A Patchwork Quilt: Tell Story, Cultivate Power-Within, Imagine, Try on New Lenses

A patchwork quilt for you, today.

Letting thoughts be here as they flow, like in the early internet days of blogging.

Remember: All life is sacred.

[First, a freewrite shared with my intimate story+somatics group two days after the election. There is so much shared understanding in that group–which I won’t be able to name here–but one important piece is respect for and knowing that each person’s system responds differently. Everyone can be in their own experience. Our shares are not prescriptive. We are sharing our lived experience.]

I had a restful night’s sleep on Tuesday, and woke up Wednesday to get ready for a day of outdoor shed organizing for my housekeeping client. I did a news search to see the election results. I had a split-second “damn” feeling, and then, “well, okay.” Shoes on, let’s go breathe some new life into this shed on perhaps the last warm day of the season.

My body was able to accept what was. Challenging emotions didn’t arise. I stayed in my tactile life, and my daily purpose remained the same. This was very different from the me in 2016. I wonder if some part of me knew this would be the result, if that’s why I was pulled to read Melania’s memoir in October, why I wrote a public 3,400-word reflection about what she and I have in common–when I hadn’t written online since 2019.

The me who has emerged from these last 5 years, that dark night of the soul, is now deeply rooted in the unseen. In Truth. In divinity. In the Great Mother. In the knowing that we are all connected. I now know that waking life is only a fraction of the experience, and it’s unfolding in each and every moment, each breath. Most of what appears to be is illusion, or was built without loving intention.

I’ll never forget my shock and naivety the first time I worked at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Refuge my first term in a conservation corps in 2017. Nevermind that we were spraying poison onto the plants, into the ground, into our food/water, our home. Killing plants which were simply being, living, adapting to changing environments as they always do, growing where they are needed, where the environment is right for them to grow. I couldn’t see that clearly yet. What shocked me was hearing gunshots, and subsequently learning that this was open hunting season. In a place called a “wildlife refuge,” people are allowed to come here with guns and murder the wildlife? I was confused. I’d thought “refuge” meant something, and had trusted that meaning. Until I learned otherwise. At the time I still believed thin-binary-narratives of words like “conservation” (good) and “invasive species” (bad). Language is powerful. The narratives that are crafted can last generations, keeping folks from asking deeper questions, from taking a second look.

Word-labels are dangerously dehumanizing when equated with a human. My body does not feel fear or disgust when I hear the words “Trump supporter.” I don’t know who these people are. I imagine my friend, Ellie, who is a sweet, loving, creative, bright, clever young woman. I know her essence. Our bodies made art together, baked together, laughed together, wrote letters to one another. She is also a human who voted for Trump in 2016. I always bring her to mind when I hear the word-label “Trump voter.” Likewise, I don’t know who “Democrats” are. “The Progressives”? Who are these people? (I feel the pain when this is done with the word-label “men,” as well, and hear it all the time in circles, a slight jab here, a joke there. I feel the harm each time.)

I have genuine curiosity about the humans behind any word-labels. I wonder what their beautiful gifts are, I wonder what makes them laugh, I wonder how they felt as a child, I wonder about their pains. I wonder about their stories. I wonder about their nervous systems. I want to listen. To expand. To see wider. To never stop seeing the young children in each of our eyes, the children we all were, the divine spirit we all are.

My lived experience, face-to-face, has shown me most people are kind. People are doing the best they can, given their current knowings/relationships/moods/bodies/environments/etc.

When I look at you and judge or demonize, I am judging a part of myself. You are a mirror to me. You help me grow and ‘know better’. You help me see what I don’t see, what I ignore, what I dismiss. What I can’t yet see, until there’s a readiness within. You help me love wider. 

