Prepperism as community — and self — care

Can we transform the concept of prepperism to be about saving the individual to focus on collective activism, instead?

Welcome! This is the Sunday Soother, a weekly newsletter about compassionate personal growth and authentic living, written by me, Catherine Andrews, a life coach, teacher, and writer. Did somebody forward this to you? You can subscribe to the Sunday Soother here.

Happy Sunday, Soothers. Last weekend I was at a local fundraiser for North Carolina artists impacted by Hurricane Helene. As the artists were speaking and presenting about their projects, one noted this: “Hurricanes don’t hit the mountains.” But then, he said, of course it did, this time. And it will again. So what can his community do to prepare?

His colleague, another artist, joked about how he thought he was outdoorsy and at ease with camping, nature and outdoor living. “But it’s a different ballgame when you don’t have electricity for weeks and water for even longer,” he explained (their community, six weeks on, does still not have potable water). “It’s exhausting to live like folks did in the 1870s,” he cracked with warmth, but you could also see all the deep grief and tiredness on their faces.

I don’t know why, but, uh, I’m definitely the kind of person who, naively, thinks it’d be FUN! to live like folks did in the 1870s (though, obviously, this is not true, but I can’t help the places my little fantasy rabbit brain sometimes goes). I’ve also long had a weird side obsession with the idea of prepperism. The dictionary defines a prepper as “a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.”

Maybe prepperism just seemed like a salve for my anxious, trending-to-OCD brain — if you could just store all the right foods, materials, medicines, you’d be safe forever!!! And what comfort in that idea of imagined safety and security and control, a bulwark against a chaotic and potentially harmful future.

But I never dug super deep into prepperism, because the versions of it I always came across seemed tinged, if not outright laced, with the idea of the individual, against the rest of the world. Of one or a few select people staying safe, having enough, while everybody else was caught on their asses, doomed to whatever apocalyptic catastrophe was unfolding outside the bunker. Culturally, it’s also (at least in the versions I’ve come across) been tied to more conservative ideologies, as well as stockpiling weapons, creating militias, not to mention oodles of paranoia and fear.

Politically, morally, culturally, emotionally, that’s not what I’ve ever strived for, and I’m sure it’s the same for many of you, too.

But I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a small community not much different from the ones in North Caroline destroyed by Helene. And in the past several years, watching climate disasters play out in Austin, North Carolina, California, Oregon, Florida, Louisiana, the list goes on… it makes one start to wonder if there’s something to this prepperism game.

But could it be done for community? Prepperism not to save the individual and be against the world and isolate and retreat and save only us, but nobody else.

Prepperism to save our communities and help others and connect.

Prepperism, too, as self-care for a future self of ours, much like the way you might lay out your workout clothes and prep a healthy lunch for tomorrow you, just, ya know, a bit more extreme and long-sighted.

And when I think about prepperism, I think not just about material accumulation and stockpiling and readiness.

I think about emotional resiliency, physical strength, land connection and knowledge, and a willingness to be in discomfort as a necessary skill.

Some questions I’ve been pondering related to this topic:

• Am I in the kind of shape that I could hike up a mountain for a day to get a fellow human medicine that they need?

• What addictions (physical, like coffee or sugar or substances, or emotional, like shopping or scrolling) might I need to end now pro-actively, before they’re swept away and I have to detox at a difficult time, unprepared?

• What material addictions do I have that I could begin ending now? What might I be able to part with that my ego thinks I need, but my heart and soul truly don’t?

• Can I forage from the land around me? What medicinal plants and herbs can I identify and know how to use?

• How is my ability to handle grief, and process change, and be in uncertainty?

• How is the state of my soul? Do I have a spiritual, religious or other practice that sustains and nourishes me through the good and bad of life?

• What does my immediate, geographical and local community look like? Do I know my neighbors? Who can I rely on, and who and how can I help? Which of my community might need what in a disaster?

• How comfortable am I in nature? Have I been camping and do I understand some of the basics?

• What state does my nervous system currently spend most of its time in? If it’s fight or flight (or freeze or fawn), how can I get it more grounded 20% more, so it’s not so overloaded and reactionary and easily triggered?

• How comfortable am I with discomfort, overall, of all sorts? Physical, emotional, mental? What can I do to increase my ability to tolerate strains in those areas?

• Could I, if I had to, carry a child to safety? Push a neighbor who needs a wheelchair to where they need to go?

“Practice discomfort, and prepare to help” is one of the mantras I’ve been telling myself and leaning into over the past couple of years, particularly since COVID.

Every time I lift a heavier weight on the squat rack, or hike up a local mountain, I use as motivation the idea of being able to help another person with my strength.

Each time an uncomfortable emotion passes through my body, I tell myself, “Don’t numb out. Stay with this. Be right here, right now.”

When my little monkey-squirrel brain tells me I need to buy something nifty, right away, OR IT WILL EXPLODE!, or something breaks that I feel I need to replace immediately, I try to wait at least 24 hours to let that buy-buy-buy impulse pass.

When I fear about the uncertain future, and tend towards rumination, I comfort myself and say, “Don’t let the fear win; your mind, and you, are stronger.”

Every time I get deeply triggered by a person, situation, circumstance, I breathe, deeper and deeper, and don’t let the trigger in the driver seat.

This growth and its motivations give me comfort. I dunno. Maybe this is just where my OCD-lite is heading these days, and I’m over-reacting.

But a deeper part of me feels we’re being called to prepare, little by little, for more and more situations like this, so we can be of service and light to our communities.

The good news? Even if it’s scary, there are so many things we can do to increase our strength of all sorts (and physical strength is by far, NOT the only important strength. If you’re in a chronically ill or disabled body, the gifts of your heart, mind, and more that you have to give your community are absolutely critical).

