where do our voices cross?
When a species has a mode of communication all its own, what happens to the possibility of connections outside that group? Where do our voices cross? What other species has ever survived so alone?
I notice so much noise from humans these days, so much coming through from all the feeds, folders, mailboxes, pings and dings (and I don’t even do social media). Anyone else feel completely inundated with thoughts to process and things to read? It’s hard to find a corner to sit my mind down and listen to the emerging birdsong frogsong windsong firesong. A computer is supposed to be a tool, but I have to ask myself sometimes: what does it fix, and what gets broken in the fixing?
When a species has a mode of communication all its own, what happens to the possibility of connections outside that group? Where do our voices cross? What other species has ever survived so alone?
As I try to teach my child how to produce a story he’d like to tell, we flip flop from writing (not fast enough) to typing (too unknown) to computer dictation (ridiculously inaccurate). He becomes so frustrated trying to find the most efficient way to get his story in writing that he soon gives up, and the story scatters with the out swing of the door. He’s gone out into the wind and changing sky, the palpable weight of clouds and cool air, and I let him go. Finally, when something happens magical enough to report, he returns with the most brilliant story of all, only he doesn’t have to tell it to me, I can see it in the color of his eyes, the ruddy glow of his skin, the authentic excitement. Instead of writing down a story, he’s just lived one.
Yes, there’s so much good that’s come from this technology: so many sweeping ideas, movements, even revolutions sparked from the ticking of plastic keys under blue-white light….perhaps so much that it’s impossible to see what’s being lost.
How does human supremacy keep us from hearing the stories we need to be listening to right now? As we humans emerge from a year of collective struggle and tension - what does the trickle of the stream say? Why might it be crucial to hear inside this Great Unraveling?
There are many questions here. Letting these questions hang in the equinox light seems the only possible worthy answer…letting the birdsong frogsong windsong firesong be the answer that begins a conversation with someone other than ourselves. Here on the cusp of ‘opening’, we humans need to listen to the elemental wisdom about how to open, and what to open into. I wonder what you think. I wonder who is pushing on your senses, waiting to be heard in your circle of belonging…
Is there a healer in there?
Healing emerges in the directional shift of moving towards life.
Peering into a sun soaked jar of the last of the green medicine from the garden, my overgrown toddler asks, “is there a healer in there?”
This is one of those great questions that only new people can conjure, one that silences me and opens me all at once. I’m finally smart enough to know not to try to answer these kinds of questions and let the spinning earth do the talking. I sit quietly for a breath or two, letting the question fill the space. Finally, the small one looks up and we see each other deeply for a wisp of a moment, letting the question land on each other.
Much later, after dinner and pillow fights and negotiations about pajamas, I lean back into that question and wonder, is there a healer in here, now? If not now, when today did I engage the healing energy that seems to be the innate force of anything and everything that strives for life? I think back to the messy parenting moments and feelings of overwhelm and know that my healer was m.i.a. (without adding guilt or shame to that observation). Then, I remember the moments where I scooped up a kid who was on their way towards tantrum, heard the cat crying for food and responded, looked out and witnessed the cooper’s hawk gliding low over the field. With each of these intertwined moments, I see that healing is never directional but cyclical, like the breath. In taking care of the old cat, I inhaled the flight of the hawk, like medicine. In taking in the hawk, I had a slightly bigger bandwidth to see a fragile child and intervene with love. The pulse of energy is ever-flowing and present, but being awake, curious, and aware seems to be the magic that engages the healer.
A few days later, when I check on the dried, aromatic mugwort macerating in almond oil, the smell reaches into my brain, wraps around my womb, and softens my heart. then the aha moment comes: “there is nothing but healers in here!” There is no other energy to engage with, as a plant, than the energy of life. Upwards and outward and downward - always - even now. With empty limbs and grey stalks the landscape heaves life force down, caressing the Earth’s crust until it yields in embrace. Healing emerges in the directional shift of moving towards life.
I wonder how it would feel to have roots spreading along my skin: like a tickle, spreading smiles? Like a soft, arousing kiss?
The plants know something so completely simple yet so vast, it’s hard to put a name to it for myself. But when I look out with delight at the free flying hawk, or sneak in to curl around my sleeping child, I know completely what it is the plants know. It’s love. Just simply (profoundly), love. They reach out in every direction with it, true healers every single one. Plants celebrate the perfect union they make out of the interdependent elements of earth and sky, fire and air. It’s divinely erotic out there….
And from that union, we emerge, are nourished and fed, and supported in our own amazing ability to heal and be well. It’s like coming home to safe, loving arms. With this image in mind, enveloped by the plants, I wish us all deep healing this winter.
the shawl of grief and wonder
using death to reckon with belonging
above is a picture of a squirrel skin, recently “harvested”. It was not a harvest I wanted to make. I would have much rather seen her dash up a tree and out of site, but she was too slow for the over-sized truck barreling toward her. I saw it in a flash: wow! bushy tailed squirrel in the road! Then: oncoming truck whizzing past without a hint of brake light. What that human driving the truck left was a trembling body in it’s wake. I circled back and pulled over, driving slowly. Annoyed drivers rushed past, while the squirrel twitched as they passed over her and I waited for the road to clear…it was a brutal 15 seconds. Then, in the abrupt silence, I walked over and scooped her up, head bleeding, but warm and pulsing. Before another driver could seal my fate to the squirrels, I dashed back to the side of the rural highway that happens to run through a most gorgeous stretch of rolling, oak-covered hills. The squirrel had a far off look in her eyes, and then she didn’t. She was dead, just like that.
The tears that came surprised me, after all, it’s just another pesky squirrel, right? But my chest heaved and my tears kept escaping as I wondered at the softness I held, the bushy tail that extended far beyond the tips of the hairs, the perfect little ears…those brilliant claws. She belonged where she was, was essential to the humming beauty of those hills, and still had gifts to give. The grief brought profound gratitude, and the two emotions wrapped around me like a woven blanket.
I wanted to blame the brutish truck driver, but it could have been me in my car that dealt the blow just as easily. It’s the ability to drive by, without a second glance that makes me wonder, “where is our collective heart?” When do we remember that the grief of the clear-cut forest, or the other squirrels and birds looking on at the one they lost, or the countless species that go missing from the planet forever every single day, is our grief too? Why do we not stop everything when we witness death or destruction to weep with the world? What if we did?
I can’t leave the squirrel here, so I place her on a crumpled paper bag with a few acorns in the backseat, and drive on towards my own family. I sing as I drive, telling the story of the end of the squirrel’s life, as if she could hear me.
When I return home, I turn her death into an offering, laying her hardened body on the last rose petals of the season, and see my children get quiet and alert in the reverence of the moment. I pass her over to my son, who later skins her with tenderness, appreciating every detail, then buries her under a grateful Oak. I hope, in turning all his senses to this animal, he feels the wonder and grief wrapped around him too.
The story that grieving is too painful to bear is an old one, intertwined with the ones that say ‘focus on the positive’, ‘stay with the light’, ‘turn away from the dark’. We can’t decipher the light without knowing the dark, or know what love is without the thought of losing it. So many cultures hold practices that guide the psyche towards loss - death meditations, tonglen, maranasati. Joanna Macy has done decades of work around helping people honor their pain. When we attempt to stay with joy, pushing the grief away, we end up with an empty cup. it may still be called joy (or progress, or ingenuity), but there’s nothing in it. So, how to change the story, and fill the cup, collectively?
