#9 A Little Bit of A LOT
October
This is ALBOAL #9 - a little bit of A LOT. It’s a little bit of A LOT of things: an update on life, a small taste, short notes, bullet points, and something curated by moi. I collect things I feel are worth sharing. I hope that for the people who are subscribed to my newsletter, there is something for everyone. This is a monthly, sometimes more newsletter if I have other pieces of writing to share. If you benefit from my writing, I’d love the support of you becoming a paid subscriber or a free one. Sharing my newsletter with others is another way to support my work. You can click on the button below to share.
It brings me so much joy to share a monthly collection of things I love as a newsletter and write sporadic essays for you to read. Thank you for being here!
Picture of our new place in the moonlight and Cheddar waiting in the car to move into her new abode, unsure, a little freaked, but that subsided quickly.
Ange Thoughts + Life
Those who take the time to read my monthly newsletter and the rumblings in my mind may have noticed that I missed getting something out to you in September. I try each month to write for the people with a paid subscription (thank you to those ten humans. I don't have a huge following here, but it keeps me going with my writing even when I want to give up). I haven't been writing much lately, so it felt good to write October's ALBOAL.
I had five whirlwind days in Ontario for my cousin's wedding and a quick family visit at the beginning of September, then went straight into packing our wee abode and moving back here on Vancouver Island. Packing, cleaning, painting, organizing, trying to locate things in boxes, finding their new place, and working in between—I'm exhausted and haven't been feeling well. My migraines have worsened these past few months, and my body pain is flaring. And although the last three days have been a bit better, my energy is still low. I may have some underlying health conditions that come and go that haven't been named. All I know is that it sucks. It's one of the many reasons I break from social media, start to slow down and tune in to patch some energy leaks while also focusing on the course I am currently taking, Somatic Embodiment & Regulation Strategies. I love learning from teachers I feel in alignment with. It is a profoundly nourishing way to learn. I am loving Linda Thai's course.
#1
Millions of Grief Wells &
Reflections on the social media fuck storm
The horror of what happened in Israel is etched into my mind. Innocent lives were lost. Grieving families forever changed. I have deep empathy and respect for Jewish people. The level of trauma endured in the present day, generational trauma, the increased need for hypervigilance, and the feeling of being unsafe are unfathomable. I won't pretend to be an expert on any atrocity.
What I see is mountains of grief.
What is happening now and for decades, these attacks on the people in Gaza and the wrath of hatred besowed on the Palestine people is beyond words. The treatment of Palestine people in such an oppressive and brutal way seems to be ignored by most Westerners. They have been shouting for their right to live and to be heard for so long, and no one cared, and some still don't. People are losing their jobs for standing up for Palestinian lives, and that tells me all I need to know.
What I see is mountains of grief.
While we are on the subject of atrocities, you may not have heard about what is happening in Congo. How about Sudan?
What I see is mountains of grief.
Ukraine, the Maui fire, and COVID killing millions, the hits will keep hitting, and we continue living. I broke my social media break to share with my 50k followers between two accounts on Instagram stories that I would not be centering my feelings, thoughts, or grief at this time. If we are decent human beings, we shouldn't have to perform armchair activism to be in solidarity with people grieving and fleeing for their lives. I also said I wouldn't be recycling talking points to ensure that I am not called out for being silent or complicit on social media, to check a box, or to "soothe" my nervous system by appeasing others. I know myself enough not to allow someone to shame me into performative activism. I also said if people follow me, they already know how much I care for people grieving profound losses. I also noted that we don't need to dehumanize one another and fling our trauma like shit (like I used to) to off-gas the pain if it's not directly affecting you. Screaming at each other on social media from the comfort of our homes in North America, please.
Social media has been a vile place for many at this time. Yet, the majority of people are empathetic; they are calling for a ceasefire, demanding the hostages be released, and they are caring for the people who are affected. They are donating and listening. Many people are in a trauma response and feeling the collective grief and the traumas haunting their insides. That is enough to make you freeze. People care about others dying, period.
Social media is a place to gain information. It's also a place to rage over disinformation and spread it to others.
As someone who writes about grief almost daily, it feels like the commodification of someone else's suffering to be writing about their acute lived pain. To share my opinions on something other than my lane is another tangent I won't go on here. I understand that people think the opposite of that. It's okay to be different in how we show up. I can't find my copy of Angela Y Davis's book, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, And The Foundations Of A Movement, but I need to reread it.
Kimberly Ann Johnson is someone I respect, which is saying a lot because it’s hard to find people who are grounded in their integrity at these times. She said this in one of her latest newsletters, and I felt it.
If at this moment, you are safe, and you know it, run your actions through the filter of whether those actions are honoring both your ancestors and the generations to come. This doesn't mean handwringing. This doesn't mean self-castigation. This means getting and remaining connected to a deep undercurrent of what is generative and what builds culture.
she also pointed out in her email this, which is exactly where I am at too.
This is not an All Lives Matter email.
One of the things that I have to contribute to a different future is to write about what I see. I call people's attention in a direction I feel is important. I read your responses, and of course you are more than welcome to have them. But you're not going to shame me into "taking sides" or using borrowed rhetoric from other social movements and applying it to this situation.
I am pretty clear what my lane is. I know where my expertise and study and life experience lies. I have a degree in Social Policy and African-American studies, so earlier in the pandemic I was qualified to talk about race in America- 25 years of reading and deep inquiry. I do not have that time in, or lived experience with the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Therefore my job is to be a safe haven to my people.
