I’m writing this as I travel eastward to visit Ancestral lands. My Father’s settler and Indigenous roots are in the central Pennsylvania and Herkimer Valley region of New York. We visit this land annually and recently planted 8 contiguous acres of pollinator wildflower fields to support the monarchs who brave a 3,000-mile migration from Mexico to Canada and the United States. This land is legacy; not owned but stewarded as an extension of our family in the eternal connection of all things. This land came to us through my father-in-law, and it happens to be in the Ancestral region of my own Father. I dreamed it long before I ever walked on it. A recurring dream of wolves and I at the edge of a pine forest and field re-emerged when I first saw this land: it was the same meeting place. This paternal lineage through the land always reminds me of my Father’s strength and wisdom, and of how much I miss the man who understood me better than anyone ever would. I am the apple that fell from his tree.

When I traveled to Australia earlier this year, I repatriated a boomerang. Repatriation means to return something to its homeland, and the boomerang, pictured above, was removed from Australia in the 1960s. It was likely carved in the ’40s or ’50s. It was given to us by a neighbor who was moving and found it when clearing out boxes of “old stuff.” Knowing of my love for Australia, he offered it to me; he otherwise planned to throw it away. We accepted it and knew instantly it was old. It hung on our kitchen wall, and I often mused at its uneven shape. I had only seen the returning boomerangs with their even and balanced shape. I would learn, years later, that this is a hunting boomerang.

Several years later, I was visiting Devils Marbles in the red center of Australia. While in the visitor center, I saw a similar, if not almost the same, boomerang. I mentioned this to the ranger, who was Warumungu, and he graciously and with a bit of understandable agitation asked me why I had it. I explained the story of how it came to us, and he simply said: “You need to bring it home.”

That was 2013. On February 27, 2025, the boomerang returned with me to Australia, with the help of a dear friend who is a proud Yindjibarndi woman and her friend who is a professor of museum anthropology at Deakin University. The boomerang has returned to the grandson of the man who carved it. He gave many such boomerangs to the missionaries who frequented Australia in the ’50s and ’60s. That’s how this one landed in the U.S. They were given in a spirit of reciprocity, not as a gift in the way of Western society but as an act of commitment to ongoing stewardship. The recipients were to care for the gifts and return or gift them onward when they were done. Most of the missionaries simply kept them, and the community mournfully acknowledges that many of those boomerangs likely landed in garbage bins, as this one almost did.

There is healing and reclamation in the act of repatriation, and I feel this standing on the land that my Ancestors walked and breathed and lived on. In these times of unraveling and upheaval in the U.S., when wild places are threatened to be sold off for corporate profit, I often hear my Father’s voice reminding me that I have everything I need inside of me, and that wild places are the most important gift.

Father’s Day came around this year one day after the No Kings protests, the same day as our wedding anniversary. As I approach the 4-year anniversary of my father’s death on August 26, 2025, I recall that the last time I heard his voice was when I sat in this very place and spoke to him by phone. No matter what I said, he just kept repeating, “I love you so much. I love you so very much, Sweetie.” I wonder if his Ancestors, my Ancestors, hear this through the ever-rippling green 100+ acres of wild woods and meadows, now bright with wildflowers and slowly being restored to their native habitat in an act of earthly repatriation.

The last time I took my father out, wheelchairing him from the small room he lived in at an assisted living facility, he asked me to roll him to the edge of the woods at the far end of the parking lot. We sat there quietly for a moment and then he said: “You and I are more alike than you know.” When I asked him what he meant, he simply pointed to the woods and said: “We’d both rather be in there than out here.”

This reflection is deeply personal. It emerged as I midwifed the deaths of both my parents, through the lens of my nervous system and all that it holds. I offer it here in the hope it resonates with others walking this path.  Written January, 2022

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Memorial Day was a big deal when I was a child. I was born 15 years after World War 2 ended and 7 years after the Korean War ended. Both, especially World War 2, were still very present in the collective memory. The Vietnam War informed my childhood and early teens. So when we gathered for Memorial Day, the shared acknowledgement of war, loss, grief, and sacrifice was palpable. It breathed just below the surface of our skin.

I still remember the energy of these somber celebrations. The potency of that memory is in the collective gathering for something that matters. It mattered that lives were lost. It mattered that families still missed their loved ones. It mattered that it was a tense, scary time for our communities.

My mom was born in 1928 and lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War. I always imagined the Depression was the most difficult time for her, especially given how financially impoverished her family was. But just before she died, she told me it was World War 2. It bothered her that it was being forgotten as it receded to a farther past of U.S. history. It saddened her that people were too busy, distracted, disinterested in such an impactful and formative time for the country she loved, to continue honoring it communally.

Those annual times of strong togetherness are visceral memories. I’ve only recalled them recently, when I joined rallies and protests in support of our rights—once fought for and oft preserved—that have been so constant. Losing them is unimaginable. And we are losing them.

When I protested in my younger years, I did so politically. The gatherings were statements. What’s happening in the U.S. now is the closest thing my body remembers to the meaningful, shared, committed action of gathering to honor, acknowledge, and protect. The intentions of the rallies and protests are not the same as Memorial Day, and I am not equating them. I am recognizing the resurgence of something important enough to pause whatever else any of us might be doing and commit to showing up to both protest the degradation of human and planetary rights, and connect with our communities in service of shared experience of unity. Every rally or protest I have attended recently feels like those remembrance gatherings: there is care, friendship, humor, and connection. We are there because it matters.

June 14th is an auspicious day for me. It’s my wedding anniversary, the birthday of my beloved teacher and friend Emilie Conrad, the day both my mother and our precious dog Osa were cremated, and this year, it’s a day of dueling gatherings. While the military wastefully parades to celebrate the U.S. President’s birthday under the guise of marching for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, many of us will gather. We will rally and protest.

This newsletter is a reminder to those of us who can—as close to safely as possible—show up to something that matters – to SHOW UP. It’s not political. It’s our civic duty. Every person in this country who celebrates our human rights can do so because of a long history of freedom movements by groups who were and are marginalized and oppressed: the American Indian Movement, Black Lives Matter, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Me Too, Civil Rights, Women’s Suffrage, Gay Liberation. All of us who cherish freedom benefit from the courageous communities who fought for their rights.

These are the very communities who are targeted today because Project 2025, a manifesto for white supremacy, is the playbook for the current U.S. government. In these times, protests are not political. They are a necessary action. They are our responsibility. I no longer tolerate my white-bodied friends choosing to remain silent and comfortable. It’s truly dangerous for BIPOC, queer, disabled, immigrant and other folks to gather. Many of my white friends complain that “no one is doing anything.” That’s because it’s our turn. And it’s timely, because the list of who’s “Un-American” is growing.

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts—and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. Read this BBC article: The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world.

To every white U.S. citizen who buys fruit immigrants picked, or lives on stolen land, or whose ancestors’ homes were built by enslaved people—it’s your turn to show up to what matters. It’s time to raise our voices in the spaces we have a right to inhabit. Our bodies are our voices, and they are being threatened with a magnitude of loss, threat, and discrimination that should stun everyone who cares. June 14, 2025 is close: Lets rally in protest, and in unity, together.

I have worked with Newcomers to the United States for over 30 years. The term Newcomers reflects our (colleagues here in New Mexico) chosen language to offer respect to the variety of experiences, often traumatizing and always life-altering, that immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, asylees, and others endure. I have witnessed many changes in the U.S.’s policies towards Newcomers, including some that were very painful to all communities involved in resettlement. To write that what’s going on today is the most painful, frightening and shocking time I’ve experienced is an understatement. Words don’t exist.

There are many threads to this complex issue. I live some of them. I am a descendant of both Native American and settler Ancestors. I know both lineages in my bones. I have learned very little about my Indigenous Ancestry because it was intentionally silenced and erased by two generations of settler Ancestors. That’s for another time. I have been told many stories of the challenges my settler Ancestors faced, propelling them to immigrate. I feel compassion, always, for their painful decision to leave their homeland. None of them was forced out, as refugees, asylum seekers and asylees are. These three “categories” of immigration describe a rigorous and intense legal process that thoroughly vets every aspect of the persons’ lives to ensure they are truly able to prove a well founded fear of persecution that threatens their very existence. None of them choose to have to flee home.

