Autumnal light
Dreaming of the dead, my new book, maternity leave, last harvest
Dear one,
I’m writing to you with some updates. But first, how are you doing at this time? I’m really curious to know. If we share overwhelm from the US election, my biggest advice would be to downshift in how you’re consuming and distributing information, and allow some time to be with and process your feelings in order to take action from a clearer mind and heart. There’s so much agency outside of voting. We tend to forget, and this reality jolts us to remember.
Here, I’m navigating the intensity of this moment by simplifying my days. I spend less time with my phone, try to sense and ground into my body through breath and awareness, and take at least one action a day related to my values (at the very least, I mention Palestine or Covid in a conversation). I remind myself that I am in it for the long haul. To expect oneself or anyone to always be active is very simple ableism.
Plus, I’m very pregnant. I only have so much energy that I can extend beyond what is required to cultivate and nourish this growing life, so I’ve been peeling back layers in order to better balance heartache and rest, awe and surrender. Poetry makes sense, rhetoric doesn’t.
Through the thick of information to process: the inextricability of the world and the novelty of this rite of passage, I have been religious about sleep. With such rapid change of my interoception, it is basic care for this queer, tender, and mammalian experience that I am privileged with. Sleep has meant wild and vivid dreams (of which pregnancy is notorious for inducing): the kind of dreams I’ve been advised to pay attention to by insightful friends for the gems they might have to offer. The dreams have been somewhat light-hearted, of course strange and surreal, until my beloved cat Satomi had come back to life. This dream held gravity.
To my surprise, even within the dream, it turned out that Satomi was alive all along, as if it was a simple fact that I had forgotten. Some characters in the montage pointed me to the direction of a storefront which housed all sorts of old things from my life, mainly objects or materialized feelings, a sort of memory bank that resembled a thrift store. I went in and carried Satomi out of the storefront in one arm and held a shelf my grandpa made in the other, and she was completely and exactly animated as she once was before. I took her back to a fully furnished apartment I’ve never lived in and then watched as she slowly transformed before me, a Benjamin Button-style reversal, to a younger version of herself. End scene. I woke up and was lying there in the mundane, holy intensity of having been visited by her in a dream, at having witnessed her life’s aging in reverse. I don’t spend a lot of time wishing that Satomi was still alive–choosing instead to sink deeper into the reality of things and allow myself to be changed and humbled by it–but god, I miss her so much. Since she died two years ago, I longed to meet her again in a dream. Her visitation now aids my rearrangement of her in my life and helps to place her into my continuous present. It feels healing, and brings me some peace. The whole event inspires me to quietly weep in place, all pain worth it to experience this enduring love which welcomes her presence in any form. At this moment, Lotte began to roll over in our bed. She grabbed my hand and took it with her as she descended to her other side. Amongst the quiet she mumbled, half asleep, “what did you say?” which I thought couldn’t be more perfect, since I didn’t say anything but the silence was pregnant with feeling.
I’m bringing the past and future together here. Harvest and seed. I gestate both the memory of Satomi and this baby that I carry. Now at a few thresholds, Sternberg Press will announce my book Dying Livingly as part of the Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann, and I will be on maternity leave for a few months. Some wonderful serial projects took place this year that I’ve recapped below with material you can peruse and read. It’s especially for grievers, and I hope you can gather a kernel of support from it and a sense of connection.
To companion this newsletter, I’ve included some paintings by artist Lizzy Marshall with her kind permission. I find myself returning to images of them again and again throughout my pregnancy as a means of support, a reminder to stay open and to trust the processes of birth and death.
Thanks for being here.
With love and in solidarity,
Staci
Dying Livingly
I’m really excited to share that my book Solution 305: Dying Livingly is going to print and will soon be announced by Sternberg Press. You can already have a look at the cover and description here.
I’d like to organize a book tour to take place in Spring/Summer 2025 as a chance to animate the book and bring together others in death and grief care. I will share an open call about this soon to develop the plan. If you, your bookshop or arts organization might be interested in hosting an event, please let me know.
Maternity leave
This experience of pregnancy has been expansive, completely humbling and awe-inspiring, and feels like one of the queerest experiences of my life so far. I’ve already started to turn inward, wrapping up activities, and will officially pause all work beginning 25 November.
