slow and steady rites and rituals
Hi all,
In a lot of ways, a lot of my early comicmaking about loss and grief were ”a way to perform rites and rituals…[which] serve to mark and assist our psyche, and community, in moving us from one stage of life to another.” As Tom Hart writes, “Our job is not to be great artists, or original, our job is to come out the other side…And [the sharing of] this final product, this artifact, this book, this story, helps us readers navigate our own transformations...”
As I look at my creative output of the last few months, I’m seeing that my writing practices are becoming space for me stay present with the ripple effects of climate collapse that touch my day-to-day life: to make emotional space for the overwhelm, grief, and anger, to make sense of the personal within the political. I wish I could say I am writing about my sense of power and agency within it all, but the truth is I don’t know, ya know? I’m somewhere in the middle of this rite/ritual, and I’m trying to be with the sense of powerlessness (without letting that kick me into fear, anxiety, shutdown, blame, despair, or etc etc etc. Namaste AF, amirite?) The reality is that the dreams that I built for my life growing up in the 90’s and 00’s were premised on a world that wasn’t on fire and an American political landscape that wasn’t in chaos. So where does that leave me? Leave us? Grasping…Uncertain…Emergent…Possible.
I share in-progress because I know I’m not alone in asking these questions and tryin to figure out this time(?) <3
I been writin’!
I made a diary comic about my salty air purifier Wini during the January LA Wildfires. (ICYMI, I also comic’d about the heatwave in LA last summer.)
I joined Hourly Comics Day this year to document my Feb 1st via autobio diary comics. 新年快乐!
I wrote about our soft animal bodies and how we are affected by fear on my Wandering Grace newsletter. Followed by a bonus constellation of links related to how we might orient towards change during these tumultuous times.
On Wandering Grace, I also wrote about being with the fallen and uprooted trees during these times as a needful site of grief. If you like and resonate with my work, please follow along with Wandering Grace on Substack as a free or paid subscriber! It is where I am devoting a lot of my regular writing energies this season.
Foment Podcast! Albert and I are making conversational podcasts again, to share what we DIY/DIT-know after years of geeking out about cooperative housing and other possibility models from the solidarity economy. Check out our first two episodes on mutual aid and revolutionary congregations and on community land trusts. (We haven’t yet done the ‘bizness’ of getting the stream live on the podcasting platforms so that you can listen conveniently via your apps, but we’re workin on it, stay tuned!)
Shout Outs
My friend Maria Renée Johnson is offering (for the third year) a 4-part online series called Holding Earth. It is an environmental grief tending series using the modalities of somatic, creative, and ecological practices. Learn more and register here.
I wanted to share a project that I had the honor of being a part of. Carla Fernandez, included me in her new book, Renegade Grief: A Guide to The Wild Ride of Life After Loss. Among many other’s highlighted stories, I had the pleasure of sharing a bit about my Dear Daughter project.
I first met Carla through The Dinner Party, and I am excited to read her book, which promises to be a profound and vulnerable exploration of care practices and rituals that empower grievers in a culture that expects us to simply “give it time.” If you would like to support, you can learn more about Renegade Grief including book tour events here, and consider pre-ordering a copy!
PS!
Gonna be attending LA Zine Fest and AWP this year as participant and fan. LMK if you are going too!!
A slow-and-steady checklist for re-diversifying your digital life away from Big Tech Corporations.
A zine / workbook / series of reflection questions (from Mariame Kabe) that help you make a slow-and-steady plan for activism that fits into your life.
An interview with the firetenders and shepherds of Bellweather (aka the School for Inclement Weather). “These practices change us, our sensory experience and what we perceive.” “But care is not always pretty either. We want care to be idyllic and sometimes it’s grotesque…it’s edgy.” “Have the culture of looking at the effects of your labor.” “We’re in a messy, post-colonial burn era.” “The land needs upwells of dying in order to persist.” “But none of these things are coming to completion on our timeline: the cotton planting, the shearing, the timing of a burn, healing the soil. We have to move on the land’s time.” “…it’s a multigenerational commitment.”
Take good care, sweet ones,
Christina