build new bridges
been watching a community of squirrels working together for a walnut harvest. seems a lot of the same thing: playfully coming together then running off to their hiding place, carrying only what they can. knowing the importance of it all.
We are in August now, the wrap of summer and start of school. Seeing all I’ve accumulated to this point. I determine what is mine to carry and what isn’t. How to live in action and rest in nature. After some full days managing well, I’ve had some down days that teetered a dark edge. More and more days feel like swimming but still some days feel like keeping my head above water until i can make it towards a shallower shore (thankful new lows are my old highs). I mostly curled up and got quiet. Thankful about how phones can be a type of portal, quick connection to people and apps sending me lyrical verse as reminders.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO _____ BEFORE YOU ARE READY
Tricking myself to the next right thing when depression hits or grief overwhelms. Building bridges to ourselves for ourselves. See also: how to continue feeding my self or how to provoke my body to movement in the case stillness becomes too engulfing. This time of rebellious imagination, intentional joy, radical hope. See also: giving into singing rascal flatt’s “bless the broken road” to yourself about yourself.
Living somewhere so conservative makes the sublties of mainstream culture more apparent in contrast to my queerness. Vacillating between blending in enough so my child and I don’t get hurt vs. how to stand out just enough that I might influence my surroundings more than submit to them. Armed with the realization that I am a victim of the system, a unconcious perpetuator of it, and a practicing abolitionist. Wanting to leave everything I encounter better than I found it.
this week I read that all great art starts with bad art. here is my bad art for consumption. here are my low quality photos with minimal effort. here is my soft hearted loud voice and willingness to consider being wrong after too many years assuming i was. here is everything i own. every material possession upon me including my reputation, experience, career, income, vulnerablity, and questionably defined “sanity”. here is my attempt at finding okayness to continue living. i give to the cause of this last effort of a short window of time where we must insist that we care for each other by being engaged, within our own determined capacity, in care for each other. which isn’t my job, but a drive that i have to work with what i’ve been given.
Q: HOW DO I FILL A BIG HOLE IN MY HEART?
A: LOOK TO THOSE WHO LOVE YOU MOST
If you know me, you likely know I have an altar in my heart for Moana’s gramma Tala and the words Lin Manual Miranda wrote in song of the ancestors, “the people you love will change you.” i’m really grateful for how i let the people i love change me. Being our whole messy selves, accepting the terms, loving each other anyway. What inspires care? What compels us to love? i mean truly, it’s got to be some innate compulsion to the invisible and that’s magical af when you get down to it. or delusional haha but either way, it’s an honorable coping strategy or perspective, i mean if it’s all an illusion anyway.
i know i’m cringe, this week I was texting with a friend about how no one bullies you harder than a 13 year old. By way of Mae’s playful impressions of me, i’m overly sentimental and cheesy af. cptsd makes you very aware of your surroundings at all times. a way hypervigilance bleeds into poetry and i know that i’m magical because my mind can do that. delusional or magical? out of all the things to be on the earth right now? happy to be either of those in all the choices. (but don’t worry, i’ve watched the divergent, i’m doing my fucking push ups too). i choose to believe it’s with purpose. in the practice of both identifying and feeling my feelings so i might process through them, use the information as a way to make me a little happier or less harmful in the future.
and i know it’s working because of how more often now i think of past cara and instead of feeling shame, i feel compassion for the combination of my deepest heartbreaks and best coping strategies. and i more and more quickly can get to “here’s the inventory of everything that got me to this moment right now” and that’s not for nothing, you all. i’ve been in therapy, eightfold path & every self help book for over a decade. please hear me when i share this fucking win. i am in the fight of my life. i don’t care how crazy i come across, i’m willing to share anything that will help any other person along in this truly wild time.
the breeze at dawn
has secrets to tell you.
don’t go back to sleep.
you must ask for what you really want.
don’t go back to sleep.
people are going back and forth
across the door sill,
where the two worlds touch.
the door is round and open.
don’t go back to sleep.
-rumi
FIELD NOTES//
alan watts on pretending we are don’t have power (transcript) (audio) 3 min
been learning more about reactivity in my wiseheartpdx pre recorded class about relationship competency & mindful compassionate dialogue
binge quilting/binge watching the fosters spin off “good trouble” which is a good mix of tv drama, relational/community healing and modern day activism, all congruent with the original series & another type of reframe
Where does your diet culture show up? by virginia sole-smith via SIL
Finding the Labor We Love episode on how to survive the end of the world from the brown sisters via jen
our children are our greatest teachers, all we have to learn in support of ourselves to support them is worth it. this week, i learned of shock therapy somehow still allowed in 2022 for children with autism at the judge rotenberg educational center in massachusetts. We must reframe what “success” means in guiding the behaviors of children, in harm reduction. (ABA and it’s broader sister therapy CBT are both sited by autistic adults of having a harmful impact)
@socraticmethodcbt & @jersey.noah meeting my needs for playfully being seen/heard through meme content
this article that broke my heart about how the translations of hafiz are fake and while i have gleaned so much from daniel ladinsky’s poems, it’s hard not to feel duped by some sense of appropriation in his loose definition of translation and all the ways he made money off of the name of hafiz.
radically imagining a better future episode of the joy report podcast by intersectionalenvironmentalist
this issue of ALICE is dedicated to black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet Audre Lorde, whose work you can dive into a bit here but i’d start here, personally.
THANK YOU FOR READING, CONTRIBUTING, AND ENCOURAGING.
I LOVE YOU. NO FEELING IS FINAL. KEEP GOING.