Salt
evaporated sorrow for this earth
With community, I’m reading Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow. We’ve been spending time with what Weller calls the third gate of grief: the Sorrows of the World. The many layered griefs moving through our social, ecological, and political lives and bodies.
Here’s a poem that emerged from sitting with some of that sorrow. It lets me be human inside the inhumanity, and I want to give it breath here with you.
My heart has been callused lately.
Still beating. Still loyal somehow. Yet holding more
than a drop is ever meant to contain.
I focus on deadlines, sharing my work,
savoring chai, and scarfing down jalapeño chips
while in the heavy reverie of Heated Rivalry.
She pulses with ache when witnessing queer love,
she glimmers at kids giggling and a sky illuminated in pinks,
she pendulates between gravity and levity when something so beautiful…
a butterfly, a hummingbird…
can’t be kept, even in sight.
Some days, she makes her demands.
Sadness envelops me for no clear reason.
Sorrow swallows who I think I am.
She wants to be held in a cocoon, or a tomb.
When I bring her to the forest
she weeps puddles that turn into cenotés.
We give space to feel the wounds of our genocides.
She drops beyond economies, into ecologies…
loss of species, languages, cultures, lineages, lovers.
What else is there to do now but fill the cavernous pools
for neon-colored froggies to spelunk again?
Water from these eyes is an offering to the rock
so the only thing left when fire evaporates all else
is salt.
Dear reader, how’s your heart?
Upcoming Offerings
These are some spaces where I’m metabolizing grief and practicing compassion, creativity, and nervous system care in the midst of it all, for myself and those who want to practice together.
Compassion is a political act that resists dehumanization, hate, and numbness. It’s a capacity we can strengthen, especially in hard times. Art, color, and beauty are not luxuries; they are historically rooted practices of survival, resistance, and transformation. This series is a sanctuary so we can stay present, connected and alive together. An early bird rate is available until 2/15, and then sliding scale.
I’ll be facilitating a session at Bioneers this year on Coloring for Compassion and Inter-Being, leveraging the Compassion in Times of Fascism Coloring Book.
I currently have openings for a couple new clients in 1:1 Creative Alchemy sessions. Our work in this space is to help the alchemical body arrive at enough regulation to access its inherent profound, illogical and creative intelligence that’s needed from us right now. Learn more and book a discovery call.
This really captures something profound about collective grief work. The salt metaphor is brillaint because it's not just residue, it's actually preservative and essential. I've been thinking about how my own climate anxiety sometimes feels unproductive, but reading this made me realize grieving these losses properly might be what keeps us from going numb. The image of tears as an offering really shifted somethign for me.
There are so many times your words speak to me, but this vibrates in my bones. My jaw is quivering with ancient pains, and I thank you for speaking to us.