When The Present Is Incomprehensible, We Look Back.
Our ancestors, our history, our former selves sometimes hold the map if we will see it. (An invitation to lineage workshop series begins 1/29. Clothing optional Womxn's Dance 2/15, and a song!)
Day-to-day life is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
I recently had the great pleasure of educating my child musically with Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl, and instantly felt myself becoming my parents sharing “oldies”. 😏
We are super into bass music in this house and Ghengar, one of our faves ripped b-a-n-a-n-a-s in this BANGER. So, naturally, I had to teach Cali about sampling and some important music history. That’s what homeschool and unschool is all about, right?
I jest. Homeschool, for me, is actually about doing WHATEVER it takes to DISRUPT THE SYSTEM on a foundational level starting with how much my own offspring is infected with the virus of modernity.
Because here’s the truth about the day-to-day. (And stay with me because I’m gonna bring you back up but we gotta go down first bb.) There’s toxic shit in our water and nobody talks about it, ICE is murdering citizens and then bold-faced lying in press conferences about it, there are multiple genocides happening around the world, the educational system mimics the prison system and rewards sitting still and shutting up and learning to be a good little cog, we are moving at a breakneck pace towards the demise of our natural world - our home - and we are so habitually disembodied by our social conditioning and the demands of our time and energy to function in modern life in bodies that are still mostly evolved to be hunter-gatherers that we are too exhausted, numb, overwhelmed or shut down to change anything. (Not to mention the power constructs that thwart the mobility of said change.) And that’s just getting started…
AND (because if you’ve been reading me for a while you know there’s always a BOTH/AND here 😉), our amazing bodies REMEMBER how to heal. Nature is WINNING so many battles out there! People are protecting growing whale populations in the deep seas that are lowering CO2 in the atmosphere! People are learning non-violent communication skills that are transforming relationships in families and in activist organizations. Kids with autism are finally being heard about their incredible telepathic abilities! For every bad thing or evil motive, there is light fighting to break through - fighting for your attention, and your energy to propel it.
Will you slow down and reflect?
Last month I wrote about taking time for integration. We are still in winter so I’m going to keep riffing off of this theme, with an ancestral twist.
My Mom, who homeschooled me, used to say “We study history so it doesn’t repeat itself,” every time I was annoyed at having to memorize some boring and seemingly irrelevant names and dates. Much of the history I studied was orchestrated from a narrow world-view, but not irrelevant. And sure enough, so much of history is repeating itself right now in the grand ol’ USA.
Yet as I take a moment, I reflect that our nation was built, yes, on the backs of slaves and the deaths and displacement of indigenous peoples. But it was also built by many powerful, communal voices who called out for change. There have been incredible tides of revolution in the couple of hundred years it’s existed. So let’s not stew on the negative. Let’s own the mistakes, and choose each day to resist, to be the change, to learn from what has worked in the past so we can replicate it, rather than just fearing what bad happened that seems to cycle again.
General strike, anyone? Minnesota’s doing it!
When political action and historical reflection isn’t cutting it…find ancestral wisdom in your body.
Sometimes, all the ra-ra activism is even more overwhelming, right? It can feel like one more thing we’re “supposed” to be doing in our daily lives that already feel like a survival show just driving to work (at least on these LA streets.)
Sometimes the looking back that we’re needing most is personal, generational, or even physically ancient, like on a DNA, cellular level.
When all the noise gets too loud, and the rage against the machine has died out, what are you left with? For me, it’s usually a body that is begging to slow down, to step outside, to notice the flowers that are STILL BLOOMING.
And there’s the balance in this practice of looking back. We don’t want to become so obsessed with our own past narratives that we get stuck there and cease to experience the now. And, making sense of the past takes as much time and energy as it does, sometimes. The answer for what is a balanced and healing exploration is something only you can answer for yourself. For me, I ask if it feels like it’s helping the now time.
Exploration Questions:
What do our own past selves have to say about “times like these”? Can you take time to observe? Is there a pattern playing out somatically, here? The world has felt heavy before. That’s always available. What made your shoulders feel lighter last time? You’ve been caught in panic loops, what disrupted the thought spiral and brought your breath back to baseline? Your own somatic healing is explored in nuance over your lifetime.
And, you can go deeper into your collective past. Do your ancestors have any practical magic for you? Perhaps there are tools you are conscious of being taught.
Perhaps you must find what is woven into your bone and sinew for you to remember.
Creator Corner Collective
Lineage recovery of ancestral practices is modern alchemy. I am so in awe and deep appreciation of the womxn doing this important work to heal us. Tomorrow starts a 4 part series from Matriarch Makeover. If you’ve been looking for a place to start this work and are a woman or femme with European Ancestry this is your invitation to join us!
“Led by Maija West and Hilary Giovale and guest teachers, we will explore pathways into lineage recovery through Celtic, Latvian and other European traditions, while also making space for other practices to emerge. This circle of learning is rooted in respect, reciprocity, and the belief that it is the birthright of all peoples to remember and carry forward the life-affirming traditions of their ancestors.”
I sat in the information session a few weeks ago and I know this circle is going to be powerful.
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Want to be highlighted in my letter? Reach out and tell me more about your work.
Pre-Save My New Single!
This song vibrates with the heartbreak of not having all parts of me fully embraced by some of the people I love the most. For some of us, we lose the strength of our rooting with our lineage and ancestry because of rifts in identities, stories, beliefs. This is for all of us who’ve ever gone through a version of this experience. It’s about setting boundaries around what loving you has to look like. Song-writing has been one of the ways I have made sense of my world for my whole life. And I know this ancestral practice has been in my lineage for thousands of years. I am so grateful to all the song-catchers, to the Muse, to Source. Thank you for giving me a way to feel it to heal it.
(And yes, I cry exclusively rainbow tears. So gay, ikik 😆)
Preview Celebrate Me Listen on Apple Music
I bet if we go back far enough, our ancestors were getting naked a whole lot more!
On February 15th I’m teaching a nude ecstatic dance workshop for WOMEN ONLY for SCNA and BITS. If you are a woman and want to explore clothing optional practice in a safe, non-sexual, radical liberation and self-love container please join us!
Here’s the Partiful link with all the juicy deets
More Artist of Everything Creations
You can check out more healing offerings at www.weepingwillowwellness.com
Book a FREE strategy session here to meet with me and discuss joining my 12 week somatic healing program, Whole Body Communicator
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And more to come!
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