Bring down cortisol - and we don't give up, we choose a lane.

(0:00) Okay, it's Friday. Tough love, let's go. It's time to pick a lane.

It's been a tough week (0:09) and time is ticking between now and the inauguration. Plus, we have all the (0:13) holidays in between and a calendar year change. Time goes fast.
Yeah, we're in grief. You get to (0:23) be sad. You get to be in grief, even if you take the whole weekend.

You bet. Go for a walk in the (0:33) Here's why. Because it lets you release your emotions.
But it also is one of the ways that (0:40) cortisol moves out of your body. When you have too much cortisol, which by the way, (0:46) kills your brain, kills your ability to learn. It is, it is very hard stress for your body.

(0:54) It leaves your body through water, it leads to tears, it leads to your urine, (0:59) and it leads to your sweat. If you're sweating it out, go take a shower right after. (1:04) But beyond cortisol, it's time to choose.

Choose one thing, choose something safe, (1:13) and choose what you can sustain. Make sure you also choose self-care, (1:18) because it's going to be a long road. It's going to be a long time.
There's a lot. (1:24) Don't reinvent the wheel. If it is something that you are interested in, choose a non-profit (1:32) that is already in existence and already doing good work.

It can be as simple as volunteering (1:38) to help put mailers together at your local ACLU. It can be as simple as going to Planned Parenthood (1:50) and asking them what kind of volunteers they need. Maybe you don't want to be a volunteer (1:56) that is between you and the protesters, or between the patient and the protesters, (2:01) but there are other things you can do.

Maybe it is in learning how to be, how to be someone who (2:11) works on the 9-8-8 line. Maybe you are a person who is ready to help with the domestic violence (2:21) in your town or such. It needs to be a safe place for you.

That's going to be different for (2:29) everybody, because safe in a target is an issue now, and it's going to continue to be an issue. (2:38) It also needs to be something that you can sustain through self-care because it doesn't (2:43) drag you down mentally and physically and grind you into nothing. (2:48) Maybe what is best for you is to become a volunteer at your local library.

(2:54) Do the things that you need to do to help be a light in all of this, to be able to continue (3:03) to say things are important to me and I have a voice that matters. We don't just go and give up. (3:14) We can't.

We cannot do that, and we know that. Is it going to be hard? Yes. Is it going to be tiring? (3:21) Yes.
Pick one thing, because if you try and scattershot across all of the different places (3:29) and all of the different areas, it will destroy you. It will destroy your energy. It will destroy (3:37) your soul.
It's too much. Pick something you're interested in and do that. Trust yourself enough (3:49) to say, okay, I've done this for six months.

This is breaking my heart. I can't do this anymore. (3:56) Take a week off or a weekend or a couple of weeks and choose something else and get involved there.

(4:05) We need you. We need you to be the beautiful, bright light that you are. We need you to continue (4:13) to do the work that you have done, and we cannot let them take that away from us.
(4:21) We are more than that, and we will continue to be more than that. There are always ways (4:28) to fight back. We're going to find them.
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We're going to use them. We're going to lose (4:35) more than a few, and the truth is we're going to lose people, and that's part of our grief right (4:41) now, but that doesn't mean we give up. It means we find a way through and that we be a light for (4:48) others to see that none of us are alone.