Now that we are going through personal and collective uncertainty, it feels like an important time to take time—if we have it—to reconnect with our selves and the foundations of our being. To shed what is unhelpful and remember what matters to us so we can recommit to our own aliveness and collective liberation. Even in times of crisis, liberation is possible.
Join me in six weeks of working through the material from my book, Circling the Star, in supportive community. Sliding scale and solidarity slots are available.
This will be an online course for psychospiritual healing and integration, and not a therapeutic group, and not billable by insurance.
In times of crisis, we’re likely to experience some regression. Young parts of us that seek out some authority to blame, some authority to hide behind, someone bigger and more powerful who can be responsible for dealing with this beautiful and at times terrifying world.
Those who step into authority, as parents, religious leaders, politicians, healers, and more may have sensed the strangeness of realizing that projection falls upon you. That you, a human being yourself, as fallible and seeking of safety as anyone else, have been targeted as the one who is supposed to know what’s going on. The right next thing to do to keep people safe. The right way to be in the world to be whole.
And, if you have that authority, you likely do have something to offer. An insight, a process, a plan that will lead everyone through the door from distress to desire. From crisis to normalcy. From illness to haleness.
Yet when we’re on the side receiving that projection, we might feel pressured to behave as though we know more than we do. To be the authority and show no doubt. And sometimes it helps, but often it becomes a barrier to the qualities that made us an authority in the first place, what we needed to practice to accrue that power and insight.
Perhaps the world needs less certainty and more courage. As a therapist, my best offering is my curiosity and a process that helps the client to heal and know themself and discover both the door and what’s on the other side of the door. I may have an idea of what I think is through the door, or I have my biases of what I think should be, but in those moments I am the least curious and the least helpful. What I offer best is the capacity to be in the not-knowing with others, but not to be crushed or overwhelmed by the not-knowing but to let it enliven us. To be excited by the not-knowing, the risk, the opportunity for transformation and the possibility that the other side of the door will be even better, although different and not free of problems.
In times like these, I feel we are all sitting in a great unknowing. There is a giant door through which we are passing, collectively, ready or not. No one knows for sure what’s on the other side. We can practice all of our tools, all of our good skills, stick to our goals, but some of us are feeling a sense of pause even in that. What if this goal I’ve been following is no longer relevant when I move through the door? What if all my work toward being recognized at my job falls to the wayside as the industry collapses? What if my grievances with my friends become buried beneath so much reality? What if all of this fear was for nothing? What if some day I wish I’d had far more fear?
Together we sit in our questions and unknowing, with all its terror and numbness and crankiness and unexpected moments of levity, peace and joy. And even with crisis and pain there is the possibility of richness, of seeing how all our lives we’ve worn a way of seeing that was never fully true. We’ve been ruled by a wounding that’s no longer relevant. We’ve been controlled by fears that simply do not matter. Even in this pain there is the opportunity to set aside all that we’ve been told to like about ourselves, want for ourselves, fear so we can protect ourselves, and discover the truth of who we are.
And if we know that truth, this door could strip away all that no longer serves that truth. We can sacrifice what was burdensome and unnecessary in the flames of aliveness. We can allow the waste and the garbage to be stripped down and pass through, fierce and sharp and ready to make a new world where the old once stood.
To pass through the door is to die. Our bodies may live and our consciousness may persist, but something in the way we’ve lived must die. Something we believed about ourselves and the world must die. Our illusions of separation. Our illusions of control. Our illusions of independence.
And each of us carries our own piece of that death. Instead of worrying about the death of the world, let us tend to our own. Let us keep our bodies alive, and grieve, and care for each other, and let ourselves be changed so that the soul has more room to breathe and adapt to what is beyond the door.
One of my topics of interest as a therapist has been reading research into the impacts of chronic loneliness on people. We are truly social animals that thrive—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually—in connection with others. When we feel safe, understood, loved and loving, valued, and have regular physical contact with other humans.
In a recent tarot reading, more prescient than I’d imagined, I drew for the Spirit of this Age the card The Hermit. It is the work thrust upon us, horrifying and rife with potential. To be asked, and in some cases ordered, to let go of the trips and events we looked forward to experiencing. To avoid our big community events, the workplaces where we regularly play out our lives among colleagues, to minimize social contact. To spend time with ourselves and the people with whom we cohabitate.