I think of this work as falling into four core pillars, personally:

1. Increasing all sorts of strength as fits your abilities (physical, emotional, mental)

2. Becoming comfortable with discomfort and uncertainty

3. Learning to consciously and intentionally disengage with reliance on big and centralized systems outside of us, as well as material items

4. A return to connection with the land

Here are some ideas. I challenge you to pick one, or come up with your own, and tell us in the comments what you’ll be doing and when.

• If you’ve never camped before: go camping! You don’t have to buy a ton of gear or go far away. Get a basic tent, and set it up in your yard, or a friend’s yard, if you can, or a local state park with car camping. If you’re in MD/VA/PA, PATC cabins are a great bridge for this, too.

• See if you can figure out a meal to cook over a fire. What would it be? Try it out, if you have access to a firepit or grill.

• Try a weekend or just an evening without running water or electricity, or if ya wanna go ~cRaZY~, both. What do you notice?

• Where have you accumulated a ton of material goods? Where and how could you declutter (and donate) just even 10% of that?

• Cook a meal from non-perishable items you already have on hand

• Bring a neighbor a meal (if you can, ask their dietary needs and preferences beforehand)

• Let’s say your living situation/house was swept away tomorrow, but you had been told this was going to happen 24 hours in advance. What are the 5-10 things you’d ABSOLUTELY need - medications? Bottled water? A personal memento? How can you make sure to list those out, and have extra on hand, or in handy nearby access?

• Do these two sets of journal prompts I created about ambiguity and uncertainty post-COVID, see what you learn about yourself

• Go on a week, or four-week, or longer or shorter, shopping ban (this one is for me. I’m still so trigger-happy on that internet buy dopamine button)

• Spend one Saturday entirely screen-free

• Practice an evening or half day or day of fasting. Most of us don’t have bodies that are fat-adapted, meaning we can’t easily switch from using carbohydrates to fats as an energy source. Fasting aids in this metabolic process, and it helps with the ability to practice physical discomfort and notice its affects on your mental state

• Practice social discomfort and go force yourself to go to local community events and meet new people, or just introduce yourself to neighbors if you haven’t already. Embrace any awkwardness you feel and know you are increasing your emotional and mental resilience in doing so

• Go on a walk in nature without a phone. Let your mind wander and connect with the land around you

• Consider your relationship to death and grief (SOOOO chill and fun!!! But deeply necessary and truly the underpinning of all the advice above). How can you handle change? How have you handled grief? How could you make friends with the fact of death? Ram Dass’ writings on death have helped me; it may benefit you to search out writers, philosophers, thinkers, spiritual leaders who can talk about it in a way that resonate with you, too

(BTW, thank god I’m already married because I feel like if any potential dates came across this list of “ideas” they would be running the other way. Not the chill, fun girl, am I…)

Soothers. Dear Soothers. Between this post and the post-election post I wrote about collapse and fascism, yadda yadda, whatever, it may seem that I am poised on a doorstep of doom and gloom. Perhaps I’m scaring you a bit, or you’re feeling bummed out. “This isn’t what I need to feel better!” your brain may be crying. “Return me to the skin care recommendations and cozy mystery book endorsements!”

But I’ve always been a Pollyanna. An optimist. A believer in the best of humanity (though LARGE MOTHER-EFFING CHUNKS are TRULY testing this belief and faith in the past several years). I think we are ready to handle this sort of thinking, and emotional preparing, and to know, in fact, that we are meant for this time. Built for it. In fact, it may give us some sense of relief, control, to really think about what we can do, where we can have impact, how we could help. It does, at least, for me. There’s a grace and lightness in facing a truth long-felt but longer-unspoken or acknowledged, and then acting from that place and reality. And with it, we can also free up room to pick joy, choose pleasure, be present with delights that are here, right now, because we understand that everything is so impermanent and so we must make room for holding on to those, too.

Whatever may unfold in the coming years, I believe in YOU. Your strength, your grace. Your capacity, your resilience. The light you have, the helper’s heart, the deep desire to aid and assist.

Practice your discomfort tolerance right now; every little bit helps. And know you are on your way to creating a path and a heart and a mind of strength and fortitude, that one day may be just the light that somebody else will need to see.

xo
Catherine

PS: Good read on this topic that touches on some of my questions and thinking: Why Progressives Should Become ‘Preppers’ The prepper subculture has long been associated with the right but, with climate disasters on the rise, shouldn’t we all be thinking about how to better prepare ourselves and our communities?
PPS: Upcoming workshop alert! In moments of political and social turmoil—like today’s post-election landscape—the act of surrender becomes a radical, grounding choice — and honestly, often simply a necessity for our sanity.

But what does surrender mean in times of crisis?

And, uh... how do you actually, like, DO it?

Letting go of the need to control every outcome, leaning into trust, and acting from a place of inner peace rather than fear are at the roots of surrender, and Missy Toy Ozeas and I hope to help teach you how to do it with our new workshop on December 4th: How to Trust the Plan When It Feels Like There’s No Plan: An HSP’s guide to modern spirituality and surrender during times of upheaval.

Missy and I will discuss our own personal life stories of surrender and also teach you tactical, practical, meaningful steps to actually step into it — how you can do it, and how you MUST do it, during times of upheaval in particular.

This workshop is designed for highly sensitive people (HSPs) who feel the weight of the world deeply and want to find resilience and clarity amid the noise so they can help their communities and take grounded political action.

The evening with us will also include Q&A, sharing, and a conversation with the community. We know that like-hearted connection and community is more important than ever, so there will be plenty of that.

Dec. 4, 4pmPT/7pmET, lifetime replay provided. $25, get your tickets here.