It matters that we change this story because our love is intricately tied to the survival of the planet, to our own species continuing, and without deep love for both ourselves and what we think of as other, we miss out on what it means to care. During this pandemic, for example, we’ve invigorated the plastic industry with barriers, individual containers - bulk bins a thing of the past – massive amounts of cleaning chemicals, but at what cost? We all know about the floating plastic island in the Pacific, that it never decomposes, but we’ve got to be safe, right? it depends on the definition of safety: does safe mean us individually, or species wide, or as a part of the metabolic earth? Is the road safe because drivers can pass easily, or is it considered safe only when it is safe for everyone (squirrel, fox, deer, bug) to pass?
we are the only species that gets to choose how to tell our own story. The story that we are separate from what we call ‘nature’…better, more essential, more powerful, is one we’ve been telling for millennia. We could tell a new - or, even older - story that we belong, that their grief is our grief, their suffering is our suffering, their extinction is tied to our own. In this story, everything is vital. Everyone matters. This is what Black people have been shouting at white people, what Indigenous people have been shouting at settlers. This is what recent immigrants are shouting at people who immigrated before they did, what women are shouting at men. We all have to matter in this story, and let ourselves be drawn in to the lives all around us and release our own storied isolation…to acknowledge who belongs, even if it's a pesky squirrel or a scraggly oak blocking our view…and to reckon with the depths of which we belong to each other, and the depths of which we belong to this earth.
the connections between gifting and gratitude
how the maternal roots of gifting show us about survival in times of crisis
“Mama, where are all the chickens?” my child came in asking on a recent late afternoon.
There’s usually 15 fluffy, mischievous hens wandering around looking for new ways into the veggie garden, but on this day, I looked out and saw a few feathered lumps in the bone dry grass. “Uh-oh, looks like it’s harvest season”, I said. Sure enough, we found 3 headless chickens lying limp, but where were the others? Upon further investigation, we deduced that 3 had been killed by some sort of mustelid, 3 were spared, and a whopping 9 were completely gone. WTF? What kind of creature carries off 9 lively birds at a time, in broad daylight? If this wasn’t bad enough, a couple of days later, the hungry bugger came back for the remaining 3, bringing the tally to 15 stolen chickens in 72 hours. If felt like a cruel joke, but not one without an echo of metaphor of what we’ve all been living inside.
This is not the first encounter we’ve had with death on the domesticated animal front, and I knew that to process any of it, I had to change the story of being “stolen from” to one of “offering a gift” – even begrudgingly. We ceremoniously brought the wheelbarrow around and dumped the 3 bodily remains in the way back, along the wild corridor of this land, to join the multiple sheep, chicken, and cat bones that grace the area. As I wandered around, kicking at old bones, I thought about all the meals we’ve offered the wild animals that we work so hard to make space for here: fox, mink, bobcat, quail, even the occasional mountain lion. I also thought about how I would not have given any of them willingly.
These bones have been offered as gifts out of necessity, like a milk-laden mama offers her body. Just like that mother, we do not get to choose how much to give, or even who to give it to. Mothering itself seems to be a bootcamp of sorts in how to continue giving even when it seems like there’s nothing more to give. While I’m not advocating for doing so to the demise of oneself, I wonder if there’s more acceptance that can be cultivated to ease our culture towards generosity, and away from the model of individualized grabbing/owning. It’s such a delicate balance, the one between self-care (or self advocating) and rapacity cloaked in privilege.
Leaning into the roots of maternal giving I get to see a fractal of the bigger picture, one that shows me how much I am gifted everyday. I imagine the willow I recently pruned didn’t want to give up all those branches, nor did the 3 remaining chickens rejoice in the return of the predator, I suspect. Maybe you or I don’t want to donate money to a certain campaign, or spend the day at the food bank, or with your ever-present children, but gifting isn’t about wanting. As my friend Riki Bloom, MFT says, “Giving doesn’t always get to come from abundance or wanting or ease, but it is about maintaining balance, equity, equanimity and sometimes it just comes without warning.”
This is an interesting moment in our culture, when most all of us are feeling the collective squeeze, either with pandemic related issues (food security, job security, human contact), stress about the political climate, or living with an onslaught of natural disasters due to climate crisis. What’s unique, is that we really all are in this discomfort together, and the overlapping crisis is the binding glue. It may seem like a time to curl into a ball and wait it out, but what gives strength and agency in a time of extreme distress, is offering a gift. The magic of a gift is that the hands on either side of the gift get to receive something - a gift gives both ways.
In spending time watching the chicken bodies become cleaned bones, I wandered past a shy oak a few days in a row. On the last day, I finally noticed the bounty of giant valley oak acorns at my feet that I could hardly believe my luck. I use these as a morning breakfast mainstay, and finding such an abundance of acorns lifted my mouth into a wide smile. The tree is quite small, for an oak, and scraggly, but it gave and gave and gave. I looked up into the canopy and saw the lesson of how to give, not based on what we have but what we are capable of.
In practicing giving, our innate capacity to be aligned with the essence of the Earth is enlivened, and like a tree in sunlight, it will grow. In aligning ourselves with what’s needed, we employ generosity as our guide. Giving, in itself, is healing.
Happy harvest season, when the land reminds us what giving is…
the storied smoke
Maybe fire for trees is what books are for us.
The smoke is stifling, depressing, and unhealthy for us humans. We can only take so much grief at once. i think it’s time for a reframe. let’s turn our amazing capacity for noticing, to the trees.
trees have an amazing capacity for communicating. It’s the way they make sense of the world, the way they travel and know things without the joy of individual legs. Scientists have realized that trees speak through their roots, sharing stories of where to find water, how to navigate a new cliff, how deep to reach for nutrients. But what if science also discovered that smoke - tiny bits of burned trees - wasn’t just “smoke” to them? what if this thick layer of haze we, along the western side of the continent are living inside, was actually a potent story for the trees to inhale through limb and leaf? Maybe it’s that the ones burned truly have transformed themselves into tiny particles of wisdom for the ones still standing. Maybe fire for trees is what books are for us.
And in those stories, what grand memories the trees have to recall! …An old black oak remembering the migratory path of the calliope hummingbird or peregrine falcon, an alder recalling where the stream bed deepened over decades of watching, or an ancient redwood, remembering for us all what the world looked like before colonialism and capitalism took hold - what it felt like to live before the human population replaced the bear and bobcat.
For the trees still standing in the diffuse layers of storied smoke, every second of every day and night…perhaps they in turn whisper to the hummingbird which direction to fly. Or the salmon, which fork in the watery path runs deep enough to spawn in. Maybe the willow has received the story from the redwood of how to see us humans from a different vantage point. One that reminds us of our intrinsic place in this great woven basket we call Earth. Maybe, by laying my spine against the willow, i could re-envision human life that is not measured by it’s productivity or power, but instead by it’s generosity and capacity for joy.
in the liminal, what is possible?
“The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.”
resident gopher snake, after a big meal.
Sept. 7th. 10am. Sonoma County, Ca, USA.
yellow. no, orange. no, creamy eggshell. salmon? milky, in a sour kind of way. A soup of fog and smoke. thick, definitely thick.
Today the world is a different color.
The sun is so blocked out that it’s not quite day and yet not still night.
What to do in this space between night and day?
Neither is fully here on this otherwise average day in early Fall. There is still a bird here and there, briefly naming things, but overall, this weather feels like the weather between breaths~
Should I inhale or exhale? Is there even a choice in the matter?
I know in my bones that the weather out there is the biggest compass for the weather inside me. All my chemicals, compounds, hormones…all tuned to the light of the sun.
like a sunflower, I subconsciously orient towards the light - or dark - of the sky.