Much is being said about the demands of this moment to practice mutual aid. And with that is relearning how to be alone.
Loneliness is a social hunger, according to John Cacioppo, who researched it extensively. When we go too long without social connection, that loneliness begins to affect our system in ways that resemble trauma—more anxiety, escalated mistrust, difficulty regulating and calming ourselves, increased sensitivity to real or perceived rejection.
Social connection and touch—consensual touch, whether it is hugging, hand holding, arm around the shoulder, massage, cuddling, or sexual touch—help to soothe us, promotes calming hormones that decrease the effects of stress on the body, and helps us to release natural opioids that ease experiences of pain. Our sense of meaning emerges in part from our relationships to others—how we are useful, how we are helpful, how we are influential.
Here’s a few interesting things. Loneliness is fed by mutuality in relationship. If your primary social contacts are people you pay or people who engage with you as a role instead of a person, that meets other needs but not social hunger. Also, loneliness differs from solitude in that the latter is chosen. When we feel we are alone and it’s not our choice, that becomes very painful.
As we practice being alone to decrease the spread of illness and stem the flood of patients to an overwhelmed and underfunded medical system, we might try some things.
Remind yourself that this solitude is a choice you are making to care for yourself and your community, and that can make a different choice. Each choice you could make offers its own personal and collective risk, but allow yourself to have the choice, and to consider your options and risks, and decide.
We each have different appetites for socialization, both our levels of hunger and ease of satiety. Some of us get lonely easily and need a lot of social connection, while for others simply getting a cup of coffee is more than enough contact. Don’t judge your level of need and consider ways to diversify social contact as you can. Call friends and family. Schedule video chats or text chats. Think of someone you’d like to get to know and reach out to them. We already have a great icebreaker. “Wow, this is a weird time. How are you holding up?”
At this time, where I live, all public interaction is not banned, mostly large groups. You may make some agreements with individuals you know to meet and connect in the ways that will serve you, knowing you’re sharing risk but also that if one of you gets sick you can give the other advance warning.
But with trying to make time to connect, and all the ways we distract ourselves, we may still reach moments where we feel trapped, isolated, and empty. There are times when we may choose to engage in numbing, soothing, checking out, or freaking out, and I do not fault anyone for that. We may also use this time to practice being companion to ourselves.
Journaling is another, whether using pen and paper, a computer, or narrating your thoughts into a recorder. You might simply journal about whatever is on your mind, then listen to it later. Or you might consider telling yourself your life story, writing about the moments that stick out to you, what was interesting about them, what they meant to you, how that meaning affected your later decisions.
For those who are interested in tarot and other kinds of divination, those are great frameworks for self-reflection. You could simply ask yourself a question, draw a card or stone, and then journal about what you think this tells you about your question.
Think about how your life has been lately, prior to pandemic. What have you enjoyed about it? What do you wish was different? What fears do you have about doing things differently? What are the risks? Given that we are a time in which extraordinary things that were once said to be impossible are now occurring, consider how you might use the malleability of the moment to change your life when the crisis passes. Do you like working from home and not commuting? What if you just… kept doing it? What do you imagine that would be like?
A person sitting cross-legged on a rock amidst water looking at a sunset. Photo by Keegan Houser courtesy of Unsplash.com
What is scariest and most beautiful is the potential for deep intimacy with yourself, to be exquisitely present to your full experience and be able to be with it without trying to fix it, suppress it, push it away, agree with it, or argue with it. A part of you feels bored, and you are there with it. A part of you feels restless, and you are there with it. A part of you says the world is falling apart, and you are there with it. Breathing. Feeling the contact of your body with the ground. Feeling how you are more than this thought and feeling.
If you are a spiritual person, you might take time to pray or engage in a longer practice. Deep practice helps us to have more space with our experience, which offers a buffer to the destabilizing effects of loneliness.
And if you can’t take it anymore, go for a walk. Be outside for a while, not necessarily interacting with folks but feeling the sun and air, spending time among trees and blooming flowers. Find a quiet place to sit and simply stay for as long as you can, still, watching what happens around you when you are quiet and still. Let yourself be enraptured by nature. I find this profoundly calming.
