“People are still working, students are still expected to give exams, people are still expected to show up to 8-hour work days and is sab mein (in all this), if you lose someone, where do you make time and space for grieving if you have to work the very next day?”
— Kuhoo Tiwari, on dealing with grief during the COVID-19 pandemic in this episode.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most catastrophic events in world history. Between money-hungry institutions gatekeeping vaccine access and poorly planned infrastructure crumbling almost entirely, citizens of countries around the world have witnessed first-hand the sinister functioning of capitalism even in times of crises. How do you deal with the collective grief and loss from the pandemic? How can we advocate for vaccine justice? How can we hold those in power accountable? In this episode of the podcast, co-host Sanchi Mehra discusses these questions with Kuhoo Tiwari.
Content Warning: This conversation includes discussions around grief, death, loss of a loved one, and social injustices during the pandemic.
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Love to read or want to revisit your favourite bits? Dive into the full transcript below!
Sanchi
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Nurturing Radical Kindness Podcast, a space where we explore radical kindness as a pathway to achieving social justice. My name is Sanchi and my pronouns are she/her.
Kuhoo
And I’m Kuhoo, and my pronouns are she and her as well. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the podcast. I’m so excited to be here today.
Sanchi
Hi, Kuhoo. Thank you so much for joining us today, and since it’s your first time on air, on the show, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?
Kuhoo
Sure, Sanchi, thank you so much. So, my name is Kuhoo and I’m a 19-year-old student and I’m currently studying to become a mental health professional. I’m also the Program Officer for Knowledge and Advocacy at One Future Collective and have been working on content for this podcast, Nurturing Radical Kindness, for the first season. I’m so glad to be hosting this episode with you today, Sanchi, and I’m so happy to see how much love we’ve received on the podcast. So, yeah, I can’t wait to get started.
Sanchi
Absolutely, and thank you so much for everyone who’s been listening in. We really appreciate all the feedback that we’ve gotten and as Kuhoo said, all the love. And thanks to you too, Kuhoo, for all that you do. I know that times have been tough, so let me just begin by asking you how are you doing today?
Kuhoo
Thank you for that question, Sanchi. I think it’s a loaded one and I’ve had to actually answer this a few times this week, and I’m really happy that people are holding space for compassion at the moment and asking each other how they are doing. Personally, I think I’ve been doing okay. It’s been a tough year and in general a very tough past two months. I think I’ve been feeling really anxious and it’s not been the best of times, but I think something that’s really helped me is just taking things one day at a time and like focusing on tasks that need to get done. And yeah, I think that’s how I have been coping, but how are you doing?
Sanchi
First of all, thanks a lot for sharing, Kuhoo. I hear you and I also resonate with a lot of what you’ve shared. Yeah, times haven’t been great, but just trying to stay afloat, I think that’s the best I can answer that question right now. And I think this ties really well with our conversation for today too, right? Since we will be talking about COVID and vaccine justice and also grief in today’s episode.
Kuhoo
Absolutely. And to get our conversation started, Sanchi, I’d like to ask you, how do you think COVID has personally affected you, not just in the past year, but especially the past few months with the second wave hitting us.
