Choosing Life in a Dying World
reflections on Springing during the Fall™️
HAPPY SPRING EQUINOX BELOVEDS
Before we get into the MEAT of the newsletter, I have a couple of quick announcements!
A new season of my podcast is out!!!!!!!
we already have the first two episodes published! We will be releasing episodes every other week!
You can watch on youtube, or listen where ever you find podcasts!! If you listen, let us know! You can send us an email at earthwormslumberparty@gmail.com
The embedded episode above is the second episode of this season. It is deeply personal to me, and I share about the spiritual awakening I went through in 2020.
Its about grief of having your world change, of letting go of friendships, of going through an un-expected traumatic crisis and the love that helps us heal and rebuild together.
how to say no is postponed!
In my last newsletter I made a declaration that I would be holding a workshop on saying no on March 26th!
I need to offer myself some graceful compassion. So much of my energy has been going towards surviving this moment that I need to pause my plan to teach this workshop on Wednesday, but I am very hopeful to teach this workshop soon.
I am planning to share the recording with attendees and to offer the waitlist a deep earlybird discount! So if you feel interested, sign up here to be the first to know when its offered
Did you know that a spider’s web is a part of it’s mind?
According to researcher, Hilton Japyassú, spiders use their webs to store cognitive information.
we are not so different from spiders, according to researchers.
There is this concept of “extended cognition” where our mind is not just in our bodies, but also in our phones, in our to do lists, in our scrabble tiles, and in our loved ones.
One of my favorite neuroscientists, Cozolino, asserts in his book The Neuroscience of Human Relations: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain, that our brains are social organs, and that our relationship to others is crucial to our function. According to Cozolino
“Our minds exist not just within us, but also between us”
I have felt the truth of this social theory deeply in the past few weeks as two incredibly precious and powerful members of my community have transitioned into ancestors.
These two beloved friends were members of my larger community, and their loss has rippled through my social web.
I feel the impact of these losses ripple through my social web as I talk to my friends, our voices heavy with grief.
I feel the ripple through my mind as I struggle to grasp this new strange reality where my friends are no longer in this world, my heart gasping at the sudden loss.
I feel the grief ripple through my physical living body as I struggle to cry.
I notice that it can be difficult to cry when I want to cry the most.
I am so good at crying, guys. I do it all the time, in situations where I’m not even that sad.
It is not unusal for me to tear up while watching tik toks of rescue dogs learning to trust their owners, or even for my voice to start to quiver while talking about my family history.
I like crying! It can be grounding and satisfying. One of my favorite healers always says, “Thank you for bringing the water” whenever anyone cries in her presence.
I am a gifted water bearer
Sometimes the weight of the sadness prevents release.
In these moments we can try and force ourselves to process the way we think we are supposed to.
Sometimes we have a mental image in our mind of what grief looks like, and when we don’t match that picture it can create inner turmoil.
After a lot procrastination and contemplation, I ended up taking my constipated tears to the club, where I thrashed my body in a dark room to deep techno beats surrounded by scantily clad queer freaks.
The floor beneath me rolled and trembled from the collective movement, and the water that wouldn’t come through my eyes left my body as sweat.
I spent so much of the night watching the ambiant laser lights that danced over the crowd, capturing the swirls of smoke from the fog machine to create a transfixing visual.
The lights in the club were Lilac
If you are a long time newsletter reader, you know that I value grief, and I talk about it frequently. Just a few weeks ago I made a grief zine, I held a grief circle, and for the past few months I have been reading Sobonfu Somé’s text, Embracing Grief, in private and aloud.
While I am delighted by the many pleasures and good fortune of my life, I also spend a significant portion of my life grieving.
Grieving disconnection to land, ecocide, colonization, disconnection to my elders and traditions.
Grieving the many forms of violence and genocide that humans enact on each other and on our earth.
However, nothing compares to grieving living people that I was in personal, living relationship with.
There is something humbling about being a facilitator, someone who holds space for grief, and then being suddenly and unexpectedly knocked over by a wave of change, submerged into an ocean of grief.
As my loved ones transition from living human to ancestor, I feel my web and me transforming, struggling to re-orient in their sudden abscense.
My two homies who have transitioned were very different from each other, but also really similar.
They were both visionary Trans* people with sharp political analysis. Weirdo truth tellers, who kept it real and had no interest in conformity or assimilating into this violent society.
They were both generative artists whose work transformed their communities. May their legacies live long and bright.
Their absence, at the best of times, would be devastating. But their absence in this moment, is especially difficult.
Ultimately, I feel so incredibly blessed and lucky to have crossed paths with my friends who have passed.
In their transition, I am reminded of how temporary our lives are.
This is the gift of grief.
Their existance is a gift that I was lucky to have recieved. To have lived with them as a part of my web for so long spoiled me. I relied on their presence, holding down and defining parts of me.
Now that they no longer anchor the web, but live within our collective memory, I am inspired to embody aspects of their legacy.
I am also inspired to take better care of myself so that I may recieve the world and myself with greater clarity and a more open heart.
When I reflect on the past, times I shared with these two precious beings, I notice how in some moments I was so clouded by my own reality, my own activation, my own self centeredness that I wasn’t truly present with them.
This is the gift of grief, a reminder that our time on earth is temporary, that each moment is not promised. It is so easy to spend our days moving through a virtual reality, lost in thoughts, or in my case podcasts.
How does it change our actions when we realize/remember that tomorrow is not promised?
the seed must split to grow
I heard this Islamic proverb during my morning spiritual study.
the speaker was referring to death as a necessary process in service to the spiritual growth of the soul.
seeds must break open in order to live.
we can’t grow AND remain intact exactly as we are.
we have to break open
we have to let the seed split, and let our truest selves unfurl into the expansive unknown, even as we are surrounded by death and terror.
Thank you for reading beloved friends! Below the paywall is a little video with some more reflections from Ramadan!
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