This time appears to be calling us to practice solitude and mutual aid, both aloneness and community-mindedness. I cannot think of a call to action that would better say “this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”
Billions of us walk through the world carrying something incomprehensibly precious and tender, a heart radiating with the potential of loving sweetness, courage, strength, and inspiration. These hearts, which have never existed before and will never exist again, made of the earth, nurtured by the age and society in which we live, hold the candle of our souls.
And it is as though each of us knows that this candle within is the most precious and vulnerable part of us. Those of us who live daily with the physical, spiritual, and emotional violence of the world have learned to guard it well at the cost of letting the light shine forth. Those of us who have had gentler, safer lives tend to react as though each little jostle and confrontation threatens to blow it out, and may be too precious and fearful of seeing how resilient the candle could be.
Imagine billions of us walking through the world guarding our precious candles, eyeing each other to see if this is a person with whom we could share our light, or from whom we must shield our light. Imagine that when our hearts get jostled and we fear the harm to our candles that we bark our fears out to the person who accidentally bumped us. When we are so focused on protecting those exquisitely sensitive lights it can be hard to differentiate an intentional threat from an accident. And at times that distinction doesn’t matter—they need to back off whatever their intention.
Your light is more resilient and more profound than you can imagine. Far from being vulnerable to extinguishment, it may transform every shock and jostle into more energy, more aliveness. And still we must walk with it as though it is precious and worthy of care and attention. We must sit with the possibility that it is no one else’s responsibility to tend our light because they have their own that requires its own exquisite care.
And yet it is possible that if we each tended our own hearts, letting them grow strong, fierce, and bright, that their flames could draw to us those who would love us better, who could reflect back the beauty of our hearts.
We may be waiting for a time when it’s safe to let out the light of our hearts. A future in which there is enough freedom, enough kindness, enough resources to make it safe. We may dream of finding a bonfire burning around which gathers our true community, those with whom it is safe to finally be ourselves.
And when we walk in the world, among billions of hearts nurturing their private flames, it seems such a transformation is impossible, or so big and far in the future. We walk in towns and cities built upon decades to centuries of growth, contraction, upheaval.
Such deep change is possible, whether it is in one person’s life, a community, or a world. But it requires long term, diligent, patient effort with no guarantee of success. Such a transformation is its own tender flame that requires care and attention.
It is an illusion to imagine the work is ours alone, that only our hearts can ignite the necessary fires. Larger forces work their will. Thoughts we believed were ours alone appear in the mouths and words of strangers. In truth there are thousands of fires burning, illuminating the truth we feel, and when we reveal our own light, we feed those flames in ways we cannot imagine.
The strangest trick of it is, we need to tend our own hearts. When I tend your heart and do your work, it is for nothing. When I tend my heart and do my work, miracles unfold.
When the malice or inconsideration of others is too painful, it is right to guard your heart with firmness and kindness. When your heat feels too sore and tender, it is appropriate to withdraw and tend the hurt. Grief is necessary, but neither cynicism nor despair is practical. Rest, then return to your work.
There are times when I have the fantasy of helping to usher in some widespread social transformation, a collective goal that uplifts us all if everyone could get on board with it.
Lately, though, I’ve been noticing cities. There are so many cities that are dense with thousands to millions of people. Cities built upon decades to centuries of growth, contraction, upheaval. At best I could only know and influence a fraction of a fraction of the people in my city. Not enough to transform a world.
And in my work I’ve become deeply humbled to the reality that deep change is possible and it requires long term, diligent, patient effort with no guarantee of success.
And it is also an illusion to imagine the work is mine alone, that I am responsible for changing billions. Larger forces work their will. Thoughts I believed were mine alone appear in the mouths and words of strangers. Thousands of fires burn with the same truth, and sharing our truth feeds those flames in ways we cannot imagine.
The strangest trick of it is, I have to work with what’s mine to do. If I did your work, it would be for nothing. When I do my work, miracles unfold.
Grief is necessary, but neither cynicism nor despair is practical. Rest, and return to your work.