I have met thousands of Newcomers and thousands more still living in limbo in camps, detention centers, and foreign countries. I have heard just as many stories. This month, I am sharing one, sans identifying information other than the country he came from.

“Mo” came from Vietnam around the 1980’s. Many people are surprised to learn we still settle refugees from that war that was a formative experience of my childhood. Today, on “Black April”, 50 years to the day after the fall of Saigon, this is Mo’s story:

Mo was born several years before the war began to a Vietnamese mother and a European Father. When the war started, he was often called “ child of a whore”, so his mother made the excruciating decision to take him to a distant relative in another community when he was only 3. By 7, he had been abused enough that he fled, and spent 7 years living between the jungle and the streets. Finding himself in Saigon at the age of 14, he survived as he could and while helping in a local restaurant, met a service member from the United States. They struck up a friendship and 4 years later, with this chosen father’s help, Mo relocated to the US via another country where he underwent the rigorous legal process to become a refugee.

Arriving here on the cusp of adulthood, his new family helped him get his GED and consider many possible careers. I will never forget the light and the water in his eyes when he sat up a bit taller and told me: “I chose to join the Marines because I wanted to serve the country that welcomed me home.”

Mo served for thirty years. In that time, he served six tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was shot three times and the bullet that entered his back is what ended his military career. In his service he met a US president who knew his name and his story, and who awarded him a purple heart. The pride as he shared this was palpable; I felt as if I could breathe it in.

Mo had married and had 4 children. All were tragically lost in a car accident. After years of utter bereftness, and an inner commitment to healing and living the dreams he still had and attributed to living in a country where “dreams come true,” he began dating and fell in love with a Vietnamese woman who was visiting the U.S. They plan to marry, and she had hoped to move here. Together, they recently decided that his remaining in the US was not an option, because he would likely be forced to live without her. He, like I imagine many of us would, does not want to continue living and feeling alone. Within the year, Mo is leaving the United States, a country he loves, has served, and wishes to call home, to return to Vietnam. Mo, a naturalized US citizen, is making this heartbreaking decision because the current socio-political environment around immigration is a cascade of ever-changing, unsettling policies that make it feel too unsafe and unpredictable for him to bring his beloved here.

I asked Mo if he would share his story publicly someday. He looked at me through teary eyes, laughed, and simply said “I just did. Now, it’s your turn. Please share it so people understand the love I – all of us who come here as refugees – have for this country.”

 

Erasure is one of colonization’s most effective and inhumane strategies for collective silencing and oppression. Googling an online dictionary, the definition of erasure is: the removal of all traces of something; obliteration. The recent scrubbing of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and women heroes from Department of Defense websites is a blatant attempt to obliterate the diversity that strengthens, protects, and, when necessary, defends the United States of America. Recently, important content—such as historical accounts of the Holocaust, resources on sexual assault, suicide, and DEI—was removed from the websites of federally funded organizations. Some of this has been restored. However, the cruelty of that action can never be undone.

Any action that intends to erase initiates a ripple that aims to disengage future generations from understanding and knowing essential memories of a shared collective truth. Erasing the stories of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo Code Talkers is a disgrace. Equally troubling are the pressures placed on federally funded organizations and universities to whitewash their language—removing essential terms like Indigenous, trauma, BIPOC, intergenerational, multicultural, and more. Watch that space. While some of the scrubbed information has been restored after public outcry, it may very well disappear again. My father, who was a Marine in the World War II era, told me many times about how the Code Talkers’ fierce and unique warriorship won that war. I can’t imagine any Marine who would tolerate the dismissal of the courage and contribution of any other Marine. If my dad exemplified anything from his time there, it’s that loyalty is in their blood.

Erasure is on the same continuum as the dismissal, denial, and gaslighting of another’s experience. It is collective “othering.” It is both not seeing someone and seeing them as less than. Recently, while walking on an icy path with a family member, I had a moment that felt like a “droplet” of this. Post-surgery, I still struggle to walk on ice and to do many things I used to do—such as run and dance—due to my disability. I believe I will be able to do all these things again (I know my own persistence!). I am also comfortable with the fact that I am currently mobility disabled. I know this doesn’t make me less of who I already am.

As the surface became slippery, I mentioned several times that I needed to go slow, felt a bit uncertain, and might need support. After the third or fourth such request, I asked for help. In asking, I said something like, “This is hard for me because of my current disability.” Within seconds, they said, “You are not disabled,” in a harsh and dismissive tone. It felt like a gut punch.

The rest of the conversation was tough, and I ended it by inviting my family member to reflect on their discomfort with my disability. They insisted that their words and refusal to acknowledge this straightforward fact were “to lift me up.” They did the opposite: I felt myself flattening down. It hurts to be unseen. That is true in any context of denial, dismissal, othering, and erasure. I have no problem with the both/and of my life right now: I am still disabled from spinal injuries and surgery, and what lifts me up is knowing that my own commitment, courage, and persistence to heal can lead to my full recovery.

Dismissing another person’s stated sense of self reflects what we are not willing to see, accept, or name. These personal erasures of “just one” send ripples too—ripples that may forever mar the relationship, because to be unseen undermines trust. My personal example also highlights how disabled folks are constantly forced to accommodate an ableist world, rather than be supported and seen within environments that yield and adapt to us. I believe this is a form of both othering and individual erasure.

Whether it’s a personal moment or a national website, these large and small injustices undermine the sense of “safe as can be,” and the trust that weaves webs of connection foundational to our shared humanity. It signals to the communities being erased that they are no longer seen in a way that honors, respects, and welcomes. This should never be taken lightly. One of my first Indigenous teachers taught me to be very mindful of every word I spoke, because when words leave our mouths, they have energy—and that energy continues rippling through the world. The same is true of actions, and those ripples can be even more potent and travel longer distances.

To counter erasure, we must engage in conscious remembrance. Conscious remembrance can include a continuum of actions, from data hoarding (see resources) to ritual. The brilliant documentary Librarians, which played at Sundance 2025, shows how librarians are now on the frontlines, resisting the erasure of decades of literature and history. We all have inner libraries of history and memories that are the foundation of who we are. All our ancestors and their actions and lives—evolutionary and familial—are the trail of breath and love that brought us into our own lives.

Memory is in our bones. History is not static; it breathes and moves us. This can never be erased. My way of remembering is to dance the sacred ceremonial dances my ancestors danced. Each step ignites my bones’ knowing. Evolutionary, familial, and personal development—all of it lives in our bones. Reconnecting to practices, movements, rituals, and rhythms that express our origins, ancestry, and heritage helps us re-member. Indigenous wisdom teaches that we are much less likely to become lost when we engage all the layers of story—layers that creativity, ceremony, and movement are taproots to.

We may not recall information linearly, but we will reconnect to the imprints of our ancestors, whose lives helped shape us. This is the truth that lives beneath words and policies—the truth that upholds our identities and names, even when others refuse to see them.

I became a Continuum teacher in 2006. Continuum is al ife and movement practice created over many years by somatic pioneer Emilie Conrad. When I first experienced Emilie’s teaching, I instantly recognized myself in the breath-sound-movement soundscape. It was a homecoming.

Continuum pays homage to the 70% water our human bodies are. In this practice, movement is instigated through the use of breath and sound – breath made audible. Similar to ultrasound, the frequency of sound that permeates our tissue – our inner landscape of canyons, rivers, organ earthy islands – enlivens the fluidity inherent in all our tissue, dense as it can seem. We humans tend to be conditioned to “do” movement when in fact we are movement. Undoing this “conditioned doing” is a premise of this work. Emilie used the term coaguladio to describe our denser tissue and our tendency to emphasize functional movement and form. Soludio was a term she used to describe all the ways density, tension, and form can dissolve to formlessness; all the metaphorical and sometimes literal mini deaths any living being can experience in a lifetime.

Illustrating the potential for transformation and healing in this willingness to dissolve form, density, unhelpful beliefs, and swim in our natural flow underlying all the currents of social conditioning, Emilie often spoke about caterpillars. She mused about the caterpillar’s courageous dissolve into a gooey mass of formlessness inside the cocoon, before it emerges as butterfly, a profound soludio. A willingness, whether conscious or unconscious, to let go into a dark unknown and to trust this letting go is the only way to achieve the bold flying beauty of the butterfly.

