness, right? So so we're taught to suppress actively now, but also we are carrying the imprints, the epigenetic imprints of our ancestors who were silenced. And so that lives in our nervous system, that lives in our bodies and in the expression of our DNA. And so a lot of times, like it's more comfortable to just stay silent. But did you know that there is an actual physiological cost of not speaking up for yourself or something you believe in? Like it actually impacts your body, your health, um, some of the ailments that maybe you're feeling, like fatigue, maybe uh challenges associated with like inflammation, chronic pain, like all of those things, you know, can be can be linked to, well, the chaos, of course, that's going on right now. There could be a hundred different reasons, but not speaking your truth contributes to that. Um, I'm gonna give you like a quick, quick little biology lesson, I guess. Um, I'm gonna keep it easy, but just just stick with me for a minute because I think that this is really important. Okay, so there's a part of your brain, it's linked to like social pain and moral conflict. And it's that part of the brain that lights up when we betray ourselves. It's called the anterior cingulate cortex and also the insula. So when you override your truth internally, maybe it's a boundary that you're crossing. Maybe you don't even realize that it's a boundary that like subconsciously you have in place or you need, but there's a boundary that's like being um crossed, or a personal value that's being violated, an emotion that you're not allowing yourself to feel. Um, the brain experiences this as moral conflict. So it could be like a violation of your internal value, some sort of internal truth system at play. Um, or your brain might experience it as like a relational threat. So um like risk being like exiled or excluded if you speak up, or it might interpret it as like a loss of agency by suppressing action that's aligned with like who you are authentically. Like who you are authentically is who you are, whether you realize it or not, whether you've rediscovered those deeper parts of you, it's still there, it's still driving everything that's going on. It's still like very actively alive in your subconscious. But consciously, if you're out of touch with those deepest parts of you, like all of these things are still hitting your nervous system. They're still being stored in your body, whether you recognize them as like active violations of your own truth or not. Um so basically, like this part, these parts of the brain, like they don't know how to distinguish between different types of pain. So if it's physical pain, social pain, or like an ethical or moral distress, like not speaking your truth. Um, like the nervous system just interprets pain as pain. And so when you silence yourself, you're telling your nervous system that something is wrong. Your safety has been compromised, your nervous system reacts. Your nervous system was what is responsible for like keeping you in fight or flight or rest and digest. Fight or flight is that like heightened state of the nervous system where you know the stress is like trapped in your body and it's really like like stress does real damage to your body. Um, so when you get stuck in this state, when you're continually betraying yourself, your nervous system sticks in the state of like perceived threat. So it could come from betraying yourself. It's like it's all of the things that are happening right now. If you're not tuned into regulation, like all of the chaos that's going on, if you're not releasing whatever the energy is that like is building, if you're not finding ways to release and process that energy, it's staying stuck in your body, causing dysregulation. So you're really like running two opposing programs at once. So one of them is if I stay quiet, I'll be safe. And the other one is deep down, not speaking my truth is violating some sort of inner truth or moral system, which is creating dysregulation. So it's a conflict between speaking up to stay safe and suppressing yourself, which is causing a dysregulation activity like in your body. So, like when you're when emotion, truth, and action are continually blocked, they have nowhere to go. So then they reroute into your body. So as you live in this like heightened state of stress and arousal, your nervous system begins to lose what we call flexibility. So your nervous system is built to go back and forth between, I mean, there's there's a lot of different like parts of your nervous system. Um, the autonomic nervous system is what I'm talking about, like the part we're not actively controlling. And so um, like your nervous system is built to go back and forth between rest and digest, fight or flight, right? Like if there's a perceived safety threat, there's a bear, you run, right? Your nervous system reacts, fight or flight, you run, you get away from the bear, but then your body's built to go back into regulation. It's meant to, you know, like the parasympathetic nervous system, rest and digest, reactivates, and you kind of go back into that like calm state. But when you're living in this heightened state of arousal long term, you lose the flexibility to go back and forth between those two parts of your nervous system. So you get stuck in dysregulation. Um, if you followed the work of like Gabor Mate, Bessel Vanderkock, who