Looking out into the salmon colored thickness, I feel like I am inside an egg, or behind closed eyelids, looking out.
Maybe this is what my eyes first saw, looking through layers of womb from inside. Maybe this is what it looks like before something new emerges.
Rebecca Solnit’s words surface: “The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.”
It’s hard to choose hope in this moment of bleakness, but my eyes rest on the willow stick I recently lopped off and stuck in the ground, and wonder: could this mix of fog and carbon be like a cool smoothie of potential green and growth for you, dear stick? What does the weather feel like for you? Curiosity is medicine we all knew once. Changing my lens instantly changes my breath, exhaling into possibility. My cells re-orient to orange, the color of the clown after all, the one who expertly navigates between joy and grief.
Here’s to looking out from deep inside, like a caterpillar folded into a chrysalis, a yolk finding it’s form, a baby reaching into the unknown.
who knows what’s possible from here?
taking solace in a sunflower's story
a sunflower’s story that offers us a kind of compass to turn to when we are all but lost.
bent, but not deterred.
This sunflower has had quite a year. First it was smashed into the ground by sticky, willful toddler hands that insisted it grow in the middle of the path. Then, the obvious troubles of trying to grow with a daily torrent of feet. Despite that, it persisted, and got to be just big enough to be noticed and walked around. Then, a dog’s happy tail came through and thwacked it over, nearly snapping it’s spindly stem. Still, even with the biggest fallback, one i thought for sure would be the end of this little struggling plant, it bloomed. Swiveling it’s head up to the sky was no small matter, no doubt, but here it is, the most battered and beautiful serpentine sunflower of the garden, going to seed.
All this is not to imply that we humans - who have been facing torrent after torrent as well- have the capacity for this kind of resiliency. I’m certainly not sure I do. But most of us are surrounded by plants just like this, who model this kind of graceful tenacity: the dandelion on the corner, the thistle taking over the field despite the mower, the redwood with embers burning it’s center. By tracking the lives of our plant neighbors, their stories offer us a kind of compass to turn to when we are all but lost. Their unspoken knowledge is something only an older sibling could impart to it’s younger. I think plants offer us a wisdom our own language cannot touch, a kind of musical tuning that can only be heard by an empty heart.
The other night i spontaneously laid down next to the sunflower, belly stretched out on the path, and began breathing deeper despite the thick layer of smoke still hanging a foot above me. Sunflower said “nose to the ground”. I said “thanks, this helps.”
what is sustainable?
sustainability does not actually exist anywhere in the natural world, only change.
According to the U.N. (who popularized the term in the 1980s), sustainability is when everyone, everywhere can meet their basic needs, forever.
The term sustainable has been around long enough that most of us think of it as an achievable end to a means. These days, many of us are wondering about how to sustain the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement and the demand for the justice system to be overhauled. Others are talking about how to sustain pressure on the political systems to reckon with climate catastrophe. Still others are wondering how to sustain the unsustainable task of endless parenting/working/hometending simultaneously (with a good attitude about it all, no less). Over and over, I hear (in others as well as my own stubborn head), that sustainability is key in making change; sustainability is needed in each of us individually to “fight the good fight”, “do the work”, or “make change happen”. Essentially, that true sustainability equals forever. Usually, after a good bout of this ideology, I feel like a coffee percolator when it’s out of liquid to percolate, gurgling and gasping, but flat out of steam.
Then, I go outside. It’s immediately apparent that sustainability does not actually exist anywhere in the natural world. The only thing I can clearly see is that change doesn’t need any effort to happen, it’s just happening. Everything is at some place in it’s cycle: sprouting growing flowering seeding dying.
The only sustainable part is that it does it again and again and again. Like the moon waxing and waning every 28 1/2 days - like the sun rising relentlessly to remind us to wake up every single morning. Everything that inspires has to expire…we have to exhale after every inhale. Try it. It’s impossible not to. So whether we are in the streets right now protesting or in the courthouse demanding justice or writing a book on racial equity, at some point we’ll need to exhale. To soften, to sleep, to take a vacation even (“GASP!” goes the martyr in me). Essentially, to drop back into the spine, the back of the eyes, and simply surrender to falling over. It’s so scary to fall down, because there’s always the chance we won’t be able to get back up, you know? In dance, contact improvisation in particular, I’ve found the best way to learn how to fly is to practice falling. When you know how to fall, the body can trust the wildly untrustworthy position of flight. What does falling look like in your life? And if we do dare “fall” into that soporific vacation, or find ourselves trolling one of our social media feeds mindlessly, or just wishing that everything would go back to the way it was, at some point we are going to need to inhale again. To wake up and rise up, back into this reality.
The thing I learn from plants about sustainability is that, although it doesn't actually exist, there is always the earth to return to and rise out of. Falling down and getting up repeatedly is a circular pathway. Life is not linear. Life is not one direction. Life is a series of ever widening circles – spiraling - turning from one direction to the next and the next and the next. One of the most helpful spirals I know of is that of Joanna Macy's work, the Work That Reconnects. She tells us to begin with gratitude, with the inhale. At any point, any place in a process that feels endless, dragging, exhausting, or unsustaining, inhale gratitude. It’s a helpful beginning. Also, tonglen, the radical act of suffering with as a practice of compassion, taught by Pema Chodron.
This work is a nice way to trick our selves into practicing self-acceptance, which is always the starting point. Giving ourselves permission to exist and be enough is a slap in the face to the capitalistic, patriarchal society that force-feeds us (especially women, BIPOC, queer people) the notion that we are never, ever enough. Fuck that, right?!
So, my hunch is that when we can be grateful for ourselves, the whole world really will shift on its axis, and become what we would like it to become. Sustainable. Sustained inhaling and exhaling, rising and falling, continuously circling towards our center. Towards ourselves with love, and spreading that love wide and far with each exhale. In systems theory, the microcosm is simply a smaller circle of the macrocosm. Widening circles. Participating, willingly, in the cyclical nature of everything, the
sprouting growing flowering seeding dying, and sprouting again.
It’s all in one breath, or one collapse onto the earth.
sing it again
every child knows something about how to grieve; it’s how to remember such wisdom as an adult that poses the challenge.
He asks me to sing it again and again
Lying in the low light, naked,
His sweaty, small
Head resting on my arm.
I sing the story of
The little
boat, boat, boat
Who ne-ver learned to
float, float, float
As we gaze at the picture book
of moonlight over water
And a tethered tiny boat.
I think he’s trying to help himself to sleep
But he’s up to something else.
After many rounds of “again, mama”,
He says, choked,
“that makes me feel so - so – sad!”
Then, the flood of tears
commences.
He wails with abandon
Eyes shut tight - tears wringing out
Like drops from a rag.
I hold him, lightly, and listen with awe.
How does this small human, 3 years here, know
So much
About how to be with grief?
Several minutes pass, it’s quiet again.
A slow breath, big exhale.
The tide recedes and he asks, with a shaky voice,
“Can you sing it one more time?”
what’s special about this child is that soft, mournful music has always made him wail. I remember him 6 months old, just sitting up, when I found an old harmonica and began playing softly. Instantly, his face twisted into pain, and he began to make a sound that reminded me of a lone wolf. I experimented, did it with a happier lilt, no crying. The piano, same thing. Violin, no question.
What is not special about this child, is that every child knows something about how to grieve. They all know how to completely let go into the vast emotional space that can be anything from joy to anger to pain. I tend to judge this as immaturity, as something to grow out of, but I wonder…
What if the deepest wisdom of the body is allowing the full spectrum of expression, clearing the path for vibrant health?
