“For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches —Audre Lorde
This week we had to feel it all. Grief, rage, sorrow, fear, crisis. Some relationships didn't survive this week, some fault lines opened that were too wide to overcome.
Our feelings were not meant to survive, but they did, and though they drag us through the underworld they are also seeds.
As Alexis Pauline Gumbs reminds us in the forward to Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies (currently available as free ebook):
(W)hat ultimately brought the plantation system down, according to the colonizers themselves, was how the idea that there were formerly enslaved people somewhere practicing freedom made captive plantation workers ungovernable.
The idea that somewhere people were free made captives ungovernable. Freedom can set us free. We can feel it and refuse to let it go. It's a spell.
And so we'll be ungovernable. Unmanageable, a force of nature, a fury, a rising tide, a thorn in their side, until we are free. So mote it be.
We will disrupt fascist death machines in courtrooms, in code, in policy, on the street, in communes, classrooms, chatrooms, and kitchens. We'll resist with poetry and song because we feel it all, and because people everywhere just got to be free.
This week your prescription is to use your cunning to imagine, enact, and embody the idea of freedom, for you. Start there. Claim your freedom, then amplify.
And listen, we know it's shitty to have to be resilient again. We're sick and tired, and tired of being scared and sick.
Still, please accept this epistle as a shrieking owl calling out to the fang-toothed life force in you that knows how to reach for the grassroots, find kin, and carry on again for the sake of all that is.
May our wonder outmatch our wounds. May our listening reach back so far it generates a future we will only recognize when we return to it. - Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Practicing New Worlds.
In wonder and rage, hope and hunger.
BFB.
Invitations
Book Love Club - YA Witches + What They Can Teach Us
Sunday, 17 Nov 1:00 – 2:00 PM EST
Hosted by Risa: "Ok, it feels like we need to be cosy together and also call in examples of of wild bravery. Please bring books (or movies) with teen witches or kid witches, and one example of what that character gives you or can teach us. Let's gather story seeds of confronting overwhelming odds and dark forces and together plant them in the amplifying sun of Sunday."
Embodiment Circle: Tending to Grief and Anger in Embodied Ways
Sunday, 17 Nov, 2:00 – 3:30 PM EST
Hosted by Lise: "In this post-election tending circle we will focus on connecting with and tending to our bodies and everything they are holding at this time of uncertainty and overwhelm. The circle is meant as a resource for those here who wish to process their emotions and felt experience in body-oriented ways.
The circle is centered around moving our focus from our mind, thoughts, and words and into our body and felt experience. We will explore how to tap into, honour, witness, and tend to our grief and anger about the current state of affairs, in embodied ways through slow and simple guided embodiment and movement practices.
There will be space for sharing and witnessing. This circle is a gentle and trauma-informed space."
Business Mastermind Group Support
Tuesday, 19 Nov, 6:30 – 7:30 PM EST
Hosted by Holly: "Whether you already have an established business or you're contemplating creating one, this group is a welcome place for you to get support and support others as well."
Witch and Stitch
Sunday, 24 Nov, 1:00 – 2:30 PM EST
Hosted by Risa: "An open circle for crafting and yapping together. Take crafting in the widest possible sense: bring your mending or your art practice, or come to talk about spellwork, or bring your divination tools and offer a reading. Or just come to hang out! I just feel like I want to host a cozy Sunday circle for new and old witch friends to pull their threads, remember we're not alone, and bitch about the world as needed."
✨
Here at the end with Hope in the Dark again (which is also available as a free ebook right now via Haymarket Books.)
“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power
Let's nurture our imaginations together, for the sake of the strange sidelong path and all that's still possible.
Love you.
oxoA+R
PS. The Missing Witches shop has ornaments now. If you're in a position to support this project and hang a little magic on your tree, then Blessed Fucking Be!
