“We don’t move on from grief.
We move forward with it.”
Nora McInerny’s funny, yet strikingly poignant TED Talk was full of the kind of wisdom that I needed to hear. People have said that we are going through a collective grieving, the likes of which we have never experienced before. Five months and nineteen days since our first lock-down, I’m trying to move forward again after giving in to grief a few weeks ago.
During the now almost six months of this new reality I’ve learned that hope is a beautiful thing. Hope is what our farmers and partner communities teach us each day.
We, the Global Seed Savers Team, have learned that now is not the time to be silent. Not this time. This time, we fight! We continue to let our voices be heard through the cacophony that tries to drown out truth and justice. In one of the meetings I recently attended in the fight against the entry of GMOs in the Southern Philippines, one of our colleagues, while talking about working with certain groups, referred to herself as expendable. She was fully aware of what she was risking. That struck something in me. Nobody is expendable. Not anywhere. Not in the work we do. So now, we are taking a clearer and stronger stand. Fighting for seed sovereignty is akin to fighting for freedom. It is resisting the influences of colonization. Seed sovereignty and freedom both have a high price. But giving up will cost so much more!
When we hold a seed in our hand, we hold the past, the present and the future. We’ve been propelled into a present that none of us expected. The seed is both a symbolic and literal redemption in this pivotal now. When seeds are shared by more hands there is a greater chance that the future we create is better. We’re proud to be holding the line with steadfast and dedicated colleagues everywhere. Relationships based on trust and the principle of mutual aid are the strongest and best ones. When we are grieving collectively, it helps to know that when we reach our lowest low, someone will hold the flame for us. We move forward with grief but we move forward together. Seed on!
