And then over the years and copious squeezes from yourself and others, tosses under car seats and cramming it into your luggage, it loses its velvety touch and its plushness. It becomes coarser, its fabric forms little balls like little roly pollies curled in on themself.

We too can lose our softness

My too muchness learned to dress in shame

tugging on me to tuck away so no one will see—

that I sense and I see in high resolution and sometimes

I wish I could blur the images or drown out the sounds,

but that’s not my nature.

I learned to cast off my nature

to dull my gradient of color and pixelate the high resolution view

The pressure to achieve, to earn love,

took her wild from her.

It pushed her to conform

to perform and to perfect

until the wild one

suffocated and lost its vitality

To the chokehold of being “good”

She’s breathing again,

shallow breaths becoming deeper,

This heirloom of depression that comes in a boxed set with anxiety that has at times felt like a burden and perpetual… it has now shifted into a call to awaken and tune into my sensitivity, to notice my cycles, and to pause to remember that we are in fact the dreams of our ancestors: to be alive and in our aliveness, in tune with nature and with our own nature, and to shape our little pocket of the world in a way that would make them proud

You are a weaver of wisdom,

we weave whirring words

until they pour out as song

or dance or brush strokes.

This is the alchemy of healing

where a wound becomes intertwined

with other threads until they find each other

and create a blanket of woven strands

to wrap you in,

When relationships lead the way, new ways of organizing society is possible. When work and productivity are de-centered and physical and mental health are moved to the forefront, core values shift and people are reminded what really does matter in this one precious life… the power of relationship to guide us toward a more just, more inclusive, and more right relationship with one another, our earth, and our livelihoods.

This language of the body

is a current

moving in through the nostrils, travelling through the lungs

landing in the bowl of the pelvis

filling the cavernous space with its presence

opening

I have to say yes to this me, here and now. Because otherwise I continue to reject and discard parts of myself along with the external someone or thing that’s the “not this”.

There is still fear where the grief has dug it’s hole. And there is still love, a deep well of it. When the mud begins to dry and the water to evaporate I dig deeper. There’s a whole mycelial network of nutrient-dense

Of course there’s always more inner and outer work, unlearning, and growth to do, but what if part of the work is just letting everything digest, settle, and return to its natural rhythm? At least at times. Because otherwise, personal growth is just another thing to consume, achieve, perfect, strive for, and do, and sometimes the being is the work.

Even if she hadn’t wanted to be here touching the earth, or here at all, the earth braces her feet and replies back, “I’m here. I’m with you.”

And so we find that which is solid, even if muddy or cracked dry, around us…

Sometimes to go within is the last place I want to go. For to go within is to face the noise, the chaos, the vestiges and ruins of that which has been erected and destroyed here. It is to remember that which I’ve tried to forget…

Our grief brings us down to earth

to the soil,

to the Mother of it all.

And to touch the Earth is

to feel the veins of our feet

meet the veins of the earth,

and to know that we are a part of her;

she holds our heavy too.