Episode 26: This Isn't Normal: Silence, ICE and Trump are the Enemy

This is not a normal episode.

I recorded this on release day because staying quiet felt worse than showing up imperfectly. I didn’t have fully formed thoughts. I still don’t. And that’s the point.

This episode isn’t about trail running, workouts, or performance. It’s about what’s happening right now in our country, how it feels to live inside it, and why silence is not neutral.

I talk openly about anger, grief, exhaustion, and the weight of watching harm unfold while trying to keep living our everyday lives. I name the difference between confusion and choice. I talk about performative “switching sides,” accountability, and why growth doesn’t deserve applause just because it finally arrived.

I also talk about movement — not as a fix, not as a distraction — but as a way to stay grounded and human when everything feels loud and overwhelming.

There’s no bow on this episode. No neat resolution. No pretending this is fine.

Just truth.

If you are angry, exhausted, numb, overwhelmed, or unsure how to hold all of this ...there is nothing wrong with you. That’s what living inside ongoing harm does to people.

I’ll talk about trail running again. I’ll talk about strength and joy and long miles.

But I won’t pretend this doesn’t exist.

This matters.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why this episode exists and why staying quiet didn’t feel like an option
• Living inside constant harm while still working, training, and showing up to daily life
• Anger as a sane and valid response
• The difference between confusion and conscious choice
• Why performative allyship isn’t accountability
• Why switching sides doesn’t automatically make someone “safe” or deserving of celebration
• Rest vs silence — and why silence isn’t neutral
• Movement as regulation, not avoidance - yep, I didn't talk about this much. I talked about how movement is keeping me sane and fighting so remember to MOVE.
• Why this fight isn’t ending — it’s escalating
• Listening to and learning from Black women and communities who have been warning us for years
• Sitting with discomfort instead of rushing past it
• Why saying something messy is better than saying nothing at all

Resources (These are from my mentor Shante Cofield aka themovementmaestro..follow her on Instagram)

• Donate to Minnesota: www.standwithminnesota.com
• Call your reps: This week the Senate will vote on a DHS funding bill that includes $10 billion for ICE: https://5calls.org
• Get involved with your local Rapid Response Network. You can Google this and include your city/state. Another resource which I have been using is https://indivisible.org. Click Get Involved then Organize Locally and then select Find Your Group. 

People to learn from - I am linking Instagram handles but most of these people you can find on their website and they are also on Threads with so much needed information.

• Kiki Bryant: uppity_negress_ - amazing workbooks on decentering white people and decentering men.
• Jackie: unapologetically_jackie - so much information and she has a whole academy of resources.
• Kiandria Demone: kiandria

