🌕 Big Scary Beauty
it’s a full moon in virgo 🌕
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
Some of you who signed up in the past month might be wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into… meditations on systems of oppression using Pali etymology mixed with eclectic collections of links mixed with reflections on clowning? Is this newsletter personal essay or existential deep dive or culture blog? Are these missives going to be long or short reads? Is it serious or is it funny?
The answer is Yes.
If you’re into an eccentric, middle-aged Black woman’s mystical-meets-mundane take on this moment of collective chaos, you are definitely in the right place.
Thank you for being here. How’s everyone feeling?
My current cancer update is doo-doo. The past few weeks have been tedious with scans and tests and appointments (and teaching LOVE CLUB. Such joy!) My wonderful oncologist is carefully plotting treatment plan next steps. I aspire to simply put one foot in front of the other. I read this line recently and it could be a good byline or might be my new tattoo: It is neither something nor nothing.
This will be a shorter than usual post.
The medical data says I am doing “worse” than six months ago. My own lived data tells me I feel better than I have in a few years. I neither want to ignore their clinical information nor dismiss my own experience — balancing this seesaw is also tedious. In the past, I obsessively tracked all the technical details of my illness. I kept binders full of notes and googled every strange sounding diagnostic term. The past few years, I could not be bothered.
I sleep a lot. In my twenties, a friend of mine wrote a song for me called Sleepy Selassie in honor of my exceptional gift of slumber. Sleeping well is probably my greatest talent in life. I’m certain it’s one of the main reasons I’m still alive. That and luck. And managing fear.
Generally, my fear shows up over-stimulated, in the guise of control (whereas my grief arrives down and drowned, as collapse). I know I’m in the grip of fear when I go into hyper planning. Well, if I can use adaptogens or mushrooms or acupuncture or [insert therapy] to increase the [insert positive] response or decrease the [insert negative] response, then…
I spent almost two decades trying to control cancer. But not only cancer. The tightness of control is deeply habituated in me. I believed if I could manage (and mangle) myself in the right ways, that all things would be ordered how I want them to be. I am unlearning control as the primary response to everything that scares me or makes me uncomfortable. I still take good care of myself but with a lot more surrender. Surrender may be my greatest antidote to fear. Surrender requires practice and dedication.
Big scary beautiful is what my wise friend and soul sister, Lindsay said to me earlier this week when I was describing all that’s going on for me right now. By all, again, I do not mean only cancer. Thank goddess. Talk about tedious. There are (and always were) any number of things happening in my life. Cancerish things. Challenging things. Wonderful things. Beautiful things.
Here is my new and improved, self-prescribed “treatment plan”: Sleep. Luck. Surrender. Beauty.
The first two arrive by grace. Surrender and beauty take skill.
In You Belong, I talk about beauty as a capacity. I got this idea from peacebuilder and poet John Paul Lederach who came to studying and writing haiku after experiencing burnout from his international work. He talks about the haiku attitude — a state of mind largely consisting of the capacity “to be touched by beauty.” When I first heard this phrase, I emphasized beauty as the goal. Yet, as I reflected on it, I realized the capacity to be touched is the key. Surrendering to beauty.
Surrender to the mystery of when I get sick (or well) and why. Surrender to not knowing when death will come for me (but certain not one of us is getting out of this alive). Surrender to the big scary beauty of it all.
May we each find our way to the grace and skill we need.
With love
Sebene
P.S. Check out my new partnership with Banyan. They will be hosting practice groups based on my Uncoupling workshop. Learn more & join here.
New Online Groups To Explore Uncoupling from Couple-Dom
Have you also been conditioned by mainstream culture to consider romantic coupledom as the key to experiencing love and fulfilment? Have you felt deficient or wrong for being single, for uncoupling, or for being unhappy in relationship? Come uncouple your mind and explore what personal fulfilment and self-love looks like for you within and without relationships of all kinds. I’ve partnered with Banyan to bring you the first-ever online Uncoupling From Couple-Dom practice groups based on my workshop. Learn More & Join Here.
Blessed to be on this big scary beautiful journey with you! So much healing love - Althea
Thank you for these beautiful words (and treatment plan: sleep, luck, surrender, beauty). A gift!