Happy spring equinox, dear reader. This is a time of opening, blossoming and life re-awakening after the stillness (yet internal turmoil) of this very violent winter. With all the horrors and possibilities of this time, I am holding many questions: What does it look like to systemically change our culture(s) to move away from the military industrial complex? How can we as a collective, reconnect to our agency to feel a sense of power and courage in the face of deep, state violence? To trust that we have been here before and triumphed? How can we act will skill in the midst of mass surveillance and criminalisation? What does it look like for us to dream Earth-based futures and to invest in the practices that support that becoming a reality? A future where abundant gardens or food forests thrive and our essential needs for clean water, air, nutrient dense food, shelter and connection are met.
Since the ethnic cleansing in Gaza began, I have been feeling a lot of grief for the Palestinian people, for this horrific violence being enacted and once again, profit and Western interests being prioritised over the lives of people. Connected to this, I feel some grief about my role within the social change ecosystem changing. There were many years of my life where I identified as an activist and that took me into roles that were more frontline, urgent and action oriented. This fed me for a long time and has shaped who I am today. I have no regrets about this chapter of my life. However, I'm clear that is not where I am now. Operating that way is no longer possible for my body or emotional health. My shape (or way of moving through the world) profoundly changed through my own journey with grief and trauma recovery since 2017. I am still getting to know this current version of myself. I will speak more to this in future editions of this newsletter. There is grief in knowing that my old shape is gone and I don’t currently know what my role or new shape is—I feel in transition and that comes with some discomfort. In a moment of feeling very helpless about this, something appeared to me in a book I am reading called Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. I opened the page and there was a clear message for me (some call this bibliomancy) about fermentation and social change — a simultaneous practice and portal to explore.
“Social change is another form of fermentation. Ideas ferment as they spread and mutate and inspire movements for change. The Oxford English dictionary offers as the second definition of ferment: ‘The state of being excited by emotion or passion, agitation, excitement…a state of agitation tending to bring about a purer, more wholesome, or more stable condition of things.’…Fermenting liquids bubble just like boiling liquids. Excited people can channel the same intensity, and use it to create change.
Though fermentation is a phenomenon of transformation, the change it renders tends to be gentle, slow and steady. Contrast fermentation with another natural phenomenon: fire… In the realm of social change, fire is the revolutionary moment of upheaval; desperately sought, or dreaded or guarded against, depending on your perspective. Fire spreads, destroying whatever lies in its path, and its path is unpredictable. Fermentation is not so dramatic. It bubbles rather than burns, and its transformative mode is gentle and slow. Steady, too. Fermentation is a force that cannot be stopped. It recycles life, renews hope, and goes on and on.”
— Sandor Ellix Katz, Wild Fermentation (pg.279 - 280)
This was exactly what I needed to read. I understand that whatever my role is / will be, I am in a season of fermenting culture change. Moving at that pace. I sense that my work on grief is part of that. In the past I was driven by an approach more akin to fire—a desire to quickly change ideas and ways of being. In some respects, my work with Collective Liberation Project was fuelled with this energy. Yes, we still had a body based approach but there was a pace and desire for rapid language change and conceptual understanding. It makes sense that this led me to burn out (more on this in future editions). Going through my own various grief portals since 2017, including losing my home to a house fire in 2020, meant that I had to slow down in order to recover. I had to find a different pace in order to re-pattern the shock and stress in my nervous system. I had to find a different pace to do the resilience toolkit certification and weave that into my daily life. My pace and my rhythm has changed. Fire is not bad. It’s a necessary energy but it’s not where I am now. I am curious about how the (much needed and responsive) fire of this time can be paired with approaches more akin to fermentation? What would that look like? Bubbly, gradual, deep and systemic culture change weaving with the responsive, urgent and determined energy of fire…
On a practical level, I'm experimenting with fermentation in the making of homemade pickles and other goodies. Learning how to grow and preserve food, feel like essential survival skills for me so I’m committing time to finally learn more this year. As a lover of Kimchi and Sauerkraut, making them myself is a fun and cost effective way to eat a lot of probiotic rich foods as a way to support my gut health after decades of challenges with digestion. I'm on the fermentation journey and thinking a lot about culture change as a practice on the micro and macro level. Eating fermented food and feeding the ecosystem inside of me (the gut microbiome which produces the majority of serotonin in all our bodies) is another way that I am practising moving beyond notions of the individual. Moving away from the lone wolf archetype towards an ecosystem model internally and externally. We are all ecosystems rather than individual units. When we eat, who are we feeding?
So, yeah. That is some of what is coming up for me this spring. I am curious if you are noticing any similar transitions within yourself or your networks of loved ones?
As we move towards the end of this newsletter, I invite you to consider what gifts you have to share? Things that come naturally to you, that bring you joy or that feel like a calling… I invite you to think about how your gifts could be used in service of deep culture change (akin to fermentation)? In your wild imaginings are there ways your gifts can seed or contribute towards the creation of beautiful futures, beyond the military industrial complex, beyond domination & extraction, beyond nihilism, ecocide and Western universalism? Perhaps this gift could be expressed best within a collective or co-operative or some sort? If you want to learn more about these models, check out the free solidarity economy course link below in the media section. Whether we move with fire, or fermentation as an energy, I feel it is the time to show up with our gifts so we can bring those forward, with some consistency, that is more generative than depleting. Or if, we have a gift that is depleting, how can we ensure we regularly resource ourselves so we can sustain the sharing? As an example on my end, I am clear that grief tending is part of what I can offer in this time yet I know that too much holding of grief can be depleting for me. I find dance is a generative gift in my life so I am moving towards approaches that will allow me to combine dance with grief tending.
I sense it will take some time to move through this moment so have to regularly resource ourselves in this deep revealing and unravelling we are living within.
My media of the moment / Links for further exploration:
The European Legal Support Center (for folks criminalised for showing solidarity with Palestine who need legal support).
Free course on the solidarity economy lovingly provided by Art.coop
A global movement to end all wars. I’m interested in this group and exploring them at the moment.
I am excited to watch Origin by Ava DuVernay tomorrow night <3
In November 2023 I was on Punk Therapy to speak about grief— a podcast about psychedelic therapy. You can check it out here.
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Thank you for reading, sending blessings your way <3