Dispensing another care package for these extraordinary times
“This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.”
Rebecca Solnit
Dear Friends
As I write these words it feels like we are approaching a great threshold as individuals, as families, as nations and as world citizens.
There is so much going on it’s hard to know what to do. It’s also hard to know what to say - I started this a few days ago and have found it difficult to find the appropriate words to share. When I lean into the currents of this crisis I realise that nobody really knows because we are all swimming in this together. Sometimes I find myself drifting between polarities of despair and hope, turbulence and calm, effort and flow, grief and consolation.
So I guess this is a time of allowing it all be here and accepting a place of both/and knowing…
It also feels like we are somewhere in the middle of a ubiquitous hashtag moment, a global Future Shock episode and a collective Groundhog Day all wrapped up in one. As the world as we know it is changing moment by moment, we can find ourselves on an emotional grieving odyssey that moves and shifts in a non-linear way. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross identified these five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and eventual acceptance in her book On Death and Dying.
This morning as I was out on my allocated 2 km circuitous walk, I listened to an incredible podcast with Brené Brown and grief expert David Kessler that blew my heart wide open .Together they share insights about love, loss, and finding meaning in times of grief. His new book adds another stage to the grieving process, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. On the podcast he speaks right into this collective moment of anticipatory grief that we are all experiencing right now as we realise that the world as we know it has changed utterly.
“We feel the world has changed and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection,is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level. There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us”.
It feels important to me to try and honour each of these stages and be with what is here now, wanting to emerge.
The word emerge is part of emergency.
Every day I am broken open by the humanity I see emerging all around me. Thank you to all the front liners, first responders, health care providers, therapists, teachers, social workers and delivery service providers for your courage as you work selflessly to minimise the suffering caused by this pandemic. Thank you to everyone who is staying at home - our interconnection and inter dependence as one human family has never been so apparent.
So maybe this is a time to find ways to slow down and take care of ourselves and each other as best as we possibly can. And maybe this is a time to evoke and locate our compassion, creativity, vision and resilience. So, I am curating another care package for you below so that you are supported in the hours, days and weeks ahead. Rebecca reminds us
“You row forward looking back. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant for our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future”.
At The Trailblazery we are committed to finding ways right now to serve our mission online so that we can mind each other and share resources and practices that will support our community in these times together.
Our next Moon Medicine Live Gathering ‘Love in the Time of Corona’ will be hosted live on Zoom at 7pm GMT on April 07 and I am delighted to say that the great torchbearer Sunny Jacobs will be our guest luminary and Lisa Hannigan our virtual musician-in-residence. Together, we will share stories, songs, practices and resources for the times we live in.
As an innocent condemned on death row for seventeen years, Sunny understands more about confinement and freedom than most of us. Locked in solitary confinement, she couldn’t leave her cell but she came to realise that that her spirit was free. She decided to embrace her life by always choosing to believe in hope. I cannot think of anyone more appropriate on the planet to talk about love, hope, freedom and resilience than Sunny - I am so proud to call her my friend. You can watch a video below of Sunny speaking at our Freedom | Saoirse experience live at Kilmainham Gaol in 2017.
For this virtual Moon Medicine Gathering Sunny will shares her experience and insights on how we can achieve liberation in these extraordinary times of global lockdown and quarantine. This circle is open to women globally so please let your sisters around the world know that they are welcome to join us.
Resources for Extraordinary Times
I have curated a second care package for you based on the great humans that are helping me to navigate the times we are in. All suggestions are welcome as we navigate this together..
⤕ Poetry: a selection of poetry places you can go
⤕ Reading: people to read and contemplate
⤕ Listening: people to listen to
⤕ Practicing: people to practice with
⤕Watching: people to watch
Dónal Ó Céilleachair - password STAYSAFE2020
Blessings to you all.
We look forward to blazing bright trails with you in the near future.
Stay safe
until soon
Kathy xo
PS: To receive your copy of A Trailblazer's Guide to the Universe click here