Sanchi
Like the how are you question, I don’t think I have a straight answer to that because most days mujhe samajh nahi aata (I don’t understand) what I’m feeling or how to articulate my feelings, but I think it’s been a prolonged period of isolation for so many of us, and it’s new, right? And everyone has different experiences with it. I mean, mere liye (for me) this is still new, even though ye pandemic ko shuru hoye India mein ek saal se zyaada ho chuka hai (it’s been more than a year since the pandemic started in India), it still remains to be new for me. And even though I might be used to some parts of it now, abhi bhi bohot saari aisi cheeze hai (there are still a lot of things), which I’m still adapting to. So, some days are easier than others and some days I’m just trying to stay afloat and this experience has just, I don’t know, magnified in the last two months. So yeah, some days are easier, some days are not. There is, I think, a very extended feeling of just general burnout. I have personally never been so low on motivation. My usual coping techniques that worked for me earlier, like meditating or just making mandalas, journaling, dancing, most of my go-to things do not seem to work for me anymore and this is for me as someone who has access to healthcare services right, be it mental or related to nutrition or physical. And you know Kuhoo, something that I resonated with quite a lot was the feeling of languishing. I read this article by Adam Grant in The New York Times that just really help me understand at least a part of what I was feeling on days when I just felt like ‘bleh’, and how they describe it is like, it’s not exactly burnout, we still have some energy and it’s not depression, even though I know that a lot of us are showing more and more signs of depression, but on some days when I just feel joyless and nameless, jaise (like) I can’t exactly pinpoint what’s happening, but I know I’m not flourishing, right? On those days, it just brings me thoda sa (little bit) comfort to just label my feelings of emptiness as languishing. And matlab aisa lagta hai ki (I feel that), on some days I have no energy, right? Because there is just so much grief, there is so much anxiety. Itna sab kuch galat hai (There is so much wrong). The country is literally burning down, so how am I supposed to just carry on? Or just stay above water. Like, you know, right now, in this moment, it feels so freeing to have this conversation with you, but it also feels like I don’t have the energy to go on.
Kuhoo
Absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for sharing that, Sanchi. I can’t agree with you more and your point about languishing and about how there are days when you feel joyless, but there’s no word to put to it. I think that has been most of my days, where it’s almost like we’re living in a loop, right? The days pass on so similarly, and when you talk about the country burning down and just general anxiety around that, I know that for me, even checking the news has become a source of anxiety. Even just looking at COVID statistics or anything like how our state is doing, how the country is doing, it brings me so much anxiety to the point where I had to go off Instagram for an entire week and that takes so much privilege for me to be able to say that because I know it was being used as a space to access so many resources, right? But for me, it was impossible for me to exist in that space without feeling anxious every second of the day. And I know ki (that) something that a lot of us are also facing is compassion fatigue. Ab ek saal ho gaya hai (It’s been a year), right? And we’ve seen so many people lose so much, and historically jab hum compassion fatigue ki baat karte hai (when we talk about compassion fatigue), we think of care workers, we think of healthcare workers who feel this. But in this pandemic, I think almost all of us to some extent have had to care for someone who is COVID-positive or have had to care for ourselves or I’ve had to see grief and loss at a very personal level, now whether this be the grief of losing someone we love, the grief of losing a friendship, or the grief of losing the life that we had before this. And now I think we are so rung out on compassion as well, even to treat myself with kindness has become tough because I don’t have any kindness left to give. And yeah, it’s been a really, really tough time. I think it’s manifested in so many ways. Constantly, I can feel that I’m exhausted, that sense of general burnout, like you mentioned, and something really interesting that I’ve been facing is brain fog or just general forgetfulness, and ye mere saath kabhi bhi nahi hua hai (this hasn’t happened to me before) where I can’t remember simple things like remembering to eat food, or remembering to send an email and for me to have to write that down and like schedule meals in my calendar has been something that has never happened before, but I just don’t remember. There’s so much on my mind but also nothing on my mind at the same time, and it’s been a very, very confusing time. But I think we spoke a little bit about this, but I, I really want to get into it. When we talk about grief and loss, I know a lot of us have been mourning alone and the pain is too big to carry alone, right? I think psychotherapist Darian Leader has stated something which made a lot of sense to me, where he spoke about how mourning requires other people, but I’d love for you to talk a little bit about grief and loss in the times of COVID as well as Sanchi.
