Hoorf! Radical Care in a Late-Capitalist Heckscape
Exhausted, burned out, and isolated in your chaotic life? Self-care isn’t enough. Hoorf! Podcast host Elle Billing is a disabled artist and caregiver on the other side of burnout. In each episode, Elle and her guests discuss the challenges of living compassionately with honesty and humor. Honoring Angela Davis’ definition of the word radical – that “grasping at the root” – we are digging at the roots of systemic problems in a conversational format, getting to know our neighbors, and using creative expression to heal ourselves and our world. Find out more at www.hoorfpodcast.com
[pause, pause, and] Elle reflects on the fourth season of Hoorf, bringing the longest and shortest season to its meandering close. They reflect on their hometown of Enderlin, North Dakota, and the previous year's challenges, which include an historic tornado and personal mental health crises, that impacted this season of the podcast. Meditating on the last four seasons, Elle shares plans for the next stage of HOORF, based on the lessons of support gleaned from their community.
Links to connect with Elle, as well as all other resource links, are in the full show notes at hoorfpodcast.com
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Hi, my name is Elle Billing. I am a chronically ill queer femme, and I'm tired. I'm here this episode and every episode to dig at the roots of our collective fatigue, explore ways to direct our care in compassionate and sustainable ways, and to harness creative expression to heal ourselves and to heal our world. Welcome to Hoorf Radical care in a late capitalist heckscape. Hi, welcome to the last episode of the fourth season of Hoorf Podcast. This has been the longest and also the shortest season of Hoorf so far. We have had nine episodes, the shortest, shorter than our usual 16, stretched out over 11 months, almost a year, rather than our typical October to May timeline that we usually produce our seasons. So again, this has been the longest and shortest season that we've ever produced. It's actually remarkable that we had this season at all. This was a season that almost didn't happen. You see, it's been one year since I stopped sleeping and ended up in the hospital. As I record this, it is the first week of September 2026. During the first week of September in 2025, I stopped sleeping, and then I didn't sleep for a week. For those of you who know what happens to the human brain when it stops sleeping, you may know the rest of the story. I had an experience with psychosis, and I ended up in inpatient psychiatric care where I stayed for 12 days. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. When I got out of the hospital, I wasn't miraculously better, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I was not in a good place. I still needed a lot of help, but for whatever reason, I still decided, as part of the process of putting myself back together, that the podcast needed to happen. We released six episodes as normal during the fall, October, November, and December, but by the time January hit. I was overwhelmed, and we kind of pressed pause on the second half of the season, but not really because I was still constantly thinking about it because it didn't feel finished. Even this episode, this is Plan C for this episode. Plans A and B didn't happen. It has taken me literal months to put this episode together because I just don't know how to end the season. How do I feel about the direction of Hoorf? I'm pretty damn proud of what we've accomplished. We've produced four seasons. We've created well over 50 episodes. Our focus has been on creativity and care, on disability and intersectional issues, on burnout and taking care of our neighbors. How do we feel about that? Pretty good. Listening back to four seasons of interviews, we have met some really incredible people. Going back to the first season and the first episode, I said something that still remains true to this day. Everything is connected, and I am so tired. I don't always thread the needle very well, though, on making the connections, and I'd like to revamp a little bit so we can see the connections when we put a season together. But going back to that episode again, I want to meditate on this for just a moment. This is quoting from season one, episode one. Individuals care, people care, institutions are care less, and still, yes, a great many people do not care. If you are listening to this, if you have made it this far in this episode of a podcast subtitled"Radical Care" and a late capitalist heckscape, chances are you care, you care a great deal, and you are probably tired, burned out, maybe. burnout happens everywhere. y'all. It's been four years since that first episode, and when we look around, things kind of look worse than they did four years ago. Individuals still care, people still care, our institutions are crumbling, and they are downright cruel. That's one of the things that I've noticed and learned in the last four years, but we are building things as individuals, as small groups of people. We are creating our own networks of care, and creating the world that we want to live in, in the shell of the one that's crumbling around us. What I've learned is that I was right. There are people out there who care. There are people right here who care. We just have to find each other. Plan B for this episode was to talk about my hometown. I came back to live here five years ago, after thinking I would never come back to Enderlin to live. Every five years, we have an all school reunion, and tons of people come back to celebrate our school and our town. We had an all school reunion the year I moved home, and we had one this year. And I had the very last minute idea to interview people about what they think makes Enderland different, or special, or unique, or what it is about our town that stands out to them, because I've heard it from people that there's just something different about Enderlin, right? And like personal bias, everyone who likes the place they live thinks