Coming Home to Love
When nothing softens the grief, may grief soften me.
- Andrea Gibson
Hi dear ones. I’m spending time in New Mexico after a transformative silent meditation retreat at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center, and I am feeling new. It also feels like a profound return as my body remembers spending a few months here during the early pandemic days after I had lost yet another home and was meandering through the Southwest seeking refuge. Here it is again: an opportunity to rest, to return again, to make home again in the present moment in the context of earthen soft edges, dry heat, and loud spirits who appreciate the reverence I meet them with.
After a week of silent practice in nature with a breathtakingly beautiful lush desert landscape in northern New Mexico, I’m now slowly integrating this potent experience through doing a lot of luxurious nothing. Well, not exactly nothing; I’m having multiple hot mineral springs soaking adventures, I’m resting a lot, I’m having soul stirring conversations and giving and receiving support and collaboration from beloveds who were in it with me, I’m letting the land work on me, and I’m taking it very very slowly.
A significant insight I received while on retreat helped me to begin to see my spiritual practices as all one thing and not these disparate endeavors. This experience was the integration of my relationship with the natural world with my relationship with spirits of the land and my own ancestors and guides and with my personal and ancestral grief practice and with my dharma practice of silence, meditation, and cultivation of freedom for all beings and not to mention my ritual conjure practice rooted in my Southern Hoodoo origins. This time I didn’t compartmentalize or try to quiet the voices in my head (which were often ancestors who had a lot to say now that I was quiet enough to hear) or resist my inclinations to make offerings to land and receive its gifts. Everything easefully flowed into everything else, and I feel changed. For this gift, I have the land to thank along with our guides Victoria Cary and Yong Oh who directed our attention to breadcrumbs that could lead us home to love, home to ourselves, and home to the present moment.
I’ve been told that I’m so lucky (or looked at like I’m an alien) to be able to prioritize multiple week-long silent meditation retreats in a year, but I know that I wouldn’t be able to withstand the way I show up in the world without this level of restoration regularly. If you only knew, dear reader, how much energy it takes to feel the griefs of the world across time you would wonder how I am alive and able to show up for the tedium of life. Or perhaps you do know, and that’s why you’re here in practice with me reading these words. In any case, the more things escalate, the more the war machine rages on, the more extreme weather erodes our senses of safety, the more grief there is to tend in the collective, the more dire it is for me to get quiet for extended periods of time and restore my capacity to be with it in all in transformative ways. It is not luck, it is by design and by the grace of my ancestors who continue to make ways out of tufts of tobacco smoke for me to experience exactly what I need to keep doing my work. I am endlessly grateful.
Tips for Navigating Apocalyptic Conditions
I want to be able to offer some reassurance that even though things seem to be getting worse and worse, they are ultimately headed in a better direction for all of humanity and for the earth. I want to be able to say that if we just hunker down, we can get through this together and see the other side. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that those of us living or even our descendants will make it to see the other side. Perhaps we are the doulas ushering the death of empire and we will perish in our efforts. In any case, there are ways we can show up with and for ourselves to make it all more bearable.
Take some time to be silent.
This is imperative. The world is so very loud and it can get inside of us and drown out guidance, intuition, and quiet truths. You may not be able to go on a week long silent meditation retreat, but can you prioritize silence for a few hours a day or even one silent morning each week? I guarantee you it will make a big difference in your inner landscape.
Go outside and find solace in nature.
While it may require a slowing down that you may not have access to, getting yourself outside and preferably in a forest, a lush park, or near natural water will reset your nervous system and replinish your nervous system without you having to do any work for it. You can just be there and let nature meditate you as Yong Oh teaches. If you can’t possibly make it to one of these spaces, can you pause as you walk to your car and take in the sky, the birds, the trees? Can you pause and know that nature wants to help you hold it all?
We must balance the suffering with pleasure.
This is not an invitation into hedonism or bypassing, but moreso an invitation to softening, rewarding, and celebrating yourself. Can you stick your face in a fragrant rose and breathe deeply? Can you make space to slowly and intentionally moisturize your body after that quick shower? Can you make it a bath instead? Consider pleasing the senses as respite and medicine to balance the atrocities that we must be present with.
Upcoming Offerings and Opportunities
Grieving our Beloved Dead, my ongoing community grief ritual for all is back this month, July 27, from 12-2:30pm Eastern time. We will continue the collective love-work of grieving our beloved dead, releasing the expired parts of ourselves, and honoring the chapters that have passed. Let’s make space for new beginnings.
Vulture Club has arrived! Vulture Club is an ongoing series of workshops, talks, and conversations exclusively available on Patreon that center understanding grief, learning how to grieve, sustaining loss, and offering practices to support us to navigate the gyre we find ourselves in. It is an opportunity to be together as we move through this global grief crisis, and it is a reminder that we aren't alone.
You can expect:
monthly live offerings via zoom
all offerings recorded and available exclusively on Patreon
live Q&A at the end of every offering
The first installment, a talk called In the Arms of the Ancestors, was so fun and enriching for me to get to be with you all chatting about ancestors and grief practice; it was a dream come true. You can catch the replay on Patreon and also get set up to attend the next installment, a workshop called Grief Pages where we will explore how to intersect our grief practices with our writing practices. I’m excited and hope you will consider offering ongoing support to get to share this space with me live and have access to the recordings indefinitely.
Until soon, brave grievers.
Ekua
🙏🏾🧡☀️