Maybe that’s why kids are so full of life, because they allow themselves to feel it all. And as they feel it all, body systems integrate and metabolize. Our bodies hold our stories, our past, our traumas, and our unprocessed emotions. As years go by, it often becomes compelling to hold a good bit of that in, and in holding, things get buried. In the lungs, grief. In the heart, overwhelm. In the liver, anger.
What do our smaller selves know about how to keep these organs functioning well, and what learned stories keep us from that vibrant way of living in full health?
In this culture, we learn to move away from what feels ‘bad’, move towards what feels ‘good’, and learn very little about the journey of acceptance of all that is. Watching my 3 year old cry with such complete surrender to his own grief, I am reminded about how to do so myself. But hearing him then ask me to sing it again - to face the pain without aversion or fear - my heart turned to regard him with the utmost respect and awe. I want to learn from this newer person how to face what is with the same calm, curious acceptance. And whether it makes me wail and cry or laugh and rejoice, I want to know I can be with it all, in real time.
garden orgasms
It’s not every day I get to support someone else’s ecstasy.
It’s not every day I get to support someone else’s ecstasy.
I’m wandering around in the last light of the day with a hose (still my preferred way to water, no matter how time consuming), and absent-mindedly point the nozzle into the sun to water the calendula. It was so beautiful, I lingered, watching.
An anna’s hummingbird is suddenly hovering two feet from my face. This is not unusual, there’s probably a dozen hummingbird’s around on any given day, but today, this tiny being must’ve been watching, waiting for me to get still enough to engage. Slowly, deliberately, she dips her tail and wings into the spray of water. I hold steady, holding my breath. I can’t begin to describe how beautiful she is, with the light behind her, neck arched, delighting in her wild bath. After a long slow minute, she disappears, and breaks the spell. I go back to watering, slow and slightly dumbfounded, until she visits again, and again; three times coming back for more. I have no idea if hummingbirds have orgasms, but if I were to guess, I would say this bath is on par with that kind of intensity for her.
After the third round, she circles my head in that classic stop/start way of a hummingbird’s flight, until she’s as close to my ear as either of us could imagine, vibrating with a gratitude that I can feel in my whole body. It’s like being kissed on the back of the neck - spine tingling. Then she’s gone.
I barely touched the ground as I walked back inside, vibrating at a hummingbird’s frequency. In hindsight, I only wish I’d thought to offer some kind of gratitude back – because really, it was a gift for me to be invited to support someone so fully inside their beauty and freedom.
the triumvirate of the health crisis, the racial crisis, and the climate crisis
I’m a white woman and a healer and I want to talk about health and wellness in these times. The way the coronavirus moves through the body is similar to the way racism moves through society.
I’m a white woman and a healer and I want to talk about health and wellness in these times. I write these words to include all of us in the work it takes to reconnect to ourselves and to each other. To call everyone in, especially white people, from all their perspectives and corners, and be counted as present.
What I really want to talk about is our bodies,
yours
mine
‘theirs’.
• • •
Since the onset of this viral outbreak, our medical institutions have advised us to do
‘everything possible’ to not get this bug: social distance, self-isolate, wash hands, wear masks.
But something is missing from the conversation.
Where is the information about how to thrive?
Where is the information about how to prepare for the possibility of actually getting this virus?
Where is the empowered story that our bodies are wise & resilient, and with preventative care, can weather this storm – maybe even be stronger for it?
Where is the curiosity about what this virus can teach us?
As Teresa M. Heinichen-Owens RN, MS writes,
“It appears that this virus "sneaks" around slowly infecting each body system it can, at low levels, so as to not alert the immune system. This behavior appears to provoke a nonspecific immune response, which causes mild generalized inflammation that can manifest in subtle ways depending on what each person is prone to, hence the masked symptoms. When they reach critical mass, the replicated viruses all signal each other to"attack" at the same moment, which is when rapid onset of obvious symptoms, followed quickly by the cytokine storm and resultant crash, occur. Now it is a medical emergency of epic proportions which western medicine has no tools to combat.”
Again and again media has reinforced the narrative that traditional herbs, simple supplements and other immune supportive traditions are unproven and likely useless in the face of Covid-19.
This particular viral presence is offering us the opportunity to pay attention to the subtle body shifts in wellness, dis-ease, and respond…to remember that health is not a given, it is something to practice. We cannot rely on allopathic (western) medicine to save us. It’s built on the premise that: you aren’t deemed ill until an expert/a doctor tells you so; the path to health is framed as being at war with your own biology (antibiotics, antiseptics, antibacterials, anti-everything); the body is viewed as a machine, to be fixed when it is broken; it replaces traditional medicines and values of healthy living, well being and interconnectedness. Allopathic medicine was born out of whiteness and patriarchy and - blatantly or not - keeps systemic racism in working order.
To quote Dr. King,
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
• • •
Now I’d like to talk about race.
The way the coronavirus moves through the body is similar to the way racism moves through society.
In the same way that we need to be aware of the subtleties of our immune systems, we must be aware of the subtleties of racism.
Not one of us has escaped the threat of the coronavirus, nor the harm of whiteness, patriarchy, racism, allopathic belief systems, or the looming disasters foretold in regards to our earth. As I write this, the eruption of protests about police brutality on Black bodies, all over the world, are testament to how “done” we all are with sitting in these compliant & complicit roles and how ready we are for healing and living in the wholeness of our humanity.
Our collective heart is broken. This breaking is showing us where the wounds are, and how deep they run.
The description of the coronavirus above sounds a lot like the silent storm of racism that impacts all of us negatively, but Black bodies exponentially. In this global pandemic, Black people are suffering at a hugely disproportionate rate. A common response is to believe that it must be ‘their’ fault. Placing blame on Black (and brown, immigrant and indigenous) people for the lack of healthcare, underlying health conditions, crowded living situations, and remaining in the public workforce (“essential workers”) - is racism. This facet of racism is convenient for white people, because it keeps white people innocent and shielded from recognizing and acknowledging our own complicit role. We may talk about health as a “universal right”, but we first have to reckon with how our white culture wants certain bodies to disappear, while others stand in the light. We have to reckon with how we subconsciously view some bodies as “less” than equal - and how we consciously make legislation to reinforce these views. We have to reckon with how Black people experience a continuous knee upon their throats and ongoing erasure by white systems of power. Simply having a white body perpetuates racism, when we choose be silent about it, in the same way simply having a Black body means being discriminated against.
Black bodies
do not get to choose when
they want to acknowledge racism,
the way white bodies do.
This is not an issue for black people to address,
it is an issue for white people to wake up to.
I remember driving through a part of the Deep South that was once the epicenter of cotton plantations and the slave trade. I couldn’t get comfortable in that landscape – couldn’t stop wondering which majestic oak might have been a hanging tree. The land felt full of ghosts. But when I voiced this to someone, she quickly responded (as an older, white woman), “Well, I’ve made my peace with that history, and I love it here.”
I understand this. I do it every day that I don’t acknowledge that I live and love this ancestral land of the Pomo and Miwok people, nearly eradicated by genocide in the name of colonialism.
But when a white person forgets that past, it serves as a strong force to keep those stories erased, and keep Black people invisible in real time. Racism doesn’t want the Black person to think their body matters, or even exists. White people still sit in the place of power, and hold the top down structure of patriarchy with a tight fist. White people need to step down, back up, and make space for something else to emerge. Not to become invisible, or replaced (as if another’s existence is a threat), but to do the work of repair after centuries of oppression and slow genocide. It’s time for invisible bodies to become visible – to be afforded the space to breathe and exist, and for their existence to matter not just to themselves, but to white people.