There are so ma

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, it's still Britney Olsen, but I do not have the same intro for this week. Um, this is gonna be a different kind of episode, so uh put on your seat belts, let's go, we're gonna jump in. Um so I'm recording today. Um on to it's actually Tuesday the day. I normally drop these at midnight. It is almost 11 30 in the morning in Arizona, and I have struggled to figure out what I'm gonna say today. Um I could have gone on about VO2 max workouts, whatever, but it didn't feel right. And it also doesn't feel right to stay quiet right now. Um not saying something would would just make me feel worse, and I think would be worse. Like to now is not the time to be quiet, um, to be complacent, to be complicit, to be all those words. So it's not a normal episode. Um, even all my thoughts aren't fully formed yet. Are they ever no, not really? Um, but that's kind of the point. Uh, to get out like what I'm feeling, um, and not just what I'm feeling, but what I'm doing um and how to show up and how, you know what, I'm gonna be present, I'm gonna be imperfect, and I'm gonna be human. Like that's all there is to it. I feel like I'm always that way. But um, yeah, this is gonna just be me talking about the bullshit that's going on um in our country right now. Um, how it how it feels, um, how I'm gonna talk a little bit about movement, but not for the sake of like being a trial runner, just for the sake of like staying sane and how you can work on processing your thoughts through that. It's probably gonna be a fairly short episode too, because I just don't have it in me to go on and on and on. And I know I'm saying that now, and who knows how long I could talk. Y'all know me. If you've been listening for a while, um, but there's a lot happening and people need to talk about it no matter how big or small their platform is. People need to be standing up for and the people who are silent, that is speaking a lot of volumes to me. I am unfollowing, not talking to people um who are being silent, um, or the ones who are definitely pro-Trump, pro-ICE, those are getting blocked very quickly. But um, yeah, so this is how this, so this is gonna be like, hey, here's what's going on, here's what I'm feeling, here's what you could be feeling, uh, here's you know, why movement's important, uh, and a little bit of what about what you can do. I'm not gonna put a shit ton of effort into what you can do, not because I don't care. I'm gonna add some links in the show notes to to where you can donate money, where you can spend time, all that good stuff. But um, I'm also uh it's just out there already. Like y'all saying who are saying, like, hey, I voted for Kamala, what else can I do? I've done this and done, and I'm like, that's not enough, and there are other action items to take, but that information is out there already. So as you can see, I'm still, you know, trying to process through and even get the right words out. But let's just say this. Everything feels heavy and loud right now. Um, there's the constant churning of the news that's happening, there's the constant uh social media barrage of things. Um, there's a lot of things going out now that are are very emotional, um, and it should be. Um, people are being shot by ice. Um, who I would consider is uh Trump's really SS, right? It's his army. Um that's what's happening right now. Um, but we're seeing all of these things, and because of the internet, because of how everything works now, we are constantly being hit by these things. I think we need to know about it. I think we need to be informed, but there's so many things that are out there right now that it can feel overwhelming. Um, and also it feels weird. You know, I talked to an athlete uh recently, actually it's a front slash athlete that I talk to uh every day who um did a 10K on um Saturday. And while she was running, and while I was running that day too, like we we we didn't know what was going on, and then afterwards she had sent me a voice message about how it went, and I couldn't even listen to it because I had already heard the news and I couldn't be present in that. So why am I bringing that up? It's because people right now are suffering, people are dying, things are happening out there. Um while others are celebrating that. We who are noticing what's actually bad out there and what's happening, we are trying to minimize and not celebrate the things that aren't good in our lives. Um, and that makes sense to up to a point, right? Like it's very hard to celebrate things when we as humans are seeing so many things that are bigger than us, um, bigger than a race, bigger than something else. Um and I'm gonna consider be like, celebrate, like you did this, you should do this, like you deserve this. I do think people deserve to celebrate wins they have, even now, even as things are hard. But like, it's okay if you don't feel like doing that too. Um, it's okay if instead of telling people how how your race went or how you run went, that you tell people how you really feel about everything that's going on out there right now. So um that's a big part of this, is it's very hard to watch people celebrating the deaths of people um over the past freaking now it's been a year, right? It's been over a year, but it's escalating. And we're seeing people celebrate it. We're seeing people defend Trump, we're seeing people defend ICE, we're seeing people be joyous about what's happening out