Dear ones -

I just wanted to drop you a note in the wake of the US election and the heightened emotions and stress many people are feeling right now.

A reminder:

What you are feeling is ok, and probably a healthy response. To respond as if under threat when you are under threat is good. It's not sustainable. Nor does it do much to create a new world. But for now, feel the feels. Breathe. Hydrate. Get out into Nature. Gather and grieve together. Touch solid things like trees. Gently pet your own chest in a downward motion.

Another reminder:

How we do the thing is as important as doing the thing. Talking about Love when you're in a place of fear or judgement lands as dissonance, not alignment. The Universe responds to our energy. Dissonance will only beget more confusion. Effective change starts with our own alignment. Are we ready and able to embody the world we're wanting to build? If we want peace and abolition, how are we showing up in our conflicts? If we want compassion, how are we bringing that to bear in as many moments as we can?

A song:

I listened to this one yesterday and it might feel good for you, too, in this moment: Help in Hard Times by Carrie Newcomer.

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Finally, a bonus podcast episode:

Last weekend I made a hat. I took a pile of wool fibers and turned them into something functional and beautiful for my head.

And since then, how wool fulls and felts has been popping to mind as a metaphor for relationship and community building. So, in the wake of the US elections, I felt drawn to share some of these musings and go a little deeper into why I believe these ancestral skills practices, alongside more animist and ancestral wisdom and healing traditions, make for a potent store house for our individual and collective humanity.

So which relationships make up the threads in the fabric of you?

Which do you not feel so full without?

Which frictions and differences are actually serving to make you stronger and more resilient? Which are too much and risk tearing or damaging the cloth of you? Which are not enough to encourage the bonding needed for us all to become?

Where can you turn to be reminded of your humanity? How are you passing humanity down to the ones who will come after?

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I’d love to hear.
​(And you can always watch the episode on Spotify or YouTube, if you want to see the hat)

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Here’s to being stronger together. Here’s to staying human and staying alive.

With love,

Kate