wrote The Body Keeps the Score, you probably already know that like these stuck energies that we're talking about, um like your emotion truth, blocked action, um, these like unprocessed situations, that sort of thing, um they like they get stuck in the body and they manifest as things like chronic pain, gut issues, autoimmune flares, migraines, fatigue, heart palpitations, all of those can be rooted in your nervous system reaction. So not processing the emotions that you're feeling. Speaking your truth, that sort of thing. So, like in addition, basically, like repeated self-betrayal, as it dulls the insula or that part of the brain that we previously mentioned, it's responsible for regulating emotion, intuition, body sensation, moral knowing. When you're repeatedly betraying yourself, it's dulling your innumer your ability to feel internal signals. So it's why you might not trust your intuition because you can't even feel it. Or maybe it's why you feel disconnected from emotion. There's all this stuff going on in the world around you, and you're not sure how to react. Because if you really think about it, somewhere deep down, you feel numb. Or maybe you just don't even know what to feel. You feel really disconnected to everything going on around you. It's because you literally don't have the capacity right now, because you're living in some sort of like freeze state, functional freeze. You know, it's um rest digest or uh fight or flight and freeze. These are like three main reactions of the nervous system to these stressful situations. So functional freeze looks like, um, okay, so this might be where everything looks fine on the surface, right? You look functional, you look like you're maybe expertly keeping all of the balls in the air. But below the surface, you know that you're operating on razor-thin margins. You know that, you know, maybe things are crumbling below the surface, like you're barely holding it together. You feel disconnected, overwhelmed, maybe frustrated, frazzled, numb. All of these are really like symbolic of living in this state of functional freeze. So basically, all of that is to say, like, there could be a thousand things that are causing dysregulation right now, but self-silencing, especially during a time when there's so much going on in the world and there's pressure from everyone to either speak up, fall in line, conform, what do you think, like to figure out where you stand or to just go quiet. But then there's inner conflict when you're just going quiet. Like during a time like that, the self-silencing, the not knowing what you believe, the not knowing what you stand for is actually contributing to like this like inner dissonance that you're feeling. And it can be contributing if you're having more anxiety or um, you know, you have migraines kicking in, you have chronic pain flaring up, any of those things can be directly linked to this. So what can we do about it? Um, well, for starters, we can we get our nervous systems regulated. So there's a reason everyone's talking about the nervous system right now. You know, I've heard from a few people, like just like off comments about why, like, why is the nervous system like all the, like, why is everyone only talking about the nervous system right now? It's like a buzzword. And, you know, I'm sure for some people they're using it like a buzzword. But for others, I think there's a lot of us who have really just realized that we've really been raised not to understand the true impact that the nervous system and dysregulation can have on us. And that's where it all starts is in regulating. Like you can't, there's no transformation that can happen. There's no elevated consciousness, higher frequency healing of chronic pain. Like any transformation you seek starts in the nervous system. You have to have a regulated body before, before you can do anything else. And really, like it with a regulated nervous system, that's where you have, that's where you find that you're able to really have like a um, you know, calm, calm body, calm mind, connection with purpose and all of that. It all starts in the body and in regulation. Um so I'm not gonna go too far into how to regulate the nervous system. I have like a I have a nervous system course available online, and um, I have some content on like my socials and my Substack. And I, you know, if you have any questions at all, like you can send me a message on Substack or Instagram, and I'm always happy to answer those questions. But, you know, regulating the nervous system in a nutshell really is about like finding ways to release the pent-up energy and emotion that you're storing, and then bringing into your life systems of like balance. So short meditation, mindfulness, exercises, breath work, movement. Um, and then okay, so but what else can we do beyond nervous system regulation? And I think one of the most important things is taking some time to understand your values. Um core values, but when I like get into talking about core values with people, at first I was really surprised to hear how few people actually know their core values. And yeah, I don't I think that it's just something that like businesses sometimes do, you know, often do as a practice, a branding practice, but individually, I'm not sure that there's like a full awareness of how important it is to know your values because you have core values, whether you've