that the place that they live is the best. I think a lot of people from small towns feel that way, but not everyone. I know folks who really struggle in the town where they live, and I have been wounded here. I'll be honest. There was a reason I didn't think I'd come back. and so I talked to people from the classes of '76 and '66 who were having milestone year reunions, and I talked to somebody from the class of '65 for a really long time, and these were all people who had graduated from my school, who had left and then came back for the reunion. I also talked to people who had left at some point, and then they came back to live here and raise a family. And I talked to people who had graduated and never left. I even talked to people who were not from here originally and just decided to move here. Unfortunately, I am not good at field recording, and because my idea was so last minute, I did not get any advice on how to do it properly. So my recordings are not any good. It's a casualty of ADHD. My apologies. I was going to use the recordings in this episode, or at least Plan B of this episode, so people could hear themselves on the podcast and we could talk about it, and it would get the community involved. And so, I'm really sorry to the people of Enderlin and at the all school reunion that you don't get to hear yourself on the podcast. I really do appreciate your time, and I really enjoyed talking to all of you. And what you said did give me some insight into our community. Everyone had a different answer for what makes Enderlin what it is, and I note not everyone from Enderland feels the same way about where we live. But what I noticed about the answers I got from the people I talked to is that for the people who do love this place, they all said something that ties back to the way that people show up for each other. People mentioned the tornado from last year, which, by the way, I will link this in the show notes. Worst tornado North Dakota has ever seen. It was, was bad, but the way everybody came together to help out and help their neighbors and take care of each other. There was a group of people who said that their graduating class was tight knit and had stayed close for 50 years, kept in touch and stayed friends, and they felt that was really special. Some people appreciate the way our community comes together to produce musicals every year and to support the arts. It's just that people show up for each other, and that is something I have been thinking about since the reunion, because that's a choice, a decision, because in a world where the news is constantly about how uncaring and cold and hostile and violent the world is getting, and how that's the way the world is, we can still decide to show up, and that's what we've been trying to do with the podcast for the last
four seasons:
to overcome isolation, to bring people together, and to talk about ways that we can care for each other, and to get down to the roots of what it is to care for each other and to lighten It's been a year since my stay in the hospital. Being there was that load, so we're not burning out trying to do everything alone all the time. one of the most isolating and terrifying experiences of my life. What helped me the most weren't the doctors; it was the visits from my parents, and the cards from family and friends, and spending time with the other patients. I fought like hell for my brain and for my soul and for myself while I was there, and human connection is what got me anchored back into reality. To be perfectly honest, I am still putting my brain back together. For me, there has been a lot of grief that has gone with this experience. And I'm still sifting through that. I'm still putting myself back together. I'm still figuring out what my capacity is. And as much as I would love to show up for everybody all the time, I have limited capacity. I'm chronically ill. I'm disabled. I have limited energy. And in order for me to show up, I have to be able to honestly assess what my capacity is, so this is the last episode of season four, but it is not the last episode of Hoorf. I'm taking a sabbatical, a second pause, I guess, where I am not going to be obsessing over what I need to do for the podcast this time. I'm taking care of myself, we as producers of Hoorf are taking care of ourselves. We're looking at the way we produce the podcast. We're looking at our capacities and capabilities as disabled people, as ill people, as producers, and as partners. We're looking at how we can show up and at how we can work, and we will be back with a different way of being here as Hoorf radical care in a late capitalist heckscape, because we can't produce something about burnout while burning out. It doesn't work that way. Thank you so much for being here for the last four seasons, and we will see you on the other side of this pause. Pause, pause, and then. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hoorf. To get the complete show notes and all the links mentioned on today's episode, or to get a full transcript of the episode, visit hoorfpodcast.com. Join the Blessed Herd of Saint Winkus by signing up for our newsletter. You can get Hoorf episodes delivered directly to your inbox. What's more, you get invitations to our monthly coffee and biscuits chat, where you get to hang out with Ricki and Elle, talk about the show, and connect on the topics that mean the most to you. You can sign up for that at hoorfpodcast.com. If you become a patron, for only$3 a month you can support the creation of this podcast, help pay my editor, and join a community of caregivers out here just doing our best. Thank you again for joining me, Elle Billing, the chronically ill queer femme who is very tired, on this episode of Hoorf. Until next time, be excellent to each other. Hoorf is hosted by Elle Billing@elleandwink, audio editing by Ricki Cummings @rickiep00h, music composed by Ricki Cummings. Hoorf is a production of Elle & Wink Art Studio LLC. All rights reserved. Hoorf can be found on all social media platforms at Hoorf Podcast@hoorfpodcast.
