Golden Threads

I CREATED AND SHARED THIS POST ON APRIL 3, 2023, THE DAY BEFORE MY HUSBAND DIED SUDDENLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY. This is not what we had planned or expected. My husband, Edmond, was the healthiest man I knew. He was my partner in parenting and adventures. He was a beautiful father to our five children. He was an open hearted friend to many. He was a brilliant compassionate attorney who advocated for those who were vulnerable. He had planned on picking up our two youngest children from school on Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

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What I have learned from grief is to

Allow the waves of grief to wash over me 

to work on me

After the waves crash

The receding water makes evident what is left of this life 

And what is gone

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As we prepare for a holiday season, and the flu and cold season, tending our immune system and emotional system seem like appropriate self-care. Many of us will attend large and small family gatherings that invoke both sweet and difficult emotions and put us in contact with potential viruses.

A friend and therapist recommended the podcast, Mindfulness Exercises Episode #024 Emotional Wellbeing with Dr. Gabor Maté. It is short and to the point on so many topics related to our wellbeing. Dr. Gabor Maté speaks to healthy anger and the boundaries that protect us, choosing guilt over resentment, and the misnomer of compassion or empathy fatigue.

Dr. Maté reminds us that our need and desire for connection is above all else. We will sacrifice almost everything for relationship, particularly in childhood. We require connection to survive.

We are also judgmental by nature. Dr. Maté encourages us to not suppress judgment, because it is an automatic response. Instead, he asks that we notice our judgments of others and self and remain curious about them in order to discover what it is we are rejecting within ourselves.

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Voices of Our Hearts: Fierce Love of Community and On River Time are Hosted by Duanne Redus. This is a live recording of a conversation that originally took place on Wimberley Valley Radio on April 27,m 2021. The conversation has been preserved and shared here as an audio blog.

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Mind splash is what I call that flood of ideas that are beyond a flash. A mind splash is a thought or idea with enough gravity to create sustained ripples. It is an idea that is expansive in many directions. I hope this blog space creates connections and conversations that lead to ripples in the world beyond this page. However, this particular series is different because it is mind splashing; ideas are less formed, in their early stages like a random rock thrown in a body of water just to see what happens.

I expect my understanding to change a lot with feedback over time, and I welcome feedback on any or all of this writing, either in the comments section, in person, via email, even beyond direct contact with me—in communications that I may never know happen. I encourage and hope for whatever agreement, disagreement, or expanding occurs. The following is a piece that is helping me begin to put more words to a topic of great interest and is my thesis for my graduate program.

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We are failing.

As a species, we are failing. We believe that if we associate with the right group of humans, we will win and the others, who are wrong, will lose. We believe our voice is louder, and that equates to power. We do not have to follow the rules because we have won and have the power is a belief that will destroy us all.

When the power shifts, and it will, it always does, they will not follow the rules either. ‘Tit for tat’ is the main rule, and we keep upping the volume on that so now we all can suffer more as we inflict the worst of it on each other.

Perhaps we will just keep increasing the drama, violence, lies, and righteousness until we burst into flames.

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For just a few hours

(Or years, or decades, or millennia)

I am Alone

a rarity, at all, certainly since March 2020.

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Beginning happens

long before we know it has begun

Before we have let go

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Desperate

Because we cannot go on like this much longer.

We each must find the

Courage to transcend this madness.

How are we going to make the leap across the divide between us?

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Brief Note: In light of what is going on in our world today, particularly referencing the unrest in the United States, I acknowledge the devastation of COVID-19 and all it is exposing in terms of the other viruses of hate, inequality, and exclusion. This article continues the series that focuses on our relationship with Nature. However, certainly what Omer offers in terms of creative transgression applies to our relationships with each other too and to this time of great change even in our massive divisions.

Creative Transgression in the Chaos of Our World

Omer encourages acts of creative transgression as a means to wake the culturally comatose. Ritual action is a powerful tool; for “when we ritualize, we imaginatively deepen our participation in the necessities, meanings, and possibilities inherent in the present moment” (p. 33).

Ritual moves underneath the status quo, bringing the unexpected and spontaneous to breathe life into our shame, failure, and trauma.

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The ziziphus thorn from the tree of life for the Nguni people of southern Africa appears on the cover of McCallum’s book (2008), Ecological Intelligence. McCallum describes the Nguni legend of this unique branch from the tree where one thorn points forward and the other “curves back and inward in the opposite direction. …tell[ing] us something about ourselves—that we must look ahead, to the future… but we must never forget where we have come from (2008, p. 13).

In her book, The Way of the Ancestors, Joan Halifax complements McCallum’s sentiment for modern society when she says “[w]e think that the ancestors are behind us, but they are actually those who go before us. They are a vanguard, a spirit wave that pulls us along. …the darkness of the past for the light that is hidden by time” (1993, p. 190).

Our very existence is intimately tied to that of our ancestors.

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Stepping Into Grief

The fragmentation of our culture cannot be overestimated in terms of its impact on Nature. We can no longer deny the ways we have harmed indigenous people and the landscape. Modern culture, particularly American culture, has displaced native peoples, isolating them on “reservations” so we can take from the land without reciprocating.

In his book, The Beauty in the Primitive, Znamenski speaks to this trauma of indigenous people when they are disconnected from their native lands. Znamenski notes that "after natives were removed from their familiar environment or after the separation of families” (2007, p. 91) the indigenous people experienced traumatic emotional and physical symptoms that sometimes could not be alleviated.

Anyone of us who experiences this loss of the familiar suffers grief and anguish.

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What is there to do about this unimaginably massive problem of our desecrated earth? How do we respond to Mother Earth’s open hand after all that we have done? Where do we begin this overwhelming task of detangling all the trouble and turmoil we are part of?

In any broken relationship, reparation and reconciliation require that we dive deep within ourselves to examine our intentions, actions, and willingness to change. If we intend to repair and refashion our relationship with the natural world, with our Merciful Mother who holds us unconditionally, despite our horrific behavior, we must first acknowledge the trouble we have made and our worthiness to step into our place in nature.

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