. . .
Maybe the coronavirus can show us, on a fractal level, how white people (as a majority) have let systemic racism fester for far too long, and for some even assuming it’s no longer there. I don’t know a single Black person who tells that story.
Could it be that we are now at the point of the cytokine storm - but the storm is in the streets in the form of protests against this viral racism?
Could it be that we are replicating the immune response necessary to lay bare these wounds?
What comes after the hurricane, and how do we survive it?
• • •
the best way I know how to weather this storm is to remember the body.
(Now I’m gonna use the word we. Not we as in all of our experience is the same. But we in that we all have a sensing, breathing, body.)
As a human being, engaging with our body’s wellness can be a force that keeps our conscience intact and our eye trained on vitality - for ourselves, our fellow humans, even for our life-giving earth. When we humans practice using our senses and trusting our gut to navigate our paths, we are waking up from the inside out…waking up the complex technology of the body. We can practice turning towards and residing within, so as to listen to the subtle (and loud) messages our bodies are continuously, generously, communicating to us.
When we come home to our sensing bodies, we begin the healing work of not seeing ourselves as separate from each other, or the planet. I don’t think we can assume that coming into our body is something that happens once and for all. Each breath is an opportunity to be with the constancy of becoming, like watching a wave arise and dissolve, infinitely.
Our individual’s wellbeing is intrinsically linked to each other's.
Your breath is also my breath.
Your life is as important as my life.
And my life is dependent on yours.
Try replacing the word “your” in the sentences above with the name of your mother, the tree closest to you, or the Black person who (still) lives on the other side of town.
• • •
I don’t mean to make this sound easy. I know first hand what a constant, arduous task it is to swim upstream from the status quo and acknowledge that my body exists, that my body is speaking to me, that it is vital for me to treat my body well, and that my own health is important. When we view something as vital, we no longer try to destroy it, be it our land, our community, or ourselves. If the ship is vital (earth), if the other passengers are vital (people we consider different), and if our own presence is vital (you), there’s no way we are going to try and sink that ship. This is how these three issues overlap, why the climate crisis, the racial justice crisis, and the health crisis are all the same crisis.
To pursue embodiment using our highest forms of intelligence, is to acknowledge that our bodies hold wisdom, that our bodies are our own, and that life is a gift.
Barry Lopez writes about the collective higher intelligence of a murmuration:
“Take a flock of starlings. The flock is carving open space up into the most complex geometrical volumes, and you have to ask yourself, “how do they do that?” The answer is: no one’s giving anyone else instructions. You look to the four or five birds immediately around you. You coordinate with them. The intricacy of the lattice means that one of the birds you’re using as a guide for your own maneuvering is itself watching the birds around it to coordinate its movement. No leader, no driver. It is an aggregate of birds.
Before a starling can join the flock, it first has to know it has wings. Once it takes flight, feeling the wind whisper to each feather, it can become one of many, where emergent wisdom unfolds. Where no one is giving directions, there is no leader, no hero. Everyone is using every sense to it’s fullest capacity to ensure a successful migration. As Lopez writes, “Maintaining direction is something that can only happen as a community.”
This is why I think that approaching health as a practice of embodiment is a subversive political act that could dissolve inequality and racism, at it’s root.
• • •
As a friend recently shared,
“these are the words I say to myself everyday:
Feel the pain. Be in the hope. Keep your heart open. Do something.”
References to media: New York Times, Healthline.com. For more reading on this topic, Slate.com
Gratitude for Ellah Ray, Marielle Amrhein, and Jesse Olsen Bay for contributions and edits.
seeds of dis-ease
everything we feel is absorbed, just like food and water and air, and metabolized into tangible existence.
Seeds have been sown. Seeds of hyper-vigiliance, isolation, disembodiment, loneliness. It may seem like those are all “mind” issues, like all of those emotional states can be shifted, but our viscera knows a different truth: everything we feel is absorbed, just like food and water and air, and metabolized into tangible existence. In traditional Chinese medicine, lungs take in oxygen, but also grief and anxiety. Worry gets lodged in the spleen, anger throws the liver function out of whack. And fear? Fear goes straight to the kidneys, causing a whole endocrine upset. When we are fearful, flooded with cortisol, and in a constant state of threat, it’s not that hard to imagine what might follow. In this lineage of bodily understanding, the antidote to fear is wisdom. If wisdom can quell fear, what does cultivating wisdom look like in the ‘age of coronavirus’?
In the same way that our hormones downshift and release oxytocin (the “love” hormone) when we smell rich soil, they also regulate when we get a hug, or make eye contact with a friend, or smell their subtle smell sitting side by side. Human connection is essential to a healthy functioning body, especially for children. Charles Eisenstein’s words ring in my ears:
“How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? How much are we willing to live in fear? Socially and biologically, health comes from community. Life does not thrive in isolation.”
This virus is a particular threat to those of us with underlying conditions and auto-immune disorders. Bu new underlying conditions and auto-immune disorders being seeded right now, in our response to living with this particular virus. And not just for the elderly or particularly vulnerable, but for the vibrant, once buoyant children who are now living under lockdown, forced to be in front of a screen and afforded little contact outside of their homes (in this county at least). Using zoom as a replacement for learning and social contact for this generation is like assuring your pet fish that it’s tank is just as big as the sea. It’s time to get real about that. As Alanna Shaikh writes, “We are listening to oversimplified lies that make us think that hate and fury and loneliness are the solution to outbreaks. But their not, they just make us less prepared. [We need to be] guided by equity, equity is actually in our own self interest.” Our equity right now is what will ensure the next generation we are raising will have the tools they need to weather what’s to come.
Our ancestors, again and again throughout history, have practiced gripping and hunkering down in the face of threat, and then, lashing out with their perceived swords. It’s so old, this response, that to change it would mean changing our cellular response to how we interact with illness, predators, or attackers…anything that threatens our existence. Our first response may be along the lines of freezing, fighting, or fleeing. That’s normal when we are reckoning with a huge release of cortisol, something that happens for all animals under threat. But what comes after fear? That’s the question I’m sitting with right now. What comes after the initial threat? How do the elk relax back into grass munching after being chased around by wolves? Humans are nothing if not creative and resilient, so what might we find by crawling out of our hiding places, and looking to the horizon? What else is possible?
Joanna Macy’s teachings come to mind when I think of moving into what’s possible. Starting with gratitude, inhaling the wonder and beauty of life, noticing the small wonders inside of each inhale. Then, exhaling the truth of all the pieces that have gotten us where we are right now – honoring our pain. Letting the grief be loud and full, so we know where it hurts. Nothing can heal without knowing where the wounds are. Then, seeing with new eyes the interwoven connection of thousands of years of exploitation and greed, and this moment, this virus, demanding we do something different. Finally, going forth without gripping or lashing out – going forth with a metabolized experience of what we are made of, and what possibilities arise from our constant remaking.
We might start with the acknowledgement of what’s true: we are not special. We are not different. We are the same as the weed we are thinking of ripping up, the snake we just accidentally mowed over, the deer hit by the late night driver, the fish hauled up out of the water. With acknowledgement, the possibility of acceptance arises. With acceptance, well, the sky is the limit. The present moment becomes precious, and from behind our masks and walls and barriers, we see that nothing, absolutely nothing, can keep us from living this moment as the gift that it is, not something we are owed, and must protect. What would it look like, if out of our collective fears about illness, disease, suffering, and death were transformed into a collective wisdom - how brilliant would that be?
“Each moment gives you the opportunity to show you who you are, and gives you the chance to decide if that’s who you want to be.” -Christopher M. Jackson
why do i do chi gong?
