I feel like I’m failing as a feminist.

Don’t over-read that statement. I don’t feel like I’m failing in general. In fact, in some areas of my life I am kicking some serious ass. Against all odds, this period of isolation and the chaotic learning environment have been amazing for my ADHD kids. We’ve all risen to this very weird occasion and we’re enjoying one another immensely.

It helps that our material needs are met. I have daily guilt over that. No, not guilt. More of a gnawing sense that I should be doing more for my community – the parts of my community that don’t live in my house.

I want to give myself a break because keeping a family fed and happy right now is an accomplishment. But then I remember that three months ago I was devoting hours every week to grassroots work for the Warren campaign and writing every day about social justice issues. And it’s not like I left the house much even before this all happened. I work from home. My daily excursions occur within a mile radius of where I live. I did my stuff from the chair I’m sitting in right now.

Why aren’t I doing more now?

I feel like my brain is swatched in cotton batting and I can’t push it away enough to formulate a plan for getting involved in some kind of socially distant social action. Most days I cant even compose pithy tweets. I gawp at posts from my friends online who are organizing grocery gift card distribution networks and writing books about reproductive justice. FFS, why can’t I pull it together and do some of that?

The answer, of course, it that I have ADHD and depression and we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. Something in my brain had to give and what gave was my SJW functions.

I desperately hope that this desire to rejoin the world of activism is the first step in actually doing some activism. But for now I am following the impulse to nest and giving money to good causes, even if I can’t give time or energy right now.

I know that’s limousine liberalism, armchair activism but it’s what I can do right now. And I have to be ok with that.