Lasara Firefox Allen
Can Breath Be Enough?
There’s a protest today. A big one. National. Historic, maybe. It’s the first real effort at a synchronized nationwide protest since the Tyrant took office.
And I might not go.
Not because I don’t care. But because I’m tired. Because I’m middle-aged and post-menopausal and drowning in paperwork and caretaker duty and adrenal fatigue and a to-do list as long as my arm. Because I’m late on filing my fucking taxes.
My morning ruminations are all over the place, and I find myself dropping into the awareness, once again, that this level of distraction, confusion, and overwhelm is the goal of the current administration. The firehose onslaught of executive orders—“Executive Disorders,” one friend called them, and another called them “Memos,” to underscore the fact that most have no actual teeth—is one of the main tactics leading to a sense of disequilibrium, panic, and information overload.
Many of these orders take aim at my core: my identity as a trans-identified person, my queer family, and my partner and child—both of whom live with disabilities. The ever-shortening news cycle obliterates our over-amped nervous systems, leaving our adrenals useless.
According to my Oura ring, my HRV is shot, and my resting heart rate currently hovers at about 72—a bit high for my nearly 54 years of age. My readiness score recommends rest, yet again, and my resilience is fluctuating between “limited” and a low “adequate.” The administration has apparently overtaken my autonomic nervous system; I worry even in my sleep, dreaming of urban warfare. Trying to hide from, outrun, and fight the military police—and even zombies. Oddly, though I’ve had dreams of the End Times and street wars since I was a small child, the zombies are a new addition to these low-grade nightmare terrains.
The app reading the feedback my ring sends shows that, as long as I get to bed on time, I still generally sleep OK for the few hours I find rest—even when being chased and hunted in my dreaming. For that, at least, I’m grateful. Peaceful sleep has been hard-won and continues to be a struggle, as I settle into my post-menopausal middle age. The Changes, with a capital C: night sweats giving way to too-easy waking, emotional dysregulation to flatlined moderate depression and a dull, monotonous anxiety.
It’s Saturday. I woke up and assembled my overwhelming to-do list for the day, in a haze of exhaustion from stress, interminable hours spent working, and multiple weekends with ailing parents. This Gen-X sandwich generation life is a doozy.
I want to go to the protest, but a stack of unorganized deductible receipts and untallied sources of gig income are waiting to be sorted, scanned, and uploaded. I really have to do my taxes. (Which is technically, like, the opposite of protesting.) I planned to have them done already, but instead I’ve spent many emergency hours in the emergency room, advocating for an ailing father who was once solidly estranged. As we move toward death the reasons for estrangement still exist, but the need to show up outweighs them. I’m not even sure why. Am I seeking acceptance? Is it the need to be the best child of all the children? The desire to lay claim to superiority and righteousness? Or merely the basic, generic compassion I’ve been cultivating as my lodestone and purpose for lo, these decades?
So here I am, deciding by way of prioritization: finish my taxes or go to the demo? Spend time with likely not-long-for-this-plane parents or build community with my peers? Work on my writing or clean my long-neglected office? Go to my friend’s milestone birthday—or get to sleep on time?
What is resistance? How does it show up? The truth is, I don’t know how to resist when I am so desperately tired.
Once again, I circle back to the oligarchic design: a hungry belly is unable to resist. An overscheduled service-sector dreamer struggling to support multiple tiers—and generations—of family can’t easily take time out to protest. So we do what we can. We do our best to support our families and communities. We continue pouring time, energy, love, and every ounce of hope we can muster into our jobs. (Who knew the end of Empire would include so much showing up at the desk to fight another day, and so many Zoom meetings?) And we pay our taxes, hoping that the less than 50% that doesn’t go to past, present, and future wars will help ensure that fewer folx are without basic services—as long as the administration isn’t successful in doing away with every last social service institution.
As the world burns, I continue doing my job, and hope that my values-aligned 70+ hours a week exempts me from further responsibility. (The old “I gave at the office” trope.) Collectively, we settle in for gladiator games as we count our meager blessings.