Through chi gong, I find the body is a vast weather system itself.
black cohosh, performing chi
I’ve engaged in so many movement practices over the course of my life, I can’t even count them. From tap, ballet, and jazz, to postmodern and bellydancing, to feldenkrais and contact improvisation and butoh, the list spans pop culture booty shaking to cerebral post modern practices like moving from my fluid system. But qigong is the thing I keep coming back to as the movement practice that sustains me through my days that sometimes feel like long years. The way the practice helps me slow down, gradually, like watching a fan slowly come to stillness, is part of the medicine. The way the movement is repetitive, easy even, giving my mind room to witness itself, is part of the medicine. Qigong is a form that holds all the parts (if we were to call them that): body, mind, and spirit. Body moves, as stagnation is the peril of the body; Mind quiets, as overthinking is the peril of the mind; and spirit connects through the reciprocity of breath, which is life. Using imagery that breathes the earth back into focus - for example “parting the clouds, moving the mist” - Qigong reminds me that I am not the sum of my parts, that I am whole, of the elements. Qigong is the taproot of Daoist Medicine, the IChing, and 5 Element Theory. Through qigong, my mind makes connections of how the body falls out of balance, heals, and is a vast weather system itself. From the body, our ancestors made connections to how energy fractures and returns, is broken and restored. We are not exempt from the laws of elemental movement, and learning them through our own moving experience is the surest way to understand what we are made of and how to take care of ourselves. Practicing this form serves as a kind of memory palace, infusing the movement with the science and physiology of being well. There is so much emphasis on balance these days, being in it, staying in it, not straying from it. But balance by definition is movement, requiring the constant subtle shifting of weight. I imagine the difficulty our culture has in being in balance has something to do with our propensity towards sitting still. Qigong is not an easy practice to initiate, but once there, it’s like landing in a deep refreshing pond on a hot day - hard to leave. One translation of qigong is “remedy dancing”, which in my experience, is the most accurate.
The great unraveling
Here’s an image to work with: our culture is a worn, woven basket, beginning to fray. what will be re-woven once the reeds are restored to a material strong enough to hold all our ingenuity?
The great unraveling
Here’s an image to work with:
our culture is a worn, woven basket, beginning to fray. we can no longer pretend what we were doing was sustainable, sustainability includes death and decay. but we have razed the fields and forests, and now there are no new reeds to harvest and begin anew - there’s nothing left to gather. instead, we are unwinding – with the help of this virus - thousands of years of work, arduous work, that created the vessel that has held patriarchy, capitalism, greed, fury, and fight along with all the rest. with the unraveling, what is spilling forth? and what will be re-woven once the reeds are restored to a material strong enough to hold all our ingenuity?
it’s messy, here at the beginning, ugly even. greed is spreading in the isolated wealthy, fury in the oppressed and underserved, fear in our officials, fight in those who house patriarchy in their hearts and think it necessary. that’s leaking out too, running amok right now and seeming to have a hand in everything. When it’s run it’s course though, patriarchy and the powers of oppression will fade into the landscape. earth uses everything; all the beautiful and terrible that we could possibly conjure is turned into compost. the greed that is coursing through our culture right now will feed the worms that churn the soil. the fear that is fueling the debate over what to do with the fact that we are living alongside a confusing, lively virus, will water the soil that has become hard with years of human neglect. and the fury and the fighting, that will most definitely provide enough energy to shake the seeds to life, the seeds that we most want to plant. my seeds are: wisdom, ethic, reverence, and utter surrender. yours will add to the diversity of what’s possible for generations to come.
and the basket? what of this basket to hold us all together? i like this metaphor for our social construct because a basket is always made by human hands. pine needles never fall in the shape of a vessel, tule and sweetgrass never grow in a circle. we are essential in creating the constructs that we live inside. maybe those fibers have some life left in it yet. maybe with a good re-soaking, and some heartfelt songs and dances as offerings, the plants will continue to offer what we most need. maybe this time, we will see the generosity that the plants offer as a gift is to be accepted, and worn like the most precious necklace. maybe we will remember that our own hands are needed to re-weave what would otherwise go untended, that we are in fact, a vital part of this breathing ecosystem we inhabit. maybe our newly woven basket will be strong enough to hold our greatest gifts as humans, our most beautiful utterances.
or maybe not, but that’s not an image that offers any hope, for surely if we continue to live by our fears, wisdom will continue to evade us as a species. Instead, i propose we see the basket - see it unraveling, yes, but also see that what falls apart feeds the thirsty earth. this may be what it will take to remember that our very bones are made not of stars, but earth, and getting close to the earth again, together, is the only way we might find our collective strength to do something different. really different.
let’s keep unraveling, all the way back to the beginnings of progress. there are coals there, singing into the darkness, shimmering with wisdom. change they say, change again. movement is everything, the dance is what makes it all worthwhile. let the body warm and churn. let the heart glow red. let the brilliant ideas burn, blacken, and crumble, then get quiet. see what the earth has to say…stay.
a phoenix from the ashes
hello, yerba santa, i said. pick me already!, it said.
So, here we are. In real time, our entire culture spinning on it’s heel. Our neurons are paused, looking around at all the space, wondering where the path went. Which way to go? What’s possible? It feels like being in a completely foreign landscape, the safe way through unknown. Right? anybody else feeling neurologically displaced?
We can’t gather, except for the depressing trip to the store. We can’t see friends, and now, we can take walks on public land. That’s trickier for me than seeing other people (granted i live with 3 other people, two of which i would describe as well-behaved wild monsters), and I’ve been at a loss of where to walk, where to find the wild places that so fuel me. I liked the story that this virus was pushing us back to our two essentials: our own bodies and the earth’s body. For a minute there, everyone was talking about how much exercise they were getting, how many hikes, how much time spent out. when the regional and state parks all around me closed, that story went out the door (like all the others these days). The I had a dream:
I was walking in a burned area, and the light was so new it looked like it was hitting the ash for the first time. the ground was soft, yielding as i wandered aimlessly. there was nothing growing, except this big shiny bush. i walked up to it and realized it was a plant i know as being kinda spindly, leggy even, and certainly not much like this vibrant shrub.
hello, yerba santa, i said. pick me already!, it said.
when i woke, i looked into the indigenous practices around using yerba santa. kat harrison wrote this about the impacts of not harvesting this plant, and you probably already know that it requires a burn to stimulate abundant growth. and why care about yerba santa anyway? well, it’s my go to plant for respiratory illness - drains dampness out of the lungs, supports the body in resolving fevers, headaches, muscle soreness, and digestive upset. not to mention the anti-alzheimer effects being studied (thank you, eriodictyon, thank you indigenous wisdom). but also, it’s growing like a beast all over the recently burned hillsides!! If there’s been a fire near you in the past few years (and chances are there has), go out. go look. go walking and say hello. Make it a treasure hunt, embrace the unchartered territory. And if you do find yourself in front of a bush that says “pick me already!”, here’s the honorable harvest to practice. It dries out easily in a paper bag or laid out, and a few crushed up leaves in a cup of tea are sweet, aromatic, and deeply medicinal (we also add honey around here; a divine combo). it’s known in my house simply as “santa-tea”, holy tea. i wonder, what else does this plant support without us knowing? how to live after devastation? how to metabolize grief into grace?
