How Do You Call Your Power Back To You?
On alchemizing collective grief and refilling our cup
Dear Reader,
Cut straight across from my underarm line I said as I passed my husband the scissors. I sat straight and still, seated backwards on a dining chair in the middle of the lawn. He’d done this for me before and I trusted him now to get it even. I felt a gnawing necessity to shed some weight, unable to carry it all — the grief of reckoning with what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal world, and the extra inches of hair. Done. I reached back to touch my ends and looked to the wet, intact curls on the grass, drying in the afternoon sun. My eyes grew wide, briefly panicked, mostly amused. It was shorter than we’d both expected. Forgot to account for the bounce back of my curly hair. Dread smeared across his face. I just started laughing hysterically — strangely liberated.
As expressed in my last letter and even more so now, I am still processing the week’s events and therefore very much short on words, big on feelings. Shock, rage, anger, fear and — what I know as a friend from long ago — deep heartbreak sits heavily on my chest. I know I am sharing this house of grief with many of you. It is not an overreaction to care so much for the most vulnerable of us. It’s your humanity showing.
We know that mutual aid and strong ties of community care are the only things to carry us through the hardest times. We’ve seen this exemplified admirably in small communities devastated by climate crisis in recent years and surely we’ve been both the givers and receivers during challenges amongst our more intimate relationships. There is no one idol to lead us to salvation. We are the ones who will take care of us.
As we’re often reminded, the journey on the path toward solution and justice is a marathon not a sprint. Urgency leads to early burnout. Collective care requires organization and everyone finding their lane, resourced with cups full — rather, overflowing so that we may pour into another. As many of us are feeling depleted post defeat, something has been on my mind this week:
When your world is rocked, when things feel like they are spiraling out of control, when you feel at the mercy of something much larger than you alone, when urgency is fueling your anxiety and your heartbreak — what small acts put you back at the the helm of your life? In other words, how do you call your power back to you?
For me, this week it was a literal cutting and shedding of the old to emerge lightened and liberated (and maybe a littler sassier?). Both a symbolic and literal act of claiming control of my own body and self expression.
It’s looked like cleaning my home. Tending to and clearing the energy in the safe space we govern, for myself and my partner and the beloveds we welcome into it.
It’s also looked like resisting the urge to over perform, whether that be exceeding my current capacity within daily social interactions or granting myself patience to move at a slower pace and spaciousness to rest.
It’s letting my Lilith show. The socially unacceptable dark femme — the moody, the angry, the raw, the untamable woman who knows her own strength. This, relating to the above, includes banishing previous tolerances for the intolerable for the sake of niceties, and the bravery to protect what is vulnerable. She bear.
How do you call your power back to you?
Sit in the quiet with eyes closed and trace all of the places and people to whom you’ve given your power away. That one relationship from years ago. That conversation from last week. The figure-head in whom you’ve given too much trust and expectation. Call it back home to you. Pull the threads tethering you to everything else outside of yourself and weave them back into the tapestry that makes you feel whole.
Other things on my list for taking good care of myself this week that might also support you —
Take a walk.
Make soup.
Spend time with animals.
Drink more water.
Keep boundaries around media consumption. Staying informed and organized, yes. The latest He Said? No thanks.
Channel feelings of grief, rage, sadness, fear into creating something. Alchemy at work.
Squeeze the hands (literally and metaphorically) of beloved connections. Check in. Cry or laugh together. Maybe both.
I will close this letter with one last thing. This work that I share with you — this practice of connected living, the art of noticing, slowing down and leaving room to be the receiver of little magic moments, of opening eyes to become experiencers of abundant simple pleasure — is vital in times like these. Being a committed seeker of joy and beauty, training to find it in places where others cannot, is a lifeline when things feel hard. It’s a buoy to keep us afloat while we tow the weight of our grief.
Supportive things from the Hina Luna seasonal shop
For soothing the heart and the nerves
For following the light of your inner lantern
For taking a clear deep breath
For loving on your precious body
For bringing love into the room
