22. on grief as alchemy

transmuting heartbreak into transformation

Friends of TC,

It has been a while since I’ve sent a tender transmission from here. I’ve started writing countless times over the last few months but the words never seemed to suffice. Every time I’ve sat down to write, the tears have been so big, so intense and so raw that I felt like I had no choice but to stop and surrender to them.  

Last year undid me in ways I am still coming to terms with: it was the hottest year on record for the past 125,000 years; the annihilation of Palestine at the hands of the Israeli state aided and encouraged by so many of our governments; more genocide in Sudan, and the Congo; the rising homelessness everywhere; too many monstrous things to count. The grief they’ve reared continues to challenge me and show up in my everyday life, driving home the interconnection between all of us, reminding me that every choice I make in my personal life is inextricable from the larger collective. These last few months have only sped up a gut-wrenching process of awakening and shedding that’s forced me to leave behind things that are no longer in alignment with who I am becoming. It’s often so hard to describe the more subtle shifts that happen inside of us privately that can’t or shouldn’t necessarily have to be broadcasted. There are many different roles to play in the revolution, but one thing must bind us all for it to really come to fruition. How will these events and moments in time change our very cells, muscle memories, and neural pathways? Our value systems, relationships, work and our very lives? 

Under the guise of a new year, I’m writing today because I want to put to bed this idea of a ‘perfect’ time to write. The world is and will continue to be a tumultuous, unstable, and volatile place, but I need to remind myself that words can be a balm in these moments and that they can become the seeds we need to grow a new world from what feels like very shaky ground. Because, if there was ever a moment when we needed more tenderness it feels like now. 

I started this newsletter as I felt and still strongly feel that tenderness is the virtue of our times. I knew that I needed to learn to work with it, to explore how to let it into my heart for it to teach me how to move through the world with deep compassion, strength, tenacity and grace.  When the world gets harder outside, we must learn to stay soft. This softness I speak of is not to be undermined or underestimated. It is malleable, robust, and born out of the refusal to harden in the face of the many myths of separation that stop us from being able to see each other and the Earth as relations, because this tenderness knows that the truly brave, even amid so much hate and fear, can value all life on Earth. Not just in times of lightness and ease but for the darkest of nights. This softness is the quality that will help us survive and separate us from those whose hearts have frozen over. I know this kind of tenderness feels harder and harder to come by in this time of immense violence, chaos, and disruption. But it is in times like this that we find ourselves now, that this capacity for being able to be tender becomes absolutely imperative for us to keep going. To not only fight but to be able to hold a joyous new vision for a new paradigm, one that centers our interconnection to each other, all living things, and the planet.

There is also something truly pertinent and potent about this collective grief that is all around us right now that I want to explore. How do we apply said tenderness to all the grief both in our personal lives and in the collective? The ability of grief to act as a panacea is critical in these times when fear is so suffocatingly thick in the air. It’s so hard to repel the urge to pull away and shut down. Subsequently, what happens then? What happens to our distress and our fury? Just out of sheer discomfort and pain, we tend to go numb, shrouding our deep heartache, using anything and everything to distract us from reality. The daily displays of such violence, death and loss are so devastating and overwhelming that our little hearts are not able to process all this pain, and so understandably, begin to close. Without the umbrella shelter of a community, our grief cannot be emancipated. It is in our very human nature that we need to mourn with others for the healing to begin. To cry, wail and scream our pain out of our bodies into the atmosphere we share. The fact that this isn’t normalized and that we are alone, witnessing so much death and destruction through the screens on our phones, is doing something terrible to us. That’s why moving our bodies and whenever possible seeking protest spaces and gatherings of love and solidarity are so important. I’ve been finding them wherever I go and feel so grateful to be surrounded by my like-minded kin with who I can share the grief of reality, while still being able to hold so much love. Watching the global solidarity movement for Palestine across the spectrum of all walks of life has been one of the most moving and beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed in my entire existence and energizes me when my heart and soul are depleted.

