Resilient Imagination

Post-Growth in Practice (Part 3)

This is Part 3 in an ongoing series on building everyday resilience in the face of ecological, systemic, and cultural collapse – what I sometimes call “soft-prepping.”

• Part 1 explored digital resilience – how to stay grounded and discerning in an accelerating information landscape.

• Part 2 looked at nervous system literacy – learning to recognise and regulate our internal states as a form of resistance and repair.

• Part 3 (this piece) turns toward resilient imagination: how to think about the future without collapsing – and why vision is a vital part of staying steady in times of contraction.

• Part 4 explores the middle path – how to navigate the space between fantasy and fatalism, and how to stay aligned without retreating or giving in. Read it here.

Two black cockatoos with yellow patches on their cheeks perch on a large, weathered tree stump in the foreground. The stump rises beside a corrugated metal roof, slightly rusted and dotted with leaves. Behind them, the landscape opens into a wide, green valley filled with tall eucalyptus trees under a soft, clouded sky.

Psychologists studying post-traumatic growth often observe that imagination is one of the first things to shut down during crisis – and one of the last to return. When survival feels uncertain, the nervous system prioritises control rather than creativity. In a world shaped by ecological collapse, political unravelling, and late-capitalist fatigue, this narrowing of imaginative capacity is not personal failure; it is a predictable adaptation. But if we want to stay steady in a world that is contracting, we cannot abandon imagination entirely. We have to learn how to relate to it differently.

I first wanted to write about a world beyond capitalism, globalisation, and extraction when I was studying politics and international relations. I was 21, finishing my undergraduate degree, and considering higher research. But I couldn’t access the vision. I remember thinking: we can’t think our way out of this one. Every imagined alternative felt vague, naïve, or destined to be swallowed by the system. It was the early death of imagination – a kind of inherited hopelessness disguised as realism.

I didn’t want to be cynical and resigned at such a tender age, but I simply could not think beyond the lines we’d been given.

That same pattern played out again a decade later, as my degenerative hearing loss progressed. By 2020, the year I turned 32, I was profoundly deaf. And while the physical loss was dramatic, what hurt more was what I started to believe about my life: that I couldn’t lead, or speak, or participate in public discourse anymore, and that I would have to live a small, creative life on the sidelines. I did not lack capacity; what I lacked was imagination. I couldn’t see myself in the world I had once wanted to shape.

Then the pandemic hit. I found myself unexpectedly locked down in my homeland of Aotearoa, unable to return to Australia due to border closures. Disoriented and grieving the life I had built, but with nothing better to do, I applied for a government-funded cochlear implant, assuming nothing would come of it. Instead, I was approved almost immediately and placed at the top of the list. Five years on, I can hear again. But what returned with time wasn’t just sound; it was a sense of voice. It wasn't hearing again that restored it – what changed was the story I was telling myself about who I was allowed to be. Once I stopped imagining myself as someone who had to stay small, my voice began to return. Writing never required hearing. Speaking up never did either. The only limitation was in what I believed about who I could be.

That is what I mean by resilient imagination. It's not all vision boards, manifestation, or toxic optimism, but the slow, imperfect return of possibility.

Global politics looks different to me now. I used to see things more starkly, with systems, movements and parties all existing along a moral spectrum from left to right. The Australian election result brought a wave of relief this morning when the Coalition was decisively defeated. I think many of us were surprised at the clear message the Australian public sent to the world; that we are not America. But I found myself wishing more people had chosen to divest from the two-party system altogether. This is probably the first year I would have confidently withheld my vote from both major parties. And that realisation, too, feels like a reclaiming of possibility and imagination.

My husband and I were also discussing Burkina Faso’s president this morning, Ibrahim Traoré. At 36 (my current age), he is reportedly challenging debt structures and asserting national autonomy in ways that disrupt dominant global narratives. I do not romanticise him; there are valid critiques, especially around militarisation and authoritarianism. But what struck me was the refusal to defer to the world order – the refusal to accept that some futures are off-limits. That, too, is imagination, and it is happening in places we are taught not to look.

And then there was the moment when Glennon Doyle left Substack after being targeted by online backlash. I was surprised by how deeply it affected me, not because I’m a fan or follow her work closely, but because something clicked. I realised how long I have stayed quiet, hidden just outside the edges of the spotlight, and how much I have shaped my work around safety. It wasn’t physical safety I was trying to secure; it was the avoidance of being seen and judged. I have spent years terrified of negative feedback, of being misread or torn apart by strangers. And I traced that fear back, all the way to childhood – to being bullied by other girls, to the way I internalised their words as truth. At the time, I didn’t see them as projections. I truly believed they were naming something real that they saw in me. Some inherent defect.