There are people who will use the best of you against you.
There are people who will receive all the love and strength from your healing heart and still reproach you for not having more to give.
There are people who will look to your integrity and say you are at fault for their harming you.
There are people who will flail and cry out that no one’s helping them while their erratic movements push away your outstretched hands, draw out your kind and patient direction, draw you into the water beneath them.
You are the strong ones, the competent ones, the rocks, the mothers, the fathers, the warriors, the nurturers, the caregivers. You are the ones without whom “everything would fall apart.”
And that is a truth that is also a lie that keeps you trapped. You who learned to set aside your wants and needs, to shelter your vulnerability while caring for everyone else’s, you have learned to believe the wellbeing of those around you depends on you.
You have learned, through disappointment, not to expect much of others. You have learned that your plate can only be filled after everyone else has had enough, only to find others took more than their share and there is not enough for you.
You have forged an identity around this suffering, a self-righteousness that is poor compensation. Your Self has been buried beneath the mighty weight of obligation, a burden you cannot help but carry and others seem all too willing to avoid.
If you are the only one “keeping it all from falling apart,” then “it” should not be together.
We need you to stop doing our work.
We need you to let us struggle more.
We need you to stop saving us at the expense of your joy, to stop resenting us for the burdens you are unwilling to put down.
We need you to let us grow strong enough to carry our own weight, by no longer letting it weigh you down.
We need you to learn from our neediness, to finally tend your heart and draw the circle around its home. To know that no one’s wants and needs are rational, and yet they are worthy of care. To know that your wants and needs are worthy of the care you give to us.
We need you to stop resenting us for giving more than we give back. We need you to match your giving with what you receive.
We need you to know your limits and abide them, and not yield to our incompetence, our pleading, our helpless desperation, so that finally we will learn the secret.
The secret you have always known: there is no one who knows the right thing to do. There are only those willing to accept the consequences of doing.
We are in the last days of the age of emperors and martyrs. Now comes the age of radical community, of interdependence, of one precious and irreplaceable Self in community with others, equal in worth and dignity.
In this year, some of my favorite psychospiritual nonfiction essays were published either through my blog or Gods & Radicals, as well as an essay in Witches & Pagans magazine.
A piece of writing reflecting on both the poisons and the healing gifts of masculinity. I understand many masculine folks in queer and Leftist circles found this validating and speaking to their experiences. Some readers were upset by Part 1 and had some hard words for me, while some readers who were upset by Part 1 but read through to Part 2 found they appreciated the essay more than they expected. Perhaps if I started with the “good stuff” and then moved to the “hard stuff” it would have been more palatable, and yet the purpose of the work was that alchemy, in which we must confront the Lead before gaining the Gold.
“There is room for all of us to continue growing and integrating more of our wholeness—both the strengths and the places of shame. Those who say that calling men to reflect on our capacity to cause harm gives us an unhealthy vision of humanity are those who want men to be emotionally fragile and isolated. If we have power, we are capable of causing harm. Period. If we are unable to be accountable in our relationships, then we cannot have relationships.”
The Prison and the Key: Pagan Perspectives on Suicide – Part 1 ; Part 2
This writing was a few years old by the time of its publication, but I’m grateful it found a place to be. The roots of this essay run all the way back to an assignment I had in high school to analyze a moral issue from religious perspectives that supported it and condemned it, and I chose suicide. Finding a religious perspective that supported or condoned suicide was challenging. When a beloved friend and coreligionist died by suicide, I felt called to take up the assignment again from my new spiritual home.
“When life feels like a prison, it is tempting to imagine the key that will release us, and to seek out all the possibilities for that key. We might imagine the key to be a perfect job, a perfect lover, the right medications, the right diagnosis. We might imagine the key to be something we know to be impossible, like a different childhood. In the greatest moments of despair, suicide might look like the key. I will not begrudge anyone their choices, but my belief is that the key is within the prison walls, within our hearts. We become free when we stop seeking the key and stop viewing our lives as a prison. “
This essay is both about my surprisingly existential crisis following a break-up but also in the context of collapsing empire and the threat of a collapsing ecosystem. In a way I feel like it’s part three of a trilogy of essays, which may have more to come, that began with “The Innocent Heart,” which was me attempting to kindly and rationally beg Americans not to choose Fascism; and then “The Cresting Wave,” which was me coming to grips with the reality that this historical moment would be us replaying the turn toward reactionary politics that has occurred cyclically in modern history, and figuring out how to be in the midst of that.
