San Francisco, CA
April 2024

i. a verdant winter

I have been going hard since January. I organized a new men's group, merging coaching, ritual design, personal work, and community building into one container. I have been doing gorgeous full moon sonic meditations. I did 3 different in-situ performance pieces. I am coaching inside a corporate context with a company and CEO I really admire. Ava and I ran two friendship workshops, and we expect to do more. I'm helping build a new poetry circle that's different from anything I've seen before. I designed and built two different websites for projects I believe in. I have been writing and posting more poetry than ever.

This isn't even everything, and it's a lot.

While at times I feel overwhelmed, more often than that I feel truly joyful. I feel so fucking alive! I'm making exactly the kind of impact I envisioned when I moved back to SF in November. I am repeatedly meeting the people I most want to meet, and finding new collaborations in every step of the way.

ii. grief

What would a missive from me be without a nod to grief? Things are changing rapidly over here. Does anyone else feel that? Maybe it's because we're in the mid-point between two eclipses (lunar last week, solar on Monday). Maybe it's because that's just what is, right now.

I'm trying my best to stay slow and welcome the presence of the unexpected. It seems "the unexpected" is all that wants to reveal itself to me, lately. I won't get into any of the personal details of my grief in here. But it abounds. I feel a sense of awe, wonder, bewilderment at so much of what's happening. And it all feels right.

Earlier this year I recorded a podcast on grief. Give it a listen, if you like. It's probably the finest thing I've produced all year. And it's especially helping me right now.

iii. of course, there are more offerings

If you're reading this thinking "I wish I could help Rishi" there is one particular thing I'd love for you to do: help me get the word out about the next round of my men's group!

There are other things, of course. Sonic meditations, poetry circles, hot springs retreats, more and new kinds of workshops, grief circles. Things arise when they do like the spring ephemerals in the undergrowth of a canopied forest.

I started calling my coaching practice somatic witnessing because, well, that's what it is!

ugh there is just so much stuff. I'm aware some of this stuff will not sustain into the next season. And these projects and collaborations are all the more beautiful for it.

iv. change

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.

— Octavia Butler, Earthseed

I'm not sure what awaits me after May. Things seem rapidly in flux. I am considering traveling again, opening new career channels, building something new, hunkering down and committing to what's already here.

All I know is that things will be different. They always are. Thanks for riding this roller coaster with me.

v. ta ta for now

I'll leave you with a recent poem:

I just want everything to be easy
But I’m stuck here
Riding this roller coaster of a body

We did not choose each other
But what is choice but self-determination?
What is choice but self-resignation?
What is choice but the turning towards this eruption in my chest that halts all other speech and thought, this heart bleeding crimson, Orange, sunflower, warm tones that leave me running for shelter from debris, 
What is choice but the turning towards this part of myself that carries the deepest longing with love and acceptance and say “you are welcome, you are beloved, you are home” over and over again til the sand settles and all that’s left is the beach and sunlight?

I barrel down the highway singing love songs from my youth
I discover them as ballads for the first time 
Each rendition dedicated to you
An ode to what comes alive at the sound of your voice

This isn’t an ode to you, though
It’s an ode to all those who left me

Be well. Reach out. I love you.

- Rishi