And I breathe my resistance.
Maybe showing up in whatever ways we can—even in our fatigue, even in our doubt—is resistance, too.
Can my exhausted, queer breath be enough?
Epilogue:
In the end, I went. Not because I felt less tired, or more prepared, or any closer to solving the riddle of resistance. Not because I had finished my taxes.
I went because, on the advice of my holistically-minded massage therapist, I ate a small quantity of mycelium—with the plan of chipping away at my to-do list while the medicine did its work, rebuilding the broken connection between the neurons in my brain—with the hope of solving some bit of what has become medication-resistant depression. (Really though, who wouldn't be depressed? I solidly believe it’s a reasonable response.)
But, as the psilocybin hit, bustling around and sticking my toes gingerly into my piles of must-be-done, I felt something subtle dawning. A gentle reawakening. A whisper that I needed to go—not out of guilt or duty, but out of presence and desire. Out of the need to be a body amongst bodies, a number among numbers, a voice in the crowd.
I texted a quick note outlining my predicament to a dear friend who I knew was protest-bound, and asked for a ride. They picked me up en route.
I arrived—still stressed, still tired, still aching with the everyday pain of surviving, still late on my taxes—with the low hum of mycelial magic guiding me gently back to the world. I stood amongst the thousands, sun dancing on my face, surrounded by strangers and comrades, cries of protest rising up in a syncopated rhythm that merged gorgeously into a unified tone.
I didn’t chant. I didn’t lead.
But I was there.
Breathing my queer breath. In community. In resistance.
And I might not go.
Not because I don’t care. But because I’m tired. Because I’m middle-aged and post-menopausal and drowning in paperwork and caretaker duty and adrenal fatigue and a to-do list as long as my arm. Because I’m late on filing my fucking taxes.
My morning ruminations are all over the place, and I find myself dropping into the awareness, once again, that this level of distraction, confusion, and overwhelm is the goal of the current administration. The firehose onslaught of executive orders—“Executive Disorders,” one friend called them, and another called them “Memos,” to underscore the fact that most have no actual teeth—is one of the main tactics leading to a sense of disequilibrium, panic, and information overload.
Many of these orders take aim at my core: my identity as a trans-identified person, my queer family, and my partner and child—both of whom live with disabilities. The ever-shortening news cycle obliterates our over-amped nervous systems, leaving our adrenals useless.
According to my Oura ring, my HRV is shot, and my resting heart rate currently hovers at about 72—a bit high for my nearly 54 years of age. My readiness score recommends rest, yet again, and my resilience is fluctuating between “limited” and a low “adequate.” The administration has apparently overtaken my autonomic nervous system; I worry even in my sleep, dreaming of urban warfare. Trying to hide from, outrun, and fight the military police—and even zombies. Oddly, though I’ve had dreams of the End Times and street wars since I was a small child, the zombies are a new addition to these low-grade nightmare terrains.
The app reading the feedback my ring sends shows that, as long as I get to bed on time, I still generally sleep OK for the few hours I find rest—even when being chased and hunted in my dreaming. For that, at least, I’m grateful. Peaceful sleep has been hard-won and continues to be a struggle, as I settle into my post-menopausal middle age. The Changes, with a capital C: night sweats giving way to too-easy waking, emotional dysregulation to flatlined moderate depression and a dull, monotonous anxiety.
It’s Saturday. I woke up and assembled my overwhelming to-do list for the day, in a haze of exhaustion from stress, interminable hours spent working, and multiple weekends with ailing parents. This Gen-X sandwich generation life is a doozy.
I want to go to the protest, but a stack of unorganized deductible receipts and untallied sources of gig income are waiting to be sorted, scanned, and uploaded. I really have to do my taxes. (Which is technically, like, the opposite of protesting.) I planned to have them done already, but instead I’ve spent many emergency hours in the emergency room, advocating for an ailing father who was once solidly estranged. As we move toward death the reasons for estrangement still exist, but the need to show up outweighs them. I’m not even sure why. Am I seeking acceptance? Is it the need to be the best child of all the children? The desire to lay claim to superiority and righteousness? Or merely the basic, generic compassion I’ve been cultivating as my lodestone and purpose for lo, these decades?