I want to hear what people are for. I want to hear beautiful ideas and create them. I am building the new paradigms that will make the old ones obsolete. Still where I began, at the roots. And by building, I mean remembering. Remembering my humanity. I am not fighting the Western Industrial Medical Complex. I’ve been tending to my health based on what my body and spirit and real-lived stories and the other side are showing me. Expanding and often 180-ing what I thought I knew. Eagerly hearing new ideas, stories. Human bodies are incredible healers! (The powerful word-label “placebo” helps to hide this Truth.) I know subtle energy. Plants. Relationship. Somatics. I know love and gentleness and care and time-with-trees and room decorations absolutely affect the wellbeing of our bodies and souls. That “illness” and “disease” are the body’s ways of communicating to us, responding exquisitely to our environments. That we are made of / part of our environments. I recently began a deep-dive research into vaccines. Wow. Where there are word-labels that demonize and suppress or dismiss (aka “anti-vaxxer”), there is much to know beneath the surface. Seeing more truths about this country’s “$cience.” I have curiosity for the deeper, fuller, lived experience Truths. It is often uncomfortable, and yet seems to be my path in life to keep uncovering things I never imagined. In fact, here is where big emotion is finally arising while writing. I have heard such hate and intolerance from all sides, that my body has fear that [certain friends / loved ones] would react with a sharp cut-off if they knew certain pieces of how my perspective continues to transform re: health/vaccines/illness/pharmaceuticals/”mental health” or spirituality/souls/The Other Side. Who I’m learning from these days. The labels that could be put upon me.

And, I can feel this fear and sadness–my body has capacity to be with the sensations. I can let people react in whatever way is right for them. I can lose false foundations. I cannot be well and hide part of who I am at the same time. I must be true to my Spirit. And, I can choose to not share pieces that don’t feel safe to share.

I am not surprised at the results. This country’s governmental structures were not built on foundations of care and Love. This government has oppressed and genocided since the beginning. It reverberates deeply. This government was created after thousands and thousands of years of other governments and societies whose leaders did not honor the Earth, did not honor the sacredness of each human, did not create Love and belonging. There was great harm, and it’s continued to be passed along.

Until we look at the pain and heal from the roots, it will continue to harm. 

The results of the election illuminate more clearly what’s actually here. What’s needed is a lot of love and healing. Transformation. Turning inwards with love. Turning towards neighbors with curiosity and care.

I wonder how we will each be transformed by this. This brief, brief history of a civilization’s government amid eternity is not precious to me, it can crumble. Political parties can crumble. The idea of “countries” can crumble. I am not afraid of paradigm shifts. I’ve been through so many already. I’m open to the Truths I can’t yet see/sense/hold. I’m open to being reborn again and again, deepening my knowing that all souls are sacred. All life is sacred.
Here’s what I can transform:
May I become a clearer vessel each day for Truth and Love,
May I be sharply discerning in which words and energies I allow to enter my field,
May I deepen my roots in Love, trust divine orchestration,
May I practice seeing others as myself, seeing myself in others, thicken, thicken,
May I practice imagining full complex folks when I hear a label-word,
May I practice integrating my shadow aspects and widen my window of tolerance with SE,
May I spread kindness, May I delight in pleasures and freedoms,
May I uplift and encourage the ideas I want to grow and the bright lights I see shining in others,
 May I learn and unlearn–to heal at the root the harm which I perpetuate,
May I continue to nurture relationships with Mother Earth and all her creations,
 May I trust that the ripples from these small, precise practices will keep the long journeys of our souls gleaming towards Divine Love. 

 

Post-election ideas I want to grow.

I only dipped into a few pieces of election content, post-election, and here are my experiences with different creations worth sharing—should they help someone else to thicken their story:

This was the first podcast I listened to, though not my top recommendation. I almost didn’t listen to this episode, because this podcast sometimes perpetuates a paradigm they often say they want to dismantle (ie choosing to play soul-sucking capitalistic ads throughout the podcast, read in their own voices!). I say this with love, as someone who has listened to hundreds of episodes since its creation. Anyway, I thought this was going to be one way, and I was gladly surprised that some nuanced perspectives were voiced within the first 15 minutes.