I’m not suggesting this plant will cure us all from the coronavirus; this virus has it’s trajectory as well and is a serious threat to the vulnerable, marginalized, and underprivileged especially. That is not to be taken lightly. but taking a walk in a new place, without a known path, towards an ally that can teach us how to rise up out of these ashes - all of this may be a step towards integrating the new horizon we are all facing together, right now. It may be that we need to physically stand in the unknown to begin to orient in this difficult time. Let me know how it goes, and what wisdom you find.
the day the cat and the quail taught the lesson
His sobs shook his chest which shook the hand holding the suspended life. We looked deep into one another, both of us knowing in that moment, nothing will save any of us from our death.
Today a young boy forgot to put one of the newly hatched quail in it’s cat-proof cage. Today, the incredible cat hunter wiggled his way into the wire pen surrounding the cage and chewed off the head of the tiny fledgling quail named “Quality”. The nine year old saw the cat in the pen, sounded the alarms with anger in his voice, and ran over to find the dead chick. his mother found him standing with huge tears dripping down his cheeks, holding the limp feathery body by a lone foot. He pleaded with me to get rid of the remaining five in our new little covey, to save their lives from his forgetfulness and the cat’s cunning. His sobs shook his chest which shook the hand holding the suspended life. We looked deep into one another, both of us knowing in that moment, nothing will save any of us from our death.
The earth after all, is made up of our ancestor’s rot and bones. ‘Earth’ is the collection of the skin and blood and organ meat of all the animals that have been here before. ‘Earth’ is flesh. ‘Earth’ is life and death, equally. It can only be this way, all of us out there eating each other. How do the trees turn decomposing bodies into green iridescent beauty? How is it that death is part of what makes this earth so exquisite? How is it that the soft skin of the earth can only exist by digesting the soft skin of our ancestors?
In this way, we are all still here. Bones filter well water. Rock and metal are formed from our thousand year old ancestors. And so why is it that we feel like we are separate, we who are alive right now for this fleeting whisper of a moment in the great story of Earth? How is it that we could be so delusional – and so afraid for what is inevitable? My heart may one day nourish a tiny weed. That weed might get stepped on by my granddaughter's granddaughter. The ash that becomes my body may swirl around the body of a future sea otter. One day a few remaining cells of what is now me may be part of a dried leaf on a tree, now falling, now landing, now becoming the earth once more. Do these images soften the reality that the earth is essentially made up of suffering? A life suffered through is a life on this planet. And yet, I look to the horizon and know that I would have it no other way, I would not trade in my fleeting whisper of a life that gets to witness this beauty for anything. The way the light reaches through the window in the morning, the way my child’s face softens when asleep, the way the patterns in a leaf show up in the same patterns on my skin.
So what is Earth again? The Earth is life and death co- mingling, intertwined, enmeshed, coexistent, codependent, grief and gratitude all at once.
The remains of the chick were left out of reach - to come back and bury her after the necessary errand - but when we return, we only find part of a wing, and a resourceful fluffy cat basking in the sun on top of the quail filled cage. Such brutality seems reserved for predators and prey, and yet, how could we blame him? The earth is as beautiful as it is terrible; as full of life as it is full of decay. The quail know this, the cat too. Their complete and perfect acceptance leaves me awestruck, and inspired to try for the same…whatever arises….acceptance.
So that’s our ‘school’ for the day, to be with and grabble over. To forgive the cuddly cat who knows how to sleep on our feet when they are cold. To learn from the remaining quail who sit basking in the sun, relaxed and open, to what comes next.
A virus and Earth have a little talk
how a conversation might go, and why it’s important to listen…
corona. crown virus. the smartest balancing act of the earth yet. 30% better quality atmosphere world wide. what else could have grounded us so extensively? when i think of humanity, i wish for this virus to end this minute. It is so uncomfortable to live inside these times, with small children to keep hopeful and unburdened, elders to protect, obligations to try to keep. but when i think of earth, i wish for it to continue threatening our way of life until the veil on our eyes falls and we see that it could be different. this virus is a part of -is in fact--our planet asking us to live in balance.
“Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is—this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from Earth. We are already home.”—Joanna Macy
I’ve been a part of the Work That Reconnects for some time. One of my most potent early experiences in this work was participating in the council of all beings, an exercise Joanna Macy came up with to explore all the different voices that make up a narrative. This is a powerful tool used to stir hearts to action. It’s often useful to give voice to our adversaries in this practice, offering a different means for digestion and metabolism of what’s happening. As we are ‘fighting’, ‘battling’, and ‘defeating’ the corona virus, I choose it’s voice to speak from. But also, as we ‘fight’ climate change with our fists and shouts - creators of the very problem we are fighting against - I choose to speak from Earth’s perspective. Here’s a version of that, a conversation between the corona virus and Earth. May it be of use somehow.
scene: a bright, sunny day back in december, everywhere all at once, like a whisper on the wind.
Virus: hello earth, how deliciously alive you are right now.
Earth: yes, I’m teeming with life, as always of course, but I’ve got a problem I’d like your help with.
Virus: yes?
Earth: well, one of the aspects of myself is a little at war with itself.
Virus: what do you mean?
Earth: I feel at odds. Maybe it’s a little like I’m attacking myself, you know? Like, I know that I’m perfect just the way I am…
Virus: of course…
Earth: …but I still am doing things to myself that are inherently damaging to my well-being. And, it’s gotten quite out of hand. This aspect of myself, I’ll it call human, is a part of me that has always had a tendency to be a bit selfish, short-sighted, and reckless, I admit. But lately in the past thousand years or so, this human part of me seems hell bent on destroying the rest of my exquisite self. Of course I know this is impossible, but other aspects of myself are truly beginning to suffer. I need a shift.
Virus: well, a thousand years isn’t much, but it seems wise to deal with this soon before it gets any harder to manage. What do you have in mind?
Earth: well, I’ve tried softer, site-specific ways of intervening: hurricane, floods, eruptions, you know my ways, but business seems to continue as usual. There’s always more voices coming in from another place trying to lull me back towards self-destruction. I’m thinking maybe you could do a little first aid support, directly impacting them all at once. Shake things up a little, send this aspect of myself into a more self-reflective mode, you know?
Virus: no problem. Should I do a complete wash, or be choosy?
Earth: Well, I don’t want to be harmed, or silenced. I really value this part of me, it’s my creative part, my gracious side, when operating well. Remember, I do need this part of me, i just need it awake.
Virus: shall i target anyone in particular? the young or old? Shall I focus on fatality, or sheer numbers?
Earth: hmmm. Not the young—too much heartache might send them all into darkness. Besides, the young seem to inspire change; nothing like a child to care for to make you change your stride. But yes, it needs to be widespread, all at once, as much as possible. This is what I’ve had difficulty doing on my own. Perhaps you could be gentle about it though? More of a confuser than a killer? I know it will be painful either way, but pain is how I know there is a wound, and how to begin to heal. It is time I reclaimed my voice with this part of myself.
Virus: ah pain, what a clear message that is. Of course I will help you with this grave task. Anything for you, really.
Earth: thank you so much virus, you have always been here for me. I don’t know what I did without you for those first billion years.
Virus: my dear, I am a part of you too, don’t forget! I am the part of you that is forthright, flexible, and the very definition of adaptable. I am born out of your collective, expansive psyche, and I am here when you need me. I am one of your greatest tools for staying in balance, which is of the utmost importance for your – and all of our existence. I have been with you so much longer than this human manifestation, I see how it is affecting you negatively. I will be quick, cunning, and yes, relentless. But I will also be gentle, inspiring, and life-changing. I will only do as much as is needed.
Virus: May I ask something though? Once we’ve got their attention, what will you do to help this human aspect change into what you need them to be?