Our teaching community was set to gather in Encino, CA in February, but the meeting was moved online due to the fires in the Los Angeles area. In our online meeting, one of the curators of our gathering, Susan Harper, who had partnered with Emilie for many years to co-create this body of work, invited us into an elegant movement sequence that paid homage to this bold transformation. Susan shared some fascinating and currently very relevant details about this “caterpillian” journey that are timely for today.

The caterpillar eats voraciously, consuming everything it can right up until it forms a chrysalis. Inside the chrysalis, it dissolves into goop. The caterpillar’s structure has no similarity to the butterfly structure it will become. This transformation is catalyzed by imaginal cells, which lay dormant in the caterpillar’s body. In the dissolve, these cells begin to form individual cells and clusters, and the caterpillar’s immune system attacks the cells and clusters, defending its structure. The imaginal cells persist, eventually forming a unified multi cell organism. It is this organism that sparks goop to become the winged creature it never imagined it was, and was always destined to become.

As I muse on these times, and last month’s piece on resistance, I consider another form of resistance – the fear of letting go. The caterpillar’s immune system initially resists the imaginal in an act of self-preservation and resistance. It destroys the cells until they, persistent, become the unified organism that become butterfly, a creature that pollinates in service of continued growth. Susan offered us the uplifting metaphor of our capacity to spread love and nourishment in service of community, rising from a history of voracious, unrelenting consumption.

Last month, writing about resistance, I described how the word can conjure tension in my body. Resistance can have force, it can feel like a push against; a fight. And there is also creative resistance. Transforming science into metaphor and poetry, if we surrender into the possibility the imaginal realm offers, trust into the dissolve, what emerges? I am not privileging one form of resistance over the other. Both are essential in times of oppression and dangerous change. Perhaps the caterpillar’s journey can remind us of both the daring, bold fierceness and yielding willingness and ability to let go with discernment that feeds and transforms our power to both dismantle oppressive change and nurture meaningful change in greater service to many.

One of my favorite Christmas presents from this recent holiday is this license plate (above). I’m going to put it on the front of my car, so it always leads.

In the past, the word resistance has conjured tension in my body. It can feel stiff and unyielding. And, as I dive deeper into its meaning and place now, I realize its true meaning and the action of this meaning is not always so effortful.

Resistance, as defined in the dictionary, means: (1) the refusal to accept or comply with something; (2) the attempt to prevent something by action or argument; and (3) the ability not to be affected by something, especially adversely.

For a little more than a week, the United States has watched key elements of its democratic experiment plundered and cast aside in service of a rising white men’s oligarchy. The large-scale dismissal of long-term federal government funding, support and even employees alters the direction and heart of our democratic dream. This dream has manifested in real life as far from a true and perfect democracy but has been a decent attempt to create a society that ensures human rights. The unfolding “hypocrisy democracy” we are living in heralds big loss: a loss of human, women’s, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, Disabled, Immigrant, Planetary and all its sentient beings’ rights. 

Much of what is happening violates laws. Of law, Martin Luther King wrote this while in jail in Birmingham, Alabama:

“How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

As I contemplate King’s words, I sense a different kind of resistance rise in me, “fluffing” up my flesh, not constricting it. I feel the warmth of Konysans—the Haitian Kreyol word for deep embodied knowing – of what’s right. No doubt, no questioning. Every cell, bone, breath knows what’s right and just.

When I teach, I speak about embodied justice as the reclamation of our own timing; our own rhythm or beat. One of many ways to consider justice is our ability to inhabit our body— be our bodies, and our movement – in ways we choose. This is our right, and this right is always governed by moral law. Many, many human beings (and more than human beings) have long suffered persecution and loss of rights due to oppression and abuse of power, especially since massive global colonization began. Today, this suffering is amplified.

Practically, in our every day, justice means the right to food security and nourishment. The right to rest and privacy. The right to congregate with people we choose to be with, to dress, worship, dance, move, work and play as we choose. And I believe it also means the consideration we give regarding how the ripples we make affect and change the environments we move in, and the “occupants” of those environments we interact with. We honor ourselves and respect others simultaneously. Embodied justice is reciprocal.

As I prepare to resist, I reflect on my mixed and dynamic ancestry. And I reflect on my ancestors who suffered because they were immigrant, Indigenous, poor, marginalized by society, and who resisted. On my mother’s side, ancestors arrived in Jamestown, Virginia and headed South but moved to the Northern United States during the civil war as resistance to the horrible practice of human enslavement. My grandfather was an immigrant from Poland who was not formally educated and was a brilliant farmer. He endured prejudice and cruelty, called degrading names and as a result, changed his last name from Jacubowski to Jacobs to protect his family. When he died, his wife had divorced him. Because his family lot is in a Polish Catholic cemetery, he was not allowed to  be buried with his family members. Now buried solo in a lonely corner of the cemetery, his true name, which he reclaimed, is forever  emblazoned on his headstone. My maternal grandmother was an amazing cook and one of the only rural Michigan locals who opened her home to Chinese laborers, who were often mistreated in those times. She rented them rooms and fed them meals, always kind. After my own mother died, I learned she had quietly advocated for LGBTQIA+ rights in her retirement community in a very conservative area of Pennsylvania, always inviting newly arrived Queer couples to her home for a “proper turkey dinner” and assuring them of their place there, and in her own home.

On my dad’s side, his Indigenous father was mistreated by his wife’s family, and eventually by her. Still, when one of his children fell on a coal burning stove and medical doctors could not “fix” his hand, he snuck his son out of the house and took him to a “Pow Wow” as they then called it, where he was healed. My own father was a corporate businessman and a renegade within that community. He always pushed back against unethical practice and was legendary for  his integrity and ethics in business. He descended from a long line of settlers who began rejecting the destruction that colonization wrought on the wilderness  and retreated deep into the land to live more reciprocally with nature and its more-than-human inhabitants. 

Resistance is the heart of these small, personal, uncelebrated actions. These are compassion-fueled, self-respecting and dignified compassionate right actions. Resistance can be subtle and remain very powerful. 

It will take time to figure out the more emboldened acts of resistance I, or any of us, may want to engage in. For now, I remember my Ancestors as resistance against erasure. I connect to the local community of business owners, many of them immigrants, who work in the building where my refugee mental health clinic is. We check in on each other, strategize for ourselves and our clients, and I assure them of my support as resistance against division. I let all my clients know what their rights are, remind them to make ample copies of their legal documentation as resistance against misinformation. I check every day regarding the businesses abandoning their DEI policies and practices and boycott them. I choose to only give my money to those who protect those policies as resistance against corporate greed. I check on the neighbors, friends, colleagues who rely on food or housing assistance to make sure they are ok as resistance against isolation. 

These are small and impactful beginnings that will become the clear path to bold and compassionate right action and pave the way for effective resistance. 

We need the light because we are the light. And yet, we are, and need, the darkness too. Our inner landscapes exist in darkness. Visible light may enter our superficial skin layers, but our interior is shrouded in total darkness. And our organs are nourished by photons emitted through the sun’s rays. Most photons that reach us on Earth are not in the visible spectrum but in the Near Infrared (NIR). NIR is light we cannot see, so even in its presence, without visible light, it seems dark. Even so, these photons bathe our internal landscape. In Kreyol, we have a term, “Sa nou pa we,” that describes the ever-present unseen— the invisible that surrounds and protects us, especially in the dark.

Darkness is what the tiny seed experiences when it is first placed into thick, dank loam, completely buried in earth. It is this dark embrace that allows that tiny capsule of potential to quiver with the idea of life and begin to reach through the dark toward light and space, until it unfolds in growth to become a fresh expression of life itself. Darkness is what invites the depth of rest and the potency of stillness that allows vibrant creativity to emerge.

Depending on where you are, this year’s ending will fold into winter’s darkness or stoke summer’s light. May we all be enveloped and embraced by that blanket of darkness that quiets and stills in service of regeneration. And may we be courageous enough to be the light.

