Shaping This Work to Better Support You
Why Your Time Starts Now is shifting — and how that shift will give you more of the grounding and support you need.
Dear friends
As you know, I’ve been spending much of my vacation time in reflection. One of the threads I’ve been following is the direction of travel for Your Time Starts Now.
When I first arrived on Substack, this was not at all the path I thought I would take. My original plan was to write about living with a rare, chronic allergic and inflammatory condition called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). I had just received a formal diagnosis, and I thought that writing might help me make sense of it — and perhaps resonate with others in a similar place.
Before beginning that, I wanted to understand how Substack worked, so I started by reading and subscribing. My very first subscription was to Robert Reich. To my surprise, comments I left there began to gain traction. From that, I realised two things quite quickly: many readers didn’t yet seem to see what I believed was unfolding, nor did they grasp the urgency of getting out in front of it. I also realised I might have something useful to offer to those who were struggling to make sense of the same patterns. At that point, I felt compelled to pivot, and Your Time Starts Now was born.
That word compelled matters. This wasn’t the result of a carefully reasoned plan. It was something deeper, something I felt driven to do. At the time, I thought my background — first in economics, then in psychotherapy — together with my experience as a whistleblower under Mugabe, might be of help. But I also knew those things alone were not the sum of what I had to bring. So I chose to keep the focus on myself light, allowing the work to speak instead. That has always been my way: I’m not here for the spotlight. I’m here — on Substack and beyond that, in life — to help others.
A couple of months ago, a dear reader reached out, offering to use her gifts to support my strategy and intentions here. Before she could do that, she asked if I might share the shape of those strategies and intentions, so she would know how best to walk alongside me. I tried to answer her question several times, and each time the words faltered. In the end, I fell silent. Gloria, if you are reading this: my apologies. I know that silence may have felt dismissive, and I am truly sorry for that. The truth is that at the time, I did not yet have the full picture myself — nor even the words to explain this — and I needed to wait until I did.
Here, now, is what I have come to understand — both about the times we are living through, and about how my own life experience shapes what I am offering here.
Let me begin with that medical condition.
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome
Imagine moving through the world with a body that treats almost everything as a threat. And when I say almost everything, I do mean almost everything — most foods, alcohol, caffeine, pesticide residue, chemical smells like perfumes and detergents, insect bites, airborne or contact plant triggers, medications and vaccines, chemicals in toiletries and detergents, stress, noise, light, temperature, lack of sleep, physical exertion. The list feels endless. Any organ or system in the body can be affected.
Mast cells are meant to be the precision weapons of the immune system, releasing powerful chemicals only when a barrier is breached and a real threat appears. In MCAS, they misfire. They treat harmless exposures as emergencies. Instead of protecting me, mine spill histamine and other mediators that destabilise blood vessels, disrupt nerve signalling, and impair organ function — mostly affecting my brain, gut, heart, lungs, and skin, sometimes in life-threatening ways. The triggers shift from day to day, and they build up cumulatively. One day I can enjoy a simple vinaigrette on my salad, but the next it might stop me breathing.
And the physical effects are only one side of MCAS. Mast cells are tightly linked to the nervous system. They flare in response to stress, emotion, and neurotransmitters — and the connection runs both ways. The mediators they release amplify pain, change how nerves fire, and weaken the blood–brain barrier, causing neuroinflammation.
This back-and-forth spirals into a feedback loop. The nervous system triggers mast cells, which then release chemicals that agitate the nerves, further sharpening reactivity. Over time, this leaves both systems hypersensitive — an neuroimmune circuit stuck on high alert, always scanning for danger.
I have, unbeknown to me, been navigating this for more than forty years. That is nearly thirty years longer than the condition has even been recognised clinically. And that — strangely enough — is part of what I can bring here.
Decades before my diagnosis, I knew I needed tools to manage my nervous system. At first, I learned them simply in order to get by. Later, I studied them so I could understand the science behind them. My thought was that one day — if I were ever well enough to work again — I might share them, and perhaps they would help others too.
But as time passed — and as I now know, as my histamine load kept climbing — daily life began to demand skills most people would never dream of needing. Over time, those extraordinary survival skills became routine. They felt ordinary, woven into daily life.
When you walk into a hypermarket and know that most foods — even in the fresh aisles, especially in the fresh aisles — are unsafe, you must learn how to manage anxiety. When the faintest residue of dishwashing detergent on a water bottle tips your body into stage 3 anaphylaxis while you are driving, you must know how to master panic. When you jolt awake in the night unable to breathe because of something you ate hours earlier, you must be able to steady yourself quickly. When every human encounter carries risk, you must manage social anxiety. And when it becomes so bad that you need to self-isolate — no more family celebrations, no more coffees with friends, no more nights out — you must find ways to adjust your emotions.
Through all of this, you must build resilience. Without it, you crumble.
