Dear—

Love Letter

Jan 28

This is a love letter. Maybe also a grief letter. Maybe, though, same-coin.

This letter is addressed to you if you want it to be, and it's not if you don't. I think with grief, we sometimes just need a witness. I write this letter in case you do, too. It's been a really hard week. Mostly, I've been coping. My heart's been about the breaking lately. Once this week, it happened that my heart broke all the way down. But then ten minutes later, I thought up a riddle: Fuck, fuck, fuck, how far down does down go if that down wasn't all the way down?

What kind of heartbreak do you got?

I've also been writing a lot of letters lately. The two aren't not related. The thing I like about letters is that they exist in the space of relation, and not in the ethereal sense that can be said of most writing. I mean in the embodied sense. Letters get put into hands and then become an access point between two hearts and then get put down on tables so the hands can be free to write back. A letter gets moved through the body like that.

The other thing I like about letters is that each one is a burrow-hole for both the I and the you. I have a habit of starting my letters with, This is a love letter. I don't mean that the letter is a package of love being sent from me to you. What I mean is that the letter is a chamber, made of the sweet and sticky stuff we call love, for both of us to crawl into. If I write to you, I'm asking you to nest with me, even just for a minute, even just for the length of a letter. I promise you that if you write back, I'll nest in your letter with you, too.

What is it that you feel that you're always managing? I feel that I'm always managing my loneliness.

I write letters so we can have a together-rest. Sometimes it feels like a desperate attempt to transform my loneliness into a beacon: Look here, you can rest your heart with me. Can I rest mine with you? If I write you a letter, it is a lighthouse: We can each be shores.

What is it that you're learning about right now? Got any wounds that you're healing? I'm learning about winter. There's a required patience to it, the gentle acceptance of limitations as grounds for coming back to the body with care. I'm learning about care, and by that I mean I'm also unlearning some lies about it.

I am studying care through a combination of research and data collection amongst my body and other bodies I know. Here is what I'm learning. I've seen more loneliness in my lifetime than my heart has the heart to stomach. I know we tend to see our deepest wounds and our deepest longings everywhere. I see loneliness everywhere. It is a yearning to belong. Left out too long in the cold with no protection, loneliness becomes isolation. It is true that there are some places in the self that only I can go, but it is a lie that self-to-self care is the singular nature of relational existence. It's a lie that my body internalized, even if there were other aspects of self that would hold it as suspect (thanks, soul). I used to think this feeling of isolation originated in me from my family. It's true that there were a lot of violences, but I think my people did the best they could isolated in their own silos. At this place in my healing process, forgiveness is a balm. But it's still one I have to apply daily.

The narrative that individuals exist in isolation can also be called the illusion of separation, and, lo and behold, it did not originate in the isolated manner of my own family and lived experiences. In fact, I see it everywhere, clawing its reach through time and space.

I see it in my ancestry and the choices that were made in the name of assimilation. I see it in schools and in organizations and in politics. I see it handed out from people with power to people without it. I see it in the histories. I see the open wound in bodies and in relationships. This narrative of isolation was not created by happenstance. It was a lie that was manufactured and then distributed globally, and I think it is important to be as precise as I currently can be about who manufactured it. This is where research becomes grounding. The lie that individuals exist in isolation was manufactured by white, european, capitalist men in 17th century europe to strip power from the newly-emerging working class. The lie was manufactured on purpose because the new capitalists needed to tear the masses of people from their previously rooted relations with each other and with the land in order to fuel the limitless, exponential growth of capital. This social and economic system, which is known as capitalism and which operates under the pretense that the growth of capital has the god-given right to be limitless no matter the cost (manifest destiny), became the driving force of european settler colonialism, chattel slavery in what we call the united states, and the global colonization of western culture.1 That means that this manufactured lie, that we are and can sustainably be separated from collective and land-based relation, is not only a pretense of western culture, it is a root of it.

My studies are leading me to have a clearer, more concrete sense of what the terms capitalism and western actually mean and the mechanisms behind them. In the past, I've mistakenly believed that capitalism is existential, but there was a beginning to it in space and time, 17th century europe, which means that the majority of human existence operated without it and that existence can exist without it again.

Capitalism tells us that we exist in isolation. It's a lie laced into the air we breathe in this country, but it is not one that every person on this land has unconsciously inhaled or inhaled by choice. Since the beginning of the european onslaught of capitalism to their native lands, Indigenous peoples and Black peoples, specifically Black women, have had their pots and pans raised, shouting for white people to wake the fuck up, this building is fucking burning, and then raising whatever weapons of protection they had because pots and pans have never been enough.

Here's my current, working summary. The illusion of separation is the root of the disease. Embodied community care is the medicine. Mass reorientation to collective care, with reparations held central, is the cure.

Emotions are not separate from the experience of learning; they are woven into the fabric of healing. I often feel rage and shame and unworthiness and grief, and it seems I am ever-learning to relate with these emotions. I'm sorry that I didn't know what I know now, and I'm sorry for all the ways I've been and acted in that unknowing. I know now, and I'm doing things different.

What emotions are in your waters? Just in case you need it: you don't always have to care for them alone.