Sanchi
Absolutely and Kuhoo, I felt every word of what you shared like you know the general forgetfulness, just not remembering what to do or just daily tasks, you know? Jo pehle kabhi nahi hota tha (what never used to happen before). Like that’s happening and that’s real and I completely hear you on that. And on grief, like I don’t even know where to begin on that, right? Because like you said, a lot of us are mourning alone and this pain is just- it’s massive. It’s too big for us to carry by ourselves, and we are grieving that loss, right? The loss of people who may have touched our lives and the loss of not being able to then process this loss with other people who may be feeling the same. I mean, it’s insignificant, Kuhoo, but I am a hugger and I feel that I’m just starved for the comfort of a hug from a loved one. Like, there’s so much pain and it also manifests physically sometimes for me, you know? I get these headaches that I never used to; my joints start paining. It’s just, it’s exhausting, like coping with grief and coping with it alone, I don’t know, it just feels like a mountain that you’re not able to climb or you just keep climbing but just never reach the summit, right? And is sab ke saath (with all of this), we are also struggling to cope with the uncertainty and the anticipation and the grief that brings. So not only are we mourning the loss of actual people, we’re also like coping with having to deal with the thoughts of potential losses in the very near, very realistic future and dealing with loss of actual lives with thoughts, and also mourning the loss of what our lives used to be. Just aisa lagta hai kabhi kabhi (sometimes it feels) like there’s no place left to turn to. What do you think?
Kuhoo
Absolutely and I don’t think it’s insignificant at all what you brought up about touch, because I know that humans, of course, are very social animals, but me personally, my love language is touch and so, the past year I have felt so starved of affection almost, even though I’m lucky enough to be staying with my family and I’m lucky enough to have a really good relationship with my parents. I have all of this privilege, but the fact that I’m still missing hugs, I’m still missing just like sitting next to a friend, being able to share space together, I couldn’t resonate with that more. And you know something you spoke about anticipatory grief of knowing that even the future holds grief for us. I think that is a constant thought on our mind as well, right? Because so much we’ve spoken about how this pandemic is temporary, but it really doesn’t feel that way,and we realize that things will be different. Things are not going to be the same ever and in this broadly imagined future, I can see almost like a storm coming, and I don’t want it to feel that way. I want to work with my healing and I want to process the losses that I’ve had, but right now there’s no space for that. I feel like there’s something still bad out there because there is, there’s been a complete loss of safety. There’s been a complete, like, snatching away of what it means for us to be social, of what it means for us to have community, and we may be able to meet each other online. We can do things like have these conversations with each other in different parts of the city, but still, we’re not together and that changes so much. I feel like this is an experience we’ve never ever had and it’s really scary. And you know something interesting is also how if you’ve avoided the virus, you’re also experiencing survivor’s guilt because hume aisa lag raha hai ki how is it that hum bach gaye (we feel like how did we survive this), right? And why is it that hum bach gaye (we survived)? when you lose a loved one, when you lose someone, you really looked up to, there’s almost this thing of why me, why them and not me? And it has been a very tough emotion to deal with. I think something that has been really saddening is people having to grieve on a schedule kyunki (because) even though pandemic chal raha hai (is going on), I know logon ka kaam bhi chal raha (people’s work is also still going on). People are still working, students are still expected to give exams, people are still expected to show up to 8-hour work days and is sab mein (in all this) if you lose someone, where do you make time and space for grieving if you have to work the very next day? I know people in my college who lost a family member and they had to sit for an exam the next day, or they had to sit for an exam within the next hour and you don’t process that grief because you put it aside. You put it away for a later time when you have, you know, the emotional capacity to deal with it, but when is the later time? Constantly in the same cycle of being at home, having to cope with all these things and having to grieve on a schedule has been so tough. I think this pandemic has felt so open-ended, you know?