Only recently have I realised — through Gloria’s gentle question, and through finally having a name for this condition — that these skills have become so deeply part of me that I had been undervaluing them. I had been writing as though everyone had them at their fingertips too. Of course, many people do hold fragments of these skills, but not everyone has a map for weaving them together into something coherent. I had assumed what was second nature for me was obvious to everyone else.
So to those who came to Your Time Starts Now hoping for support from “Lori the psychotherapist, who had also weathered authoritarianism” — I’m sorry. I didn’t give you what you were looking for, because first I needed to bring into the light what had been shaping me, unseen, for decades. That will change now, and in the second part of this post, I will open up how.
But before that, I’d like to explain why what I can bring is more than this alone.
My “Superpowers”
Living in a body that treats the everyday as dangerous is exhausting. But it has also forced me to develop ways of moving through the world that I might otherwise never have learned. Over time, these survival skills have become something more — hard-won abilities forged under pressure.
This is where the personal crosses into the political. The same hypersensitivity that undermines my health has also, strangely, gifted me a few unusual strengths. Let’s call them my “superpowers”.
A mind that is both highly analytical and deeply intuitive. My subconscious is always tracking patterns. When your survival depends on spotting danger early, the mind learns to notice faint signals, connect events others see as unrelated, and sketch out possible futures. That pattern-tracking runs in the background, and I’m generally not aware of it until something matters. Then, something surfaces in the night and I wake to an alert — a shift, a tightening, something nudging me to pay attention. At first it carries no explanation. It’s simply a signal that something is stirring.
Politically, I now understand that my subconscious orients to the long-embedded memory of life under Mugabe’s authoritarian regime in Zimbabwe. I know authoritarianism not just from books but from lived experience. That has left me hard-wired with a sense of what authoritarian danger looks and feels like. When that subconscious alert has risen in recent years, I have listened. Now I’m acting.
The capacity to surface and test what the subconscious has flagged. For decades I used this skill to manage my health — testing foods, environments, stressors, until I could keep a fragile balance. Research became my way of making sense of signals, and my training in economics gave me the tools to check whether the evidence held up. That discipline lets me transform vague intuitions into grounded analysis.
The third is quieter but no less vital. Living with limited energy has forced me to become exacting in how I use it. I can’t afford to waste it, so I’ve learned to strip away what doesn’t matter, keep what does, and structure my days around what will actually move the needle. By necessity I’ve become highly organised, and that discipline lets me focus my attention where it’s needed most — staying steady when circumstances press hard. In a world that runs on noise and distraction, that capacity for steady focus allows me to keep going where others are pulled off course, and to hold to the thread of what matters until the pattern becomes clear.
A cultivated refuge from noise and danger — the state of flow. Instead of being consumed by fear or rumination, I can anchor my attention for hours at a time. Immersing in a single absorbing task calms my stress loop: cortisol falls, dopamine and norepinephrine rise, and my nervous system shifts from hyper-vigilance to focused engagement. In that state, fragments cohere — the alerts, the research, the organisation of energy — all of it comes together. It allows me to back up those subconscious signals with facts, reasoning, and plain language: what I believe, why I believe it, why it matters, what to watch next.
Why This Matters to You
Although much of the world’s attention is fixed on America, what we are facing is not confined within US borders. The trajectory of the United States will reverberate everywhere. For seventeen years, researchers have documented the steady contraction of democracy and the advance of authoritarianism. What once looked like isolated cases now reads as a global pattern.1
In 2024, that pattern accelerated. Across continents, voters unsettled by economic strain, social disruption, and political fatigue turned against those in power. The backlash often opened the door not to renewal but to far-right movements. Promises of order, purity, and strength found fertile ground, while democratic norms weakened further.
More than one-third of the world’s population now live under authoritarian rule, with sixty countries classified as “authoritarian regimes”.2
The United States is not an exception to this. It is the hinge point. If America slides into authoritarianism, the effect will not remain within its borders. It will embolden regimes already tightening their grip, legitimise tactics that undermine democratic institutions, and send a signal that the world’s most powerful democracy could not hold. That ripple will reshape what other governments feel free to do — and what their citizens may come to accept as normal.
Wherever we live, this matters to each of us. It shapes whether our press remains free, whether courts remain independent, whether our children are taught history or propaganda. It shapes how safe it is to dissent, to gather, to organise. It will shape the choices our own leaders feel able to make, once they see what America is normalising.
Because so much is at stake, it matters that we are able to see clearly — not only so we can prepare for it, but because clarity helps reduce anxiety. That may sound counterintutive, but as a psychotherapist I can tell you that it taps into a deep psychological truth: uncertainty is often more stressful than bad news.
Clarity helps us in many ways.
It reduces the unknown. Anxiety thrives in ambiguity. When we don’t know what’s coming, we imagine all possibilities, often catastrophising. A clearer picture helps limit that overwhelming range of imagined outcomes.
It creates space for agency. When the future is like a fog, we often feel helpless. Clarity — however difficult — can shift us from reactive paralysis into proactive strategy.
It helps with emotional regulation. When we name and understand what’s likely ahead, we can begin to process our grief, fear, or anger more directly, rather than carrying a vague sense of overwhelm all the time.
