Incredible piece, my friend!!! Grateful to be in community with you all, lock step. I will keep holding onto that dream I had that Palestine was restored and shining brighter than ever. Dreaming that more trees can be planted, more food can be grown and shared, that we all are in a kinder, more thoughtful place. Maybe I just need to fly around the world with a big blunt strapped to my back so everyone can relax and laugh for starters … ❤️ Thank you for this to remind us all what needs to change. So fortunate to know you. 🫂
I LOVED reading your article Saira. I too have been reflecting on grief and loss. How does one grieve something that didn’t really exist? Those solid, trusting, reliable friendships with people I thought I shared common values with, were not solid, not trustworthy, and not reliable. Clearly our values and belief systems were not in congruence. I had simply imagined that they were. So how does one grieve the imagined?
For a while, I thought it wasn’t a real loss but simply a revelation, the result of a litmus test that I ought to be grateful for revealing itself sooner rather than later. I told myself that I should be relieved that I found out who truly cares for others and who doesn’t. Now I want to rebuild community with those who truly care.
And then I shifted from denying the loss of these “friendships” to realizing that I had connections with these individuals and deep emotional investments. They felt close, loving, nourishing, nurturing even. They held track records of ‘reliable thus far’. They gave and took space, invigorated me through dialogue and proximity. They felt safe. Now I find myself struggling with their absence because they’ve left a void, an empty space that’s now filled with silence. It’s in that silence that I find myself questioning what happened and why. How do I trust myself to make the right decisions of who to let into my life again? Despite what I had imagined who these former friends were as human being with heart, these are real losses, despite the fact that we weren’t on common ground.
I think that I didn’t really know the people I thought I knew. Now I’m going to rebuild community by getting to know people by spending one-on-one time with them.
We’ve all been growing immensely, this past 1.5 year especially. I know that my own thinking has shifted so drastically in being someone who was volunteering as an Indian citizen for the Obama campaign, to feeling relieved when Biden won, to really understanding how the empire operates, recognizing that we don’t live in a democracy, and that we are the T-word empire killing our own and the rest of the world.
I’ve always found bubbles to survive as a Brown queer cis woman first gen immigrant. This last year and a half, I’ve been held by a new bubble of people who are anti-genocide abolitionists unafraid to speak up about genocide.
Thank you. There IS a lot of clarity as to what we want to end but saturating in survival culture doesn’t give room to imagine alternatives. Alternatives get categorized as unrealistic cutting off the creative process. Part of creating what we are FEELING is impossible is being willing to create shit that doesn’t work, doesn’t work as well as we thought, could be improved but we can only see that if we are IN THE PROCESS. That’s the creation process. Too many need to see the “end” to have hope.
Because of my age, nearing 62, I see the process and the time Life had to take with me and is STILL taking with my own evolutionary path. All of this is SPIRITUAL work. Those who lean purely in the political, the economical, the social, the intellectual are missing the link that binds EVERYTHING. Spiritual work, personally, that drives collective change.
Thanks for the reminder. It's sprouting now everywhere, just like the weeds in all the cracked roads, weeds rooted in to the land below, in all her vastness and depth and memory. But it takes the right tone to click in. This little newsletter does, like the fruit blossom scent I'm virtually drowning these past few nights. Perfume and stars. This heped me to re-realise that the burnout fatigue is from decades and decades of working with the ideas and practices of new worlds, and old lessons. But that the path was, mostly on faith, because it was never so unmasked, so brazen and grinning. That faith was part of the burn as well as the joy. So now, now. Here it is, and what we worked on is needed and recognised, from permaculture to Villaging to language. But so tired, and the energy required now is higher, and the need of those around us even more... I have no resolution or real.point to writing this. Only, I guess, how to join the get togethers? Respect heaps the work you're doing.
100% this! Such a beautiful piece, Saira!
