the format of these monthly updates are directly inspired by how my family and I stay connected with each other. you can expect some main points, some tangential stories, some vulnerable reflections on things that feel uncertain, and an invitation to share what’s up with you too.

CW: unskilled drawing of a spider; allusion to fentanyl-related death; allusion to miscarriage

here’s some snapshots of what february looked like:

🪦 A grief anniversary arrives.
Beloveds, get nalexone (narcan) and fentanyl testing strips before they’re needed—for yourself or your loved ones, whether you know anyone who struggles with substance use or not. You never know when having them on hand may save a life. In LA, the public library has these resources available anonymously and at no cost.

🎲 I induct a friend to their first d&d experience.

🤲🏽 I host my first session of my first Resilience Toolkit Intro series within my new business.

🍰 My sister’s birthday!

🛂 I help my family plan for their first visit to the netherlands.

😞 I come to terms with the fact that I likely I won’t be able to afford attending my family reunion in the summer.

📧 I send my first email newsletter as a business.

👹 A 3-year pathfinder campaign concludes after its final boss session.

⚔️ I join a new d&d campaign with new friends.

🫥 Symptoms of PMDD make their inevitable return as my body’s hormones acclimate to no longer carrying a pregnancy.

🌑 I host a DFTH new moon circle.

🎶 The following day I dance and cry by myself to the new moon circle playlist.

🖤 I newly resume research and exploration into a years-long interest: findom.

🫶🏽 I finish my first Resilience Toolkit Intro series as a new biz.

🪙 I earn my first income as a new business.

🧾 I get a stunning and totally unexpected bill for the emergency surgery I had in December.

🚲 I do my first bike ride since recovery.

🃏🃏 I get to attend not one but TWO WHOLE WONDERFUL game nights with friends.

📰 I read up on the current waves in discourse around Polyvagal Theory, reflecting on the parts left unsaid and how to parse valid points of contention from the theater and politics behind who gets to decide when and how knowledge is valid.

🤬 I discover that my insurance had not backdated my coverage like they said they would, and my medical bill for the removal of my ectopic pregnancy will not be covered. I continue to dispute this, as the debt could possibly affect my visa.

1️⃣ We arrive at our 1 year anniversary of immigrating to the netherlands. It’s the warmest, sunniest day in weeks.

card pulls and personal reflections

🦋🗣️ 19 - Painted Face - Self Expression

“Open up and allow others to see your Medicine.” Offer gifts to others who need those talents right now.

I am ready to release the hesitancy I’ve shown in the past towards sharing my gifts. Create and put out my offerings. Maybe write some.

🦊🫣 25 - Fox - Camouflage

“adaptability, cunning, observation, integration, swiftness of thought”…“quick decisiveness in the physical world”…”the art of Oneness through understanding of camouflage,” but also silliness as camouflage? The joy of knowing the playground of your life.

Conserve and observe. Protect those close to you right now. Find joy and play this month. Keep to our values but turn your energy towards sustaining ourselves right know instead of challenging, when possible.

🕷️🕸️ 43 - Spider - Weaving

“you are an infinite being who will continue to weave the patterns of life and living through time. Do not fail to see the expansiveness of the eternal plan. Create, create, create!”…”seek alternatives to the present impasse”…Are you getting to close to an entangling situation? Do you need to write out and review your progress so you remember how you are creating a new/different phase in life? Find joy, get moving for inspiration, “observe Spiders web and find pleasure in the ideas you receive from her universal language.” Notice opportunity at the outskirts of your life, has something you’ve woven borne fruit?

I am both creating and balancing; weaving what I need to catch what I need to sustain myself. You Are In It Now.

conversations with community

This month, someone asked me to elaborate on what I meant in calling myself an estranged dancer, that they felt it deep in their gut upon reading it. I’ll share with you what I shared with them.

As far as feeling like an estranged dancer, dance was a central component of my life and future plans before COVID. While I do still believe myself to be a dancer, it feels strange to be a dancer who hasn't danced regularly since before COVID. I get to dance with at 1-off events like CripFeest, and I facilitate 1 monthly online movement class for work as of this month. But every time I describe myself as a dancer, there's an internal asterisk that pops up, reminding me how long it's been since I was in a tango embrace, or a salsa turn, or a bachata dip. At some point I questioned whether I still considered myself a dancer. There was a lot of grief around that, and there still is. Ultimately, it feels like 'yes but,' with the 'but' being that I have been separated from the places where I would normally feel comfortable dancing, that i'm in an uncertain process of reconstructing those spaces for myself, and in the meantime I haven't done much dancing. I definitely feel like I'm still a dancer, but I also definitely feel like the act and practice of communal dancing along with current dance spaces have estranged themselves from me--estranged in the same ways that many family members have estranged themselves over not wanting to take any more COVID precautions.

I remain inspired though. I know it's so doable to have CC dance spaces. I and others have done it before in the states, on a regular basis even (for a short time). Here's a recent one in Chicago 💖 I hope to be dancing with folks soon someday.

As much as I remain inspired, I also remain enraged. There is a constant latent grief, lament, and fury at the cognitive dissonance in hosting dance events with no precautions against COVID (and measles and monkeypox and bird flu, take your fucking pick of whichever new or returning illness is propagating amidst the people under a government with both a complicit and gutted public health system 🤷‍♀️).

Earlier that week, I’d been reflecting on how almost all the dance spaces I’ve ever called home over my life up to now are not actually places I feel I can safely go back to. It’s wild to see so much COVID denialism in a space that is so body-centric and connection-centric. I feel thoroughly uprooted as a dancer, and have felt this way since even before I packed up and moved to another country. At the end of major lockdown periods, and in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings, and all the ‘listening and learning’ and the chilling reprisals of ‘I can’t breathe’ worldwide that have not yet stopped, I really had a naive hope that of all places, dance spaces might have some solidarity to show in gathering in ways that keep each other and our literal physical bodies safe. And to be fair, it was a dance space in my community who had the last recurring masked outdoor social that I was aware of before that eventually became fiscally untenable in a climate increasingly committed to eugenics. But who is there to dance with when we have strokes and heart attacks in our 30s and 40s? and when all our spoons our spent tending to the chronic fatigue (and more) of ourselves and our loved ones? and when we have to pay medical bills so we can’t pay to be in dance spaces? How do those things help us ‘live our lives?’ And what ‘normal’ are we even trying to go back to if each new infection leaves us with lingering aftereffects and new disabilities that change how we live these whole lives, never mind whether we can still show up on any sort of dance floor? What ‘community’ will be ‘left’? What community is being ‘left’?

If covid-conscious dance spaces are something you’re interested in building with together, reach out to me at ritual.as@tuta.com. I don’t know all the way how yet, but we will dance.

In closing, I offer this quote that I picked for my sister to write on a note and leave on my cousin’s grave back home on what would have been his 32nd birthday:

"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

~ James A. Baldwin

Rest well cousin; we hold you as we hold each other.

Thanks for reading, wishing you moments of ritual, rest, and restoration.

misha
ritual as: | website

p.s. You can now read about March here!