Under the Surface (navigating the chrysalis even amidst it all)
Amid the intensity of the world, cellular life continues… – Notes on sanctuary, imagination, and what quietly reorganizes beneath it all ꩜
(Be sure to make it all the way to the books, resources, and article that originally inspired the question, “How is your heart?” below! ↓)
Amidst the intensity of the world, cellular life continues under the surface, tuning to the season, sending taproot down to earth...
...to find that which sustains, that which reorganizes, that which brings courage, maybe even that which kindles faith
Hello, friend!
Peeking my head out of my winter hibernation (chrysalis!) to say hi 👋🏼
How is your heart?1*
Whew, mine is definitely going through the stages of chrysalis – which is to say, at times tumultuous, at times magical, at times terrifying...
I am doing my best to take time to rest, but gads, the inner world can be fertile (to use a nice word for it) here in the goo! On a good day, I can feel my imaginal cells twinkling like stars in the vast open void… ✨ On a 'bad,' murky like mud. Or frozen. So I cultivate stillness (while gently moving) and keep listening...
I am not hiding in this cocoon, but hopefully taking enough time to let the chrysalis renew me for the path ahead.
I always intend my dark wintry times to be spaces of true transformation – which is to say, death (can’t escape it) and rebirth. But it’s not always easy. Sometimes the formless and the dark can feel like it swallows us whole, can’t it? And with the world in the throes of tumolt, we can also be swept away in the waves of so. much. suffering. (Fuuuuck)
May we find and create spaces to help us metabolize all of it.
This year, as I have truly carved out a Chrysalis for myself (and others!), I am finding respite and balance in coming home to the movements under the surface – the unmaking, the undulating, and the new becoming. Inside, I remember to find a place of nourishment, remembrance, and even some strange degree of faith.
For we all need sanctuary – both within and without – in times like these. We all need spaces where dreaming and imagination can still live, can be rekindled even! For what this world has – as many of us have [independently 🤯] coined it – is a crisis of imagination.
It is to this end (or journey) that every offering from my hands and voice comes. Not as an escape, but as a way to root in the real – in strength and in truth.
May the tunings and turnings of our own soul paths strengthen us for the very work the world needs – reimagining possibility. Bringing love where there is fear. Bringing medicine where there are wounds.
Soon I will peek out again with invitations – into the dance of the dream, the movements and sounds of the soul…
But for now I just wanted to say hi, to let you know you are loved, your care is important, and I am honored we are in this together 🙌🏼
With all my care, and wildness and wonder, always ~ Ariana
p.s. I thought I'd share a little light reading. Lol. Inside the mind of an earth-witch entangled in both the beauty of the world and the disaster of modernity. See below ↓↓
p.p.s. Nerd note for the nature-astute: cocoon & chrysalis are actually different types of shells for similar processes, but I use them both poetically. Hey, who am I to guess whether you are a butterfly or a moth? (Arguably, with my night-owlish tendencies, I myself am more moth...)
✦ Resources for the unraveling (…& rebirthing) ✦
A fun list to live by
100 Things to Do Now You Are Collapse-Aware
— You may not [want to] identify with the concept of collapse, or it may be new to you – but whether you think it’s the worst thing or the most delightful possibility to approach humanity (or something tangled in between 😜), this list is still pretty excellent. Heck, this list would be excellent even if there was no degree of predicted collapse.
Organized by sections such as Body & Nervous System, Land & Place, Community & Relationship, etc, this list is chock full of prompts for remembering how to be more complete human animals
2 seminal books for these times
Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
+ Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion
— both by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira of Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures. Great guidebooks for decolonial thinking, and for re-envisioning possibilities of relational, reciprocal culture ... amidst the fall of empire and other terminal errors
Another book for reconsidering the human story
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by Davids Graeber & Wengrow
— A heady but fun romp of a book (or fab audiobook) that turns anthropological theory on its head and suggests that the disastrous arc of history we’re currently on is not the inevitability of evolution, nor even necessarily the linear path we’re destined to stay on – and that human imagination (and cultural possibility) is wider and wilder than we often give it credence.
+ Past articles for courting, navigating + savoring winter:
___
✧
In the unmaking,
the unmasking
We are undone
to be remade
Slowly fashioned
of starlight and snow
✧❅✵❅✧
*For a deeper dive into this question (and why tending beauty and joy is important even amidst the sorrows of this time), visit my friend Ari Honovar’s recent post, How is Your Heart? — “What has hardened it lately? And what might soften it without turning away? What grief are you holding? And what practices are helping you stay human in the face of it? What else is it carrying? And what does it need to stay open without breaking?”
Yes! I also enjoyed the collapse-aware list of things to do, and found both books to be captivating🙏🏽