Sanchi
Absolutely. I completely hear you on that Kuhoo. And yeah, I mean, how do you put a timeline to grief, right? I mean, everybody processes things differently and just, for example, where I work, we get a three-day bereavement leave but who decided that, right? Like, how do you expect somebody or everybody to just live everything that they’re living through in that three days’ time and get back to work? And you know, Kuhoo, I want to spread hope, but I feel grief. I feel anger, I feel exhaustion but more than anything, what I’m feeling right now is just helplessness, because there’s so much that is wrong, right? And like you said, we’re going through something that we’ve never experienced before and on top of that, there is just so much injustice and so many gaps in access that are stemming from the pandemic, and I feel so helpless that I’m not able to help out, or maybe help out as much as I want to. And then a related thing is that why is the onus of helping out, being put on us, being put on citizens? I know from my own and other people’s experiences that a lot of us as citizens feel so guilty because we are not able to help out, be it because of the lack of resources available or the acute shortage of infrastructure or due to our own mental health. We feel guilty because we tell ourselves that we are not doing enough, but that onus in the very first place should not be on us. And idhar (here) Kuhoo, I’m reminded of these two tweets by Nikhil Taneja, wherein in one he urges us not to feel guilty and like, just not feel guilty about not doing enough because it’s not supposed to come down to us. We pay taxes so that in times of crisis our representatives help us, right? But they failed us so just reading that one tweet helped me on that day that I was feeling very, very anxious and guilty. So, to all our listeners, I just want to say this, it’s absolutely not on you. And another related thing that he said and at the risk of repetition, I am going to say this again. ‘Everything is broken and it absolutely shouldn’t be up to citizens to fix it.’ So, it’s amazing to see the power of people coming together, but also tragic that we have to set up volunteer frameworks and search engines to find things that people in power should be providing for us. I mean, we are ever so grateful to all the people who are stepping up to help. It’s really a thank you beyond words. But also, a word of caution, which is like let us not romanticize this courage our people have shown because this is not what we asked for. Speaking from personal experience, I work in the HR field, in a corporate space, and in my role as an HR business partner, I just never imagined that one day my job description would include calling up hospitals and checking on the availability of beds and oxygen for affected employees and their loved ones. And having conversations about coping with the loss of a loved colleague or a family member, I mean how did we get to a point where a capitalist organization that runs purely for profit, and I was quite surprised at this, how is it that my capitalist employer has probably done more for its members than our representatives? And it just angers me and exhausts me again and again and I can then only imagine the courage it must take for everyone who is doing this day in and day out, out of choice because we essentially have no other choice. And again, there’s just so much wrong. Our access to basic healthcare is being dictated by our identity and the positions we occupy in this country’s society and I don’t know if things could be worse and there was a light, right? There was the hope of a vaccine, but somehow, we have managed to mess that up too, and mess it up massively.
Kuhoo
Absolutely, Sanchi. And something you said about not romanticizing courage, I think for a very long time we used language like ‘COVID warriors’ and ‘frontline warriors’ and when you label healthcare workers as warriors, that is very inappropriate because nobody who chose to become a healthcare worker wanted to become a warrior. When we’re talking about the kind of courage they have displayed, it is purely because this was demanded of them, because the government was not able to set up infrastructure that could support its citizens. And of course, our healthcare workers have done an amazing job and for them to show up so beautifully for the country and for all of the citizens and globally, right, not just in India has been wonderful to see, but how are we demanding so much of our citizens? And when we talk about the vaccine as well, I know that in India the shortage of vaccines and oxygen in the past two months has been staggering. The visuals that have come out of the country have been extremely, extremely heartbreaking and even with that, when we knew that we did not have enough vaccines, the vaccination drive for the age group of 18 to 44 was started but where are the vaccines to give right? And at this point in time, we are witnessing what the World Health Organization has basically described as a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines as well, between the rich and the poor countries, and within countries, between rich and poor citizens, because corporations are basically impeding or limiting access to quality and accessible vaccines, and bohot lambe samay mein (in a long time) healthcare in general, we’re prioritizing the lives of very specific people and we’re not providing equitable vaccinations. Do we prioritize lives of people or do we prioritize profits of select corporations? And right now, I think what we’re doing is the latter, right? Because when you look at a global scale, jab hum puri duniya mein dekhte hai (when