the format of these monthly updates is 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.

Note: I currently don’t have home internet; the soonest I’ll be reliably online is 11 August. For folks anticipating updates or trying to reach me—thanks for your patience!

🌕♒ here’s some snapshots of what it’s looked like since the last full moon:

🍰 We celebrate a friend’s birthday by helping them cook their favorite birthday cake from a family recipe

💇‍♀️ I wear my hair in a top poof for the first time since being a literal child

🥞 Our friends teach us to make blinchiki, and we eat blinchiki for the first time!

🤡 My friends take me to see a secondhand bike to potentially purchase, but it is too tall for me by a truly hilarious mismeasured amount.

🐈 We cat-sit for friends!

⛺ We have a wonderful time outdoors at Fertile Ruins, and return home smelling like campfire and having a new favorite marshmallow

🚌 I go on a Dutch bus for the first time!

➕ We pick up a used shelf for the room we’re staying in. It comes with extra unexpected (and typically expensive) shelving inserts—score!

👩🏻‍💻 A dear friend takes this fantastic photo (above) of me cozily working at their window

🎊 WE FINALLY GET AN OFFER FOR AN APARTMENT!

🧾 I finalize my Q2 VAT filings

🚴 I get a used bike that is more my size.

💥 I try to ride the new bike with my partner on the back…we need more practice lol

🥳 We celebrate our impending new apartment and my new-used bike with a cozy meal and a stellar private mini-concert!

🌈 I host a Resilience Toolkit Intro session with Garden of Queerdom!

🌱 I finish up a Resilience Toolkit intro series in Garden, and start up weekly practice sessions!

✍🏻 WE SIGN THE LEASE FOR AN APARTMENT

🔕 I finally get to turn off notifications for Stekkies

💁🏽‍♀️ I wear my hair in two side poofs and bangs; for the first time in awhile, I feel really cute

🛒 I take my new-used bike out for a proper first ride—a grocery run

🎁 It’s my dad’s birthday!

🧪 A friend and I dye some clothes!

🍪 A friend bakes us cookies “just because,” using a recipe they got an age ago from a now-estranged former bestie

🍦 We have a fantastic moment with friends lounging on their balcony and eating ijsjes

🛏️ Our friends help us go mattress browsing

🪛 How many people does it take to reverse the hinging on a fridge door? Probably just 2, but we learn it’s much more fun with 4 😆

🏥 We get good news that an unexpected surgery for a family member goes well

moments of mundane magic

A dear friend of mine asked if they could place something on the small altar I’d made for myself in our temporary room, and that I’d adorned for the Cancer new moon earlier this month. They mentioned a baby plant that they’d shown me on our first day here. They’d been saving it as a housewarming gift. “That’s perfect and plenty” I told them. Earlier, they’d squirreled into frame with me during the video call I was having with my partner to view yet another overpriced apartment. “Keep me posted on all the hot apartment goss” they’d tell us as we departed to another city to cat-sit for other friends. One of many moments of being looked after. It feels nice.

conversations with myself

This same time last year, we were in escape mode. Our then-roommates had decided that us addressing abusive behavior within our community was more hostile than the abusive behavior itself, and we were looking to leave as quickly as possible.

This year, my experience of cohabiting with other queer, neurodivergent, CC friends for the month of July has been deeply nourishing and truly life-changing. Somewhere in the overwhelm of recovering from major surgery, financial uncertainty, and housing insecurity, I forgot that, while not absent of friction, things are not so fucking hard with people who actually like you and whose goals are to find clarity together. I’ve missed being this domestic. I’ve missed having the capacity to care so much about clean floors and meal schedules and hanging laundry. Far from trivial, my preferences around how I upkept my space were some of the first things I had to compromise on when we moved into a temporary unit that had years of build-up that I never had capacity to deep clean—even moreso after my surgery.

I spent most of July with my ears clogged up from allergies—also a reprise from last year. Similar to back then, the constant newness of that constant sensation is taxing on my sensory capacities—especially alongside the suite of sensations that come with the anxiety of feeling behind. This time around, there have also been a lot of fun and funny moments of me mishearing and asking for clarity.

