the generative liminal

i've been writing this post for months now. opening, editing, closing, leaving, letting it settle, returning. worrying in between. stalling. unsure if this is the right portal for me to share through, regretting letting the annual fee pass into my credit card statement unnoticed.

but i joined a queer choir and danced in the front row on the first day to whitney, next to my honey. and i've been swimming again. and i've been struggling too. so here i am. goals this morning, post tarot and coffee: to read and make small changes once more, and then send, let this part of me be seen.

it's me thinking about change again. and transitions. and how these liminal spaces are those of generative beauty. and how these ecotones of my heart require strength of bone, body and spirit.

alright, a breath. a release.

i've felt in between since i was 13 – always trying to find the way through, emerge complete. i'm realising at 41 how has been a version of banishing parts of myself, where i thought the work was to leave behind the parts of me that didn't fit and morph into what i thought was expected of me. but my queerness, magic, creativity, gifts, deepest connection and ritual practice all happen in the in between, and are where i feel most connected and true. i no longer want to move through, i want to cherish and be here in the liminal, where i feel at home in myself. i want to honour the struggle, and the different ways i attempt to contribute to a liberatory future for all.

when i get snarled up in the desire to effect change, on a timescale that is urgent/important/fire, on an accountability scale that moves beyond my own sphere of influence/where there is lack of relationship, i enter my burn out.

i'm trying to track the steps, but they are non linear (of course, my spiral loves).

i encounter the injustices of racialised capitalism (leanne betasamosake simpson's language i am learning to use to better name the violence of extractive capitalism), and of white supremecy culture and bias (insidious and closely woven with white fragility).

i feel responsible, in recognising my own complicity in capitalism, and my own positionality and power of cis-whiteness, to name what i witness (i'm especially thinking of dawn morrison's work here in from the ground up).

i try to focus on my own accountability, on those most impacted/harmed, and on the relationships that do exist, where the conversations about impact, rupture and repair may happen.

change is slow. i make mistakes.

i'm committed to keep practicing, wild heart, strong back, soft front (language from brené brown, here with krista tippet)

some things are released, where repair isn't possible or wanted or timely (and there is grief in that discard, cody cook-parrot)

it's hardest, this whole process, when i'm the one who has been hurtful, where my approach or actions resulted in hurt or harm, and where i lost connection, lost the opportunity to repair, was afraid and moved from that fear.

i am also slow to process. to see where i was hurt or harmed. it took me 27years to really meet the 13yr old me and begin to understand how hurt i was from that time in my life, and how deeply the behaviours i learned at that time were/are impacting me.

i think about all of the people in and connected through the downtown eastside who taught me to speak from my own authentic, resonant and intuitive self, while also directing me to get more educated and aware of the lived experience of those most directly impacted by those violences of colonial (racist, extractive, supremecist) capitalism. often i recall the names and faces of those who shared their stories with me, checked me, gifted me their presence. many still in connection. many now passed. i follow a practice learned from VANDU - to speak the names of loved ones passed into the room at openings of circle and ceremony. i don't want to type them here, but i do speak them at this moment, and feel the swelling of grief i'll always carry, the loving connection i do not want to sever. and i speak your names too, dear cherished ones present, do you feel me strumming on our spider silk transmission channels?

how to hold multiple truths, many loves, joy and woe together? to be in the liminal that is all things at once, always changing. to honour the transitions that i am in. to face the changing world - the collapse, and the horror, the grief and loss - while participating in and giving my attention to the regenerative and liberatory systems that will replace and grow beyond those we are enmeshed in now.

good thinking always happens at the moment of speechlessness - donna haraway (thank you for the introduction to donna, carla <3). i look to the pause then, in moments where i am speechless, where i am shocked by what is revealed to me, by what i see and feel, by what i come to understand.

i draw 8 cups for abundance of feeling; 6 swords that hold space for repair and new growth; the empress of swelling creativity, nurturing yet unsure of direction (jodorowsky's tarot). i seek to be connected, to unfurl.

sending this with my loving. le grá. haddon.