I just watched the movie White Bird on a flight, and even through the tiny airplane screens, I found elements of this film quite impactful. I imagine a movie critic might find some flaw in the plot or character development and consider one of the “main threads”—the link between a character’s Holocaust history and her grandson Julian’s involvement in bullying—a bit thin. Yet, through Helen Mirren’s gifted acting and the ability of actor Bryce Gheiser, who plays Julian, to communicate a wide range of emotions solely through his eyes and facial expressions, the potential for transformation in a lineage of intergenerational trauma comes through quite potently.

One of the memorable dialogues for me is a scene set in 1942 when the young Jewish girl, Sara—who will become the grandmother—listens to her father explain why they must flee their home:

Sara: Why do people hate us so much?

Father: Not all people—you need to remember that. But some do. Some—yes. What I believe is that all people have a light inside them, and that light lets them see into other people’s hearts. But some people have lost it. They have darkness inside them, so that’s all they see in others. They hate us because they can’t see us. As long as we shine our light, we win.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.”

In the Northern Hemisphere, we are on the edge of our winter solstice, a day that holds five more hours of darkness than any summer solstice. From here, we move toward longer light.  For most of humanity’s time on Earth, this dark period signified going fallow, surrendering to the biological imperative of deep rest, hibernation, and stillness. The immense glow of modern life—waves of energy and light emitted from devices, streetlights, and vast swaths of “development”—costs us our dark time.

We need the light because we are the light. And yet, we are, and need, the darkness too. Our inner landscapes exist in darkness. Visible light may enter our superficial skin layers, but our interior – brains and kidneys – are shrouded in total darkness. And, they are nourished by photons emitted through the sun’s rays. Most photons that reach us on Earth are not in the visible spectrum but in the Near Infrared (NIR). NIR is light we cannot see, so even in its presence, without visible light, it seems dark. Even so, these photons bathe our organs. In Kreyol we have a term, “Sa nou pa we”, that describes the everpresent unseen. The invisible that surrounds and protects us, especially in the dark.

In these times, when news and conversations so often refer to “these dark times” or “the dark times ahead of us,” darkness can seem solely negative. Philosopher-historian George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” While the intergenerational thread explored in White Bird is crucial to consider now, as history threatens to repeat itself through the rise of divisiveness, dominance and violence, “othering” the darkness may not be helpful. The tendency to make darkness undesirable can separate dark and light, who thrive most in togetherness. When one is clearly visible, the other is sa nou pa we.

Darkness is what the tiny seed experiences when it is first placed into thick, dank loam, completely buried in earth. It is this dark embrace that allows that tiny capsule of potential to quiver with the idea of life and begin to reach through the dark toward light and space, until it unfolds in growth to become a fresh expression of life itself. Darkness is what invites the depth of rest and potency of stillness that allows vibrant creativity to emerge.

Depending on where you are, this year’s ending will fold into winter’s darkness or stoke summer’s light. May we all be enveloped and embraced by that blanket of darkness that quiets and stills in service of regeneration. And may we be courageous enough to be the light.

In September’s newsletter I alluded to writing about Haiti and the Haitian community in this newsletter. November is always potent with its first day, the Day of the Dead, following Samhain and ending around a celebration of harvest, however flawed the story of Thanksgiving is. My intention then was to share some of the beauty of Haiti’s rich ceremonial traditions because November is one of our most important celebrations of the crossroads of life and death, a bountiful place for Spirit. It also is a time of strong powers, embracing the fertile void of living and dying. And it’s the month I was born in mid-stream between Day of the Dead and Thanksgiving.

This November the US held an election, and the potency of this month has changed significantly. I wish I was surprised at the election outcome. I anticipated these results, as outrageous as it is that someone who says horrible and blatantly racist things about Haiti and other communities of Color and Culture (and so many others) would become president. I have been thinking about power a lot since the elections. Power seems to be an obsession of many in the US right now.
With power comes responsibility. When I was in high school, in the Vietnam War era, I often mused at the cliques and the variance in power that existed between the more and less popular cliques that defined my high school. I recall one day in the hallway between classes, witnessing an act of unkindness and meanness by a “powerful” student towards a student who was less popular and often bullied, and thinking: The more power we have, the more responsibility we have. This is WRONG. We are responsible for the effects and impacts and ripples of our power. This seemed so obvious to me, and I have never forgotten that moment because I intervened. In the wake of this month’s elections, I am aware of how dangerous intervening in abuses of power will become.

November 1 is the Day of the Dead in many places, including where I live in New Mexico. It is known as Fet Gede in Haiti. The Gede Spirits are the Spirits that embrace the edge of life and death and all the ways dark and light interface. They are powerful. They use their power to protect children, especially those called to the Mystery too young and too soon. They laugh at human folly, reminding us to play, and to engage with levity in our seriousness and our responsibility because we are all co-journeying to the same destination: the Unknown. Celebrating Fet Gede, we celebrate the balance of power each of us is. Each life is a meeting place of power and powerlessness moving towards an ultimate outcome we cannot control. The ceremonies for Gede are powerful and beautiful, and always culminate in a feast that provides nourishment to our entire community. No matter how little material wealth anyone has, the community has the power and the responsibility to offer food to everyone who shows up.

That Haiti, Haitians and Haitian traditions are often maligned in service of power and dominance is repugnant. The reverence for the interconnectedness of all life, for both the mundane and the mystical, and all the ways they intersect to offer us strength and power in our time here offers a level of respect and care that we could benefit from cultivating and living now. Aspects of Vodou remind me of Buddhism. I appreciate the understanding that the divine resides within us and that is what offers us power to participate with life in ways that both acknowledge and ease suffering for all – not create it. With Thanksgiving approaching, a day that is named for a meal that allegedly celebrated the beginnings of shared abundance between the Indigenous people of this land and the colonizers, imbalance of power once again shows its shadow side. My terms for this day interchangeably are Gratitude Day, to offer respect to those who have stewarded the land for at least 30,000 years, and Genocide Day, to acknowledge the blatant destruction of Indigenous ways of living and being. This way of being is a respectful reciprocity and balance of power that is lost in the hypocrisy of the myth some people still believe. My Indigenous teachers and Ancestors teach me about the essential place humans have in the world of all life. With our immense power we are here to protect the balance of the natural world, to celebrate her power and to steward those who we can easily overpower. It is not a life of dominance and extraction; it is a life of cooperation and care.

I don’t go to church, and I pray all the time. A favorite Haitian proverb says that we dance to know God, that our church can be our body, and that worship is an active expression of empowerment through our active embodiment of Spirit, God, Creator. In other words, we worship when our actions benefit others. On the heels of this election, may this Gratitude Day be one that heralds an awakening of all that we have to care for and steward in the US, in our global community, and in the vast expanse of nature that created us. May we show up empowered and may we move and act responsibly.

Many of my Indigenous teachers remind me to enter spaces in the natural world consciously. Whether going for an ocean swim, taking a nap in a forest or resting on a log, I have been taught to pause, connect with the space I am about to enter and therefore change, and ask permission because my presence there will have an impact. This is also a process of discernment. Discernment has depth. Discernment is rooted in our interoceptive,  i.e everything we sense and know beneath our skin, insight. The Kreyol term konysans is, for me, connected to discernment. Konysans is a deep knowing; a knowing in our bones and through our Spirit that connects us to all that is – past, present and future. 

Dancing the Wild Home retreats are an extended experience of entering a space respectfully, in discernment and with appreciation for divine perfection. When I was a teenager, I had an epiphany that the most perfect perfection honors imperfection as whole and perfect. In our world that overwhelms our senses with images of artificial perfection, that almost forces high speed interactions and over-scheduled days, DWH is a balm and a counterpoint. Beach walks, whale encounters, movement explorations and wild inquiries are infused with the practice of consciously entering a place and discerning all our actions there.  A former participant described learning to marvel at the sacred in the ordinary and everyday. 

The beaches on this remote island with no roads, cars, towns or stores are full of gorgeous seashells. Shell collecting is pure magic. When the tide is low there are ample tidal pools to search for treasures in. We also find seashells out amongst the reviving coral reef. A 2015 typhoon damaged and bleached much of the reef. It is now resurrecting with a palette of underwater color that is magnificent. 