Amanda, within the first 10 minutes, articulates that for hundreds of years, election after election, people have been elected into office who denied the humanity of Black folks. The government has never been caring for their humanity. So, the recent shock to Amanda (who is white) that this government is not looking out for her wellbeing or humanity, has been fact to Black (and Indigenous, and other) folks since the country’s founding. Black folks had to create their own safety in their communities, as the government was actively harming them. 

In the next 5 minutes, Glennon makes a great point about how she’s acted as a codependent wife in cleaning up America’s messes and history and hoping for something better. America was revealed for who America is. Nothing new. Powerful to sit in the stillness of that. (These first two ideas are worth listening to, especially if they’re new. Give the first 20 minutes of this episode a listen if you’re open/interested, and see how their conversation lands in your body.)

The third important point in this episode: Importance of taking direct action where you are, instead of losing energy fighting against and being angry about a broken system. Amanda gives a very tangible illustration of this in her life.

The messages that most resonated with me:

Our lives are in our hands.

“When we allow our egos to do our heart’s work, what needs to get done doesn’t get done.”

Imagine what’s possible. (Imagine & daydream have been resonant messages from many different folks during this time. Yes, yes, yes.)

A woman shared this article in my story+somatics group, which was published on December 6, 2006 in Vanity Fair. I was relieved at the widening / zooming out which it offered. Naming the gov=business piece helped articulate what I’d been sensing in so many areas. This piece illuminated larger patterns and stories. I found looking through this different lens valuable and clarifying.

Finally, if I can only recommend one conversation, this is it. adrienne, Autumn, and Norma’s conversation soothed and lit fire and resonated with my soul. Norma is a Native Hawaiian and 86th generation Zen Master. I’ve listened to their conversation twice so far. My body responds to their lens with yes, more of this wisdom, please.

Norma points out the speed at which our society thinks things happen, how quickly we turn to despair: “It took about 4,000 years for us to get to this point, and so the notion that it could somehow right itself in the course of a few election cycles, I mean, what’s that about? What’s that about? … That means we’ve completely bought into a consumer notion of human history.”

The power of story.

All month I have been reminded–through the widest variety of sources–of the power of story. Some are in the “the world is catastrophic” story. I’m grateful to have been in my own dark night of the soul from 2019-2024, away from media/internet storylines. (That journey will be my first book.) I was exquisitely present to the energies in front of my fingertips. It was challenging. My body felt pain/activation at the smallest, most basic, uninteresting interactions with other humans. My system was living in so much fear and my nervous system was stuck in flight-activation, body pumping out stress hormones all day (but I didn’t know this yet). Because of this reality, I was living in the sad story that I’m too sensitive for this world. That I’ll never have friends. So many days, deep in activation, beyond exhausted. Days where I thought all I’d ever be able to do in this world was leave my job/home and go live on Forest Service land or BLM by myself. I wasn’t cut out for society. Something was really wrong with me. I couldn’t see beyond this terrible present experience.

I persisted, one tiny step in the dark at a time. I learned of the Goddess tradition, and was shocked this whole chunk of history hadn’t been in my education. I seeped myself in spiritual and Divine Feminine sources, soaked it up, each leading to the next right-timing teacher. Starhawk. Reclaiming. Sonia Choquette. Mirabai Staar. Lynn Andrews. Judith Orloff. Judith Blackstone. Laura Lynne Jackson. And so many more. Nervous system learning/Somatic Experiencing & healing, which saved and changed my life. Irene Lyon. Molly Caro May. Energetic practices and grounding. Intuition Medicine. So slow. Over years and years. Filled with pain and uncertainty and loneliness.

Today, my sweet body is no longer responding with pain/activation at everyday interactions. I’ve been teaching it—through simple somatic practices and awareness—that she is safe. Healing trauma. Rewiring my physiology. Regaining so much life force. Anxiety bubbles, which were once the water my body swam in, are rarely here. I feel like a new person. Since this fall, I have been able to go to a grocery store! A post office! One day in October I drove to town twice in the same day, and could still be vertical after 5pm! I went to a church service (UU) on Sunday and had small talk with people and my life force didn’t drain! My capacity continues to expand.