we see in the whole world), wealthy countries have focused almost exclusively on securing vaccines for their own populations instead of investing in cooperative initiatives. And to give you an example, so I am 19 and that means I am eligible for vaccination in India at this point in time, and even if I have been trying for the past two weeks every day to book a slot, I haven’t been able to do so, but at the same time, my friends who are sitting in a country like Canada or who are sitting in a country like the US or those in UK were vaccinated almost three months ago and the disparity is staggering, right? Because when you talk about vaccination justice, if these wealthy countries have basically almost exclusively gotten vaccines for their own populations, what is happening is there’s a severe shortage for countries across the world who are not able to afford this. There are limited supplies with vaccines as well. If you look at Canada, it has nearly secured 10 doses per capita and what these countries are basically doing is that they are raising vaccine pricing and squeezing lower-income countries completely out of the vaccination race. I mean, South Africa had to pay double for what the European Union did for the vaccine and that is so shocking because at this time, when we are facing this pandemic of global proportions, where we’re facing loss like never before, even here, our capitalist agendas are coming into place. Even right now, what we’re focusing most is on profit and not on saving lives of people across the world. Most wealthy countries will fully vaccinate their population this year, but lower-income countries and countries in the global south may not achieve mass immunization until 2024, and that is 3 years from now. And if this vaccine nationalism almost continues, the poorest in the world will be pushed into more disease, into more poverty, and into more death, right? And closer to home, Sanchi, I know things have been really scary as well. Would you like to talk a little bit about how India has been handling vaccination?
Sanchi
Yeah, thank you so much for raising such important points, Kuhoo. It just so vividly brings to life like, what the true picture of the suffering is really and I think, moreover, the biased suffering at various levels, right? And like you pointed out, it’s just been done for select people, right? And so while we talk about the skewed suffering like you already have mentioned and the vaccination, I think it’s very important to look at how the vaccination drive in our country is being run currently and more importantly who is it being done for, and I think it’s quite clear, ab toh jab se 18-44 years ka slot khula hai (since now the 18-44 yrs slot is open). It’s very evident who are the people the drive is for or what are the groups that the country regards as its population. I think it’s beyond a doubt, it’s very clear that it’s the upper class, upper caste, privileged elite who seem to be ahead in what has actually become a game of survival of the fittest and the fastest, to get slots on the CoWin app, or, you know, simply through our economic, social and cultural capital. In our country, vaccine lagwaane ke liye (to get the vaccine), you have to have a working smartphone or computer, you need to have access to fast, reliable Internet, you need to be digitally literate. You need documentation or ID proofs. You need to be able to go to vaccination centres and of course, have the means to reach there, and like this is by no means, this doesn’t cover everything you need to have. These are simply the most obvious ones that we see, right? So, I don’t know in a country that’s divided on so many parameters, it really just makes you wonder who are the people the country currently thinks of its own, right? And there are just so many problems that come with this, like even though we hear that Aadhaar isn’t necessary to register for the vaccination, we also know that countless hospitals, kitne saare (so many) private suppliers and states say ki (that) Aadhar is necessary to access medical resources. We’ve heard so many cases where vaccines have also been denied due to errors and documentation and Aadhar is also considered necessary for admission into COVID wards in so many places. So, what of our people who do not have documentation? Are we just okay in denying them access to life-saving resources? And I just feel defeated and there is a whole separate conversation about our data and its privacy and about the government initiating things like facial recognition for vaccinations and health IDs for vaccinated people, right? And I know that so many people’s organisations have come together to demand things like walk-in access for vaccination, vaccination provision in the absence of Aadhar, in absence of CoWin or of residence or any ID proof, no unethical data collection through apps, and to have a more equitable and just an accessible vaccination drive for everybody in the country and not just some chosen sections and I have been learning a lot about this through the Internet Freedom Foundations’ Instagram page, and would definitely recommend the same to any one of our listeners who’d like to read more about this. And again, it’s just, it just comes down to the fact that it’s infuriating that people of our country, that the civil society has to remind our representatives of why what they are doing is just plain wrong, and dealing with these injustices that have been created, you know? These didn’t come along with the pandemic, right? These created injustices while also going through a life-altering pandemic, I mean, it is bound to take a toll on our mental health, individually and collectively.