Many of the shells have slight imperfections after being tumbled around in rock and water. Underwater shells are often “perfect”: no cracks, breaks or discoloration. Whenever I find them, I think of the seashell stores I frequented as a child, piled with “perfect” shells. Shells that likely were housing an animal when found. Animals who were cruelly removed, displaced  and killed. 

This year, I found one “perfect” beautiful shell underwater that  appeared to be empty. Bringing it ashore, I checked it several times and even though it was a bit heavy, it seemed void of an inhabitant. I found a smaller, similar shell near a tidal pool, and carried both back to my room. Within moments of putting them down, the smaller one scooted away. So I checked the bigger one again, and was still convinced there was no-one in the shell. I placed it in a large clam shell with other shells I collected. In the morning, I saw a small creature had tried to move the shell. She was half hanging out, dead. I was devastated. Its tiny face was exposed and I felt certain it felt its own kind of fear. Weeping, I returned the tiny body to the ocean, and later, returned the shell. Beautiful as it was, I discerned that I could not keep it. My mind logic said “Now it’s definitely empty–keep it.” The 80% of my brain that is my body said “NO. Return it to the sea”. 

Many people might laugh at the thought of grieving a tiny crab. I’m certain just as many would keep the shell, now that it was definitely empty. It took 2 days of discernment for me to know – Konysans – to return the shell to the same place in the reef where I found it. An offering for another creature; a home. Beautiful in its unblemished perfection as it was, I knew, beneath the entitled reasoning we humans have long used to justify displacement, murder and dominance of so many creatures, that choosing honor and respect for the little crabs life, and the home it could provide for another, was the correct action. 

Together we began collecting and co-appreciating  the shells that were “imperfect” because they showcased an inner spiral we would not see if it was still whole, or a flash of color that isn’t apparent on the outside. Always asking permission before gathering them became a practice for each of us. We each created ephemeral art of these shells, and placed them in designated collection sites, agreeing to choose only a few to carry home. These shared actions of honoring the divine perfection in each broken or tattered shell (and other ocean finds) through art-making, surrendering the beauty back to the tides and then letting our open hearted curiosity guide us to observe more beauty in the wild, taking only what we were granted permission for, is engaged reciprocity rooted in the discerning heart of konysans.

We all enter spaces: Walk through doorways. Jump in a pool, or the ocean. Step into a meadow. Open a fence gate and enter a garden. Daily, annually, every moment, we enter (and leave and enter, again) a space.

When I teach eco-somatic movement, I invite movers to consider that every time we step onto a natural surface (earth, mud, stone, sand) there are tiny microorganisms under our feet. How many survive? How often do we consider the literal weight of our step onto any earthly surface? Entering, do we consider our impact beyond our time there?

This awareness and practice lives at a cross section of my life. Equally spiritual and practical, an experience during one of my humanitarian assignments illustrates the practical importance of this. In 2005, I was part of a research team interviewing survivors of torture in Mexico. We visited one community so close to the US border we could see a Jack in the Box just across a river. When we arrived, the small town appeared to be “closed”. All the curtains were shut, and no-one was out. After we stood in the town square, a few faces peered out from behind the curtains. Finally, one door opened a little, and I introduced ourselves (they were aware we would be arriving). A few of the households agreed to speak with us. They were open to sharing their stories.

The stories’ details are too many and too explicit for this newsletter. We learned that all the men in the village were either dead or imprisoned. Those imprisoned were being tortured. We learned that this community was under surveillance by the cartel and the military. They agreed to speak with us again, because we were connected to human rights organizations who had agreed to support the communities we visited. We returned two days later, and the whole town was quiet and eerily still. Finally, a door opened and a woman waved me over.

“They were here after you left. They threatened us. We cannot talk to you. You need to leave now.”

I was followed by the cartel several times during my remaining time there. And when I left, and many times since, I contemplated the consequences of our visit for that community. Our visit there was one of many to various towns and prisons; we were guided by governments, and had support from human rights organizations. We agreed we never ever would have gone there if we had known the potential danger to this community. We left. They stayed. What happened to them after our visit?

That question is a pillar of my teaching to humanitarian workers headed out on assignment: As you prepare to enter this space, begin considering how you will leave it when you get to go home because this scenario repeats any time we deploy to a disaster or complex humanitarian emergency, and have the privilege of returning home. It’s amplified when we are evacuated from dangerous contexts and leave our host country colleagues behind. I will never forget evacuating from Haiti in 2004 when violence was erupting everywhere. I was ushered out easily; lines of Haitians waited at the airport, praying to leave*. The depth of inequity that permeates international development and humanitarian work, as I wrote last month, is an ongoing consequence of colonialism. There is so much more to say here. I will resume this thread in a future newsletter.

Many of my Indigenous teachers remind me to enter spaces in the natural world consciously. Whether going for an ocean swim, taking a nap in a forest or resting on a log, I have been taught to pause, connect with the space I am about to enter and therefore change, and ask permission because my presence there will have an impact. This is also a process of discernment, and that, along with white whales, hermit crabs and seashells will be next month’s topic

Every Sunday, I join a small group of Santa Feans to feed prairie dogs who live, as most now do, crammed in a triangular wedge of dry dusty land between highways. Once prevalent throughout New Mexico, the Gunnison and Black-tailed prairie dog is an icon of this state. Sadly, its reputation as “varmint” has led to it being displaced by growth, its burrow-based living space often bulldozed over for new development, or whole communities shot for sport. Prairie dogs are a keystone species, which means they are a living vital intersection of prey and predator. The burrows and colonies they create protect over 100 other species, they are communal beings who take care of one another even if it means death, and they often greet the sunrise or sunset as if in prayer or ritual.

Recently, one of my colleagues was distributing grains that I topped off with carrots for hydration, and we were admiring all the new burrows and wee ones, delightfully squeaking as we dropped food in. I was sharing how someone had laughed at me for doing this, and said “What a waste of time—it isn’t sustainable” to which I asked: “Name one thing that humans do that is truly sustainable?” Of course, in communities and geographies where people still live in a non-extractive, reciprocal alliance with the earth and all her creatures—rooted, 2 and 4 legged, winged, finned, crawling and slithering – there are most likely many sustainable actions regularly committed by those intentional stewards of the land. Sadly, feeding these darling and essential members of the web of life is not sustainable and I do it because they have been disrespected and cruelly subjected to loss of place and home by humans. As a human, I know I bear the responsibility of yielding equal amounts of respect with the powers I have to create and to destroy. The least I can do is contribute to their decreased suffering by offering food. As my colleague said amidst this discussion: “Prairie dogs are a big part of what makes New Mexico, New Mexico. They are this land. Their existence here is why we are New Mexico.”

New Mexico has a reputation as unique as these animals. We are often referred to as a “Third World Country”. Aside from the derogatory nature of that now passé term, we are a bit like emergent nations that follow a different flow than others. Having worked in international development and humanitarian response for over 30 years, I recognize the myopic tone of that term which really means countries that have a different way of governance or less emphasis on extraction-based, capitalist economic development. Colonization has an impact here: Inherent in that idea is the belief that development matches a certain socio-economic and socio-political standard suited to the colonizers. The loss of habitat, food, freedom and life for prairie dogs and so many species – including humans – is a direct consequence of how fast colonization changed the landscape and access to More-than-Human, Indigenous and traditional ways of being.

On June 7 of this year I saw the movie, First We Bombed New Mexico. This was an auspicious day to see it as it was the day that the S.3853 bill (Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA) sunset. The film’s courageous director and many of the individuals featured in it were present in the audience. After seeing Oppenheimer receive seven Academy Awards — despite its failure to acknowledge the land stolen from the Tewa to build Los Alamos or the extremely high rates of cancer in Brown and Indigenous communities downwind of the Trinity A-bomb test site — I am convinced that every American should watch First We Bombed New Mexico. The sunsetting of the bill means no reparations for these communities, who continue to endure the loss of loved ones and compromised health, having survived at least two waves of colonization. Meanwhile, predominantly white communities in Arizona, Utah, and Nevada received reparations for the Nevada test site exposures in the 1950s. The injustice is glaring.

