🌕 Here Is Enough
it's a full moon in aquarius 🌕
Happy Full Moon! 🌕 Halfway through the monthly lunar cycle, this phase supports generating & harvesting. The Moon is Earth’s celestial anchor in a vast and mysterious cosmos. Honoring lunar phases reminds us to feel our connection to nature’s rhythms & cycles. Welcome to this moonly missive…
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
When I was shopping the proposal for You Belong, there was one imprint I dreamed of, though it felt like a long shot. As some of you may know, you rarely hear back from most publishers, so I was delighted when an editor from this press not only wrote, but also mentioned they were familiar with my work. In their very kind rejection letter, they used a term I’d never heard, explaining that they did not publish prescriptive nonfiction. It’s a fancy way of saying self-help. Years later, when I presented at the Miami Book Fair (the second largest book fair in the U.S.), I was the only self-help book on the program (you can read all about my subsequent imposter syndrome here). If you still believe in genre, self-help is the least respected. Yet in the end, I prefer the specificity of self-help over the generalizing of prescriptive nonfiction.
All that to say, I never mean to tell anyone how it is—only how it is for me.
This will be a short missive. I had a completely different post planned for today—one exploring connections to home, land, imagined homelands, and land back (hence the above collage)… all for another time. This past week I’ve felt foggy and run down, and I couldn’t tell whether it was emotional, physical, or both. I attributed it to the allergic response I’m having to cement dust in my apartment because of pointing they’re doing on my building, to the doomsday energy of global fires & storms (actual and metaphorical), to gut-biome-destroying prophylactic antibiotics (which given all my recent-ish infections, I’ll likely be on for the rest of my life), to dairy I had no business eating, and, especially, to my feelings about what I thought would be impending radiation.
Turns out, I have a head cold.
How are you doing? It’s almost August? I hope you’re allowing whatever feelings come your way about the current state of life (inner and outer). I appreciate you being here and all of your kind messages since my last essay. Did you catch the “thought would be impending radiation” earlier? As you may know, I was 99% sure I’d be starting new treatment soon. Well, the inoperable lung tumor—which had more than tripled in size in less than six months (my many other tumors are pretty stable) and which a biopsy had shown as malignant? That tumor stopped growing. It’s also no longer showing much cancerous activity. I KNOW!! Or, rather, I don’t know (wtf is happening)! My hot take:
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” —Meister Eickhart
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Every body is a tiny temple of mystery. My body is, as my friend Elizabeth said, a weird miracle (I had been calling it just weird). And, like each of our mysterious tiny temples, mine is destined for illness, aging, and death. It’s hard to admit that I’m still recovering from last year’s pain + debilitation debacle, but I have not felt all that mentally sharp or physically energized in a while. Also, I make a lot of mistakes. For last week’s First Quarter Moon, I initially titled the meditation “Already Home.” But after drafting it, I realized it should be called “Here Is Enough.” However, when I scheduled the newsletter, I neglected to change the name, so what I say in the recording doesn’t match the words at the top.
Here Is Enough suits today’s Full Moon post.
I’ve mentioned before that, for a number of years, my BFF Naomi worked for the City of Santa Monica’s Wellbeing Project (now defunded/defunct). She once explained to me the distinction they made between wellness and wellbeing. Wellness focuses primarily on physical health, while wellbeing encompasses a holistic alignment that isn’t contingent on our bodies being perfect—or even pain-free. I do not enjoy feeling unwell, and I don’t imagine you do either. But the wellness industrial complex would have us believe that physical wellness is a goal that can be completely optimized. This suits a society requiring our near-constant attention for the purposes of distraction and diversion. If we continually feel both lack and fear, we will maniacally produce to consume. And ignore the broligarchs adding AI jet fuel to our blazing planet. As evidence, this YouTube short with Jia Tolentino about plastic surgery (“everyone is hot and nothing is erotic”) featuring a clip of a 14-year-old girl on TikTok demonstrating the anti-aging beauty regimen she started at 12.
I almost didn’t send an essay today. I thought I did not have enough to say. Then I remembered this recent mini-episode from Prentis Hemphill on how “burnout is not only the result of doing too much, but often from doing too little.”
Here is enough is not a destination. Here is enough is an invitation.
Here, typing this up on my laptop the morning of the Full Moon, is enough. Here, on the sofa with tissues strewn around me, is enough. Here, angry that the Substack Team continues to platform Andrew Tate (and saying so out loud), is enough.1 Here, enjoying the warm spices of my tea, is enough. Here, having creative container excitement about Carolyn Yoo’s upcoming Zine Lab and Kening Zhu’s Labyrinth Library, is enough. Here, feeling ChaCha at my feet, is enough. Here, sensing this breath… and this one, is enough.
May you cultivate well-being wherever here is for you.
With love,
Sebene
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Meditation Party: Reckless Conviviality With Mindfulness Superfriends
This is one of my favorite events of the year. I love the chemistry between the 3 of us (which tbh is mostly Jeff and I making fun of Dan plus me constantly keeping all of us on track—thus playing straight man to two hetero white guys). It’s a weekend of laughter and tenderness and wisdom and dancing. Who said waking up has to be serious? October 16–18th at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Scholarships available. More info here.
First time commenting here. I have been moved, inspired and grateful for your writing and sharing for several years now, since the Kalyana Mitta group I facilitate read You Belong in 2023 (our second read, after Kate Johnson's Radical Friendship). I just want to say, I would never have categorized You Belong as "self help," though if one looks at that phrase literally rather than as a label for a shelf in a bookstore, certainly the book encourages us to find our own "help" within ourselves, as we re-understand the dharma through a lens of embodiment and belonging. Here's a passage we all loved and came back to again and again:
P.160 "Although we are not one, we are not separate. And although we are not separate, we are not the same. If we believe the delusion of separation, we will succumb to narratives of domination. And yet if we insist all of us are the same, we can never understand the ways this delusion affects us differently. Depending on where we are positioned in the concentric circles, we might not see clearly what is occurring for others. Many of us are taught to not love ourselves, to not belong to ourselves. We are taught to abandon the margins for the center.. in order to gain entry. .. But whether we hate the shape of our nose or the shape of our body, strive to be .. perfect or .. productive, reject our culture or reject the margins, we still belong."
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
With much love and care and hope for wellbeing for all of us,
Holly
Thank you sis for all your news -- blessed be!! "HERE" is absolutely enough. Much metta! 🌕💜🪻