First, Let Us Attune

Before we enter this yellow orb’s story, may you pause and enjoy a slow, regulating breath. We say in grief group: Slow the Pace, Warm the Space, and Bring it Face to Face.

Here we enter a practice of stewarding radical care on this our precious earth. As you scroll, may this prayer do the work of holding you with safety.

I type with my right hand, my left placed on my chest. Through this quantum dance of touch and language, I am thanking my body for never leaving me, and thanking your body for never leaving you. Both of our eyes are able to see this typeface and this, my friend, is a miracle. Can you believe it? I celebrate you and the many hills I am certain you have climbed, the many times you have felt defeated only to rise over, and over, and over. You are not unlike the sun - I can already feel your warmth in my imagination. You are bright shining brilliant on clear and misty days all the same.

Now, Let Us Sit at Rumi’s Table

May you settle into this poem’s embrace, the ethos of which is the driving force behind Together, the Practice.

The Guest House, By Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

And break bread with My Origin Story.

I am not afraid to hold any part of you. As a Triple Libra, I believe it is my life's mission to sew seeds of healing in support of our collective return to embodiment. I have learned that the strength of our humanity resides in our access to resources, liberation, and restorative justice, and I am rooted in a commitment to promote the radical re-imagination of our lives. Some of my favorite pathways are through song, dance, stillness, and the art of looong, winding, ecstatic conversation.

A decade ago, I stood at my heart’s door shaking, afraid, and vulnerable. I’d just experienced a barrage of initiations: my first encounter with instability, my first therapist, my first diagnoses, and my first undeniable contact with the end of the road - the void - the liminal. It was during this time that I entered intimacy with another crucial first: my first opportunity to establish safety in my body.

As I processed what it meant, for me, to be a human living with CPTSD, recovering from Anorexia, and managing Complex Grief, I took to the rich wild terrain around me and studied aliveness. I trained in Opera for a year, I lived in Northern Italy sharing traditional song and meals with Syrian and North African refugees, I stewarded the re-entry process for women being liberated from prison, I fell in love and called off my wedding, I started and ended a rock band, and like many others who have experienced a well of pain, I stepped into the field of Social Work. Here I devoted my twenties to exploring this question - what does it really mean to live this life all together? And how can we do it more beautifully? What does it take to sustain bravery, curiosity, and warmth, when society would rather extinguish those precious resources?

This question percolated in my mind as I weathered life’s topography. I felt glimpses of answers in every jaunt, but, I felt them most often fill my belly like a balloon warm with passion outside of pathology or over-identification with the stories I told about myself. I felt them most when sitting on the couch with someone I loved, locked in gentle eye contact, holding the role of a safe and attuned other.

I invite every part of you to come to the table here. All of your joy, your anticipation, your grief. I’ll be meeting you here with all of me, too. And what could be more powerful than two people meeting in wholeness, willing to suspend their judgement about themselves, one another, and the world and with unflinching compassion and courage, to explore all of who they’ve been, who they are, and who they could be?

And, At Long Last, Audre Lorde, Please See Us To The End of This Introduction

With her words I send you a beam of bright love, hoping that we meet soon - in this form or another. May you speak and be heard, reveal and be witnessed in bone-deep satisfaction, affirming this indestructible truth: you were born on time - you belong here - and this world needs your medicine.

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. 

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said,

‘Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.’

That visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”

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