there, and then there's the rest of us, and when I say us, I am included in this, who have no oh not that we have no idea what to do, but we are having struggling to reconcile that we are living our everyday lives, we are still going to work, we are still running, we are training, um, we are doing housework, we are doing um uh laundry, we're taking our dogs on walks. Like our day-to-day is still happening, but we're still aware that all this other shit is happening too. And it's very hard. It's very hard. I believe uh one of my voice messages um to my friend was just finally ended just with, what the fuck? Because like I didn't even have words, and I still don't have words. Um, and I'm probably not gonna have all the words by the end of this, but hopefully it's helping you because this is that's what it's for. Um, but we're also trying to understand how easily people turn away from humans. Like, how how can you see what we've seen um and defend it or turn away from it and just be like, well, that's what it is. It just comply, just comply, just do things like that. Um, and there's no understanding it, y'all. That that's that's all there is to it. There's not, you know, it's evil, period. That's it. So if you're like, I don't know, like, I have a friend who voted Trump and he's not like that, or my husband, this one kills me, my husband voted Trump, like, and I didn't, and he's a good guy. I'm gonna let you know I'm done with that. I am done. I have tried to show empathy, and I'm a very empathetic person. Not empathetic empathy to Trump supporters, but empathy to like, okay, like this person did this, you're married to him, whatever. Done. Done with that completely. Like, I don't care who they are. I argued with my little brother yesterday because of his views now. Um, are not in his face. They've always been that. He's always been a Trumpster. But I got into it with him because that's where we're at right now. It does matter. We need to have the conversations, we need to have the energy to be able to continue fighting, but at the same time, stop trying to understand these pro-Trump, pro-ICE people because you're not going to. You don't have a mind like them, you're not evil like that. So stop trying to understand it, stop trying to defend it just because you're related to them or because you're friends with them. It's bullshit and it's done. So, hopefully that point came across. Um, but uh there's also like this point when I realize like they're not confused. Like these people, pro-Trump, pro-ICE, they're not confused. They are making a conscious choice to be this way. There are things that they are seeing with their eyes, hearing with their ears that are actually happening, and they are doing the best mental gymnastics I've ever seen in my life. Um, so they are making this choice. They're choosing cruelty, some are choosing indifference, and that realization hurts in a in a different kind of way, and I don't even know how to describe that. It feels like there's some grief there. Um there's a lot of anger. I am very angry. I don't know if you can hear in my tone. I am I am over the top angry. Um, but when whenever I see people being cruel and having joy in seeing people, friggin' a little boy, you know, being in the middle of it, um, seeing a man shot in the streets, hearing about Keith Porter being shot on um New Year's Eve into New Year's Day by an by an off-duty ICE agent who came out for it, seeing people defend Kyle, what's his name? Written house, I never remember it because I fucking hate him. But we're seeing all these things and it's all starting to come together. And some of us have who have been trying to understand like what's happening, what's going on, why do they think that way, it it's it's the confusion is cleared up. It's just a choice they're doing. They're racist, they're homophobic, they're xenophobic. It's all of that, and that's why we're here. But I don't want to say hopefully because it seems like, okay, like all this happened, let's let's get something out of it. I wish none of this had happened because I don't want to get anything out of it. But if something comes from this, I hope it's that you realize, like, you've got people on your side, um, and there are things that we can do, and right now you gotta stop on stop trying to understand these other people because it is a waste of your energy. And we need energy to fight what's happening. And I'm gonna let you know there's probably gonna be more deaths with this um more and more as people start to step forward, people get in the way of the abuse of power that's happening, all of those things. I don't know if you can hear it too. I'm kind of dehydrated. I've noticed the past couple days I'm not drinking much water. Um, and that's stress-related and that's dumb, but that's where I'm at too. So um I will pause for a moment so you guys can take a drink of water um and make sure you're doing that. Take care of yourself, okay? So, um, but also I want to say this part out loud too, because it matters, okay? Um, if you're just now realizing how bad it is, I mean, okay. I'm not here to shame growth. People can change, but change isn't a performance, and switching sides doesn't automatically make you safe or good or deserving of a celebration. I am seeing people who are promoting their spouses who um turned away from Trump just recently, or I'm seeing people themselves who are like, I no longer like, you know, care, you know, I no longer support