I will keep my books open for holistic deathcare through 22 November for those who are in need of support. While I cannot walk alongside clients nearing the end of life and service their carers at this time, I offer guidance and presence related to death fear and anxiety, pre-planning and practical support, as well as grief care. Sometimes one session can be enough to help you feel resourced and oriented in the right direction. Please feel free to book a 1:1 session and skip the discovery call if you know you’re in need. I’ve opened up more spaces in my schedule to accommodate yours.
I will be ready (hopefully) to welcome back 1:1 clients at the start of March 2025.
It would be my honor to support you when I’m back, but please don’t stop yourself from reaching out for care right now, as there are many amazing death and grief care workers out there. I will recommend some if you reach out to me directly.
Thanks so much for everyone’s patience and support during this massive life transition!
Last harvest
This year I have emphasized working in series across different scales of time and through degrees of (very special) collaborations. As a last harvest of the year, I’ve gathered some of the material here for you to peruse and engage with.
1/3. Transitional time held through October: Align for life balance and death education
I created a new course offering called Align: contemplative care for living with death awareness. It consisted of three, small group sessions online that focused on thinking and feeling death anew and establishing a deliberate practice for your y/our death and grief care. The information, guidance, and resources were chaptered around facing, pausing, and doing deathcare. I was so impressed by the (mostly artist) participants who joined, and I learned so much from them in turn. It is powerful to have a space to speak in open and generative ways about death and how it informs our lives. I hope to offer this course again next year.
Sourced in part from the Align series, I am creating a one-page PDF grief care primer for new and experienced grievers. It’s something you can pull out when you need some gentle reminders. If you make a donation to an organization or mutual aid fund of your choice and send me a screenshot of your receipt (staci.bushea@proton.me), then I will send you this resource in return!
Some of my recommendations include:
death doula Sasha Heron and her efforts to raise funds for displaced families from Gaza currently residing in Cairo (venmo: sashaheron / cashapp: $sashaheronliberation)
2/3. Seasonally ripe but omnipresent: Summer Grief on Metropolis M
Published every Thursday through the early weeks of summer, each writer offers a glimpse into how they shape and are shaped by grief. Each essay is paired with a photograph by artist and poet S*an D. Henry-Smith, someone whom I admire very much, and whose works capture transitory feelings of a vibrant present.
Introduction: Staci Bu Shea introduces what grief is like through a series of writings from individuals who have faced the loss of someone deeply important to them.
Lin: Chus Martínez reflects on the work of her friend, the artist Lin May Saeed.
Ruben: Yessica van den Berg gets in touch with her brother by writing a letter to him.
Rami: Dina Mimi weaves through waking life and dreams and draws connections between individual and collective grief among different kinds of death.
Carla: Katja Mater documents encounters during the last days of sorting through the belongings and cleaning out the house of Katja’s mother.
Epilogue: Jumana Emil Abboud addresses Grief directly and entices him (us) with a story. Grief himself, when enlightened and imbued with purpose, may be just the medicine we need.
3/3. Punctuating this Gregorian calendar: The Sphinx’s Riddle at Manifold Books
Manifold Book’s year program The Sphinx's Riddle features contributions by Moosje Moti Goosen, Natalia Papaeva, Katja Mater, Dagmar Bosma and the Paul Hoecker Research Group. The theme of mourning and transformation is approached from a multitude of perspectives, such as mourning surrounding life and death, medical gatekeeping, the loss of one's mother tongue and forgotten queer histories. In relation to the exhibitions, I’ve organized a series of collective reading sessions in collaboration with the artists and Manifold. For each session, I make a report to offer a glimpse into the event. Here’s the schedule and what’s taken place so far:
28/01: to attend to
09/03: to dedicate to with Katja Mater
01/06: to attest to with Dagmar Bosma
05/10: to remember for with the Paul Hoecker Research Group
23/11: to pass on with Natalia Papaeva
2025-TBA with Moosje Moti Goosen
Thresholds
From now through the winter solstice, I wish you ease in letting go what you need to, taking rest where you can, and feeling fortified in your small and big actions. From my threshold to yours, for ours, here is some wisdom from the late John O’Donahue:
We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality begins to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.
At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossing were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.
– John O’Donahue, To Bless This Space Between Us, 2008