“In the face of the most existential of existential dilemmas—the potential that our civilization, if not our species, could be in its final decline within my lifetime—I who had at times struggled with the depressive belief in the meaninglessness of my life now found even that familiar groove lacked comfort. In the past I found comfort in reincarnation and the hope of being born into a better future. Now I’d begun revisiting the belief in transcendence and the hope of leaving this hell world to a saner place. But none of these beliefs brought true comfort or meaning. They were, fundamentally, coming from a place of resignation and escape, not courage and liberation.”
This has been a year for grieving, though for many of my people grieving has been extending back to at least 2015. Grieving what is lost and being lost seems necessary if we are to envision what is to come that will transform and outlive the current tensions of our age.
This piece is a poetic contemplation on grief.
“There is no shame in loving and no shame in losing. We journey together until we no longer can. Some seasons of growth are longer than others, but in the end this is a world of ripening, harvest, and decay. Blessed are the ones who taught us with their hands, their mouths, and their hearts how to love more deeply and more courageously. Blessed are the ones whose absence still marks our hearts.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was not a widely shared article, but it’s one I feel that is important, at least it was important for me to write in thinking through the meaning and implications of guilt. I’d forgotten that 2019 included the dissolution of two important relationships, with people I’d looked to as mentors who I then felt hurt by, and this article begins by addressing some of my learnings from that experience.
“The seed of vengeance may simply be in the longing for having one’s hurt witnessed and validated by the person who caused us harm. An instinctive knowing that this could bring healing and relief. But so rarely are those who have caused harm able to bear the feeling of their own guilt and shame. Instead they defend against it, minimize it, reject it, or compel others to hold it. Lacking that outlet for healing witnessing, vengeance becomes that venomous instinct to cause them a hurt that will match the hurt we feel, escalating rather than healing discord. “
People disappoint and hurt each other, and we’re also what we’ve got.
I was listening to a Jane Siberry song, “An Angel Stepped Down (And Slowly Looked Around).” It’s an interesting kind of song, in its way interrupting itself, looping back, nonlinear. It sounds like Truth embedded in conflict. The process by which Truth moves from revelation to articulation, messy and beautiful and confounding and never emerging quite whole. A story about flailing, seeking comfort, and receiving instead a challenge that would grow us to more than we are. A song as a myth, revealing a deep pattern that repeats and repeats.
There’s a line that keeps coming through the song, “I believe that love is the only thing that can heal us all.”
This is a belief that I’ve held and tested and found both true and wanting. I believe love brings us to our wholeness, and “love” is an inadequate word. Anything I say about it leaves out something important. Words are not enough, but they’re what I’ve got.
That love as ideal, as healing, has felt sorely tested and found wanting these past few years. What does it mean to offer healing love to those who do not want it, or don’t want it from us? Is it possible to offer healing love when there is an agenda beyond simply wanting the best for the other?
Deep, transformative healing takes time, diligence, and hope. We heal in relationship but we have to show up together striving and desiring that healing.
Having seen the scope of healing in an individual life, and the scope of the problems looming for us as a species, love feels like not enough but also all I’ve got.
In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to walk through several cities I’d never seen before. I marvel at the scope of them, the immensity of people, the depth and complexity of history. To change so many hearts seems improbable and perhaps a false goal, a goal that leads to tyrannical thinking. No wonder our most popular solutions keep looking like giving more and more power to a small number of equally flawed humans.
Not that I have better answers to the larger problems, only that we should listen to the voices that remind us of our humanity. Our capacity for love, our limitations, accepting the harm we’ve caused or benefitted from, slowing down, being with our feelings, letting the body and the heart pull us out of the whirlwind of mind and the clashing swords of ideology. To face our enemies and allies heart to heart, even when our blades must meet.