Care. Follow the root. The word care is derived from the old english word carian, 'to feel concern, to grieve.'

In Brené Brown's new book, Atlas of the Heart, she quotes grief expert David Kessler: 'Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint.' What is the nature of yours? How do you relate with it by yourself or in community? What are your rituals?

I've heard before, in theory, that grief needs to have a central role in the self and in community spaces, but my embodied learning of it is running much deeper than a theory could ever go. Every time I reorient towards care for myself or someone else, a sweeping wave of grief swells and mounts, roaring into every tributary embedded in the grounds of my body and psyche. In the very act of that reorientation, I must acknowledge the pain and losses that people should have never had to experience. Sometimes that includes myself, and the grief is personal. Sometimes it does not, and the grief is outside of me; I sit in deep concern. What changes is whose grief is held in the nucleus.

Sometimes my grief is boulders; sometimes it is mountains; sometimes my grief is stones. Reorienting to being in right relationship means grieving how much time I spent severed from it, severed from the pleasure of belonging.

Let's talk about pleasure. I wanna talk about pleasure. It's a mounting wave, too. How do you conjure it? What is your pleasure like? How do you relate with it? What are your rituals?

I dance a lot. I write poetry and then reread it. I revel in touch. I walk with bare feet on the ground. I put my bare hands on trees. I go to the water. Hang out with the children. I eat good food, lots of onions and garlic. I move my body. I read about quantum physics; it brings me immense pleasure when science catches up with soul.2 I spend the majority of my time relating with others or relating with self. I leave messages on post-it notes for others to find. Sometimes I make scavenger hunts. Games; I love games. I play cards. I read a lot of fiction and listen to a lot of music. I love hearing instruments. I'm learning to play the harmonica, but I don't have enough skill for it to be pleasurable yet. I commune with spirit. I laugh a ton; it can all be quite absurd. I flirt with life. Maybe you can feel it in my poems. It's how, in my healing process, I keep pleasure close by. Sometimes I forget that, just like pain, pleasure has homes in the body. I take time combing through each home. Sometimes, like this week, none of my rituals for conjuring pleasure work. I need to trust that my others can help.

If I see healing as a mountain, then it is made of many stones. I must turn over each one. In the act of doing so, I reject apathy. I reject the option to remain disconnected. I will care. Whatever it is I'm looking at, I will stay with it. Whoever it is I'm looking with, I will stay with you. I will not turn and walk away. But I know that pain accumulates. This week, it feels impossible to be with it without others close by.

You, what do you need? I need together-rests.

I've learned that while relating to humanity, to the spirits of the collectives, is critical, it is not how I learn to practice care in an embodied way. I practice in the symbiotic relationships, the ones I have direct access to, the actual people in the room with me, the people whose bodies I know. My soul-mates taught me this. These are the people who keep me on the ground, close to my own body.

Dear soulmates, my care for you is unconditional. I know you've got me. I've got you, too.

Care. Follow the root. The old english word carian has the proto-germanic root karo-, 'to lament,' from the proto-indo-european root gar-, 'to make a sound, to cry out.'

Care is the crying out for our others and having our others respond. It is when we call out a need, and then we receive it. I am in the habit of scanning my surroundings for people's cries. When I hear one, I cry back. I've often been told I do too much. I'm still learning how to care well, but I refuse to believe it is not my responsibility. I think that is another manifestation of the lie. And while letting go of that responsibility is sometimes a survival strategy in particular environments, it cannot be the solution. The solution is for more people to realize that it is their responsibility also. Deep, deep down I've been afraid that I'll always have to be the one taking care of myself. I know now that it is ableist to even assume that everyone has had the option to do so. The illusion of separation is ableist itself. I'm learning we must reorient to those whose survival is dependent on collective care.3 And I know that the very concept that we exist in isolation is simply a lie. I know it is a lie, but I still often yearn to hear someone say it: You are not alone. You can rest with me.

What are you afraid of? What do you long to hear? In case you need to hear it: You are not alone. You can rest with me.

If I write you a letter, it is a lighthouse. I am simultaneously crying out and crying back, in case you're crying out, too. Right now, I am learning about discernment. Soulmates are the ones who always and habitually cry back. I am learning to choose to be in the room with the people who want to walk with me in care, and I know that for our collective's survival, a small room will not be enough. Here are some other things I know. I am early in my development. I have many limitations, and I will let them be grounds for coming back to the body with care. I make many mistakes. This shit is not new just because it's new to me. Wisdom is found in the people and in the relationships. Storytelling and storyasking are critical. There is a lot for me to learn and unlearn. If I run too fast and too soon, I won't be able to listen. If I crawl too slow and too late, pain will accumulate. So in the while, I'll walk and work. I'll write letters. I'll together-rest. I'll heal. I'll keep close to my body, to my pleasure, to my soulmates, to the earth right beneath my feet. I'll cry out, make sounds, and follow the ones I hear back.

You, what do you know? What do you want to know? What do you keep close? How do you stay close to the body? What do you do in the while? What do you know about care? I wanna know: How do you cry out? How do you cry back?

Okay, breath, I'm gonna go read some fiction.