JenTalksLoud

January 24, 2025

Lately, I have found myself in what feels like a crisis of spirit—caught up in a Nutri bullet of anxiety, rage, grief, and fear, likely (most definitely) heightened by this week’s inauguration and subsequent executive orders. 

After some reflection, I have come to notice the most common feeling is regret. 

There’s something toxic about the mantra of “no regrets, ” and I think regret gets a bad rap. We should regret gauchos, passing things like Prop 8 in California, and all the terrible things we said about Britney in the early 2000’s. 

And when it comes to the election, I’m more than reluctant to let us off the hook by saying “Hindsight is 20/20”. I think we need a little more tough love than that. 

To embrace accountability, we have to acknowledge and own our missteps. Regret, to me, is the reminder of what it feels like when we don’t chart a better path forward after doing something wrong.

One note: I am going to use the royal we a lot here because I am speaking to feelings of personal culpability and a common feeling of the collective dread (that I have noticed via being chronically online). I want to be clear I am not absolving the role of institutional corruption in how we got here. 

Here’s what I think regret allows me to do: 

Get Off My Ass. 

I spent Saturday at the People’s March, and let me tell you, it was as cathartic as hell. We followed behind the Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Free DC, Palestinian Youth Movement DC group. It was a reminder that strength lies in community. And that I don’t want to live with the regret of something happening to a friend or neighbor because I didn’t show up when it mattered. Here in DC, the fight I want to lean into more is for DC statehood. (More on this at a later date!) 

It also made me miss Oakland, where trolls rarely made an appearance. Here, there were tons of people in town to celebrate the installment of our Rapist in Chief. Many took it upon themselves to act like petulant children (Literally – for real – there were grown men in red hats and ugly suits skipping outside Gallery Place METRO with little rapist flags.) 

The march was a lot of things, but the word we kept coming back to the most was “joyful”. Despite everything, we found literal joy in the community we were in. We were mad as hell but we were joyful.

Protect My Peace. 

In 2016, the Wednesday after election night, I found myself angry and crying at some tech bro who I overheard say, “I’ll be honest, I voted for him.” That was embarrassing. I regret that. Not the calling him out per say, but doing so when I was emotionally unprepared to handle it.

What I didn’t do? Argue with the MAGAts in attendance at the People’s March. Instead, I made it my mission to disrupt their little social media influencer efforts by yelling over them and forcing them to move away from the group in order to get coherent content. It felt like a healthy, non-violent way of protest while leveraging one of my greatest strengths.  #JenTalksLoud 

On the Sunday before Inauguration Day, I escaped the city to this cute K9 oasis on the Chesapeake Bay. And since there were literal Nazis downtown showing support for the removal of abortion rights today, I was grateful to recharge, away. It allowed me to return with more of a crystalized understanding of what I could do without getting caught up in the insanity that was (is, will be) DC. 

Sometimes protecting my peace looks like yelling over bigots. Sometimes it looks like removing myself from the environments that trigger me when I can. Plus Charli had the time of her life sniffing and losing her mind over deer on our (very cold) walk.

Learn from Regret.

We should regret the last election; we should regret 2016. (Looking at you, DNC.) We can’t ignore how many lives have been affected by regressive, often deadly, public policy—lives lost and futures dimmed because we haven’t made enough progress.

And I’d be remiss not to recognize those who remind me, “[The status quo] has always been the case; people are just out in the open now.” We can’t keep going like we’re going and expect everyone to be okay. If we aren’t regretful about recent and historical events, what are we really doing differently? 

A conversation with a friend got me thinking about regret versus shame and guilt. Regret is like wishing for a do-over. While guilt and shame? Those bastards are the result of cognitive dissonance. Shame keeps us from seeing the truth. And wallowing in guilt – that just drowns progress. What happens when you can accept your regrets and still find joy amidst the chaos? You create a new direction. It’s a hard balance, but I think it’s possible, even when the world seems upside down.