Like a Fool

On Setting Out Like the Journey's Completely New

The Fool is a card of new beginnings, opportunity and potential…Even though you don’t know exactly where you are going, you are being called to commit yourself and follow your heart, no matter how crazy this leap of faith might seem to you. Now is a time when you need to trust where the Universe is taking you. - Biddy Tarot

When I launched the 2024 Election Year Support Group for white women, I knew that - as females, prone to society’s expectation that we endlessly care-take everyone around us -  it needed to be grounded in nourishing our own nervous systems and determining what was uniquely ours to do. I realized that that had to apply to me, too. 

For a long time my partner and I had dreamed of visiting Europe together, but the pandemic, the climate crisis, and other responsibilities had kept us from acting on it. Crazy as it may sound, we decided to spend May of 2024-May of 2025 abroad, living and working remotely. Wild.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “I thought Michelle said she had been serious about preventing another Trump presidency?!” And, in fact, I was. I led the Election Year Support Group all year via Zoom. I voted by mail, participated in phone banking at extremely odd hours from Europe, and donated money to the organizers working on the ground to get out the vote in the most contested races. All things I would’ve done from my home in California; I just did them from a bit farther away. 

I was clear that it was simultaneously time for me to hunker down and organize my butt off to defeat rising fascism, and time to live my life like the world we’ve long needed is already here. Working to be as powerful as I could be in the outcome of the election simply insisted that I not put off going for the life I wanted for myself a second longer. Of course that election didn’t go the way I’d so dearly hoped. The fool doesn’t always succeed! At least not in a linear sense. And yet, my partner and I visited some of our ancestral homelands, learned a lot about ourselves, our people, and the larger world, all while feeling very much ALIVE. Turns out I was having one of the very best years of my life while fighting a battle that I ultimately lost. And now - what do you know? - there is another important election that requires our serious attention. Always will be…

The truth is, I think we’re being called to do work that is bigger, wilder, more complex and alive than simply out-organizing our political opponents, though we’ve *also* got to learn how to do that. We’re being invited to regenerate our very love of life, our wildest hopes, and yes, even our “foolishly” large visions for what’s possible. Tinkering around the edges of this morally bankrupt system simply will not do. It’s time to face the ways we’ve become jaded in our thinking; to reclaim the beauty of our right to vote, and, more than that; its radical promise. There are so many ways to act powerfully. What path do you feel beckoning to you?

I remain inspired by the All By April movement which is bent on making sure that nonprofits which fight for us to have a functioning democracy receive the funding they need in time to do their work most effectively each election cycle. One of them writes, “Many donors do not realize that supporting democracy in an election year requires donations by the spring, not the summer or fall.” So I make my election-related donations by the end of April, and I fundraise from others in my community, asking them to do the same. 

For white women like me, there’s a particular kind of gold that resides at the intersection of where our oppression and privilege meet that I want us to learn to leverage responsibly. You could even call it “Fool’s Gold,” also known as Pyrite: “a substance that is common, widely distributed, and useful for sparking fires.” What if white women really rose to this challenge and helped to start little fires of funding everywhere to benefit the grassroots organizers working to win a governing power? What if our movement’s visions really came to pass?

The Fool lifts his chin and gazes upward. Risking foolishness beneath a bright sun, with a lightness of step, he approaches a precipice he may just fall into. He is hopeful: more interested in potential than guarantees. With a white rose of innocence in his hand, and a small bag slung over his shoulder, he expresses a pared-down sense of enoughness, and a willingness to GO. A little white dog plays at his feet, up for the challenge, excited to accompany him, wherever they are headed, together. 

I’d love to have you with us in my next group for white women working towards social justice. Register your interest here.

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