Earth: oh, that will be the easy part. It’s the getting their attention that has been difficult. I am certain that once they pause, they will remember their right orientation as a working part of me. They will employ their greatest gifts to me: creativity, ingenuity, and complete adoration. When they love themselves, I become love. I know, it sounds a little woo-woo, but it’s true. Humans were made to be beautiful, and when they are beautiful, I am too.
Virus: my love, I see how you so desperately need this human aspect of yourself. I will do everything I can to halt them in their tracks, and trust their hearts to envision and implement a way of living that suits you, in all your beauty.
Earth: thank you virus. You have always been my ally in altering courses. Be swift now, and effective. Go show them how inextricably connected we really are. I await their loving attention, and utter surrender.
“In healing, the body is restored to itself.” - wendell berry
what becomes of a broken heart?
How does our collective vegus nerve metabolize all that is? How can we deeply allow both the gratitude and the grief to ebb and flow?
We are here, opposite the exhales of autumn, hurtling into spring with consistent speed, and as far away from fire as we get, here in Sonoma County California. I’m feeling the infectious joy of sprouts popping out everywhere as they draw me down and close to inspect how new beings begin. It truly gets my vegus nerve relaxed and open and functioning properly. At the same time, I tuned into the radio for a short moment this morning to hear that the past 4 Januarys have been the hottest on record (planet wide), it reached 70 degrees today in Antarctica, and Australia has just announced, after 5 months of burning, that the fires there are officially contained. I know, now the vegus nerve is trembling as feelings of bewilderment and grief and exhaustion rapidly replace each other, right? I keep finding myself in this fluctuation of extremes: heart melting beauty swinging to heart melting devastation. How does our collective vegus nerve metabolize all that? How can we deeply allow both the gratitude and the grief to ebb and flow? Many wise people talk about this, my favorite ones being Rebecca Solnit, Pema Chodron, Joanna Macy, and Martin Prectel, but the common thread they all touch on is that of fierce radical acceptance in all the muck and tumble that drenches our daily lives. Easier said than done…
Recently, I had a love affair with a fox. sort of. You see, this red fox has lived in the blackberry patch for years, about 2 acres from where I lay my head. One day, with my toddler on my back, I wondered out to the field where about 100 newly planted native grasses and shrubs were taking root. Like any good mother I was checking on them, eyes cast down, scanning for blue eyed grass and buckeye, figwort and toyon. I happened to stop and look sideways, and there, not 50 feet from me, was a fluffy red fox, hammering away at the itch behind his ear. We stood transfixed, me and my 2 year old, watching as this beautiful creature scratched and chewed and licked nearly every part of his body. He even looked up and saw us a couple of times, but his bath was more important. I stood with tears welling up in my eyes - not even sure why - it was just so much to be so close with this fox, sitting in the sun at the base of an old valley oak, sharing an intimate moment. And then, he dissolved into the blackberry thicket, just like that. Over the next several days, I courted him with handfuls of madrone berries, toyon, some dried huckleberries from the season before, to which he replaced with scat, perfectly placed, where the berries were offered. I could have kept on like this forever, but then, my neighbor came home with a dead fox in her car. She’d spotted it on the side of a nearby road, and brought him home to take the skin. I didn’t want it to be the same fox, my fox, but when I saw his bushy tail, now deflated, I knew. I felt silly for crying, and only then realized what he’d meant to me. To have a wild friend to bring gifts to, someone in the back field to visit, someone who speaks a refreshingly different language all together. His departure felt like a wound in the landscape.
What’s uncanny to me, is that if this happened weeks before, I might not have even noticed fox’s disappearance. He might have been like a passing memory; oh yeah, there used to be a fox there…
Making contact with the wild earth is an opening up to the immense magic and beauty that it holds, but also to the deep grief that comes with such open-hearted witnessing. Maybe that’s why so many of us live in cities, suspended above the earth, moving from screen to screen. Maybe it’s just a little too much to be in a constant state of falling in love and being heartbroken. It might be though that our ability to love and grieve are our deepest gifts, and using them is just what our earth is demanding of us right now.
immune systems
I’ve been thinking a lot about immune systems lately. My littlest offspring has been sick most of his 2+ years on the planet so far.
I’ve been thinking a lot about immune systems lately. My littlest offspring has been sick most of his 2+ years on the planet so far. Nothing awful, just a nasty cough that comes and goes and rounds of snot that makes him sound like a swamp cooler in his sleep. It could be much worse. But being a healer, I want him to be well, and being an herbalist, sometimes I feel like tucking my tail between my legs because I haven’t figured out the formula that gets and keeps him well. Self judgement is always so ready to take over!
So instead of trying to fix him, I’ve been working on a perspective shift: every time he wilts with the onset of illness, I say he is building the most robust immune system possible to weather this world. We all, animals and plants included, have to figure out how to survive this life, and our immune response is what keeps us kicking.
I think of the immune system as a structure that arises from within to keep the body in balance.
A healthy immune response is neither too much (allergies) or too little (auto-immune disorder). These days, immune dysfunction is a growing threat to all of us. Our bodies do all kinds of ridiculous things to try to find balance (anyone else ever been appalled by the amount of snot a body can churn out in response to a cat hair, whiff of invasive grass, or bite of something seemingly benign?).
Which leads me to this question: how does the body of the Earth do this? This year, we’ve likely all been effected one way or another by what media likes to call a natural disaster. In my own little town there’s been extreme flooding, mass evacuations from fire, and wind upwards of 80mph. But underneath our own experience, it seems to me the earth is working to restore balance through water and fire, wind and mud. There is a simple reality that balance is necessary, and our grand earth will have it no matter what. What if we humans actually are part of the Earth’s immune system? What if instead of us acting like a virus, we acted like a healthy immune system…If we took some of the burden off the elements, and made choices on our own to restore balance? If we committed somehow to being an ally, in even our smallest choices. We know how to do this, inherently, we all have immune systems ourselves, and with compassion and a sense of connectedness, that’s all we need to act in harmony with the Earth. After all, we aren’t separate from Earth, we are fully made of the vast elements and energies that we collectively callEarth. I think it’s high time we stepped into our rightful place as protector, not agitator.
hummingbird rollercoaster
we belong here, are even needed here…
tiny, fearless
i happened to have put a bench in the middle of a robust little hummingbird's territory (calypte anna for you latin geeks). i've been visiting that bench in the overgrown wild garden for some time now - many seasons - watching him spin around me from tree to tree, singing at the top of his tiny lungs and fearlessly dive bombing anyone who dares to enter his home. but today something new happened. this funny little creature flew way up above me, so far!, and just when i thought he'd never come back he swooped down towards the horizon, disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of me with a loud warrior cry, and went back up towards the sky to do it again. he circled around and around, at first i actually thought another hummingbird was chasing him he was so fast to rebound, but no. it was just this one tiny being ferociously enjoying his very own roller coaster. i was completely exhilarated. then, he was done. back on the oak branch, chewing out his ballad of a song.
it's not often i've had the opportunity in my adult life to be somewhere long enough to watch another animal's nuances unfold. it makes me feel at home. when i began learning about the plants in sonoma county, my relationship to them solidified my sense of homecoming, that i belong here, that i'm even needed here. and my hunch is that knowing a place is what has the capacity to heal an entire generation of wandering children. (which is just what we are.)
so when i go on a little hike to tend the mugwort patch, thin the hemlock, or prune the elderberry it's not just a pleasure stroll, or a harvesting trip, but a collecting of the medicine of belonging. if you don't know it, kat anderson's book tending the wild is a lovely informative read, as is braiding sweetgrass, by robin wall kimmerer.
from wherever you are on the earth right now, i wish you homecoming.