WTL Issue 017 | February 11, 2026 |
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Strongest at the center
Lessons from the Long Haul
I’ve been thinking about transitions lately. The email arrives, or an announcement at an all-staff meeting, or you’re scrolling the news over breakfast. Those first moments of processing. Your eyes scanning words while your mind already runs calculations.
One blustery November afternoon, I sat in my office watching the light drain from the sky. My fingers wrapped around a mug of tea, the ceramic still warm against my palms. Outside my window, coworkers were getting ready to leave the building. Some pulled on yak-tracks with practiced efficiency. Others chose a skating shuffle across the parking lot ice, each person comfortable with a different level of risk. Everyone holding the tension from a day thick with uncertainty about what comes next.
I've lived through enough administrative transitions to know the pattern by now. The announcement comes at the state level, the federal level, sometimes both at once. And in the hours and days that follow, you ask the critical questions: What stays? What goes? What has to change?
For years, Arctic policy itself was remarkably stable - one of the rare bipartisan constants. But as an advocate working at the intersection of policy and community, I watched the ground shift in other ways. How agencies interpreted that policy. Which voices got centered in implementation. Whether the partnerships that communities had built would be honored or have to start over. The policy framework held steady while the practice kept moving beneath our feet.
And now, when policies create fear and instability in communities, when federal and state actions threaten the work and the people we care about, the ground shifts in ways that feel both familiar and entirely new.
The ground will shift again. The question I keep coming back to: Where do you put your energy when it does?
Field-Tested: The Ripple Map
When the ground shifts and I feel overwhelmed, I think about ripples. Drop a rock in still water and watch. The ripples are strongest at the center, fainter as they move outward. Your influence in climate work moves the same way.
I’m borrowing the ripple metaphor here to map where your energy has the most direct impact when conditions are unstable.
Close Ripple → Direct Impact
This is where your energy has immediate, tangible effects. Your daily choices. Your team relationships. The quality of your work. How you show up in conversations. Your own capacity.
Middle Ripple → Collective Influence
This is what you shape through organizing with others. Coalition building. Calling representatives. Public testimony. Amplifying community voices. Partnerships that shift power.
Far Ripple → Systemic Change
This is what takes sustained collective power over time. Policy outcomes. Election results. Large-scale institutional change. The national political climate.
The practice when uncertainty hits:
Start close. Are you protecting your own capacity? Are your immediate relationships strong? Is your daily work aligned with your values?
Move to the middle. What coalitions can you organize with? Where can you show up with others? What collective action is possible right now?
Recognize the far ripple reality. These outcomes require time and collective power. You can't control them alone, but middle ripple work absolutely influences them.
The redirect: If you're fixated on far ripple outcomes without tending your close ripple or engaging middle ripple organizing, you'll burn out before you see change.
The hard part: This doesn't mean accepting what's happening in the far ripples. It means understanding you reach them through the middle. Through organizing, coalition work, collective advocacy. And you can't sustain that work if you've neglected what's close.
When you feel powerless, ask: What can I do in my close ripple today? What middle ripple action can I take with others?
Signals & Shifts
Join knitters in Minnesota who are casting on to create “Melt the ICE” hats. These red pointed hats with a tassel are inspired by Norwegians in the 1940s who were protesting occupation of their country. Sometimes tending to your close ripple means working with your hands while building something with others.
Care and support are the fabric of our society. Find your local mutual aid efforts nationwide and consider helping where you are able. This is collective influence at work, people organizing together to meet immediate needs in their communities. And resources for talking to kids about current events, supporting people with disabilities, and finding organized ways to help in Minnesota.
Question for reflection: When you notice yourself fixating on far ripple outcomes, what helps you redirect your energy back to what's close or to organizing with others?
Take good care of yourself and the work that's yours to do. Both matter more than you know.
Nikoosh
Work That Lasts arrives every other Wednesday. Forward to a colleague who might need these tools, or reply and let me know what's working in your own practice.
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