ever actually named them or not, you have core values. And everything you're saying and doing, every action you take, every thought you think is basically running through this program that includes your core values. And if it conflicts with them, there's this, you know, an energy, there's a dissonance created in that conflict. And that's what's living in your body. Um, you know, if you ever find yourself like speaking up for something you're not speaking up, or taking an action and it feels unresolved after maybe there's something that you said to someone, you're like, why is that sticking with me in such a way? Like it's it could be that it's conflicting with your core values. You're acting from a place that doesn't align with your values, but you don't know it because you haven't named your values. So, like, for example, for me, um, some of mine are love, equality, and authenticity. And so in the past, like, although at my core I've always been passionate that all beings are inherently equal. And so, in instances like when I haven't spoken up against racism, for example, that's been something that has contributed to the dysregulation that I used to carry in my body. And if you've been here for a while, you know that I live with fibromyalgia. But for the most part, I live now pain-free after, you know, a long process of really like aligning with my truth, understanding who I am at my core and regulating my nervous system. But, you know, that in the past, those are the situations that would really sit with me for a long time and contribute to the dysregulation. Now, you know, I believe at the end of the day that love is always the answer. And if I can choose to live and lead with love through love, it's not about picking sides. It's about aligning with a core value. You know, I believe in humanity and decency and compassion. And so speaking up for me is so much easier now because speaking up really becomes more about like spreading love and compassion into the world around me instead of focusing with like focusing on aligning with like one side or another. It's not about sides at all for me. It's about choosing love a hundred percent of the time. And right now for me, um, you know, I I just believe so deeply that that hate is winning and that people can be really good at our core. Like people, people have it in them to be good and to live with love. And and I think that, you know, there's other programming that's that gets in the way of that. And I just think that the more we tune in and deconstruct that programming, the more that we're all able to anchor into love. I think, you know, love is like a universal language, it's something that lives in all of us. And, you know, I'm not the only one who has love as a core value. Um, I think that the more we each connect with ourselves at like a soul level, the more we realize that that love is a guiding light for all of us. And so um, you know, choosing to use my voice in the name of love becomes a lot easier. It becomes a lot easier to tune out any, you know, negativity that I get in response. And if I lose relationships over it, like we're not aligned to begin with. If I lose, you know, friends or followers, like I I don't want, I don't want people in my like in my in my life in a core type of way. Like, I don't want people who are able to really like live within my energy field um if they're not living with love. It's just it's not worth it for me. Um, and so I think that the more you tune into what your values are, the more you start to realize, like when somebody says something in your presence that really like conflicts with one of your values, sometimes staying silent like means that you're giving them the green light. Like basically, like it's assumed then that you're in in many instances that you're agreeing with them by not speaking up and that it's okay with you. And so when you know these are the things that I just can't live with. If, you know, like I I have to speak my truth in that way. Um, I think it stops people from spreading hate. Maybe they don't realize they're doing it. Maybe, you know, people are just sometimes people are just like talking to talk and they say hurtful things because it's just the program they're running on. Um, but when you interrupt that cycle and you speak up and you say that's not okay with me, it starts to shift the world around you. But it's when you're really aligned with your why that you know the situations that you want to speak up within. You know, you know you have like boundaries for yourself, sort of. Like you don't want to be someone that's constantly speaking up, um you know, and speaking up against other people. I don't I don't enjoy being that person, but I know now where my edges are and the situations that in order to stay aligned with my own truth, I know the situations that really mean that I need to say more. So I don't know. So what so what are some ways to start to practice this? Um you know, start small. If you're somebody who really has never spoken up in your life, um start small. So speak up in really small but safe ways. Like even something like, you know, you you're going out to lunch with somebody and they pick the restaurant and you're like, oh, I really don't want to go there. Like, speak up. Where do you want to go? Um, you know, it's a movie that you're going to with a partner, spouse, whatever. Um, it's not a movie you