him, blah, blah, blah. I'm gonna let you know it took two white people dying for you to get that. It wasn't all the other things that have happened since he's been a president since 2016 with a little break in there. It was something that happened that you finally saw yourself in it instead of having empathy to others. So yes, I'm glad you changed. I'm glad you're changing your mind. But again, it doesn't make you safe or good or deserving. Like if you were quiet before, if you benefited before, if you minimized before, if you were fine and comfortable, then the work doesn't start and end with a post or a sudden opinion shift at all. This isn't about applause, it's about accountability. And if that makes people feel uncomfortable, honestly, good. Um discomfort is part of that waking up. So what I'm not doing is clapping for someone just because the harm finally touched them. Being late doesn't make you a hero. And what you do after you wake up is what matters. So, y'all, I'm not trying to put people down who are like coming around, but don't expect us to celebrate you because first of all, that's center. Don't center yourself in that. That's not the point. But now what it means is what action are you gonna take? That goes for the people too who are saying, Oh, I voted for Kamala, there's nothing else to do. Yes, you can donate money. You can call your senators, you can call your reps, um, you can protest. And I don't want a peaceful protest. Yes, I don't want people like hitting people or anything like that, but protest should disrupt. If you just go and do a protest and you are walking around and things are just going along business as usual, that's not helpful. There needs to be some form of disruption. It's disrupting traffic, it's disrupting business, whatever that is, there needs to be a disruption. So, for those of you new to this game, I will put some links down there. I'll talk about a little bit about what actions to take. But like there are things you can be doing. There are you can be supporting things. Um, I know some people don't have time for every day of the week, but you can donate money, you can share posts, you can share what I'm gonna share. All of these things matter. So, here's the truth though. What's happening isn't normal. And if we start accepting it as normal, that's a problem. This isn't just politics. This is the power being used to harm. Ice is not an abstract. This is happening right now. Families are being ripped apart. Freaking there are so many people that don't even talk to anymore because it's not worth it. And that's not about me, but like things are happening and it's crazy. Fear is the tool, and dehumanization is the strategy. Like, that is the point. Why do you think people say illegals? Why do you think people say aliens? Why is that? It's to dehumanize what's happening. That's it. That's the whole point of those terms, y'all. It's to dehumanize. We're all humans here. And Trump didn't invent racism or any of it. Any of those isms and all of that, but he is accelerating it deliberately. Like he is causing more divisiveness. He is the cause of a lot of what's happening. He continues to amplify and everything else. So, yes, he is a big part of the problem, but guess what? That means we have to fight against that. So, we're not gonna hedge, we're not gonna soften right now. Right now, I will tell you, I would love to curl up in a ball and not do anything. I have struggled yesterday. I had to tell a couple of my athletes, I was like, I'm sorry, you deserve a better response, and I don't have it in me right now. I do not have it today. But that's honest, that's what it is. But I didn't curl up in a ball. I took five to ten minutes to myself, and then I'm like, okay, like what can I do? What can what what needs to happen? Who can I talk to? Who can I learn from? What can I put out there? Where can I spend my time and money and energy? All of that. So we do have to figure out what to do and what our capacity is too, right? Like, I don't want to hear like I'm exhausted, I'm tired every single second. I have told friends, like, I am exhausted, I am tired too, and it's okay to feel that way. It really, really is, but we can't stay in that. Um, and that's probably the reason why I even decided to record today, too, because when I record, I get this bump in my energy. So yeah, it's kind of selfish. I am processing as I talk. Who knows if you guys are getting something out of this? I really hope so. I am rambling, but at the same time, this is something that's important because I want you to hear it, but it's also going to give me energy so I can keep fighting, keep spreading the word, um, and keep helping others. So, of course you're exhausted, of course you're overwhelmed. Um, the body might even feel like it wants to shut down. Uh, and there's nothing wrong with feeling that way. You know what? Maybe you go to bed a little bit earlier at night. Maybe you let yourself sleep in a little bit. Maybe you did take a mended dap, whatever it is, make sure you're eating and drinking, though. That is one thing. Um, my friend and athlete, she's one I keep referring to. She doesn't care if I use her name. So, Catherine, I've talked to Catherine, she even asks she's like, have you gotten food and water? And I was like, Oh, I ate, but uh, my mouth is dry. Holy shit. Like, so like when when things, when you're especially when your body feels like it's shutting down, you feel something, check in. Have I eaten? Have I