Speaking up or posting on social media can be one aspect of acting in solidarity, but it's not the only way. Shaming people if they do not speak, post or share their thoughts should come with some nuance with a side of trauma-informed understanding. It usually doesn't mobilize people into action to shame the shit out of them, nor does it consider people's stress response. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. I am guilty of acting this way to others, demanding them to speak out now. But isn't that the crux of fundamentalism? "Act like this, or you're out." This is a nod to Clementine Morrigan for being such a potent teacher. If I hear one more person say that she is problematic, lord. I have learned so much from her ability to hold many moving parts and all the nuances. I also appreciate her input on Palestine liberation, which you can read here and here.
I also understand that it can be infuriating to watch people in positions of power and status stay silent or silence others. And we can’t forget the spiritual bypassers and those only out for their bottom line. Still, that differs from Barbra Sue, who sells pottery with 1k followers, who just got out of a deep depression, and now someone is yelling at her on the internet? The black-and-white thinking about what we believe social justice has to look like can be unrealistic and dehumanizing for those trying to exist, parent, grieve, work, and tend to their sick loved ones. The average person may be already trending water. That may be all they can handle.
Most people have the ability to understand how people do or do not show up online versus how you want them to is a YOU problem, not a THEM problem. We can humanize each other's existence and consider that we often don't know what is happening in people's lives as wars break out across the globe. We should recognize that people have different competencies, mental health and health struggles, traumas and capacities.
I think social media is a way to shift people towards Palestine liberation while also not acting in anti-Semitic ways, to follow activists connected to the front line and listen to their requests of the West. I think it’s essential for many to stand for freedom, move, cry, protest, rage, whatever it is that helps you and people in their community. I also think social media is a fuck storm of disinformation and harmful to people's mental health in heightened times. Being and doing offline seems more potent than ripping people apart in the comment section. My main focus and lane are on those I serve in my community through my massage practice and my writing on grief and loss, where my movement-based work lies in listening to grieving people and creating space for them to be held and heard. The key word is listen.
I deeply care. Most of us do. Most people care when people die in droves, especially when it is children. We all have different parts to play. I pray we all open our eyes and tend to ourselves and each other OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
#2
Art + Artists that make me feel whole again
Ez Naive <3
I can’t recall when I started following Ez on Instagram but I’m so glad I found her art. There is something so potent about her work, I am having a hard time picking a print because I love them all!
Through her art, she is exploring themes of motherhood, sexuality, intersectional feminism & magical realism. She is inspired by raw emotion & nature.
#3
Sama' Abdulhadi
On her Instagram handle there is a link to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
#4
Home - Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
“Conversations about home (at a deportation centre)” in 2009, a piece inspired by a visit she made to the abandoned Somali Embassy in Rome which some young refugees had turned into their home. In an interview, she told the reporter that “The night before she visited, a young Somali had jumped to his death off the roof.” The encounter, she says, opened her eyes to the harsh reality of living as an undocumented refugee in Europe: “I wrote the poem for them, for my family and for anyone who has experienced or lived around grief and trauma in that way.”
#5
#6
Piacere Ears
#6
The Reading Room
Currently Reading:
Strange Bewildering Time By Mark Abley
In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail — a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme, Afghanistan lay at peace, and city streets from Turkey to India teemed with unrest. Within a year, many of the places he visited would become inaccessible to foreign travellers.
Parachute Women By Elizabeth Winder
The true story of the four women who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help shape and curate the image of The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones have long been considered one of the greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time.
At the forefront of the British Invasion and heading up the counterculture movement of the 1960s, the Stones' innovative music and iconic performances defined a generation, and fifty years later, they're still performing to sold-out stadiums around the globe. Yet, as the saying goes, behind every great man is a greater woman, and behind these larger-than-life rockstars were four incredible women whose stories have yet to be fully unpacked.
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World Audible Audiobook By Naomi Klein
What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were similar enough to her own that many people confused her for the other. For a vertiginous moment, she lost her bearings. And then she got interested, in a reality that seems to be warping and doubling like a digital hall of mirrors. It’s happening in our politics as New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers find common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting “the children”).
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World By Cal Newport
Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction.
Strong Female Character By Fern Brady
Scottish comedian Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she'd had loads of boyfriends and is good at eye contact. In this frank and surreal memoir, she delivers a sharp and often hilarious portrait of neurodivergence and living unmasked.After reading about autism in her teens, Fern Brady knew instinctively that she had it—autism explained her sensory issues, her meltdowns, her inability to pick up on social cues—and she told her doctor as much. But it took until she was thirty-four for her to get diagnosed.
Strong Female Character is about the years in between, and the unique combination of sexism and ableism that so often prevents autistic women from getting diagnosed until adulthood. Coming from a working-class Scottish Catholic family, Fern wasn’t exactly poised to receive an open-minded acceptance of her neurodivergence. With the piercing clarity and wit that has put her at the top of the British comedy scene, she now reflects on the ways her undiagnosed autism influenced her youth, from the tree that functioned as her childhood best friend to the psychiatric facility where she ended up when neither her parents nor school knew what to do with her.
#7
Healing Heart
There are no adequate words for those displaced, watching loved ones and friends die violent deaths, scared, feeling unsafe, grieving and traumatized. Those directly affected have families in parts of the world ravished by war, oppression and subjugation or unable to get out. I am not the voice that needs to be at the forefront of this conversation that I know.
What I see is mountains of grief.