want to see. Don't just go with the flow. Like practice, practice speaking up. And and from there, you'll find that you build your capacity to speak up in other ways, right? Like speaking up on social media and in social situations, it's like none of us need permission to speak up. But for those of us who have sort of been running on this programming that we're waiting for silent permission because it's just part of the conditioning that we're still like working with, when people that you trust and love around you, when they start to speak up, it's like that silent permission that just creates this ripple of more people speaking up. And and it's, I don't know, like their strength in numbers or strength in in community when you find the people around you who have shared values. It's just easier to figure out who you are in the deepest parts of you. You know, it's easier to to know yourself. We we learn ourselves, we know ourselves through each other and through building community. And that doesn't mean that we should only build communities of people who have the same values. In fact, you know, I don't think that's true at all. It's a subject for a totally different podcast because I think in that lies this idea that, like, we've become so disconnected from our ability to live in discomfort and hold of opposing viewpoints. I think it's really good to be able to be in community with people with opposing viewpoints, but it's also really important to have a closeness with other people who have shared values so that you have safe spaces to process and talk through things and witness each other. Um, so you know, if you have a platform, use your platform. Again, it doesn't have to be about sides, and maybe you're going to lose some followers because they feel committed to living through hate and division. But do you really want them in your energy field, anyways? I mean, I I don't. I don't know if you've seen those accounts that are like, this is a, you know, a running account, but running is inherently political because you can't run if you get shot by ice. Like, you don't have to be that bold. You could. Maybe you start by like restacking posts that align with your values or sharing stories. Um, maybe you make a bolder statement about what you stand for so that there's no confusion in the future. You know, something simple, like just to be clear, I stand with humanity and equality. And, you know, later on, nobody is surprised to find that like your values aren't aligned. Um, and again, maybe you lose some followers, but I think you attract the people that that are aligned, that you want in your energy field, whether it's an exchange of goods and services or conversation, community. Um, you can talk to your kids. Having hard conversations right now is really important. If you're not talking to your kids about what's going on, they're hearing it from someone else. They're hearing the headlines, they're hearing. Um, I mean, like, did you see the video of that little boy? He's so little. He's he's what, like six, maybe seven? He just played, maybe he's a little older, eight at the most, but like he just played a soccer game. I think he has a jersey on and a and a metal around his neck. And he's crying in the car because one of the kids on the field told him that he's an illegal alien and you know he's got to get deported. And and the kid's like, but I where would I go? I was born in the United States. And he's confused. And and in that moment, like his whole world was shook by like his confidence, his belonging, like all of those things are are changed because of how people are treating him because his skin color isn't white, beige or beige, right? It's not the right shade of beige. And so his whole world changes in that moment. And so if you're not talking to your kids, these are the things that they're hearing. They're not growing their own like resolve to speak up. They're not growing their own guardrails if somebody speaks up about something that's happening that's cruel and happening in the world, and you know, they're they're internalizing that, and whether they start to, you know, repeat whatever it is right away, or it just becomes some sort of thread in the talk track that's building subconsciously, like they're hearing it elsewhere. And so if you're not sharing what your family values are with your children, then they are creating their own based on the company that they keep at school or wherever they're gathering. So having the hard conversations with your kids, it's really important. There's guides all over the place. Um, again, like, you know, shoot me a message. I talk to my kids all the time about this. I have a four-year-old and an 11 and 12-year-old, and we have age-appropriate conversations. We have them often, and I share with them what I know that they're, you know, ready to hold. Um, but I don't shy away from it. And, you know, we don't speak in a way that it's going to like invite fear into their lives in in any kind of like unhealthy way, but it is important for them to know what's going on, and it is important to know like where our family stands on this. So um, you could also join up, like create a just like a local group of of friends who share values, you know, of love and equality. Um and and like fight back online. Like, I can't tell you how disheartening it is. Like every time I go on Facebook and one of my local