Displacement is being forced off one’s ancestral or homelands or being unable to live there as fully and healthfully as one once could. Displacement is the act of separating home from habitant, which is cruel. This human practice of displacement of beings, human and More-than-Human, who are not just living there but who are the place, connected to the land and soil and sky in ways that may be invisible to some, is not sustainable The absence of economic “profit” of a particular kind does not mean that the potent and very real depth of life’s reciprocal relationship between earth and those who live with her is not valuable. The webs that connect us are not the greedy webs of capitalistic entrapment and carnage; nor are they the technological webs that make virtual communing possible. Yes, technology can connect us in powerful and meaningful ways, but this is not the web of palpable love of flesh to flesh connection. This earth-body/flesh-body reciprocity is our most valuable treasure because it is the weaver of the web that sustainably includes us all in love and respect.

 

July, 2024 ~

I am writing this a few days after joining my weekly Haitian dance class for the first time in 16 months. On March 12, 2023, while in the South Pacific, I stood up to tend to something and collapsed, my left leg unable to carry me. On March 22, 2023, after a long travel home I ended up in emergent surgery. The surgeon thought he would need to do 1 or 2 laminectomies. It ended up being a more lengthy and complicated surgery that I now affectionately refer to as the removal of my “ocean debris.”  A series of auto accidents had the cumulative effect of congesting my lumbar spine to the point of nerve compression, strangling and eventually complete damage and shut down.

Dancing in class again, I kept hearing and seeing—the way we do when we engage in deep listening to our own sensations, feelings and thoughts -that ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING is possible. The immense joy my bones were dancing illuminated my inner landscape with hope. Not given to “Pollyanna” approaches to navigating life’s big challenges, I was surprised to hear myself silently reciting this phrase over and over. I often conjure my most helpful ideas when dancing, and as I danced these words, I experienced a full body realization that my healing journey has been – and still is – one of choosing the path of possibility. During this journey, which began with a real question about if and how I might walk again, I received so many messages of impossibility: a physical therapist asking me what I loved to do and then telling me “You’ll never do that again”; a sharply exclaimed reaction from a colleague or friend insinuating that my experience was “terrible, horrible” and I was surely “SO traumatized.” I’d also been treated rudely, literally told I needed “too much space”, when I previously tried to re-join my dance class when my body was still moving slow and lacking the refined coordination required to dance “correctly”. The list is long!

On this Saturday, I was also keenly aware of all these messages and, an environment infused with beliefs and messages of impossibility, that seem to be increasing daily. The messages of hatred, toxicity, othering, polarization, are profuse here in the United States. This is occurring elsewhere, as well. The anxieties, immense worries, profound sense of loss and sadness my clients and students are bringing to our work and classes is palpable. We seem to be metaphorically, and perhaps almost literally, swimming around messages of fear.

Rachel Blodgett of Serpent & Bow is a  wonderful textile artist and one of my favorite pieces is pictured here:

As I danced, I shone my attention on how good my bones felt, scaffolding the strength and emergent movement of my muscles and connective tissue to the rhythms I have loved for so long. I heard the cadence of my breath and felt flow begin to direct my body. And I realized this is the balm, the antidote, to the messages of impossibility that at times, or for some, always surround us: Listen to your bones. That is the only map that matters, because that is the map that knows who you are, what you believe, and what you are capable of creating and contributing to in this world.

This path of possibility is medicine. Next month, I will share more about places, beings and experiences that are my portals to this medicine. For now, I dance.

June, 2024 ~

As I write this on June 7, 2024, it marks three years since my mother, Mary Jean Jakubowski Gray, died. My Father followed her soon after on August 26, 2021. The amount of time since their passing seems like a very, very long time ago, and, like it was only moments ago. Perhaps the death of both my parents so close together compounded the loss in a way that has altered the time so that it feels both recent and distant. Writing on June 7, 2024, seems particularly auspicious because it is the date of my Spiritual mentor, teacher and friend Tony Lee’s memorial in Australia, and tonight a beloved friend and sister, Nancy Herard Marshall, will be honored in a Fet Kazi Kanari, the traditional ceremony for recently departed in Vodou. My physical body cannot be in all these places at once, so I am here, in my own Ti Kay Miste (“Little Mystery House”), at my Ancestors’ altar, holding vigil and in embodied prayer. I am sitting, breathing and moving the question—how do we become ancestors? How do we grow in relationship to our most recent ancestors? I realize that this is a new relationship with each of these people, and it takes time, like any relationship, to cultivate. It’s a bigger, unique, transformative relationship that, to me, feels like an expanded reciprocity. A global reciprocity that is a multi-dimensional experience of living with this person. Their essences seem to become more than memory, and exist in, above, below and all around us.

When my parents died, I suddenly knew them in my bones and flesh in a way that I can only describe now as embodied memory. My Mom prepared me for this. One of the last things she said to me when I asked her how I could go on without her, was: Don’t worry, honey. You will grow into this new relationship with me. At first it hurts. A lot. People keep telling you to take solace in memories and you must tell them to stop—because at first it really hurts. It’s too soon. But with time, the memories soften and become part of you. It’s hard to describe. They don’t hurt as much and then suddenly they are you; I will become part of you, and then there is pleasure and love in remembering.

How do we learn how to relate to our ancestors when they first become ancestors? So much of the emphasis of someone’s dying is on the loss. And yet we gain a new relationship, an ancestral one. The loss of physical presence and actions and words is real; what about the gain of an ally, friend, beloved in the Spirit realm, or however we believe in ancestry? How do we engage with this relationship with someone in  the “ever after”?

After my parents died I began to consciously “work on” our new relationship. I built an altar that remains, shifting and moving things to honor their birthdays and death days and holidays.  I prayed to and for them through their Bardo, and practiced timely and meaningful rituals from my own traditions. And, I  listened. Listened for ways they might show up, as they began to in dreams and breezes, butterflies and feathers. Or a moment of sudden recognition of their voice, speaking a few relevant and helpful words, in and around me at the same time.

No relationship is finite; it is a process and a moving river of time, past memory and memories in creation in the present. This infinity extends to relationships with the dead. Grief and loss are often treated or described phasically, with a timeline that leads to ease and some sort of closure. This does not make sense to me. The growth of a new and unique relationship does, so as my Ancestor friends gather on “the other side”, I reflect daily on how we continue to relate. I am finishing writing this newsletter on June 18; Tony Lee’s first birthday as Ancestor, a perfect day to celebrate a dear friend.

May, 2024 ~

I have never really liked fruit. I think what I really didn’t like was grocery store manipulated fruit. This changed after a profound experience with cloudberries in Norway. I traveled there several times a year to teach, spending time in the Arctic Circle of Samiland. One of my friends and teachers there is a Shaman, who often invited me to accompany him to harvest the few plants that grow in that rugged tundra. The year we gathered cloudberries was the year I learned to love fruit. My teacher, Niillas, encouraged me to taste the berries we were collecting. My body literally “sparked” at the first bite–I was tasting the color orange, the soul of Vitamin C. It was a literal explosion of the taste of sunshine.

My family, on both sides, were farmers. My Father’s parents and grandparents became miners after their ancestors had to sell vast tracts of Pennsylvania land they started farming in the 1700s. My Mother’s parents came from a long lineage of Polish, Scotch/Irish and Canadian farmers, and my Mom grew up on a farm. I only met my Grandmother once, and one of my most striking memories of her is JARS. Jars of jams, preserves, of almost everything that can be jarred and canned. And I remember what she said to me: “Whatever you do, learn to preserve food. You never know when you will rely on it.”

As I imagine many of us might have done, I planned to learn from my Mom. I told her many times I wanted all her recipes for homemade soups, pickles and jams. I was raised in the suburbs; my childhood was spent in a home that was one of the first built on land that had for over 200 years been a farm. The farm became a village and then a suburb. I think many of my generation have farming ancestry and were brought up on smaller tracts of land, perhaps eating TV dinners and commercially canned food. The transition to “convenient living” happened quickly. My Mother refused to rely on those modern culinary “advancements”, and yet my childhood was still very different from hers due to all the ways food became more accessible in stores: we no longer needed to grow it. Only a generation away from the hard work and self sufficiency of her farm background, all links to that seem to have dissolved in my lifetime. Loss can happen so quickly.

