Here

Inhale [one, two, three, four]

Exhale [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight]

Again while counting:

Inhale (even deeper)

Exhale (more completely)

Once more, slowly and with feeling:

Inhale (expand your chest and belly)

Exhale (contract, lifting your pelvic floor and squeezing your abdomen)

End of October, thinning of the veil. Happy Samhain.

Student movement in Serbia wins and their organizing will be studied for years to come. Lula wins and the market drops, because under conventional capital markets, ecosystems are often structurally valued "more dead than alive." The Hunter’s full moon in Taurus wins. Anxious energy for US midterm elections won’t win. Many planets in retrograde now. A lot of life going on.

So, this weekend I participate in my own at-home retreat. Everyone’s out of the house except for my dog. I’ll use my phone as little as possible and focus on resting, walking, and writing. When I clear the decks like this, it’s easier to listen to my whole body. Then I try to perceive what’s not immediately present but can be summoned (like spirits). I’ve come to understand that I need a string of days like this each season to return to myself (especially during Samhain). My personal deathcare and caregiving needs it. There is no doubt that most everything in my life is better for it. Win-win.

During the autumn gathering for Wayfind, my seasonal grief care practice group, I asked participants to do abbreviated versions of the Qi Gong movements parting the clouds and repulse the monkey to help clear mental fog and overthinking. These are arm movements synchronized with the breath that involve pushing out and away from the body, helping to align the heart and lungs. Essentially, this was about making more room for oneself, and feeling empowered to protect it.

What space can you create around yourself so you can experience your life more attentively? To empty out a bit? To contract, draw your energy in on a nice and long exhale? Even if it’s for a day, or an hour.

Chances are, you have to plan it in. Here is your permission slip and some encouragement to believe in and advocate for the space you need.

Now

• My autumn class Align – Contemplative Care for Living with Death Awareness is back for the third time! Due to my care responsibilities at the moment, it comes in a different format. This year Align is a live, small group class on 12 November (with replay available) and a personalized one-to-one session in the weeks that follow to help you put theory into practice.

  If you’d like to explore your relationship with death as a way of deepening your relationship with life, I have a discount for those in my newsletter community! You, dear one reading this: use code HEREFORYOU to receive 15% off. Expires 3 November.

• On 14 November, join me for the closing program of The Land School, the 2026 Autumn exhibition program with 4Siblings x itacateca at Casco Art Institute in Utrecht. I’m hosting a conversation and workshop on death and decomposition as part of life's ongoing cycles of transformation and regeneration, emphasizing ecological forms of body disposition.

• As we approach the holidays, I want to point you to the six senses gift guide for grievers that I made last year for inspiration. I’ve also made gift certificates available on my booking site, in case you would like to contribute grief companionship to someone you love.

Close

My dear friend and collaborator Mira Thompson recently said that “true intimacy begins where certainty ends,” which really resonates with me. I’ve been writing about how much we can be changed in the act of giving and receiving care, if only we could revere how vulnerable it is to need it.

Mira also reminded me of this epic 181-word sentence by Virginia Woolf from On Being Ill, which I recommend you read out loud:

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm chair and confuse his 'Rinse the mouth – rinse the mouth' with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us – when we think of this and infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature."

With this I want to send blessings to everyone who is sick, who is in a state of recovery of some sort, who suffers, who waits for an answer, who senses they are in an obscure place between the realms of better and worse. I wish you the intimacy that Mira speaks of, which might grow the features of hope.

Developing,

Staci

PS. I share Align only once a year for now, in Autumn, and given the amount of individualized support this time, I only have space for six spots (max). Consider securing your place with the discount code soon!