Kuhoo
Absolutely. Sanchi, I hear you and you bring up some really important points about who do we value in our country? What citizens are we seeing is valuable? And while we were talking, I was also thinking about like, there are so many things we’re not considering. What do we do if someone has a disability? We’re talking about fastest and fittest, right? But the slots are getting booked in 2 minutes flat. How do you account for someone who might not be able to book it as fast? And even if we are able to book it, how do you account for people who are not able to take time off work to go get the vaccine? When my father had to go get the second dose of the vaccine, he was booked for an 11:00 AM slot and he got home by 6:00 PM and he was able to take the whole day off of work because he requested for it, but that’s a great privilege in itself, right? How do you miss a whole day of work when you’re not even able to pay for the vaccine? And this is something that has been infuriating, that right now we only have for the 18-44 section of private vaccines available, with slots going up as high as ₹1300 per vaccine. How? How are you supposed to pay for this? How are marginalized people, or people who are not even able to get a day off work for this supposed to pay those high prices for something that should be so easily and openly available to all? It is absolutely infuriating, and it has taken a toll on my mental health and it has increased so much anxiety, not for myself but for my friends, the people that I love, the people that I work with, because I’m just thinking that where do we go from here? There’s so much loneliness, there’s so much burnout and general exhaustion. There’s so much loss, but there’s also so much anger. What do we do with all of this anger, right? How am I supposed to sort of deal with it? And there’s also the inability to access mental health support. I know a lot of us have realised in the pandemic that this is something we require and this is something that might help us, but I know that there have been reservations that people have to be able to access mental health support. And Sanchi, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about what those reservations might be, why people might not access this support.
Sanchi
Absolutely. And thank you so much once again, Kuhoo for like, I just think you articulated so many of my feelings so well. So really thanks a lot for that. And I think when we talk about access to mental health, the first thing, of course, is the cost of support, right? Do we have the economic means to access mental health, right? And that of course, is the first barrier, but even if we go past that, I think there’s just so much social stigma around it that for somebody like me who started using mental health services, I started going to a therapist during the pandemic and I do have the economic means to access it, but I still don’t tell my parents about it, and I don’t know why that is, right? I don’t tell them that I’m going for therapy. I try and fund that on my own from whatever I’m earning or I am comfortable with my sister, so I ask her to fund it for me. But there’s just, I don’t know, I also have inhibitions about talking to my parents about it because I don’t know how do I begin that conversation. And again, this is for somebody like me who has the economic means to it, right? So first of course is a huge economic barrier to access mental health services and then just in the kind of society that we are in right now, Kuhoo, I think it’s just tough for us to talk about it and I don’t know, like it’s so wrong on my part as well, to not initiate that conversation with my family. I should do it, but somehow, I don’t also find the courage to do it, and I also fall into a trap of guilt about it because there are so many things that maybe I don’t talk about, but somewhere I feel I don’t have the strength to do it. And I’m just trying to pick my battles and trying to stay afloat, but I’m also hoping that I get around to talking about it to my family. So yes, I think one of course is the cost and another is the, just the kind of ideas we have about what mental health services might be like, right? Just our societal, conceptual understanding of it as a country, as a society. What are your thoughts on it?
