Hello everyone!
I am extremely exhausted by these times… but I am also increasingly seeing the need for us to both organize and be in spaces and communities together, during these times.
Teaching is something that I consider to be an act of service because I get to connect directly to you, and there’s an intimacy here that I like, which is such a juxtaposition to the lonesomeness of writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a naturally solitary person, I prefer aloneness, but in the container of teaching, I get to share myself differently. It’s also a deep honor to hear your stories, to hear you speak and articulate your deepest emotions… this moves me. It keeps me going. It reminds me of the places I seek: ones of deep vulnerability and care … with a hope that we can continue these spaces outside of just the container of the class, where we can continue to be invested in places of open-heartedness.
After researching Who Is Wellness For? for years, I had to consider what utopia could look like — and if I had to critique and deconstruct our failures as a society, then I also needed to comprehend where we could go from here. Something that stood out to me a lot while researching the book is how important gathering is, and how important vulnerability is as a tool for self-reference… but also as a tool for writing.
I believe coming together with an understanding of what we individually need to do is also about acknowledging that there is something revolutionary in a world that comes together and takes care of each other. But, even before that, we need to believe that it’s possible, that a revolutionary world is within our grasp. Being in different organizing spaces for the last few years has also helped me understand revolutionary texts and language, and I’ve also had to engage with many different personalities, and people with different understandings and awareness of what revolution is. What I feel like these spaces lacked was a sense of imagination of what could be, and what the future holds for us if we can collectively work together… More of us need to imagine how we can get there. These are questions I’ve had to face in my own writing, and own life, this constant question of: what’s next? I understand that, for some of us, revolution gets easier to invest in when you can see it… so how do we see it, together?
I think this is a product of my trauma to a certain degree as well. I think all child sexual abuse survivors have a deep reservoir of untapped power; it’s what that violence does to you. You either shatter or you break open an ancestral seal that makes you limitless. In my own life, for the last five or so years, I’ve been invested in this latter path. Working closely with the medicine grandmother ayahuasca, but also working toward being a death doula, I have gathered a lot of self-knowledge. I’ve also published five books in the last five years - so many things have died and been reborn inside of me. I feel like a completely different person than I was last year. This intensity has strengthened me. My life, and the desolation, degradation, and hardship has brought me to this point, a point where I gather all that I know to keep going, to keep dreaming and reimagining. As I heal my own heart, I learn how to go on.
If any of this sounds interesting to you and you’d like to sit with me for three hours, I’ll be teaching a class next Thursday at 1 pm PST on the 21st of March (Note: this was originally supposed to be at 5 pm, but I changed the time, I’ll be fixing the flyer too) which is also the spring equinox.
I’ll be teaching this class separately four times this year - on each solstice and equinox and will try to rotate times so I can get folks in different time zones.
This will be recorded in case you can’t make it!
For more information, you can visit here.
There’s a sliding scale option for Black, Indigenous and Palestinian folks, disabled and working-class folks, folks from and living in the Global South, as well as for CSA survivors. If you need any other financial assistance let me know!
I hope to see you there 🖤❤️🔥🖤❤️🔥🖤
signed right up <3 can't wait
Imagining potential futures of liberation and radical transformation is so important. Very humbled and excited to join!