Dear ones -

This email is a check-in, a new podcast episode announcement, as well as an invitation to join the upcoming Sanctuary cohort.

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The Check-In

So… how we doing?

My body has been manifesting symptoms of intense stress for much of this year and, in spite of all the tools I have, it’s only been getting worse. Last month, I stopped sleeping and my digestion shut down for a while.

Thanks to acupuncture and even more shifts in my daily patterns, I seem to be back on track, but even now, it’s still a mitigation process rather than a sense of true, physical thriving (for the moment). I find myself deeply OK and deeply not OK at the same time. Perhaps you can relate?

To be clear: this is not a sign of failure.

Not on my part and not on my body’s part.

I offer that this is an inevitable consequence of our sensitive, human bodies existing in violent systems of exploitation.

The dynamics of election years here in the U.S. seem to follow remarkably similar patterns to dysfunctional parents fighting over custody of the children, not because they actually care about the children, but because they care about the power struggle between themselves. And our bodies are designed to respond to events happening around us.

We also have a collective nervous system. Those used to be more limited in scope - our more immediate families and communities. Now, thanks to technology and global economies, we are attuned, whether consciously or not, to much wider webs of kin. Which means, whether consciously or not, those of us who are sensitive will feel race riots, genocides, natural disasters, epidemics of depression and loneliness…and all kinds of other things.

I say this not as a doomsday prophet but as one who values hearing the sobering truth. We don’t have to like it to find it grounding to hear we aren’t crazy if we feel this way.

I also say this because I believe our deepest spiritual work is not to “transcend” it all, but to bring Heaven to Earth as it were. To see how what’s happening around us is a mirror for mistakes and missteps we continue to perpetuate (mostly unconsciously) because it’s how we’ve been raised to assume life is.

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The Podcast Episode:

And here’s where we start to get into the idea of “shadow work” - the tending to the parts of us labeled “too much”, “too wild” - tending to the soulful parts we’ve been taught to shame and fear and relegate to the edges.

So as the moon gets swallowed by a shadow today, I share with you a podcast episode on shadow work and burnout.

It’s not my most concise (Pisces Sun and Mercury here, so this eclipse is getting me right in the spaceys), but if I waited any longer, it wouldn’t have come to be… so here’s to humanness.

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Shadow Work and Sanctuary, with me:

If you feel like you’re needing to bring some wild pieces back home, back to center, from the edges; you’re welcome to check in with me about 1:1 work. My current webpage for that is being renovated, so responding here to let me know you want some more info or would like to explore if we’re a good fit would work best.

And if you’re wanting a cave-like community space to rest, connect, and explore how things like a shadow across the moon might teach us about being alive and being human; our next cohort of Sanctuary starts at the end of this month and runs through the darkest part of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere.

It’s not a content space - it’s a being space. A space of exploration and caring witnesses. It’s a deeply human space. (And it will have within it the energy of the lands and stories of Scotland as I’ll be back there again for the winter).

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May we each find the safety and support needed to be our most alive selves and to offer that juicy beauty to the world -

Kate