this thursday

ah this thursday is american thanksgiving and really there is no shortage of ways that this day can be hard and challenging, ohmygod so many ways and so many reasons

[whispered aside! if you love american thanksgiving and are looking forward to thursday, then I am very happy for you and wish you great joy, pleasure and delicious pie, you probably do not need either this post or the secret hideaway that I am setting up for us, but of course you are welcome and invited too, there is space for you too, and now back to naming the hard things! same goes for friends in canada, mexico, europe, japan, new zealand, australia and wherever else you might be reading, hi!]

the hard things let us name them

hard things not limited to but including,
ohmygod the list might be too long, we need two lists, if not more
let’s start with mine,
on the personal level

on the personal, for me

(1) okay so for me this day is so lonely and painful, I never want to spend it alone
(2) but I also can’t join people in their holiday celebrations, gatherings of people do not work for me, extremely high sensory processing sensitivity means it’s too much energy to navigate, even the best group of people is overwhelming and exhausting and will take all my spoons and I will get a migraine
(3) haha seriously though sharing a meal with more than two people (maybe three if I really really like them all) is the worst, why do people like doing this, it is a mystery to me, why is the whole damn culture set up to privilege extroverts and brains that don’t get overwhelmed by sensation, I feel frustration about this
(4) many painful memories and grief around this time of year means I might spend a lot of the day in tears, and when I say “might”, I mean 98% chance of loud public crying, which is awkward enough alone and really not something I want to bring to someone else’s festivities
(5) last year I had the perfect thanksgiving: sweetness + solitude + magnificence + love, out with the beautiful boy in the stunning mojave desert, delicious leftovers from the mexican place in town, walking in the desert at sunset, holding hands and laughing, snuggling on the couch, in love with love and life, and now he is with someone else, and I am in a dark cold loud city, and I want to experience that thanksgiving again, that form of love-and-closeness, but it does not exist anymore

on the political, for me

the history of this holiday is so painful and awful, the erasure of native people and their history/experience/trauma is already day-to-day reality, but on this holiday it is amplified, how do we even begin to acknowledge, make amends, be present with a day of [public expressions of gratitude] that overlaps with terrible injustice

I also think a lot about the alone-and-lonely, the people who miss family or never had or crave it or those who do not want it at all and don’t wish to be around it, this is yet another holiday that celebrates and centers those-who-have and the experience-of-having, and neglects all the people in a state of lack, loss, pain

I don’t know how this can change, how do we change culture, this is painful too, this is something I want to write about more here, because self-fluency is not only rewriting our own habits and patterns but glowing change into the world around us

back to the personal, for you, maybe

when I think about other people I know here, the hard parts of this day are different but equally hard:

from obligations and expectations real-and-perceived, personal and cultural to family stress and travel stress and wanting everything to be not-terrible, and then setting boundaries, and the frustration of having to set them, worries about unwanted questions — and how to answer them, or how not-to-answer them…

for those of on the highly-sensitive/witchy spectrum or whatever you like to call that spectrum, we pick up on all the ambient anxiety anyway but it really picks up intensity this week, and we have to clear that out of our headspace!

some of us are bracing for encounters with people who hold opinions that are genuinely dangerous and awful, I am so sorry if you are in this position

and while gratitude is genuinely a luscious glowing beautiful spiritual quality that transforms hearts and so much more, it also gets distorted so fast through culture into shoulds/expectation/bullshit, into forced and contrived, the unsovereign energy of that is exhausting too

in short, it is a lot, this day, even for people who mostly look forward to it

elephants

everyone this week is justifiably upset about elephants (I mean, we are upset about everything), but these are actually not the elephants I wanted to write about today

I have written about twenty minutes on elephants and also symbolic elephants (gender) and writing notes to an elephant, but today a new kind of elephant

in the air

lately have been playing with the proxy mission of I Am An Aerialist And Everything Is Solved In The Air, which comes with the superpowers of Turn It Around, Turn It Upside Down, and Rest Into Silk

my favorite thing about the aerial silks I got to test in vegas is how they are rigged to hold so much more than me, a built-in state of extreme over-preparedness, the superpower of not only All The Safety but also So Much More Safety Than Could Ever Possibly Be Needed

no matter how scary it is to go upside down and trust the silk (and for the record aerial yoga is not even three feet above the floor, it’s supposed to be therapeutic and calming but I have to talk myself into it), I can remember that this apparatus is set up to hold exponentially more stress than I could possibly give it

oh right this thing is RIGGED FOR CIRCUS IT CAN HOLD TWO THOUSAND POUNDS STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD A BABY ELEPHANT, so when I give it all of me, I cannot tear it or even stress it, no matter how awkward and graceless I feel, none of that matters, this contraption is set up to handle more damage than I could ever do, the very definition of abundance and plenty, safety and protection

can we use this to solve thanksgiving

what is a container with [COULD HOLD AN ELEPHANT] levels of Safety, Protection, Purpose, Intent, Magic, Candles

not that we want to hold elephants obviously, I just mean the intention of that much power, that much held

what do we know about Rigging — the good kind, in the form of boundaries, containers, structures?

what are the foundational elements (and elephants) of safe transformative space, how do we create a hide-out blanket fort space to shelter us from the hard parts of thanksgiving, while making space to rest into the good parts of finding a thank-you heart

TIME
SPACE
INTENTION
QUALITIES (and superpowers)
BREATH
BODY
MYSTERY (solve for x, exploration)
TREASURE (SELF TREASURING)

mmm it is a compass of eight points

what does this remind me of

does anyone here remember hermitsgiving?

hermitsgiving was this amazing thing we used to do when I had the retreat center, a five day quiet retreat that took place over american thanksgiving, with a giant delicious picnic feast on the floor — yes it turns out I do enjoy communal meals when there is a shared sovereign culture of no-advice no-caretaking, and no obligation to talk or interact, and quiet music and warm loving people, hermitsgiving was the best and I miss it

invitation

you may share this with anyone who might need it

you can seed superpowers and wishes for the week (and for thursday especially if you like)

you can share !!!!!! about what is here or joy-and-hope, or anything sparked for you while reading

here’s how we meet each other here: with great kindness and appreciation and love

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