drinking? How did I sleep last night? Drinking. Is drinking a word? Drinking, drink. Anyway. But like, make sure you're still taking care of yourself because if you are not, it is very hard to function and fight because that's what it is. There's nothing wrong with how you're feeling. Um, this is what's living inside, or this is what living inside ongoing harm does to people, right? It's like, how do we function in this? How how how do we even do this, right? And I mean, there's definitely some cognitive dissonance going on out there for sure. But like, remember, rest is to human, right? That is literally okay. Taking care of yourself, but silence is not neutral. Silence is is something that really tells me a lot. Whether you believe and are pro what's happening or you're anti that, it doesn't matter in the sense that if you are silence, I am seeing you on the other side of where I see things. You are not in the fight, and you need to be. So rest as needed, but don't take advantage of that. We've got to be doing stuff. So, right here, I mean, I feel like it's hard reality all the time, but I try to section off my things based upon topics. But like, this fight isn't ending. It's not de-escalating, it is escalating. Um, I already said this, more people are gonna get hurt, more people are gonna die. And I'm not saying that callously, I'm not saying that casually. This is what it is. Um, when people um, and I will say this black people, indigenous people, they have been fighting and fighting and fighting for so long, so much longer than we white people have. Um, whoever we white people are listening, that's who I'm talking about. All of you, even the ones that are taking action. Um we are new to this. Um we have not fought like others have fought, and it is very hard for us to get past that discomfort. I'm not making an excuse, by the way. I'm uncomfortable too. This is not an excuse not to do something. I am telling you, I get what you're feeling because we have not had to, because we have privilege. And we can't help our privilege, but now we have to use it, which means we're gonna have to get uncomfortable. We have to sit with what's going on and process our feelings. Um, that doesn't mean we get to sit and do nothing for like years or months while we figure while we go to therapy and figure out what's going on in our head. But it does mean we need to sit with what's happening. We are not used to sitting with this because with our privilege, we don't have to. We've never had to. We just do that and we keep moving and we're like, well, it's not happening to us, and that doesn't mean you're not empathetic. It all means we have never pushed out there, pushed out of that comfort zone to really, really speak to others, to really take that action. So the fact that now you are seeing white people murdered in the streets, that's new. Um, yes, white people have been murdered in the streets for yes, but not like this. How many black people have been murdered in the streets over the past years and years and years? A lot. There are list upon list. Um, how many people of color, how many indigenous people, so many of them. They have been seeing this for years. They have been warning us and warning us, they have been talking about this. This is not new in the past year for them. They have been talking and talking, and we have not been listening. So, first of all, now it's time to listen and not be combative, especially to black women. I have learned so much in the past probably three or four years from black women, and even more so lately. Um, and what I have realized is like we we we need to believe other people. A lot of times what I've been seeing is people is a black woman will say something, and it is very true, and it is very real to their experience, and it is very real to the racism they felt. And then a white woman will come in and like question them and be like, no, well, maybe they or they meant this or blah and all this stuff, and this is not the time to do that. The time is now to shut up and listen and then take action. That's what we gotta do. So I will link to a couple of people that I follow who are amazing, but there are so many amazing black women that I follow out there who, first of all, we don't deserve them. We don't deserve the knowledge that they have, but they put it out there for us for free on the internet. Um, some of them have workbooks and books um that you can go through too that are super, super helpful um that help us learn how to decenter us as white people. By the way, white people are centered in almost everything. We try that real, real hard. I should do an episode on that. But there are resources out there to help us learn about people who have been fighting for a very, very long time and warning us about what's happening and what was gonna happen. So we need to take that because it is out there for us to use. And so none of this is new, unfortunately. Yes, the escalation, all of this stuff, like I cannot believe it. There are people who were civil rights activists um, you know, in the 60s and the 70s, and maybe even before. They're still alive, y'all. This is not that long ago, and yet they are seeing things go backwards even more. It has never been good enough. We so stolved so many problems in our country. It has never been good enough. But now we're starting to see it at a higher level. So let it be uncomfortable, and that's it. Sit with it. Sit with what you're feeling. All of that. I know I