Tattooed, Tested, and Touring: The Beginning of the Year
- PRSL
- Jan 26
- 5 min read
January is a weird month. 2026 seems to be a weird year.
I’m home. Actually home. Sleeping in the same place more than three nights in a row. Cooking meals that don’t come from a truck stop. Hugging people and hanging out with friends without a countdown clock in my head. And I’m grateful for that...deeply grateful. But I’m also restless as hell.
This is the part no one warns you about. When motion is your normal state, stillness doesn’t feel like rest... it feels LOUD and exhausting. My body is finally slowing down, but my mind hasn’t gotten the memo. It’s pacing, fidgeting, waiting to be busy again and on the move. I’m antsy in the quiet, which feels ridiculous after the year you’ve all watched me survive. But the truth is, my anxiety doesn’t disappear when I stop moving. It just echoes louder. It screams when I’m running nonstop, and it screams when everything finally goes still. Being an anxious person is a marathon in the mind. I am at the point where every knock on my door sends my heart on a race for hours. It feels unsafe to be stationary.
January is SLOW for a touring organization like ours. Emails go unanswered. DMs sit on read or never get opened at all. About 80% of the tours and festivals we’ve reached out to haven’t responded yet, and that silence can mess with your head if you let it. Many other nonprofits are tabling at shows now which is amazing but also means I am hearing back less and less. I am questioning what kind of momentum we can have this year. If this is going to be the year we are forced to give up. It sucks. And all of this is coming from someone who believes nonprofits should work together. Who believes we are stronger as a network and community..... and here I am. Worried. Nervous.
And then I zoom out. Because it’s not just about PRSL. It is not just about us.
The world feels heavy right now. The U.S. feels tense, fractured, exhausted. People are scared, burned out, broke, grieving, angry....honestly everyone is feeling all of this at once. We are living in a fucked up timeline of events and you can feel it in conversations. You can feel it in the way people are pulling inward instead of reaching out. You can feel it with how angry everyone is getting while also feeling defeated. Even community spaces feel shakier than they used to.
Running Punk Rock Saves Lives means sitting with that reality every single day.
We’re not just planning tables and tents. We’re planning how to show up for people who are barely holding it together. We’re planning how to keep harm reduction stocked when supplies cost more. How to keep mental health resources accessible when everything feels overwhelming. How to keep pushing bone marrow registry sign-ups when people are scared to even think long-term and think being on a database. How to be engaged with the current states of our country as a nonprofit committed to helping and making a difference.
All of this is happening while I’m trying to plan a year that doesn’t feel guaranteed with brand new leads. On top of that, we unexpectedly lost one of our South Florida leads. His passing rippled through everything. Through the org. Through our community. Through me. And I didn’t know how to process it....honestly, I still don’t. Things were hard between us. We were struggling. We weren’t getting along. Our friendship was strained and stressful and messy. It led to more than a few panic spirals. And then, suddenly, he was gone.
This isn’t the first time I’ve lost someone in the middle of unresolved tension. The last conversation I had with my mom was her asking for forgiveness and me saying I needed more time. Her last words to me were, “You don’t know how much time we have.” The next day, she was gone.
Complicated grief is fucking real. There’s no clean ending to this. No lesson wrapped in a bow. Just the reality that grief doesn’t wait for closure.. it shows up whether you’re ready or not. All I do know, is we will be blowing bubbles and having a rubber chicken at our tables this year in his memory. His heart was HUGE and we are feeling the loss hard.
And the important reminder right now: WE NEED EACH OTHER.
This is a season, maybe even the year, where community actually matters, not the buzzword version, but the real one. Check in on your friends, chosen family, and friends. Always share resources and information. Be patient when people are slow to respond. We are being inundated with everything right now. Give some grace when everyone is stretched so thin. And our BIG one pick someone up when they drop the ball instead of shaming them for it. Punk has always been about mutual aid. About showing up when systems fail. About taking care of each other when no one else will. That ethos doesn’t disappear just because it’s winter, or the world is on fire around us, or because the emails are quiet....or the myriad of other reasons.
so yeah...I’m happy to be home. I’m restless because I sitting still in such uncertainty is uncomfortable. And I’m hopeful not because things are easy, but because I’ve seen what community can do when it refuses to give up.
So here is to a new year. Yes, there is a shit ton of shit....but I believe. I believe in community and friendships. I believe we can make a difference together. I believe many a thing and I am going to be hopeful even when it feels impossible.
We’ll keep doing the work and we are hoping we don't have to do it alone.
Tina
What Is Moral Injury?
In traumatic or unusually stressful circumstances, people may perpetrate, fail to prevent, or witness events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations (1). When someone does something that goes against their beliefs this is often referred to as an act of commission and when they fail to do something in line with their beliefs that is often referred to as an act of omission. Individuals may also experience betrayal from leadership, others in positions of power or peers that can result in adverse outcomes (2). Moral injury is the distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes spiritual aftermath of exposure to such events (3). A moral injury can occur in response to acting or witnessing behaviors that go against an individual's values and moral beliefs.
Word for word taken from US Department of Veteran Affairs website.
written Sonya B. Norman, PhD and Shira Maguen, PhD
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