All of that experience since 2019 has allowed a new story to emerge.

I learned of the Great Turning. I grew roots into my personal power within, with The Great Spirit. The story that has arisen naturally, from this quiet presence, is that my soul chose to be here at this exact moment in time. I am a bridge between worlds, a bridge between paradigms. I am attuned to the unseen, fluent in emotions and sensations, able to heal with my deep presence and love. I am here to notice what I notice, love what I love, and share heart-stories that need to be expressed. In this new story, my sensitivity is a huge strength. It’s the very compass that will guide us through uncharted territories, through the fog and distracting illusions of tech/media, through harmful untruths of Western “health” paradigms. My body, the Earth, my intuitions (all one in the same), have always led me towards love and healing. It’s not easy. Leaving relationships, leaving paradigms, being unseen/misunderstood, distancing from people. And, it can be simple. Move towards what feels good in your body. Even when it defies societal/cultural/familial norms. Move towards what feels right in your Inner Knowing. Go slowly, with lots of loving self-talk, with prayer, with guidance from all realms. It’s allowed true transformation. An enlivening. An awakening.

One of my teachers, Molly Caro May, says that your artistry + your attention = your aliveness. Tend to them.

I am in beautiful company with this story; many others have been feeling the same pull for decades. In these times, there is a deep, deep desire to feel human and to be in spaces where our humanity is celebrated. There have always been people making non-profits, businesses, books, music, teachings, gatherings, experiential skills courses, neighborhoods, song circles, and more — from the heart, and this has only increased in recent decades. I’ve seen the story again and again these last 10 years: The tech job that leaves a person with an emptiness inside that can’t be ignored. The hollowness of these structures built on pain. More and more folks can sense that lack of depth, lack of Love, lack of meaning. Those ways, those structures are draining our life force. The folks listening to their intuitions have been using heart roots to create with intention, each step of the way—bringing magnificent blooms. More and more are getting pulled, invited (sometimes through great challenges) into our true nature, called to spaces and communities with deep roots in our humanity, in our connection with the Earth. To remember who we are. To remember our bright spirits. To remember our emotions. To remember our power. To remember our aliveness. To return to our bodies. Find these humans. Find these spaces. Gather in living rooms and kitchens, around a pot of soup. Have conversations, nurture relationships. Continue to validate, care for, and celebrate your humanity. This is a radical act within our society.

 

Thank you, teachers.

In this season of life, here are my teachers on this side of the veil who remind me of the above ideas:

These are the folks with whom I’m in or have been in some sort of more formal energetic exchange for their teachings.

There are many other guiding lights, in a less formal role, nevertheless cheering me on this season of the journey:

You don’t have to agree with all of a person’s beliefs or actions to learn from the person. Not even a majority. It seems silly to need to say this, but we need the reminder in today’s culture. My friends and I are very different. This is wonderful. We are like-hearted, not like-minded. 

I will not scrutinize the daily actions and words and decisions of others; I’ll look attentively and lovingly at my own, honor the humanity, greet my shortcomings with love and forgiveness.   

Who are your guiding lights this season? 

 

Let the story shift, thicken.

Here is the piece that doesn’t seem to fit smoothly among these other pieces, and it’s a new piece that is present this month.

As I’ve written, I have been through many 180s already in my life. Catholic to atheist. Monolingual to trilingual (living in foreign countries), Western medicine to holistic healing (thru 10-yr digestive disorder), Arby’s-loving to whole-foods vegan eater (over 10 years), atheist to deeply Spiritual communer with The Other Side (thru grief + trauma + high sensitivity + dark night of the soul), more that can’t fit in these short words, and, I’m open to an unfolding I never could have imagined. I’m curious to know who I’ll become, and how my current perceptions / ideas of life experience will continue to widen and change as I experience new experiences.

I know that there is so much complexity and nuance in the human experience. I try to practice awareness and curiosity when I’m presented a binary or absolute. Always. Never. I practice loosening the grip, hold a little lighter, play with not holding at all, releasing, surrendering, trusting.