said this wouldn't be that long, but I'm at 20 minutes, y'all. How about that? So I promise I don't have much more, and hopefully you're still, like I said, you're listening. I hope you're getting fired up. I'm not trying to make any angrier than you already are. Um I'm very, very angry, but we need to stay fired up. This is important. So again, not offering just a whole bunch of answers here. Um, you can donate to um there's uh Minnesota fund you can you can donate to. Um again, you can call, email uh senators and reps. Um I'm reposting a lot of um information on my Instagram about like what you can actually do. Um because and it's okay to look at ones that are more all feely, right? We're up on our feels we do have to feel what we're feeling, but we also can't stay in that feeling phase. We have to see what actions we can take to help. So again, I'm gonna link a lot in the show notes because it's gonna be easier than me like just spelling it all out here. And I'm gonna link and I'm gonna try to get some links. I know some of you don't have social media that are directly to things too. So just expect quite a bit in my show notes for that. Um, and if like you care, you're gonna take time to look at the show notes. All right, take the time and do it. So I'm not telling you what to post, not telling you this one episode's gonna fix everything. I'm just saying let's not normalize what what's going on, because this should never be normal. So here's here we're bringing it back, bringing it back here. So staying quiet, definitely, to me, it feels like you're just participating in the bad. Um, so speak up, take action, do things. Um, saying something imperfect is better than saying nothing at all. Uh, whether it's standing up to somebody who made a racist joke, um, whether it's physically getting in between a person um and an ice agent, whatever that is. I'm not saying that wouldn't be scary as shit. I have not been in that situation, but guess what? Sometimes we have to stand up for other people, so sometimes it's uncomfortable, and people do get hurt and people do die. And that's part of our reality now. And this is also part of how we stay human. We are humans. We should be sticking up for other humans. Uh, we should not be dehumanizing others, it doesn't matter if they came over legally or illegally, anything like that. It doesn't matter what color our skin is, it doesn't matter how we talk, anything like that. We are humans. Now, that said, let's just do a little pivot towards I am not being nice to Trump supporters. I am not being nice to pro-wise people. I am not going out of my way and finding them on the street, but if somebody says something, I'm calling them out. Period. Um, I have had a few people on social media who with um with the last two people who were killed, um I'm sorry, my brain just went dead. Uh Renee and um, oh my gosh, Jeffreys' middle name. Um, but the nurse who just got killed. I'm sorry, I should have that in my head, and it's not, I don't even have it in my notes. But um, there are people who have put say her name and say his name on their posts and on their stories, and I know they mean well, but guess what? Though that phrase isn't for us. The actual say her name is the real phrase, and that is for black women who have been killed and nobody was saying their name. We don't need to use say her name or say his name for us white people because guess what happens when Lynn Rovic gets hurt or killed? That name's out there. It is totally already out there. So all I did was I went and corrected these people. Not in a vicious way, just said, hey, just so you know, this is the background, just like I explained it to you. People are already saying our names. I say our because I'm a white woman, but they are saying our names. The say her name is not for us. It is for others. So, yes, if you were talking about Brianna Taylor, who was murdered a few years ago, you can say say her name because people were not saying her name. So that is just something I'm saying. That was just an example of how you can address people. You're like, why is that really a big deal? It does. It does mean something. It really, really does. Because we need to focus not just on the white people who have been murdered, but all of them who are being murdered and probably will continue to be murdered um throughout the next few years. We'll see where this goes. We have no idea. But just so you know, I will talk about trail running again. Of course I will. I love it. It's part of how I'm surviving right now. Um, even when I'm crying on the trails, even when I'm doing some um rage running, you know, it is how I survive, it's what I need. I'll talk about strength and long runs and all the lighter shit sometimes too. But I'm not gonna act like this isn't happening. And I'm not gonna pretend that this is normal because it's not. And if you're angry right now, good. You should be. And if you're exhausted or numb or overwhelmed or you don't even know what you're feeling anymore, like the what the fuck, that makes sense. That's what living inside this does to people. I don't have a bow for this. I don't have a fix. I just know that staying quiet was starting to feel like participation. And it still feels like participation for anybody. I have not been quiet about this, by the way, guys, but it's participation if you're quiet. And saying something messy felt more honest than saying nothing at all. And this matters. And I'm not gonna make it smaller.