Incredible piece, my friend!!! Grateful to be in community with you all, lock step. I will keep holding onto that dream I had that Palestine was restored and shining brighter than ever. Dreaming that more trees can be planted, more food can be grown and shared, that we all are in a kinder, more thoughtful place. Maybe I just need to fly around the world with a big blunt strapped to my back so everyone can relax and laugh for starters … ❤️ Thank you for this to remind us all what needs to change. So fortunate to know you. 🫂
community, YES.
I LOVED reading your article Saira. I too have been reflecting on grief and loss. How does one grieve something that didn’t really exist? Those solid, trusting, reliable friendships with people I thought I shared common values with, were not solid, not trustworthy, and not reliable. Clearly our values and belief systems were not in congruence. I had simply imagined that they were. So how does one grieve the imagined?
For a while, I thought it wasn’t a real loss but simply a revelation, the result of a litmus test that I ought to be grateful for revealing itself sooner rather than later. I told myself that I should be relieved that I found out who truly cares for others and who doesn’t. Now I want to rebuild community with those who truly care.
And then I shifted from denying the loss of these “friendships” to realizing that I had connections with these individuals and deep emotional investments. They felt close, loving, nourishing, nurturing even. They held track records of ‘reliable thus far’. They gave and took space, invigorated me through dialogue and proximity. They felt safe. Now I find myself struggling with their absence because they’ve left a void, an empty space that’s now filled with silence. It’s in that silence that I find myself questioning what happened and why. How do I trust myself to make the right decisions of who to let into my life again? Despite what I had imagined who these former friends were as human being with heart, these are real losses, despite the fact that we weren’t on common ground.
I think that I didn’t really know the people I thought I knew. Now I’m going to rebuild community by getting to know people by spending one-on-one time with them.
We’ve all been growing immensely, this past 1.5 year especially. I know that my own thinking has shifted so drastically in being someone who was volunteering as an Indian citizen for the Obama campaign, to feeling relieved when Biden won, to really understanding how the empire operates, recognizing that we don’t live in a democracy, and that we are the T-word empire killing our own and the rest of the world.
I’ve always found bubbles to survive as a Brown queer cis woman first gen immigrant. This last year and a half, I’ve been held by a new bubble of people who are anti-genocide abolitionists unafraid to speak up about genocide.
Fuck yeah. All of this. ❤️🔥 The only way.
❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
YES!!!!! I'm here for it. Let's goooooooo 🔥
Thank you. There IS a lot of clarity as to what we want to end but saturating in survival culture doesn’t give room to imagine alternatives. Alternatives get categorized as unrealistic cutting off the creative process. Part of creating what we are FEELING is impossible is being willing to create shit that doesn’t work, doesn’t work as well as we thought, could be improved but we can only see that if we are IN THE PROCESS. That’s the creation process. Too many need to see the “end” to have hope.
Because of my age, nearing 62, I see the process and the time Life had to take with me and is STILL taking with my own evolutionary path. All of this is SPIRITUAL work. Those who lean purely in the political, the economical, the social, the intellectual are missing the link that binds EVERYTHING. Spiritual work, personally, that drives collective change.
Thanks for the reminder. It's sprouting now everywhere, just like the weeds in all the cracked roads, weeds rooted in to the land below, in all her vastness and depth and memory. But it takes the right tone to click in. This little newsletter does, like the fruit blossom scent I'm virtually drowning these past few nights. Perfume and stars. This heped me to re-realise that the burnout fatigue is from decades and decades of working with the ideas and practices of new worlds, and old lessons. But that the path was, mostly on faith, because it was never so unmasked, so brazen and grinning. That faith was part of the burn as well as the joy. So now, now. Here it is, and what we worked on is needed and recognised, from permaculture to Villaging to language. But so tired, and the energy required now is higher, and the need of those around us even more... I have no resolution or real.point to writing this. Only, I guess, how to join the get togethers? Respect heaps the work you're doing.
Beautiful and loving piece. A message we all need. I definitely needed it today. 🖤 thank you
I love this!! Reminds me of what Karl Dunn is writing over at Undividing, he talks about a lot of the same things ❤️