LOVE IS KING
i would not describe my mom as a cook. every time i’m cooking in my mom’s kitchen with my mom’s things, there is so much i reach for that’s not here and i miss every person i’ve ever met.
what is up you beautiful people. reporting live from the final days of my makeshift december sabbatical, the holy daze. still so much work. i’m in a long cold virus which makes my lows lower. so just trying to soothe. collect. brace for dark days by tending to the spirit. burning some candles. taking my time. with mae more often preoccupied with other kids on winter break, i have accepted that listening to music while doing a puzzle for a few uninteruptted hours is the closest thing i will have to a vacation. and yes, that includes intermittent crying and yet still seems to beat my disassociative self soothing go to : thumbsucking my glowing screen. MUSIC AS SOUL SALVE
i find this season from thanksgiving to the new year to call for stillness in spite of all that feels busy. the animals in the snow blanket outside suggest this quiet curl up. an insular season of reflection which comes with grief and our heaviest and darkest processing. words have been harder for me to find. BEING has felt like the natural orientation. leave the light on.
living in the unsustainable tension of this proverbial house divided that is this nation/state/family i am in. i’ve tried to mentally break down how when we disagree, it’s really about what values we are prioritizing and what need it meets. our values determine what we live for. how my values—where i focus my attention—determine what reality i’m living in by actively creating it. how we might form a shared reality if we can all get clear enough with ongoing agreements to prioritize specific values and the loudest needs. so i propose that this first shared agreement is that LOVE IS KING.
love as in real love. not patriarchal conditioning or romantic codependence. love as in bell hooks quoting erich fromm, “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.” love as in every being’s inherent worth radiating from them with the same fibers that made up the stars they once were. i think of some imagery from the irish claddaugh symbol—a heart with a crown, held by two hands. somewhere over this vision i see a banner reading hank willis thomas to us “LOVE OVER RULES.”
some things i’ve been sitting with about love: real love is a listening ear and an available heart. the compulsion to love without return being a different thing than a reciprocated friendship. i really believe everything is love or the path to love. i have been drawn to love my entire life. i love people. i hope every person who has ever interacted with me feels that love. this is how i got into christianity as a teen and what prompted me to go to seminary. it is also what had me leave christianity.
in the standstill of the pandemic, I found myself working on new layers of emotional healing via emdr therapy, previously mentioned here. One question that came up was, “who did i want to be before sexual assault pushed me off track?” I was at seminary, feeling a call into ministry because i knew ministers were to be called into the work—studying spiritual texts contemplatively, listening to the spirit, preparing speeches or letters or conversations to encourage their communities based off their own understandings, being available to their community in liberation to all. What could this look like as a career, but without religious dogma? (i have so few guesses, so sincerely open to input/brainstorming)
also in the standstill of the pandemic, my child and i both noticed the stark contrast of how we existed in our own space vs how we exist in social settings, especially as our energy used in hypervigilance was energy that could no longer go to “performing” social interaction in the same ways. I have understood myself to fall under the umbrella of neurodivergence for some time now, having been medically diagnosed with c-ptsd. i now understand that my heavy lean into introversion has been likely due to something more like adhd/autistic (AuDHD) burnout that leads to cycles of depression. and that fawning, people pleasing, mirroring, masking to all be sort the same maladapative nervous system response, attempting to keep me blended in and safe. my animal body’s self protection strategy. (reminder: the nervous system is primal, not intellectual. the phrase ‘feel it to heal it’ is not just a bumper sticker. eMotion: shake, scream, cry, laugh, sing, dance, MOVE the energy, get weird.)
i write these words to you, in small pockets of time, as i am able. they are puzzle pieces found in the reflection of loving you, that help me find my way back to myself. they are a collection of things i hear in synchronized soft whispers of connection. they are the i who questions and the i who answers communing together. they are my darkest shadow and my brightest light. they are me.
i root in remembering how we are all in this together, how we cannot not be. i consider how every time i type these unfinished words out about things i’m learning or thinking or integrating, i’m haunted with a who am i to even speak up. and then beyond that, i conjur enough courage to remember again that i have a voice. who am i not to? i’m a person breathing oxygen on the only planet we know that produces both people and oxygen. and there is an exciting possibility of each huemxn’s unique role like unique fingerprints that has nothing to do with comparison, competition, or mastery. here’s the love i can show up for: most people i know are working 9 to 5s with a full house & full schedules while living in inner and outer worlds that needs nurturing asap. we all have to stay informed enough to keep pushing necessary change. so the purpose of sharing what i’ve found helpful in case you find it helpful feels more like making eye contact and saying “PHEW, a miracle we got to here, a shortcut to free info if it serves you, let’s keep going” as we keep going. i welcome your experiences of staying curious as free grist for the awakening mill, too.
This issue of ALICE is dedicated to every person reading this who sends that text, mails that postcard, buys that gift you heard someone mention, finds that favorite food/snack/treat for a friend, shares that thing you made with someone you love, offers someone dinner, gives a long needed hug, makes them a cake, has time for a quick walk, is in that LOVE WORK.
may your holy daze be gentle and your new year be exactly what you need. mwah.