I have had this image on my inspiration wall for years. I’ve been staring into those kind eyes while pondering the depths of its meaning, and always feel my heart reaching for the expansive kind of love it holds possible. I know it is the love beyond labels, beyond walls, beyond borders and divisive binaries… beyond all the fighting for righteousness, resources and power. It is a feeling, when I root way down deep into my own mysterious nature, I can sense in my embodied being. It is an undeniable, primordial belonging my cells remember.
In recent years, I realize how I’ve internalized cultural disconnection. Much of own my life and identity has oriented itself around struggle, whether fighting against injustice or for my own belonging and happiness. Struggling gave my life purpose, but it also kept me drowning in cycles of being marginalized and depleted.
Once I began to shift my practice towards reorienting to what I am for and inherently a part of (rather than what I’m against and apart from), interconnection started shifting to become my new center of gravity.
As I continue to unravel from systems of fragmentation, the inquiry around wholeness emerges ever more naturally. What happens when I tend and reach for all the exiles, within me and around me, is what releases me from needing to fight or flee. Being inside a story of belonging that isn’t conditional is intrinsically connective and healing.
Until several months ago, I only understood and supported global humanitarian aid projects broadly and from afar. Now, with someone in my life who is directly a part of Doctors Without Borders, I have a new way of understanding unconditional care - and more importantly, to see it already exists in our world. Their principals are founded on the Hippocratic oath: to do no harm, to be impartial, to bear witness, to be accountable, and to give care to anyone who needs it. This does not require abandoning one’s self or beliefs. It does require practicing how both can coexist.
DWB is currently on the ground in Jamaica in the wake of Hurricane Melissa, as well as in other high-conflict disaster areas like Gaza, helping to rebuild access and infrastructure to provide emergency medical care desperately needed in those parts of the world. People from all over the globe are leaving the comfort and safety of their own lives to live by these principals. Please help support their efforts if you can.
This is what love without borders looks like in action.
It also looks like the enormous wave of grassroots organizations coming together to feed our communities in the wake of the national food disaster created by our government.
This is what we mean when we say… we take care of us.
And, Us, can not mean only some of us.
We all deserve food, medicine, shelter, care, love.
A requirement of collective belonging is wholeness — within ourselves and within our communities. There can be no fracturing, no other.
We will continue to practice, together.
From My Patreon Portal
I am always recalibrating things in my portal to be in right relationship with my current capacity and resources, and those of you joining, witnessing and supporting one another through creativity as care. I truly adore connecting with you more intimately and will never be a creator churning things out for fast consumption. Reciprocity and resonance will always be what nourishes my heart and my work. I am grateful for each of you sharing your energy in that space.
If you are in need of small circles for art-making, story telling and creativity as care, this space may be for you.
Offerings this season:
Coming soon… Story Mapping Workshop (online) with free collage kit
And It Was All Yellow - on beauty as somatic care, naming our fears + letting go
Collage cuts Community Swap (closed)
Without You - a personal story of love + loss through 3 decades of the musical, Rent
Secret Notebooks Wild Pages, free printable story lexicon
Collective Resources
these rad tee’s (above) supporting the ACLU
give to the SNAP Rapid Response fund
Project Bread food resource hotline
Important SNAP benefits update
FREE fresh produce and bread in Boston (JP) on Thursdays
get a FREE ICA Boston year-round Artist’s Pass if you are a working artist
“We Are Each Others Liberation”, is on bookshelves now
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