Two years ago, an apricot tree – one of only 3 trees that survived a fire –  planted in what’s now our yard when our neighborhood was a Japanese internment camp in World War 2, had a bumper crop. It was raining apricots from all our neighborhood trees. Neighbors collected them, but many began to over-ripen, so I took boxes to the mountains and carried them up into the woods for bears. In the process of doing this, I tried one. I had never eaten a fresh apricot–only the dried version. I was doubtful. When I tasted one of the apricots from our tree, I had a response similar to my cloudberry moment. The flavor is the purest, apricot colored-sunshine-fresh taste. Our apricots explode with flavor that is all color.

After we stuffed our freezer and still had piles, I remembered my Grandmother’s words. I had never made Jam or any kind of preserves so it felt like a big deal to try it. I researched, studied, bought jars and sterilized them, and began a several hours long apricot jamming process that went well into the night. I learned we need less sugar because of our tree’s natural sweetness. I shyly shared the many jars with friends and family, and–there were demands. People asking if I had more. People trying to cajole me out of someone else’s jar. People writing to ask when the next batch might be.

We still have apricots in our freezer from that bumper crop, and I am still making jam. And giving it away. Each deeply jewel toned orange/amber jar reminds me of my Mother, my Grandmother, and the long lineage of ancestors for whom preserving food wasn’t novel; it was survival. It reminds me that what is lost can sometimes also be found, perhaps in a new way or form.

The earth is still so generous, even as the human species continues to abuse and extract and suffocate her. Our tree is pretty abundant this year, and I’ll be making more jam, and reviving my lineage, later this summer. The line starts at our door.  😊

April, 2024 ~

Outside, Spring is so bright I can taste her. Bright. Fresh. Sweet. The sky is such a bold blue that all the other colors – migrating birds’ wings, blossoms popping, fresh leaves – are emboldened to their most potent shade. Observing, I find myself pondering how often I have actually paused long enough to smell Spring. Let scent tendrils infuse the lining of my nose.

I’ve written about slowing down, and my need to slow down following surgery. I have spent the last year visibly, temporarily, disabled. Pre and post surgery I was in a wheelchair, my left leg too weak to ambulate. I graduated fairly quickly to a walker, and then “stumbly” to a cane. I finally let go of my cane in late Fall, unless traveling. This graduated experience of disability is eye and heart and mind opening to the daily reality of those living long term with visible and invisible disability. I am learning. I realize how much inconsideration and disrespect my colleagues can endure. When my leg collapsed, I was in Tahiti, which I later learned is high on the list of places for disabled folks to visit. I had a swirl of feelings when I was suddenly in a wheelchair all the time. Immobility was really new for me. In Tahiti, my husband pushed my wheelchair everywhere we went and I was treated with the most profound respect and care. The word we chose to describe both our experiences of this is DIGNITY. That changed the moment we landed at SFO. We were looking for a seat in the crowded lounge, and people literally raced to get to open seats before we did. Only 1 person offered her seat. I have spent a lot of time since then contemplating the origins of discomfort, shame, and marginalization in our disabled and neurodivergent community. It’s hard to source one’s own dignity when environmental cues express intolerance, impatience and sometimes, disgust. Initially when I read those cues I felt angry. Sometimes I said something strong. I realized that only increased the shame or frustration I felt when the person wasn’t a willing listener, which was most often the case. These experiences have me contemplating how often our community of disabled folks have to thicken their skin and soften their hearts to allow a litany of microaggressions roll off of them.

Recently I was visiting friends. A small group had just completed a five mile walk. I watched them depart earlier, wistfully remembering the feeling of a long walk or hike, seeing all the wildflower colors, smelling rain, refreshed when clouds rolled in. At some point in our conversation, one friend said in a self-celebratory way, “Well we all already walked 5 miles and I worked out before that!” We should all celebrate our accomplishments and the tone had just a hint of boastfulness to it. I felt the inner flush I know as shame. The words that formed in my brain’s mouth was “Count your blessings; what a privilege to be able to do all that.” I didn’t say it; I didn’t want to do harm. Those words stayed with me for a while. As I began to “sink” I paused and observed the just blooming Indian Paintbrush and Bluebonnets. That pause, drinking in the color and taste of Spring, was restorative. It melted my sense of aloneness. I recalled a poem a friend sent me, written by a disabled person, that emphasizes s-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n in every stanza. I wish I could find it because reading it is an embodied experience of what it feels like to be forced to slow down in a society that swirls and speeds around me. I am reminded of all the times I push myself and walk a few extra blocks and then have to move very slowly, which causes others around me to adjust. Often unwillingly. I cannot move faster, and still, people race, push, dart by me in a way that communicates: You are in the way.

There’s more to write. As I continue learning the art of slowing down, I also learn to do less. Be more. This practice of shifting attention to color and light, to intentionally seeking the scent in an inhale, to pausing to notice beauty, stillness, life, is a reset. I practice the art of appreciation. It doesn’t erase the insensitivity and microaggressions. It softens my heart so they roll off my more durable skin.

March, 2024 ~

I’ve just returned from Australia, and shortly after that, Austin, Texas, where I taught in the Embodied Neurobiology Alternate Route to Dance Therapy Program. “Sitting Alongside” is a movement observation and assessment class that centers Indigenous ways of seeing and “assessing”. Traditionally centering systems that originate in euro-centric contexts, this course weaves the brilliant work Body Mind Centering and Polyvagal -informed DMT with this Indigenous perspective.  In “Oz”, I shared Continuum in urban studios and at Dance in the Wild on the wild land in the gorgeous Dandenong range; I offered our (my clients, mentor and my) Polyvagal-informed Somatic and Dance/Movement Therapy training in steamy, earthy Darwin, and I taught Trauma and the Moving Body as part of Yoga for Humankind’s amazing 200 hour yoga training. I am struck by the longing to dive deep, to immerse in material experientially and “embodiedly”. A turning in and turning away from the online, image-promoting learning opportunities that exploded during the pandemic. Yes–online learning increases access to information and education and as such, is essential. And it got us through 3+ years of pandemic and shutdowns. It also spawned a plethora of virtual experiences, training, and self-named experts. It’s speeding us up at a time when the longing for deep dives requires slowing down.

March 22nd was the 1 year anniversary of my spinal surgery. March 12th was the day, in 2023, my left leg collapsed and I lost the ability to walk. Auspiciously, on March 11th of this year, I danced for the first time since March 12th, on the bare earth with bare feet guided by the amazing Jo Woods, dear friend and Open Floor Teacher. Australia is a healing land. It’s ancient, raw and full of wild surprise. While there, I also spent time with my friend and mentor Tony Lee, a Larrakia healer who teaches me the depth of our connection to nature, how the Digeridoo’s frequencies echo the vibrations and frequencies of earth, ocean, cosmos; how we can connect our energy to earth and Spirit energy and heal. We only need to pause long enough to sense this connection. Once, I would have dipped in to teach my class and made sure that, during the 4 days of Dance in the Wild, I could “connect” somewhere to keep up with emails and the busy-ness of my life. This time, I stayed. On The Land. I took naps. I swam in natural cold pools. I met new people and spent time sitting on grass with them. I listened to the magical bird calls. This is how I could dance again.

On March 22nd of this year, one year post surgery, I was able to move through the entire developmental sequence of Body Mind Centering, which I could not do even a month ago. I attribute the relatively fast restoration of my mobility to my willingness to slow down. REALLY s–l–o–w  d–o–w–n. For years, I have zipped around the planet teaching the art of slow movement and slowing the restorative process down for clients suffering the deep wounds of trauma. What hypocrisy! There is so much to say about this slowing down, an ongoing theme in my life. This is inspiration for another newsletter, as is the new experience of being visibly disabled in the USA. This month, as I celebrate my re-ability to walk, swim, dance, and spiral on the earth, I offer GRATITUDE  to the soft yield of Mother Earth.

February, 2024 ~

I’m back in Australia, my heart’s home. The immense and diverse land of this sea-surrounded continent is living, breathing history. I’ve met some of the deepest wisdom here, in First Nations friends and teachers, extraordinary wildlife, and magical landscapes, all existing for thousands and thousands of years. It was a dear Australian friend who introduced me to another friend who teaches freediving in Tonga. So this beloved place is part of the path to my annual retreats with whales. Last month, I began to write about whales as teachers. This month, I’ll share the profound teaching of one whale, who I briefly “met” last summer (2023) in Tonga. I am still impacted by our interaction.