It’s similar to the Buddhist story of the farmer, not knowing if these are good times or bad times. It has to do with my trust in the Divine unfolding, in the spirits and all the unseen elements at work in every moment.

And, I’ve recently been shown where I was holding on to a smaller, thin story, beyond my awareness. 

A few weeks ago, I’m sitting reading a book, and one of my lenses falls out of my glasses.

Plop.

That’s the week I learned of the P|andemic documentaries. (As someone who has been off social media for many years and generally away from the internet/media, I hadn’t heard of them before.) 

I watched all three documentaries within a week. (I recommend spacing them out if/when you watch them, and grounding/resourcing in nature before/after!) I tried to do some Google-research afterwards, and was surprised at how much censoring and story-making that search engine does, and Wikipedia also. This was a shock to me! I knew things were biased, but didn’t realize to what degree, to what extent the manipulation and censorship was going. In all directions. Then I bought the P|andemic book to do more research, as well as other books.

This book surpassed my expectations (well written, readable, human) and allowed me to take in a new lens. (Their tagline almost does a disservice, invoking “cure”; the book/story is much wider/richer than what the tagline would have you think.) I’m so grateful to the writer. It’s helped me illuminate where I was holding on to a thin story, places/sources around me upholding this thin story, where I’d been unable and unwilling to see it differently, where I had blindly accepted cultural narratives (ie “conspiracy theorist”) without looking into anything firsthand. 

The audiobook is free, by the way, though I enjoyed the physical book. (But you’ll need this direct link, as a Google search will not help you find their site: https://plandemicaudiobook.com)

(Then I spent many days deep in the mystical realms, in awe of all the layers and complexity. I think my body was balancing out all the materialism/$cientism from these sources.)

This shake-up has been important, in ways that are still unfolding. Remembering to shift perception; it’s all so malleable and temporary and complex. The timing of this illumination is only growing my purpose. My healing journey from what I haven’t labeled but what could probably be called complex trauma kept me “out of the world” for about five years. I’m back, but transformed. My toe is dipping in. I have deep roots now, able to look at things for the first time. My pen is in hand, aware there is a great need for intention in the world today.

Clear purpose is guiding my days.

 

My daily purpose.

All year I’ve been collecting—in various notebooks and scraps of paper—actions which are worth my energy, worth my time. As someone who has long been living outside of cultural/societal “guidelines,” I’ve made my own. They shift and change over time, as my lenses and perceptions and experience change. Here’s some of this collection, things which currently nurture my roots, which my soul feels aligned in practicing:

Wherever I think I know better than someone else – be aware.

Continue to notice my sensations, track their changes, listen to my body.

Illuminate and create nuance. Thicken a binary story. Tell a human story.

Create relationships. Have conversations with living, breathing humans. Create relationships…

-with neighbors
-with plants
-with creatures
-with myself (all the parts, shadows, etc.)
-with my ancestors
-with the dark

Create an environment (food, energy, surroundings, colors, sounds, content sources) that nurtures my being and affirms my humanity.

Listen to the Earth. Honor her. Bring her offerings. Tell her what’s in my heart.

Make visible the wisdom and power of nature.

Soak in pleasures. Feel the sensations of joys and delights.

Spend most of my time in stories of an expansive narrative, which makes my soul sing.

Go outside. Be outside. Be outside & embodied, aware of sensations.

Continue to grow and practice my personal power. My creative power.

Play! Create and do things that are absolutely not useful or for any purpose.

Grow healing ideas.

Be as utterly present, moment by moment, to my own experience as I can be.

Imagine, in embodied visualization, beautiful scenarios.

 

What feels nourishing to you these days?

—

I’ll close with a freewriting question inspired by a recent workshop taught by Molly Caro May.

I invite you to set a timer and move your pen for 5 minutes:

What are the resources you already have (internal & external) to support your wellbeing, to nurture your aliveness/spirit/heart?

Jot a list or let the pen move, and see where it takes you.