Kuhoo
Absolutely. I think those are some really, really important points and funny how you bring up that you started accessing therapy during the pandemic because I also had my first therapy session in the past year. And for me right, I’m studying to become a mental health professional, but still, in the first few months of accessing therapy, when I would bring it up to my friends, I would almost hesitate. Before I said so, I spoke about this as therapy or my therapist told me because I felt, I don’t know what this barrier is, why there is so much social stigma around it. And in general, we are very, very afraid to ask for this support because it also makes us look weak somehow, right? If we’re unable to manage these things by ourselves, and I don’t think that you’re weak or anything to not be able to have this conversation with your parents because it’s a very tough conversation to have. I know that in a lot of Indian families, our first resort is why don’t you just talk to us about it? And in a time when we need mental health support more than ever, the kind of restrictions that we have in talking to our friends and family about it has really been like a huge hurdle in us even accessing mental health support. Now I’ve come to a point where I’m very easily able to talk about therapy and to advocate for therapy, but I still know that people have hesitations against it and there’s a lot of work to be done and understanding why. But I really do think that it’s very important, especially at this point in time, to take care of your mental health in whatever way you can do so. And I’d love to talk a little bit here about a campaign that One Future Collective is running currently, our supporting the mental health of COVID Workers Campaign where we’re essentially raising funds for mental health needs of COVID-19 workers and we’re providing them mental health support through one-on-one therapy sessions and also through support groups. And we also realized that mental health professionals at this time also financially burnt out, right? Because it’s been a long year of them doing a lot of heavy lifting. So many professionals I know took so many pro bono cases last year and have completely stretched into their capacity. So, the reason we’re taking donations is also to ensure that mental health practitioners are equitably paid and the campaign is open to anyone who is a COVID worker and our definition is not restricted to just healthcare workers, we also invite any sort of workers who have in all essence worked through this pandemic to support someone. So, we’re looking at frontline workers as defined by the Ministry of Health, social workers, NGO workers, journalists who are covering COVID-19-related news, crematorium staff and also caregivers. Right now, even just being at home, having to manage a household, having to take care of someone who might be COVID-positive, we consider that as a COVID worker as well because there’s a very special type of grief in that as well. So, I know that seeking support is hard, but if you or anyone you know who is a COVID worker would like to seek support, please do check out our campaign, details of which are available across all of our social medias, and we would love for us to be able to support you in your journey as well.
Sanchi
Absolutely. Thank you so much for bringing that up, Kuhoo. And I would also like to say if you are in a position to donate, please do that, or if you’d like to share this initiative with somebody who could donate to it, we would be very grateful for that as well. Everything counts. All your support is very, very appreciated.
Kuhoo
Thank you so much for saying that, Sanchi. We appreciate all of your support, whether that is through donation or through sharing the link forward. We would love for you to be involved in the campaign in any way possible, so please reconsider donating to us.
Sanchi
Right. Thank you so much, Kuhoo. And that brings us to the end of today’s conversation. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. We understand that times have been incredibly tough. So, thank you so much for your time with us.
Kuhoo
Absolutely. We appreciate your support so much. I know taking time out to even listen to a podcast episode has been hard for most people. So if you’re here, thank you for spending time with us and sharing this space with us. We hope you have a restful week and yeah, we hope you stay safe and take care. Until next time, stay with us on our journey towards a radically kinder world.
| Reflection Activity Reflect on the collective grief and systemic inequalities revealed in recent global crises, such the pandemic, climate change issues, and so on. How can we advocate for justice, how do we hold space for healing, and how do we hold those in power accountable? |
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About the Nurturing Radical Kindness Podcast
Radical Kindness is the ethos and practice that forms and informs One Future Collective. It guides our constitution as an organisation and is the core value that guides our work. It is a politics of love, fighting against apathy and hopelessness. Often being ‘hard’, ‘stoic’ or ‘rigid’, is considered crucial for social change, and it is this very notion that radical kindness challenges. It espouses that being kind, compassionate, and loving in our activism can still pave the way for dissent, defiance, growth, and rebuilding. It is a tool we seek to use to rebuild our systems with care, nurturance, and justice at their core. It allows us to hold various stakeholders, including ourselves, accountable in how we interact with ourselves and our communities and to build towards a lived reality of social justice collaboratively.
Hosted by Sanchi Mehra and Vandita Morarka of One Future Collective, this podcast attempts to unpack what it means to be radically kind and how we can practice it through conversations with members of the One Future Collective community.