community groups that like I stay part of because I want to like know if something's going on locally that I should know about, but like somebody says something in favor of protest or neighbors who are at risk of you know, some sort of ice raid, or maybe there was, you know, ice in one of our neighborhoods, and somebody will post online and then all of the comments are hateful people cheering on the cruelty. And like it's it's really disheartening. I lose more and more faith in my town and my walls go up more when I leave my house. But I'm like, I know that my whole area doesn't believe that. I think that these are just the louder voices right now. These are the louder voices that you know are standing behind speaking hate and cruelty because the people who are living and leading with love like don't want to get into these like pissing matches online. But like find a group of people who want to fight back and and tip each other off. Like there's another one of those posts on social media, and just everyone goes on and is like, like this is hateful. Like, what are what are the things you don't have to fight them back, just have the same thing that you say all the time. Like, um, I I don't even know. There's so many different things that you can say, but it doesn't have to be to fight or oppose them directly, but it can just be like about humanity and equality and human rights and being nice, like being kind, anything, but just um, you know, like flood the system with positive messages, messages of love instead of letting those dominate all the time. Um, participate in a boycott, really like shutting down the economy on a large scale, small scale, however you do it is is a very real way you can, you know, speak up, um, reach out to your Congress people, all of your lawmakers, like put pressure on them. Um, you know, they're also being flooded by the chaos in all of the different areas that like are an emergency right now, but they're also not doing enough. And so call them nonstop, write letters. I don't know if they're having town halls anymore, but have town halls, like whatever you have to do to be in front of them and let them know that this is not okay, um, do that. And and don't be afraid to speak truth to power as you build your capacity for using your voice. When people around you are spreading hate, don't be afraid to speak up. I mean, like I saw a post the other day of a woman basically saying like, if there's somebody in your life, probably a man telling you to stop carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders or to stop getting so worked up about it and stop caring so much. Getting too involved. Like they're part of the problem. They are protecting a system that is not built to protect all of us. And so don't let those voices be the loudest ones for you. Don't let them stop you from speaking your truth because it is causing nervous system dysregulation. And it's it's not contributing to that ripple effect that I think we need so strongly right now in order to be the louder voices, because the voices of cruelty and the voices of hate are the loudest right now. I think there's a lot of fear, you know, standing behind so many of us, um, keeping us from speaking up, speaking our truth. And so, you know, I think that I think it's really important to just stand firm in your values and what you believe. Share from the heart, share from a place that feels really aligned for you. But share, you know, share, like share what you think. Don't if you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, re-regulate and then re-enter. Because when you look away, they win, their voices stay louder. It doesn't take anything. Like they are literally just um building momentum for themselves. Like when you're just spewing hate, they're not, they don't have to like recharge, you know, they're just living in a constant state of hate and anger. And, you know, there's inner turmoil and dissonance in that by itself. But like to stand in love and light right now does take continuous regulation and continuous like replenishing of your own light. But you you have to keep doing it because really like everything's at stake. Like democracy really, like it's is it it is at stake. Um I don't know, just like everything that we we have loved about the United States in the past is at stake. And I don't know, like I guess I know which side of history I want to be on, but also like right now I know I want to be an ally. I want to be someone that stands up for my neighbors, and to do that requires discomfort, it requires overcoming some fear and it requires being really intentional about holding capacity for what's going on and then you know, recovery. But we have to do those things if if we want to have a better world. So anyway, um yeah, thanks for being here. I'm just really grateful for all of you. Um, grateful for um fan mail. I've gotten a couple of of notes if if any of what I'm saying here has has uh resonated. You have no idea how much it means to me. You know, I'm speaking into this void here, and I'm just hoping that, you know, it's I'm hoping that for anyone who needs to hear these words, it's helping. I'd love to hear from you guys. You know, uh send me a send me a message on Instagram or Substack, or you can email me. And um, yeah, I would just love to hear from you and connect. So thank you for being here and um I'll talk to you soon. Bye.