I was catching up with another friend and I mentioned how healing it’s been, getting to have a completely different experience of cohabiting with friends. The stress and uncertainty of taking a slight different shape to make space for all of us to move freely together, to communally upkeep the home, the familiar choreography of making sure everyone is fed—all so nostalgic. It’s been one of the experiences that has reminded me most of home since I got here. As many terrible living situations I’ve been in or awful things previous roommates have said or done to me—in the past year and beyond—it’s been healing to not just know but experience that things can be different. I often tell people (because it happens often) that I can cognitively understand something, but my body may not be convinced yet. This living experience so far has felt like the epitome of “healing happens in relationship.”

This by far hasn’t been the only example; with the new moon in my 4th house of ancestry/roots/family—and with my own moon there to boot—and with this odyssey of an apartment hunt, it’s been the example that’s most top-of-mind lately. It’s been healing in the way bits of our lives were welcomed but never rushed—a place for our one mug here, a shared load of laundry there, the massive adjustment of co-cooking 3 meals a day for 4 people, of learning “the systems” for how spaces and rooms are arranged, and in what ways those systems have been informed by which ancestors. It’s been in the unwavering commitment to clarity of communication—a shared practice over shared values—and the constant invitation to figure things out together. It’s been in the intentional ways of finding joy with each other each day, of honoring each person’s contribution and adjusting not just to meet but support each other where we’re at. It’s been in the way we do what we can when we can, of building a practice of both noticing and asking where things can be done. It’s been in the rituals of affection small and large—from treats just because to toasts at dinner for small milestones to congratulating each other on making it through hard/frustrating/annoying tasks and days. It’s been in the corny jokes and serious reminders to have something hot to eat. It’s been in the learning of each others curse words, greetings, and niceties in our native tongues, and in the collective reminiscing of things we miss from where we were born and raised. It’s been in the cackling, ribbing, advice, and apologies.

This is work. And while much of it is predictable, the weight of perpetual uncertainty feels much easier to bear knowing that we’ve been meeting it over and over again together as a group—disabilities, neurodivergences, differences, and all. The impact of that lifted weight is both a literal and figurative ability to breathe easier. I don’t have to maintain so many constant background programs in my brain calculating how I’m going to meet the next moment/day/week because I feel safe asking for help, and I can trust that help will come. I have more capacity to experience myself and each moment more presently—without needing to fling so much of myself into hyper-vigilance towards the future or be digging so far back into the past, wondering if I’ve missed some crucial signal or detail. I get to be more myself.

I’m so glad and so grateful that our hosts did not try to be “chill hosts.” I’m so grateful to have been so invited and so welcomed into the thick of their existing ecosystem. I’m so grateful to have been put to work, and to have been invited into so much play. I’m so glad to have had expectations of me clearly named, and to have had adjustments/corrections/requests so clearly offered. What a treasure to find friends with whom you know you can make a home.

After 15 months in the Netherlands, we prepare to finally move into a place that we can call home for longer than a year. As many folks know, I asked around for all sorts of help during our apartment search; I thought not having a place by our June 30th move-out date was a step backwards, a falter, a notch closer to catastrophe. After our stay with friends, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to be proven wrong.

✨ where you can find me this month

• Resilience Toolkit practice group | sign up
  weekly on Thursdays @ 8am ET / 1pm GMT / 2pm CET

• Spots open for CC Solo 3-part Resilience Toolkit Intro

  • It’s been awhile since the last PWYC CC Resilience Toolkit Intro I hosted back in February. It may still be awhile before I can host another.

  • In the meantime, I have some availability for more flexible sliding scale 1:1 series.

• August availability: 3-part Resilience Toolkit Intro for orgs / private groups

  • Do you have a group of folks who want to learn the Resilience Toolkit? If you already know times that everyone can show up, I can work with your capacity and desired session frequency to host a private intro series for your work team, your community garden pals, your D&D group, your family—whomever!

• Accepting contract work for admin / newsletter / systems transition needs

  • in addition to my own newsletter, I maintain the regular newsletter for my family’s bi-annual reunion, along with similar services other more formal clients ☺️ If you’ve been wanting to get away from MailChimp, ConstantContact, Gmail, etc. for your newsletter—or just want support with a new/established one, I can send over a quote for what a project / ongoing support for that looks like.

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

misha | ritual as:

p.s. you can now read the august new moon reflections here!