Today on the 11th of January, we have a new lunar cycle starting, a new moon in Capricorn. Today is also the day that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel has started being reviewed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Listening this morning to the facts that I know but in this way, in this space, by these formidable voices is rousing up so many emotions and activating my grief in a big way. South Africa’s charges are written using so many of the words, video evidence and statements of intent from the war criminals themselves, clearly stating their desire to wipe out an entire group of human beings so it’s hard to imagine how charges like this can be ignored without dissolving the court itself as well as giving up on the idea or practice of collective responsibility. It’s hard to grasp the gravity of this moment, this is not just a test for the UN, but as revolutionary poet June Jordan so rightly said back in 1991, ‘Palestine is the moral litmus test of our time’ and today it is a litmus test for all of humanity. I don't know how much justice will be served if this ruling is not legally enforceable, but nonetheless today, I am deeply moved by the South African team. Feeling much gratitude to South Africa, with their history, where people lives are still severely impacted by the effects of apartheid, speaking up to stop an another apartheid state from continuing to wage genocide. A powerful reminder that the struggles against injustice and occupation are always interrelated and it is our responsibility as humans to show up for each other. 

For those of us brave enough to accept reality, we know that there is only more grief headed our way. This is not a time for irrational optimism that can only give us a very short-lived sense of relief, followed by soul-crushing disappointment. We are now faced with a daily choice, will we choose to engage or deny and withdraw? As the empire continues to collapse, things will only become more violent as they fight to retain power. The climate crisis cannot be fixed or solved by humans, we have already done too much irreversible damage and so we must now learn to live with the emerging consequences. So it is now of the utmost urgency that we learn how to let this grief in, to let it heal and transform us because grief can be the most powerful alchemy, capable of softening the hardest of places in our hearts, as it’s clear we’re really going to keep needing it. Inner resilience is required for us to be able to stay present and curious. None of us are exempt from loss, pain, illness and death. Our suffering is what makes us human. Yet somehow, we have such little understanding or capacity to talk about and share these huge fundamental life experiences. It is like we have tried so very hard to keep grief disconnected from our lives, but in grief lies our greatest reckoning. Albeit we try so hard to ignore the concept of impermanence, how everything we love we will eventually Iose, so we must gain more fluency in the language and practice of loss. 

Despite it often being used to describe the ending of the world, apocalypse is a Greek word meaning “revelation”, an “unveiling”, or “that which is uncovered”. That is what is clearly happening now: the floor of our world is being cracked open under our feet to reveal the darkness all around us, lighting up our collective shadow. We can see these dark forces at work are not here to support life, since through their continual actions and legacies of extraction, exploitation and domination we can see clearly that they despise all Black, Brown and Indigenous people everywhere, as well as women, children, the queer, disabled, elderly and the only one home we share, our Earth. In Buddhist traditions, apocalypse comes as a result of collective karma — everyone's actions toward one another and the world. We are in a moment where we are being asked to either radically transform ourselves to become the agents of change needed or be passively swept along. I truly believe we all have something to offer in these times. We can act as a lighthouse, beaming light from our hearts to radiate back out to the world. But for the world to transform, for us to be able to beam in the dark, we must ourselves transform. This transformation can only happen in the heart because a unified consciousness is a heart consciousness. When we choose to transform we must accept that we will lose what we hold dear, but something else happens too, an all-encompassing consciousness, a state where we no longer feel separation from nature and each other. 

The end of last year for me brought on the endings of many things. The end of my relationship being one of them, meaning I have reached the end of my Milanese era. I am currently living out of a suitcase incidentally with my most humble belongings, taking refuge and surviving on the generosity of my many beautiful kindred beloveds. I have thrown myself into the wild ocean of uncertainty and despite the untethering from a person I still love and deeply care for as well as the life we built together is utterly heartbreaking, I can now also for the first time in a long time, see and feel so much possibility on the edge of my horizon. I am now actively choosing to reorient my life and my entire being, to at least try my very hardest to live a life that embraces the values of being in right relationship with myself as well as all living beings and the Earth and if words create worlds let these be mine. 

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror yesterday and was taken aback by this unfamiliar version of myself being reflected at me. Through all these endings, struggles and darkness, something big is happening and I am being reborn. I see the light coming back into my eyes, and despite it being the depths of winter, a youthful glow coming back into my face. My many tears of grief have been watering the soil of my soul that despite the shaky ground, has become so rich and fertile from me composting my life as I knew it, so that new seeds of alignment could grow into a new chapter of my life, a life that even in a time of such grief, anger and chaos can have the potential for so much love, deep purpose and meaning. 

Free Palestine

Free Ourselves

In grief and gratitude,

Naomi 

PS - I also want to extend the ultimate extra gratitude to all the generous souls who have been supporting this space albeit my absence. Your support has really been an active form of care in a hard time. So thank you, thank you, thank you. <3 <3 <3