🎧 Listen to the Essay and/or Meditation 🎧
Why, yes, those are 2 separate audio links – 1 below, 1 above. || My reading of this essay is right before the opening Hi friends. 👇🏾 || A guided meditation is at the top of this email. 👆🏾 || An archive of meditations lives here.
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends,
Thank you for being here and for your patience. I know it’s been forever. How are you? Yes, that’s a loaded question given the current global mayhem. What if you allow yourself this one moment to pause and take a deep breath. No, really. I mean it. Feel an entire inhale and exhale. Again please…
How are you doing right now? I’m doing better than when you heard from me last. The magnolia tree catty–corner from my window is blooming, and I’ve missed writing at this desk. I’ve missed you.
Did you notice I renamed this newsletter from Ancestors to Elements to remind me to love? As only a few might remember, the latter was the url of my very first website (almost fifteen years ago!). As metaphors, ancestors and elements remain powerful touchstones for the paradox that we are not the same (ancestors) and we are not separate (elements). Both ideas will continue to shape my writing and teaching. But since January 20th, I’ve been pondering what is uniquely mine to do (and how to do it). Witnessing the genuine fuckery all around us, perhaps you too constantly ask yourself, “How can I best support personal & collective liberation in these wild times?” Whenever I listen deeply, I hear the response: love. Do you hear that too?
Actually, it must be love that animates my relationship to elements and ancestors, helping to loosen any rational defenses I still hold against the truth that paradoxes are portals, that this world contains magic, that all life is holy. Love heals my wounds of belonging, allowing me to embrace the inherent mystery of my own and every life. I’ve learned to love what my friend Maud1 calls ancestor trouble, and then extend any forgiveness to those who are living—including me. I practice loving the elements in every atom of reality within and around me: fingers on this keyboard, moisture in the air, sunlight shining, slow steady breaths, the click click of typing—all of it distinct yet divinely connected… by love?
The other day, I was reading a post by the wonderful Josie George and this sentence floored me: “You can’t expect anyone to save a world they’re not in love with.” 🥺 I’ve written before about “trust life” (the mantra turned tattoo I borrowed from my buddy La). After reading Josie’s insight, I recognize that it can be difficult to adopt trust life if I do not embody another directive: love life (maybe my next tattoo). remind me to love will explore just this: the inner work of loving ourselves, each other, our Earth, our cosmos, and life itself so we can imbue our outer work with sacredness & devotion, with compassion & wisdom, with joy & beauty. Also, jokes. Expect the same soulful, nerdy, quirky ramblings sent to your inbox and timed exactly to lunar phases—now with even more love!
If you’re a new subscriber, Welcome! I’ve been quiet during this chaos called 2025 because of an unexpected illness vortex (not entirely unheard of for me, but it’s been a while). After a week long hospitalization in December for a cancer–adjacent infection, I’ve spent the last 3+ months often in pain and disability. All this made more challenging by various setbacks in healing. My 5th floor apartment features many sunlit windows—a lovely place to spend a cold winter of limited mobility—and it’s also felt like a pain cave in the sky. Though the physical agony is lessening, I cry almost every single day. Most new year plans got thrown out. Not the start to 2025 I envisioned. The surprisingly good news: despite all this medical nonsense, my tumor markers continue to go down. 🤷🏾♀️
This period would have been impossible to navigate without the support of incredible friends. Special shoutouts to the lesbians and moms who offer me such tender care. And thank you to all of you who sent me messages and metta and more. I can’t not tear up every time I think of how much love I receive. Honestly, I can’t not weep about many things these days. A current spiritual practice of mine: allow myself to cry a teeny bit and/or sob uncontrollably whenever I fucking feel like it. Having grown up with the message that any tears were to be sucked right back into my eyeballs or else, I then predictably chose romantic partners who made it clear they could not deal with me crying (obviously because they were bullied by the culture into not being crybabies). I want to make a Proud To Be An Old Crybaby t–shirt.
These months have made me a graduate student of physical pain and how it directs all my attention to, well, moi. When discomfort is constant, there is little space for consideration of anything but “my pain” (or, rather, how to get rid of it). When I mentioned this to my friend Aoife, a doctor, she pointed out that this self–centeredness is completely understandable—my body is trying to protect itself by signaling me to pay attention only to it.