But watching Glennon, a powerful and successful woman, be swarmed by petty backlash, I didn’t see evidence that I should be afraid. I saw just how meaningless the cruelty is – how random, how much it says about the crowd and not the person. For the first time, it felt obvious: it is never about you. It is about other people’s discomfort, projection, and need to control who is allowed to express in what spaces and how.

Glennon chose to leave, and I respect that, especially if it was the most regulated, protective move she could make in that moment. But I also wanted to reach through the screen, hold her hand, and say: fuck them. You deserve to be here too.

At the same time, my own Substack was growing fast, and I was spiralling. I knew I was hitting a growth edge. I booked a session with Georgia, a dear friend and intuitive practitioner. A veritable shaman if I’m honest, though she’d never call herself that. In that session, she helped me locate and release an ancient snake curled deep in my gut: a holding pattern that had kept me small for most of my life. The fear began to shift. The snake uncoiled. I remembered: I never needed permission. Just imagination strong enough to believe my words deserved to be heard too.

This was affirmed by a podcast I listened to on Sounds True with Michael Neill, where he reminded us of something simple but quietly radical: you are not insecure, you just think you are. It comes from the NLP paradigm, and he acknowledges the complexity and caveats there. But what he is pointing to is something universal that we often struggle to embrace: the idea that the mind works more like a projector than a camera. We don’t just respond to reality. We construct it, live inside it, and then forget we made it up. It is not a groundbreaking statement until you actually start to live it. Go listen to the podcast if you have a problem with this, because he breaks it down and responds to Tami's challenges on the matter beautifully.

This landed for me at just the right time because it mirrored my own experience with feeling insecure and being seen. The thing that held me back wasn’t the stories of deficit that I told myself, but what I unconsciously made it mean. That I can’t be a leader. I can’t be visible. I can’t participate in public life. The fear wasn’t located in my ears, or some fixed part of myself. It was located in my imagination.

What Neill offers is a simple but powerful distinction between physical safety and psychological safety. Most of us, especially those listening to podcasts or reading essays like this, are physically safe right now. But our felt sense of danger is often shaped by what we imagine: the future we are projecting, the rejection we are anticipating, the collapse we are bracing for. We think we are afraid of uncertainty, but we are not. We are afraid of the meaning we have attached to it.

And when we can separate out the real threat from the imagined one, we get our flexibility back. We can move again. Think again. Create again.

Bill Plotkin calls this kind of inner work soulcentric visioning, a process of imagining that emerges from deep engagement with place, psyche, and purpose, rather than ideology or escape. Joanna Macy, in her work on Active Hope, describes imagination as a practice of staying in right relationship with an unknown future. This involves showing up for what we value even when outcomes are unclear, rather than clinging to certainty. Tyson Yunkaporta, in Sand Talk, reminds us that Indigenous knowledge systems imagine collectively and relationally. They are grounded in ongoing conversation with land, story, and kinship – not abstract individual visioning. These approaches are also echoed in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which helps us separate from the content of our thoughts so we can take meaningful action even when things are uncertain or not as we would choose them to be. ACT teaches that we do not need to eliminate fear or confusion in order to move forward – we only need to connect with what matters to us, and keep choosing it.

These thinkers and frameworks have shaped my own understanding of imagination. Not as fantasy or hope in the conventional sense, but as a willingness to rehearse futures that honour life. This does not mean bypassing grief or pretending collapse is not happening. It means reclaiming agency inside it. It means recognising that fear and imagination often occupy the same neural real estate, and we get to choose what we rehearse.

We can grieve and still build. We can fear collapse and still create. We can feel unsafe and still act in alignment with our values. And perhaps most radically, we can do all this and still enjoy our lives.

For those of you who want to explore this idea more deeply, I’ve created a small collection of resources for my lovely paid subscribers. These include a printable reflection worksheet, writing prompts to help re-open your imaginative range, a curated list of readings and practices that support visionary thinking, and access to a private group chat where we can share our ideas and imaginings more personally.

I’m continuing to offer 50% off subscriptions for readers following this series. And if you’d like to join but genuinely can’t afford to pay right now, just message me and we can work something out.

[Access the Resilient Imagination Toolkit →]

Gabrielle x