These last two weeks I have been living as a microcosm of whole system collapse. And I’m here today as a weary traveller reporting from the end times, for anyone who is open to hear.
Responsiveness
Years ago, one of my favourite poets, Adrienne Rich, wrote lines that cracked the surface of my mind and let light into my world.
My volume of A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far is grubby with use:
“If you can hear and understand this message
send something back; a burning strand of hair
a still-warm, still-liquid drop of blood
a shell
thickened from being battered year on year
send something back.”
This being heard and receiving something back is such an important part of being human.
I feel very grateful to those of you who responded to my last newsletter, when I wrote about my partner John being taken into hospital, in a critical condition, 12 days ago.
People came out of the woodwork – old friends, people from the past I haven’t heard from for years, people I’ve never met but who found their way to Tribe in Transition.
All sending love. Letting me know you care.
And that means a lot. You made a difference.
It reminded me that relationship is not measured by how often we speak.
Sometimes it reveals itself most clearly when life breaks open.
We discover that we have been carrying one another all along, even when we didn’t know it.
It doesn’t take much to make a difference in someone’s life.
A simple reaching out, a few kind words. A willingness to see, hear and respond.
And yet, I know I don’t always follow through when I feel moved. I put the impulse aside for later and never get back.
When I don’t follow my heart in the moment, time passes and the opportunity to connect slips away.
Kindredness
More and more, when I think about the world I want to be part of, kindness is at the centre.
And the kindness I’m thinking of is not false comfort and easy answers but what my dear friend Woods called kindredness.
A recognition of our shared humanity.
The sense that we are companions on a journey that can be awe-inspiring in its generosity and beauty. And which can also bring us quaking to our knees.
Today, I’m committing to the practice of kindredness.
And for me, kindredness brings together kindness and truth.
I want to speak honestly enough that you might recognise something of your own life in mine.
In such a way that our connectedness is revealed.
And we are reminded of our common humanity.
So that we might have the courage to discover what is real, even when it is uncomfortable.
Again, I know I won’t always succeed.
It is a practice: How to speak truth kindly.
How to be in relationship while being true to self.
Authenticity
I’ve always thought of authenticity as this practice of being true to self while being grounded in interconnectedness.
A commitment to express “me” while also including “you”.
I’ve been very blessed in my life to have had wonderful conversations with many lovely people. Those conversations have been life blood for me.
And there have also been times when I’ve felt like a lone pilgrim trudging across the wilderness, speaking into the void, receiving the icy touch of separation on my skin.
This current rupture in my life, which began with John’s illness, has increased my dedication to growing a community of people who speak truth kindly.
Gathering with the intention of discovering, finding words for, and sharing the truth of our experience, as we travel through the burning grounds towards new ways of living together on Planet Earth, is something I care about deeply. It’s my way. My path.
A Global Community of Caring People
One of the sustaining foundations of my life is a knowing that I am always part of a global community of caring people.
People of all ages, all colours of skin, all belief systems.
People who love the Earth. And who do their best to walk a life-affirming path.
I may have never met you. But I know you’re there. And your existence gives me strength.
And I know we’re here – millions of us, all over the world.
At times, I’ve lived in the thick of community, facing into the challenges of relationship and how we can live our values, here, now, every day.
At other times, like now, I’ve lived a more secluded life.
But my work has always been to invite people into spaces where we can explore our own truth and be seen, heard and received.
And I have always tried to find the words to describe the difficult experiences of being in transition – from the old world, so raucously blasting out its war cries – to the new world built from the quieter whisperings of Soul.
I live from this knowing that the loud and cruel “power-over” world is not the only reality.
My roots are deep within the common ground of kindredness. Not only with humanity but with all life forms.
It is this radical knowing of our interconnectedness that holds me when the stories that once knit my life together no longer work.
When I find myself asking:
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Who am I now?
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What matters?
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What can I trust?
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How do I live when certainty has disappeared?
I remember that change is a constant, uncertainty is fertile and there is always something holding me, if only I can trust it.
Existential Crisis
So here I am again, in the thick of existential crisis, trying to find the words to connect with you.
When John was taken into hospital, I was brought to a standstill, along with him. Cast onto the life-death edge, I turned to sit, face to face, with death again.
Is he going to die – soon?
Will he live on, riddled with disease?
Who will I become in response?
And me, when will I die?
Who will be there with me?
How will I live between now and then?
What choices will I make?
In the initial days of this crisis, I was ungrounded, floating through the bleak landscape of grief and depression.
I didn’t want to speak to anyone or give substance to the litany of misery I was experiencing.
I knew this would pass. And the best way to move through was to sit with it all and hold it all.
I became an island, drawing on the strength of the ocean.
The Unravelling
And then, this week, as the heat intensified, the container that had held my life began to unravel.
The threads had been pulled too tight and could stretch no more.
The old life I had been living and the old identity I had been inhabiting had lost their elasticity, their resilience, their purpose.
Things started to fall apart in the physical realm.
My car failed to start and began to groan loudly.
My website broke down.
The money pot was nearly empty.
The heat was intense.
I thought, this is breakdown.
But I am not breaking down.
I’m strong, resilient, resourceful, connected.
I realized this is not a permanent breakdown. It’s an interruption.
Life is asking something different of me.
The chrysalis and the butterfly are here.
Yet I feel no sense of liberation and lightness.
I am just here.
No longer trying to hold it all together.
Sitting in the unknowing.
Practicing kindredness and truth.
Just here, breathing.
Finding Truth in Uncertainty
I don’t know what will happen next.
I don’t know what shape John’s health will take.
I don’t know what shape my own life is becoming.
But I know the path I will walk.
I will practice kindredness.
Not kindness as politeness.
Not kindness as avoiding difficult truths.
Kindness as kindredness and companionship.
As the way we remain human when certainty has gone.
Seeing each other. Hearing each other. Feeling each other. Responding truthfully to each other.
I will keep creating spaces where people can be seen, heard and received.
If these words meet something in your own experience,
send something back.
With Love,
Rose