It improves collective coordination. Movements and communities can’t mobilise around vague dread, but they can around shared, grounded understanding. That makes collaboration more strategic and effective.
It allows for preparation — both psychological and practical. Preparedness doesn’t eliminate fear, but it replaces some of it with confidence and resilience.
Psychological preparation means we can begin to adapt mentally and emotionally to difficult realities.
Practical preparation means we can take steady, concrete steps — from voting strategies to digital security to emigration plans — that help us face what lies ahead.
And clarity creates meaning. When we understand the forces shaping our future, we can better frame our values, our roles, and our purposes in relation to them. Even in dark times, that sense of coherence matters. It gives us the ground to say: we know what we are standing for.
Which is why clarity is exactly what authoritarian regimes work to strip away. They rely on disorientation. They want us overwhelmed, unable to separate noise from signal. That is why Trump “floods the zone with sh*t” — to dominate headlines, yes, but also to exhaust our ability to discern what really matters.
There is, however, a way to cut through it. Beneath the noise, the clearest markers of where his administration is heading lie in plain sight: his Executive Orders. Read carefully, they show not only what is being done but how power is being structured and expanded. They are a framework — a map of the road ahead.
The difficulty is that mainstream media usually reports these orders at face value, focusing on immediate content without tracing their longer arc. And the kind of political analysis that does map them tends to sit behind high paywalls, out of reach of the ordinary citizens, civic groups, and charities who most need it. Which leaves many of us facing the consequences without a map.
That is why I began tracking some Executive Orders here. These posts have consistently been among the most widely read and most shared. Numbers aside, what has moved me most has been your responses. Many of you have written to say these posts cut through the fog, bring clarity, and help you feel less alone in the struggle. Some have shared them with civic groups, colleagues in charities, or resistance organisations. That feedback has shown me the value I had only sensed at first. But I can also see that it’s created confusion about what I’m offering here at Your Time Starts Now.
And so I have realised this work needs a home of its own. Presidential Power Watch is a new sister publication — launched today — dedicated to tracking executive power. My hope is that it becomes a resource you can draw on and share: a place where you and the communities you serve can find clarity and foresight about how power is being expanded, what it means for you, and how to protect what matters most.
I’ll begin with a review of the August Executive Orders. The first post looks at the creation of the Olympic Task Force — an order that not only centralises Olympic logistics, but also widens surveillance powers and extends security control through the 2028 election season. It’s a development the mainstream media has largely overlooked, and given the unfolding battle between Trump and Newsom, it carries real weight.
This does not mean I am stepping away from Your Time Starts Now. Quite the opposite! Because while clarity is necessary, it can also be destabilising. If clarity is all we have, the picture may feel overwhelming — like watching the floor drop away in slow motion.
Grounding is what keeps clarity from turning into disorientation or despair. It’s the act of placing that clear picture within something steadier: shared values, community ties, long-term perspective, or simply the reminder that authoritarian turns are not permanent states. Grounding gives us a point of reference so we can orient ourselves.
So Your Time Starts Now is where I’ll begin to put my qualifications and my own lived skills in grounding and orienting to work. Presidential Power Watch will sit alongside it: narrower, more technical, focused on the details of power’s expansion. The two will run hand-in-hand — one offering steadiness in the broad landscape, the other mapping the changes in mechanisms of power. Both are aimed at helping us navigate what lies ahead.
Think of it as one way I can put these unusual “superpowers” in service of you — so that together we are less disoriented, more prepared, and better able to protect what matters.
In the second (much briefer!) part of this post, I’ll share how Your Time Starts Now will take shape from here — and why I believe I have something more to offer than I have yet spoken of. My hope is that as you read on, you’ll find not only direction, but a sense of steadiness and support to carry with you. I aim to publish this on Sunday, but as I’m packing today and returning home tomorrow, it may take slightly longer to complete.
What lies ahead will not be easy, but we don’t have to meet it in isolation. My hope is that this work gives you not only insight, but also a sense of companionship on the road — a reminder that even in unsettled times, we can hold steady together.
In solidarity, as ever
— Lori
Chenoweth, E., 2025, History and Practice of Nonviolent Resistance, YouTube video, viewed 21 Aug 2025
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 2025, Democracy Index 2024: What’s wrong with representative democracy?, Economist Intelligence Unit, viewed 21 August 2025, https://www.eiu.com/n/democracy-index-2024/
Such a moving article! Thanks very much for sharing this important story. Navigating and managing the unpredictableness of MCAS must be exhausting. Over the years, through my own experiences and those of family and friends, I’ve learned just how intricate and delicate the human body is. I’m reminded, once again, that there are so many dedicated medical professionals who are hell-bent on understanding physiology and improving our lives. Sadly, there’s the other side of that equation where the stress of our world (especially for intuitives) and pollution certainly impact our health. I’m glad your article is shedding light on MCAS for others...
Thank you for your clarity and insight!