The lovely group who had gathered for my annual Dancing the Wild Home Retreat were all out on a boat together. We’d had some long swims and were enjoying the company of a Momma whale and her little one. Both were curious and interactive, spiraling up around us, passing by to make eye contact, sometimes swimming quite close to say hello. I was in the water with our whale guide when the whale family decided to continue on their way, and I was a bit removed from my group members who were either on or nearer to the boat.  I began to follow our whale guide and swim along with the pair. I paused, realizing they wanted to move along without us, which we all respect. The length and proximity of interaction is always up to the whales. They choose if we interact at all.

As I floated in the water, my gaze turned to the right and the trail of bubbly froth left by the Mom and Babe. Suddenly, I felt something on my left side. It is hard to describe what I felt; it was a BIG presence. An invisible shadow. I immediately turned to look, and no less than 4 feet from my body was a massive, 40+ ton escort. The escorts are usually male (not always), and they rarely interact. They will intervene if humans don’t respect the “times up” cues of a Momma whale, and I have seen one charge someone who blatantly disregarded a Mother’s repeated attempts to disengage. I’ve floated above a few who were slowly rising towards the surface, but they always swam off before they came up to breathe. When I turned towards this magnificent giant, his eye was right next to me. He was gazing into mine. I let go – I ceased moving and let my camera submerge. All I could do was float in the awe of the moment. He slowly, slowly glided by me, very intentionally maintaining my gaze until his pectoral fins and body were beside me. He could have easily knocked me with his fin; but instead he gracefully dropped it so it was vertical alongside him, not extended in the water. He knew I was there and he definitely wanted me to see him.

Unbeknownst to me, the other members of my group were a bit panicked as I had literally appeared to be swallowed by the massive being when he surfaced beside me. It is hard to describe what I felt, but it was not fear. My body suspended in Awe. Grace. Respect. An enormous gratitude for being seen and for seeing; my heart bursting with the energy of reciprocity with one of the world’s most dignified wisdom keepers. There simply are no words for the depth of this exchange.

What was clear to me is that he did intend to communicate RESPECT. Yes, he was likely there to protect the Mom and baby, but I sense that he knew we understood that our playtime was complete. His presence emanated a reciprocity of being seen: I was in his home. His ocean. We humans have not treated the ocean, his home, as we should. We dump and pollute and drain it of its diverse species with cruel profit driven fishing and mining industries. His intentional respectful connection with me was a request for me – us – to RESPECT HIS HOME. The mom and babe’s home. The Tongan Tribe of Humpback Whales home. To assume our role as stewards of this shared earth and help him protect his oceanic community.

There is so much more to say about these times and the critical crossroads we are at in terms of planetary health. Please see the resources I recommend to learn..and do..more.

January 2024 ~

As we move into 2024, I have continued reflecting on place and how place relates to belonging. My relationship with the ocean, and with the ocean’s mighty whales, invokes a strong sense of place. I experience the relationship between humans and ocean as child and Mother, and I am curious how we can reconnect to our deep origins in the ocean.

Without her, there is no us.

About 25 or so years ago, I had a dream that my father and I were climbing in a very large bleacher stand, overlooking the ocean. I seemed to know it was the Pacific Ocean. Despite the fact that we were outside and surrounded by immense space, we were trapped. We could not leave the bleachers. We were climbing up and down, up and down, and sideways, looking for an exit. We never found one. As we climbed, I noticed that my father was getting tired, and he began to appear old to me.

Desperate to find a way to get out, I turned to look to the ocean and saw four whale tails, dancing, almost as if they were synchronized swimmers. There were two pairs and they were swimming, pirouetting, and dancing with their tails above the water. In that moment, I experienced a felt sense of safety, calm, and some sort of holy reassurance that everything was okay.

Two things became clear to me: the dream was a forewarning of my father’s death—a call to prepare. And, the whales were offering their compassion. Whales are deep divers and communicators about their, and our, relationship to place. They are emissaries of love and compassion. This dream ignited my ongoing relationship with whales as teachers, mentors, friends. I read about them, learn about them, and dream about them.

As I began to learn more about these great beings, I journeyed to the South Pacific, to the island nation of Tonga, in 2015. There I learned to free-dive in the azure waters where whales breed and birth. My encounters with these beings were dream-like. Moving underwater immediately invites us to slow down.

As I now reflect back on this first journey to visit the whales, I am beginning preparation for my annual eco-somatic whale encounter retreat in Tonga, a country whose land and inhabitants have become my teachers. The whales, too, are important teachers. Tonga is special in many ways: since 1978, when King Tāufa‘āhau Tupou IV declared a moratorium on all whaling within the kingdom’s waters, all Tongan waters have been a sanctuary for whales.

December, 2023 ~

Recently I was in New York City, close to where I spent my childhood, to teach my course Trauma and the Moving Body. Being back on familiar ground, I began to reflect on 2023, a year that was filled with an intense healing process while I recovered from a life-changing surgery. As a dancer and dance therapist, much of my life has revolved around movement. Having to learn to walk again and not knowing if I would dance again has deepened my inquiry into how I relate to movement. It has also sparked a deeper dive into my place of origin, my place of ancestry, and from this place of geographical proximity, these questions: Where am I at this moment? Where are we all?

Walking through the city and still tentative on my feet as I continue on my path to recovery, I was hyper-aware of the fast pace of people walking near me—especially those who were looking at their phones. How do we as humans in such a high speed, device-driven society relate to place now? I wonder if we can be willing to pause long enough to let this inform who we are with ourselves and our relationships with others.

In 2012, when I was in Darwin, Australia, I heard a beautiful song, sung by Gurrumul, a Yolnu Aboriginal Australian musician, about place from his First Nations perspective. I am reminded of this song periodically and even rhythmically as I move through my life. I am fascinated by how we relate to place as part of our identity.

This will be my third holiday season without my parents. As this year comes to an end and we enter a season of gathering, reflection, and family, I feel a sense of appreciation for the ways my parents tended to our family holiday rituals. As I continue to navigate this new relationship to my parents as ancestors, I offer an invitation of a practice that supports my ongoing inquiry into the connection between ancestor, time and place. Take a moment to pause, close your eyes or soften your gaze, and notice where you are. Notice all of you, inside and out, on the ground and in the place you are. Consider how this present moment is inclusive of your past and your relationships and journeys. And then listen to your whole-body response to this question: Who am I?

Join the PVI Community for this free Somatic Movement Practice led by Amber Gray, PHD, MPH, LPCC, BC-DMT, NCC. Amber is a licensed psychotherapist, innovative movement artist, board certified dance/movement therapist, master trainer and educator. She is also a member of Polyvagal Institute’s Editorial Board.

Polyvagal-informed Dance/Movement Therapy is at the heart of Dr. Gray’s Restorative Movement Psychotherapy. The core of this work is breath, sound, and movement as a direct access to regulate the nervous system following traumatic exposure.

Listen to Trauma Healing, Somatic Psychology, and Human Rights Advocacy with Amber Gray and Ali Mezey

Join Ali and Amber, and our participating listeners, as they explore the profound lessons gleaned from working with survivors from diverse cultural backgrounds. From the complexities of dissociation to the transformative power of Restorative Movement Psychotherapy, Amber shares invaluable insights and practices for healing trauma. Gain a deeper understanding of the adaptive function of dissociation and discover practical tools for promoting resilience and well-being in the face of adversity.

Embark on a journey of connection and grounding in this beautiful Earth Body Meditation led by Amber Gray. Rooted in Amber’s dual heritage of white settler colonizer and Native American ancestry, this practice merges Native American and Vodou traditions to deepen our sense of being of the earth. Explore sensory memory as you envision placing your feet on your beloved patch of earth, sensing its textures, smells, and colors. Through gentle movement and stillness, allow the earth to speak to you, guiding your body into a reciprocal dance of reciprocity and reverence. Find solace in the stories of this sacred place and the beings who have called it home, as you cultivate a profound sense of presence and rootedness.

This meditation is an excerpt from Amber’s live event and an encore to her episode Trauma and the Body with Amber Gray: Regulation, Restoration, & The Patience of Whales.