Love is not merely acceptance, though it demands that. Love is not always remaining sweet and kind under the barrage of contempt, mistrust, pushing away, or desperately pulling forward. Love is not always announcing harsh, violent truths regardless of another person’s mental and emotional state. Yet love encompasses these qualities. Love includes kindness warded with boundaries, and accountability softened by affirmation. Love is both firm edges and a soft center.
We may not be able to save our societies with this love, but it may be that in reaching for this love we find that which is worth nurturing and preserving while the garbage and rotting structures around us collapse and give way. We may find the strength to connect to our neighbors, to slow down, to be kind and direct. We may not change the entire world but we may change our own world, entirely. It does not feel like enough, but it’s what we’ve got.
Heartbreak and loss knock the best of us onto the floor. We become humbled by the absence of those who made our lives full, who lifted us up, who helped to us feel loved, desirable, and worthy.
That deep loving connection and acceptance is the greatest gift of loving relationships. To be the focus of someone’s heart, to feel like the most special person in the world, is a deep longing many of us carry. It is one that we are conditioned to expect to experience with parents or love relationships.
And it may also be a hook that keeps us tethered to a bad relationship. In abusive and controlling relationships, the giving of that kind of loving attention may inflate us with euphoria. And then, when the abusive partner withholds that love, it may feel like an existential threat. After several cycles of inflation and withholding, we lose our autonomy and ground.
The fear is, if this person is not in my life, I will never have this feeling again.
What I am learning, and remembering, is that once we have this experience of being so deeply loved and accepted—it is ours. Our body learns and remembers that feeling. We can return to it and access it and nurture its expression.
It is perhaps much like a campfire. If you are building a fire in the woods and have no matches, flint, or lighter, it’s not impossible but it takes a lot of effort. You have to work hard for that first spark, scraping wood against wood or stone against stone. It is far easier if a kind and helpful person who already has a strong fire burning brings over a coal or lighted branch for you.
Once your fire is burning, though, you can continue to feed it. You don’t need that person to keep bringing you new wood.
A person’s hands forming a heart shape around a setting sun. Photo by Mayur Gala.
Take a moment and, if you have ever had a moment of feeling deeply loved, deeply seen, deeply valued by another person, remember that moment. Remember what you were wearing, where you were, what the person smelled like. Remember what led up to the moment and remember the moment itself.
For some people, that feeling of love and admiration comes not from a lover but from somewhere else, even pets. That is totally okay for this exercise.
Sometimes these moments of deep love get tarnished by painful events that occur with or immediately after. For this practice, keep your memory at the moment of feeling that love and connection.
Notice what happens in your body as you sit with that memory. Imagine that the love and attention you received from the other person emitted from them as a color, as an energy, as a sensation that fills your body. Imagine that to be like a spark of energy that you can grow with slow, steady breathing.
Breathe into that feeling and imagine it saturating your body. If there are parts of you afraid or unwilling to take in that experience of being loved, acknowledge that. Imagine that feeling can surround and support these parts, and let those parts know they can take it in if they wish, but do not force it.
Spend a few minutes being with this. Know that this feeling may have begun as a gift given by another but it is yours now. Your sense of love, admiration, worthiness. Thank yourself for showing up, and go be in love with yourself.
Whatever causes you grief, let yourself grieve. It is healing and necessary to feel the pain of the loss, whether we understand the fullness of its dimensions or not.
Perhaps the grief seems misplaced or remote, but in truth we may be grieving a deeper change that this incident only symbolizes. We are grieving what was once possible, what we once took for granted. We need to grieve to unhook our attachments to what was. We need to grieve so that we can, when we are ready, make something new.
And if something does not cause you grief, but it does for others, that is okay too. You can be the one who listens and supports this time, who cares and witnesses while they do their work. And hopefully when it is your time to grieve, others will be available to you.
Grief is deeply painful and we can at times feel lost in it. Yet grief is also the cool well of refreshing water when we have been moving through an arid and hot land. Sinking into the grief refreshes the soul, makes us ready to create something new.
We are in dire need of grieving the old and embracing the changes that have been thrust upon us. We don’t have to like the changes that are occurring and being demanded, but fighting them is a waste of our power. Grieve, remember love, and still make time for joy.