So here I am, deciding by way of prioritization: finish my taxes or go to the demo? Spend time with likely not-long-for-this-plane parents or build community with my peers? Work on my writing or clean my long-neglected office? Go to my friend’s milestone birthday—or get to sleep on time?
What is resistance? How does it show up? The truth is, I don’t know how to resist when I am so desperately tired.
Once again, I circle back to the oligarchic design: a hungry belly is unable to resist. An overscheduled service-sector dreamer struggling to support multiple tiers—and generations—of family can’t easily take time out to protest. So we do what we can. We do our best to support our families and communities. We continue pouring time, energy, love, and every ounce of hope we can muster into our jobs. (Who knew the end of Empire would include so much showing up at the desk to fight another day, and so many Zoom meetings?) And we pay our taxes, hoping that the less than 50% that doesn’t go to past, present, and future wars will help ensure that fewer folx are without basic services—as long as the administration isn’t successful in doing away with every last social service institution.
As the world burns, I continue doing my job, and hope that my values-aligned 70+ hours a week exempts me from further responsibility. (The old “I gave at the office” trope.) Collectively, we settle in for gladiator games as we count our meager blessings.
And I breathe my resistance.
Maybe showing up in whatever ways we can—even in our fatigue, even in our doubt—is resistance, too.
Can my exhausted, queer breath be enough?
Epilogue:
In the end, I went. Not because I felt less tired, or more prepared, or any closer to solving the riddle of resistance. Not because I had finished my taxes.
I went because, on the advice of my holistically-minded massage therapist, I ate a small quantity of mycelium—with the plan of chipping away at my to-do list while the medicine did its work, rebuilding the broken connection between the neurons in my brain—with the hope of solving some bit of what has become medication-resistant depression. (Really though, who wouldn't be depressed? I solidly believe it’s a reasonable response.)
But, as the psilocybin hit, bustling around and sticking my toes gingerly into my piles of must-be-done, I felt something subtle dawning. A gentle reawakening. A whisper that I needed to go—not out of guilt or duty, but out of presence and desire. Out of the need to be a body amongst bodies, a number among numbers, a voice in the crowd.
I texted a quick note outlining my predicament to a dear friend who I knew was protest-bound, and asked for a ride. They picked me up en route.
I arrived—still stressed, still tired, still aching with the everyday pain of surviving, still late on my taxes—with the low hum of mycelial magic guiding me gently back to the world. I stood amongst the thousands, sun dancing on my face, surrounded by strangers and comrades, cries of protest rising up in a syncopated rhythm that merged gorgeously into a unified tone.
I didn’t chant. I didn’t lead.
But I was there.
Breathing my queer breath. In community. In resistance.
Lasara Firefox Allen, MSW (they/them/Mx), is the author of Jailbreaking the Goddess (Llewellyn, 2016) and Sexy Witch (Llewellyn, 2005), as well as the chapbooks The Pussy Poems and Disjointed (as contributor and editor). They have four forthcoming prescriptive nonfiction titles, including Genderqueer Menopause, slated for release between 2025–2027. Enjoying a side-focus of micro-memoir and poetry, their work has appeared in Sledgehammer Lit, LiteraryKitchen.net, Spooky Gaze, Tangled Locks Journal, Spillwords, Mountain Bluebird Magazine, Guilt Scar Zine, and Pulp Lit Magazine. Lasara is a Witch, nonprofit CEO, menopause and life coach, and a co-conspirator for collective liberation.
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Subscribe to their Substack: substack.com/lasarafirefoxallen.
More at: linktr.ee/lasarafirefoxallen.
Socials:
Substack: @lasarafirefoxallen
Instagram/Threads: @lasara_firefox_allen
Facebook: /lasara.wakerobin.firefox.allen (personal) and /lasara.firefox.allen (professional)
TikTok: @lasarafirefoxallen
