The First Harvest

I’m slowly emerging out of a multi-day grief bender. I could kind of feel coming and sense it in my periphery but nevertheless it knocked me down hard.

Grief often feels nebulous to me, and I’m not always sure where it’s coming from. There is rarely just one thing to grieve at a time. I find that opening up the cache of personal heartbreaks tends to break open the dam for ALL of the sorrows to flow through, finally getting the chance to be mourned and reckoned with. The inevitable feral wail that always joins the party is for The World. An atmospheric grief, a roaring grief,

I notice that after coming through an intense grieving cycle I gradually start to feel in love with life again, a feeling of possibility, and life force energy slowly draining back into my body. It’s strange, because being in the grief, being pulled out by its riptide, or held down in its spin cycle, I lose touch with the ground. I forget that I have feet. And I can’t imagine how I’ll feel better again. Then slowly and sometimes suddenly I am swept back to shore. I can lay on the hot sand and feel the texture of my skin again, and let myself melt.

I think there’s a general consensus that this is an intense time on Earth. If you are reading this and feeling discouraged and exhausted and heavy, I am reaching out to you and encouraging you to keep making even the tiniest, slowest movements towards love, whatever that means to you. Even if it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere, and the path is endless, maybe these small movements can be reminders that no feeling is forever…and moving towards love is always worth it.

I’ve been talking with my friend Sam about this time of year — the full heat of ripened summer. This past Friday, August 7, marked the cross-quarter day (halfway point) between the summer solstice and the fall equinox, celebrated in Celtic Europe as Lughnasadh, a time of honoring the first harvest. Taking stock of the seeds, projects, efforts that we’ve been tending throughout the year that have come to bear fruit, and also noting which ones have wilted, struggled, and died, even despite our best efforts. Pausing to celebrate our accomplishments, and making some peace with all that we haven’t been able to do, before making the final push of summer.

I’ve been considering what’s present for me in this time, and what is ripe for me to harvest. And although there’s been so much I’ve been learning and enjoying and experiencing this year, the fruits that immediately fell into my hand were deep sorrow, exhaustion, and anxiety. They had been waiting for me to take a bite and digest them, and so here I am.

What follows is, as per usual an evolving train of thought … take from it what you will as I attempt to let it just be what it is.

~

The first harvest this year is grief
Laying thick in the air like smog
Like smoke
Seeing it in the distance, seeing it change the color of the sun
And the moon
And knowing it’s in me too
Moving through my blood
As I catch myself holding my breath

Everyone’s been talking about the heat
How tired we are
How irritable

We note that things are different than they were before
things feel like they are falling apart

The tornadoes
The floods
The fires
The loss of crops
the feeling like something isn’t quite right
or that maybe it’s all an illusion, just in my head

And then sometimes we ask,
What does it mean?

Is this how our summers will be now?
What happens if we have another winter like last year?
What will happen to the bears if they can’t find enough to eat?

What do we do
But really, how do we do it together?
this was never a problem for an individual , a hero to solve
No one is coming to fix it
only a gathering up from within
A reaching out

~

I’ve been thinking and talking with friends this week about how it often feels taboo to bring up the existential dread of this thing we call climate change/catastrophe/crisis.

It is an instant mood killer,
Like dropping a turd into the kiddie pool.
It’s awkward and unwieldy
Like trying to carry a mattress or large piece of furniture by yourself.

And then I wonder if we could collectively shift the conversation into how we can be part of the climate changing, in the sense that we can empower ourselves to change with it. (Not that this isn’t already in progress, just saying…) I wonder what would happen if we could collectively embrace that change and adaptation is natural, normal, and healthy. That we can allow it to teach us something. And show us that living in dynamic reciprocal relationship with diverse ecosystems is really good for us! And could lead to way happier, more meaningful lives! And that the challenges we are faced with can be opportunities to bring many of us out of isolation and into friendship, solidarity, mutual aid, and remind us of the humor, strength, and joy of being connected to one another, even if it’s sometimes annoying :).

Of course these crises are daunting and our political leadership is generally incompetent at best and horrifying at worst. And also, no one is coming to save us, especially not those of us that are committed to finding some superficial, egoic benefit from hoarding greed and attention.

Or as Ursula K Le Guin’s says in the “The Dispossessed”:

It’s been a while since I really let myself imagine what a healthier world would be like, feel like, taste like. Since 2020 Quarantine I’ve been more in a place of practicing having grace and acceptance for how complicated and hard things feel, which has been healing in its own way. Now I’m noticing that it feels vulnerable and even “cringe” to hope and dream, because what if I’m disappointed and made to be a fool? But what am I doing if I don’t have something to move toward? I know I get a lot more done if I have a tangible goal, than if I waffle around in indecision and doubt. There are so many excuses I make for myself in order to continue to suffer, and I suspect there’s some level of this pattern happening collectively as well. I am working on integrating the belief that things in my daily life, and on the larger spectrum, can be more beautiful, relaxed, joyful, and nourishing than I expect or could even imagine them to be.

And so I would suggest that rather than focus on

• Indigenous groups (who make up 5% of global population and are protecting 80% of the world’s biodiversity) having the structural leadership to guide our collective land & resource use (aka Land Back)

• Meaningful wealth distribution and heavy tax & regulation on corporate monoliths — learn about the graduated income tax ballot initiative in Colorado this year

• The outlawing/abolition of private prisons and detention centers

• A moratorium on manufacturing new “stuff”, or at the very least, anything “single use”. What if we could pause and just re-use and re-purpose what already exists which is A LOT….?!!! (See: Human-Made Materials Now Weigh More Than All Life on Earth Combined)

• Urban planning that prioritizes walking and biking and de-centers cars (See: Paris cut air pollution by 55%)

• Centering the health and well-being of children and elders

• Joining more groups / clubs / coalitions

• Letting the grandmothers be our council, the leaders we turn to

• Cultivating a culture of deep listening to the plants, water, mountains, bugs

• Looking at the sky more than we look at screens

• Cultivating a culture of regular community grief spaces so that this stuff doesn’t build up so much and result in mental health issues and sideways violence

• Respecting each other’s bodies the way we want the Earth to be respected.

• Treating our own bodies the way we want the Earth to be treated.
  How would that shift alone reorient our daily choices, priorities, and movements through life?

• It’s a working list… what would you add?

In the spirit of Lughnasadh, the first harvest, may we celebrate what we’ve been able to grow and tend to this year so far. And may the dreams that did not come to fruit this year, or in the way that was expected, be welcomed by the scavengers and decomposers and be transformed into fertile soil for the next season.

May the tears of this heartbreak quench the ground of its thirst
And bring us closer to the underground rivers of our soul

That we may sing, tend and celebrate the fire of life-force in the heart of the world.

~

Thank you as always for reading.

- Rachel

P.s. Please take my use of “we” throughout this letter with a grain of salt. I don’t mean to speak for anyone else, I’m more dreaming of what is possible collectively. And of course, as always I’m only perceiving my own small slice of reality, from within the context of the culture that I’m part of — curious how others are seeing things.

************ P.p.s. Don’t forget to send me your fabric scraps if you want to be