Pain is challenging enough. Then my mind gets involved and the real trouble begins. It requires all my skills of awareness to not constantly couple physical pain with mental and emotional additives of frustration and fear, dejection and despair: Why is this happening, when will it end, will it ever end, what am I doing wrong? That final question reveals my particular inclination towards self-blame and shame around pain—that this is somehow my fault. Whenever my mood dips with the ache of muscle spasms or when tears pool after a particularly sharp nerve activation, I remind myself that both physical pain and emotional pain are processed in the same part of the brain. Difficult physical sensations and challenging emotions naturally draw my protective attention and both benefit from my loving care whether a deep breath or the third Advil dose of the day, soothing touch from my own hands or acupuncture.
Underneath the question why this is happening is the belief this should not be happening—a belief fueled by the way pain and suffering are disparaged in our society. In You Belong (and many other places), I’ve referenced bell hooks on how our culture regards pain as a negation of worthiness. I went looking for the original article2 and found that, in her next sentence (which I’ve never quoted before), she actually relates this devaluation to spiritual bypassing.
“One of the mighty illusions that is constructed in the dailiness of life in our culture is that all pain is a negation of worthiness, that the real chosen people, the real worthy people, are the people that are most free from pain… We see that denial in a lot of New Age thinking in the rhetoric that connects becoming more wealthy, more happy, and more free from all forms of pain with becoming more spiritual.” — bell hooks
This is not the first time I’ve considered spiritual striving or even how it sneaks into my practice. But I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot, especially as I notice a familiar pattern of impatience connected to my current limitations—an impatience directly linked to the inability to be as active as I presume I should be. For many weeks, I could not do very much. Though I’m logically sure that I will be ok, decades of living in a country that offers no collective safety nets of any substance have shaped me. I, like most of its inhabitants, have internalized the national ideology that work is what makes one worthy. Output rules. A day or two, even a week of rest and recovery from injury or illness feels reasonable. Months of incapacitation elicit panic around my purpose and worth, fears about my resources and future. I did not invent these worries out of thin air. Or, rather, fear of not doing enough is the air we breathe in this country. The lovely Kate Tyson wrote recently about taking a six week sabbatical in India and meeting European travelers who were perplexed as to why that’s not simply called “a vacation.” Touché nos amis. My bestie Peter and his man Paul are traveling on a three month sabbatical because Canada has a self-funded leave policy for government workers. They both teach in Toronto public high schools and they plan leaves of varying lengths every few years. Oh Canada!
On top of the injurious attitudes towards my own pain (that it should not be happening and is my fault), I add the insult that, despite obvious limitations and incapacitation, I should still be doing more. As versed as I am in contemplative practices that encourage being, I am highly conditioned towards doing even when the “doing” is simply loops of planning and critiquing what exactly it is that I think I should be doing. These thought include how I think I need to respond more quickly or more robustly to everything going on “out there.”
Let’s be honest, most of us were already under–resourced and running on fumes. Now we have to deal with moronic, greedy, immature, man-boy robber barons with outsize power wreaking havoc and wrecking lives. My approach right now to everything: adapt. Adapt to any internal and external realities as needed according to my actual capacities. Internal—I need a cane today, therefore, I use a cane today. External—I must protect my energy or these rapid fire changes will be the end of me, therefore, No News Before Noon. [I want to make buttons!] By the time midday rolls around I’ve already meditated, journaled, read, exercised, nourished myself, connected with friends… that is, I’ve grounded myself, replenished my energies and capacities. You know, loving life. And I still stay informed. It just doesn’t get to dictate the majority of my day. This discipline [and it takes discipline—I am tested everyday with the impulse to look at the headlines before 12pm but so far I have not caved!] helps me recognize and organize how I want to direct my inherently limited life force.
I am certain I want to direct the love and trust for life here to this newsletter. I also hear the call to write a second book. At least the pain cave gave me perspective to understand that creation requires spaciousness (which is another reason we are being flooded with crises—so we don’t have space for creativity). If I want to write another book, something’s gotta give. I’ve decided that something is online courses. As sorry as I am to not do so, I won’t be offering any online courses this year and instead will be directing more energy to this space perhaps doing video offerings and/or live Q&A’s (your suggestions are welcome).
I have so much more I could say but I’ll end with saying I’m happy to be back. I’m committed to helping us nurture faith and determination, to grown in love and trust for life.
With love,
Sebene
P.S. I paused payments for these months but paid subscriptions are back on. If you are able to afford a paid subscription, I appreciate the support. Thanks again for being here.
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Maud happened to change the name of her newsletter the same day I changed mine—I adore the new name: Meditations on Kinship.
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