concentric circles of belonging

from embodied solitude to creative expansion

Hey there, muses

what a marvel to be in December

and yesterday, December 1^st, was a new moon, of two new moons this month

And my period started yesterday and when I realized it was the new moon, I just felt like my body in conjunction with the elements of this cosmos had conspired to give me this really great surprise.

It doesn't take much in my world to bring on a whole lot of delight

and yesterday was also the first Sunday of advent for those who follow a Christian liturgical calendar

and here in Massachusetts it feels like legit cold over the past few days;

Thanksgiving Day was wet and wild and I had a premenstrual-ish headache that was flowing and I was working with it throughout the day, and it became such a perfect invitation to do precisely what my body wanted rather than the norm, which would be to indulge in maybe some richer foods than my body really loves and to really stay focused on human interaction throughout the long period of time we spent with family …and the time with family is wonderful, and

I took like a 30 or 40 minute walk in the rain and revisited trees and brambles and stumps and spaces in the yard in Rowley where we lived for several years and which is this beautiful home site of David's clan - really beautiful space - that has many sacred elements for me

and if I hadn't had a headache, I probably would not have taken that time alone, getting wet (but pretty well-geared for the experience)

I'm so grateful for the ways that my body - this embodiment - invites me to participate in life in ways that would not occur to my humble prefrontal cortex, my rational mind.

I am grateful to be in this body that has demands and desires and preferences and perturbances that require attention

and I have not always felt that way about being in my body

so I'm grateful for all the angst and all the confusion, the downright confusion, that have led to the degree of ease and grace and gratitude that I experience on the daily, even when I'm in discomfort

and yesterday I got this beautiful text message from my beloved muse Laura;

we had exchanged messages we were maybe going to do a little latte date yesterday,

and I sent her an audio text that my period had started and it's probably better to just take some solo time

and she responded with a beautiful message about how she would say she was sorry that I was uncomfortable, but she knew that I'm not sorry, so she wasn't going to say sorry

and I felt so validated to have a friend who understands that discomfort and pain are not something that I want someone's pity or sorrow about;

that at least at this moment in time, having someone else interpret my physical experience or my emotional or energetic or psychological or spiritual experience … having someone interpret them according to their experience or place it on a binary of good/bad/oo-I'm-sorry/yay-good-for-you …

It just feels irritating to me to take on others’ interpretations,

and it also makes me aware of the bazillions of times and ways in which I have foisted and layered my interpretation onto the experiences and stories of others, so that's a way in which I want to continue to shift and grow,

is to take full responsibility for the interpretation of my experience for me;

to unhand the interpreting of the experience of others … at most, to posit possibilities, to offer words with curiosity rather than with the voice of authority for them …

I want to be my own authority and to give others the authorship of their own lives.

Two weeks ago, I talked about the shapes of nourishment and belonging that we sometimes find in our lives and the ways in which little gestures can make a huge difference;

and then last week, I talked about anger and the way my body was finally releasing the anger that it had needed to push down in relation to my incarceration/hospitalization experiences that I went through as a result of my bipolar experiences of “mania” and “psychosis” …so many different languages I could use to describe them more fully…

My styes, my anger expression, have been healing very gradually, ohh so slowly, as though they do not want anyone in my life to miss them… and I honor them, I honor them, I am rockin’ the look of the two pink dots to the best of my ability

And today I want to say a few words about shapes, and the phrase “the shapes of belonging” feels important - I think that might be the words that I used a couple weeks ago –

but I've had this conversation with people repeatedly lately, and then I found out, unshockingly, that this is a way of thinking that is within Indigenous circles, and within many traditions, so I was like, Of course, this is not me being original or clever, this is just me re-membering, putting pieces together for myself, that have been around for thousands of years, and I'm sure I've heard them from others.

One concept that I think is really important is the idea of concentric circles.

So, for each of us, and this is my interpretation, I'm not quoting anyone in an Indigenous space or claiming that this is the cosmology or worldview of any particular tradition, this is the way I'm seeing it from my vantage point:

At this time in history I think we're all invited to be central, very much claiming our own space, a singular instantiation of human and divine energy. We are each in some ways very, very alone. I want to shout out my muse Rainer Maria Rilke, the beautiful poet, who speaks so beautifully about the essential nature of solitude, the way in which each of us is very much alone [shout out to Paula Marvelly & the Culturium for this lovely essay on Rilke & solitude];

And then, from my point of view, we have dyads: we have mirroring relationships, where it's you and me facing each other, it's one-to-one, and those dyadic relationships, spaces in which we can look into the eyes of another and say, “Yes, some aspect of you mirrors me.” It's the energy that I invoke each time I have a conversation with an individual on Monday Morning Muse, and I sing to them and right now I'm singing it to myself, but I'm singing it to each of you, like looking in my eyes:

When I look into your eyes, I see everything

Everyone in every story book

‘Cause I love your love and I love your peace and I love your joy

When I sing that song, and it came through me when I was 9 or 10 years old, I feel this little bedrock knowing that even though we're very much each alone and singular, we also can mirror back the cosmos, and when we look into each other's eyes, there can be this knowing, this recognition energy of like,

I am you and you are me and even though our stories might be profoundly different and even if our identities intersect in almost no obvious ways, if we can unencumber ourselves of the layerings of interpretation and life experience that we have, we're going to see that we are the same. We're going to see that little sparkle in the eye.

And of course the dyadic relationship is something that I'm very invested in as a therapist and as someone who just like lives and breathes intimate connection. I am someone who has almost boundless compassion and capacity … compacity?! - that might be my word: when you have immense capacity for being in a connection that is compassionate and that is heartfelt.

And I want to just like shout out all the seasons of depression that I've walked through and all the pain that I have encountered in others that has built this capacity to be like, Yeah, bring it on, I can be with someone who is hurting incredibly, and I also trust the spark of joy and humor and fullness that is also there even when we're walking through the darkest night together.

[let’s review]

So we've got ourselves, sometimes very much alone.

We've got dyads.

Then there's this triad thing, and shout out the Christian tradition that talks about trinitarian energies, and anyone, any parent, any couple who has ever had a baby, they know about the importance of a triad: to have an experience where there is immense love in a dyad and then you bring in a third, and the love somehow like exponentially increases.

I have not had children of my own but I have witnessed this time and time again, and I have had this in other triadic experiences of relationship, where there are complex relational emotional energies that arise, where it's no longer quite as simple as maybe a dyad was, but/and there is beauty flourishing in new ways.

My most recent experiences of this come in my SoulCollage® training and my SoulCollage® cohort, where we have a practice of doing readings of our SoulCollage® cards and we use the triad frequently. You have one person reading, one person who is the scribe, and one person who is the witness. And I could go on and on about theological trinitarian ideas, but there's something about the shape of three that does really matter.

And then we go from there into every other possible number, we have concentric circles in which we can belong. I've got to shout out my Creative Expression Groups at Jeanne Geiger right now, because we started a writers group, Bruce Menin and I, a year and a half ago, and it has had very different numbers in it from one week to the next; these days we tend to have at least five, often as many as like 8 or 9/10/12 people,

and in those spaces, magic happens. I am not joking. We joke about our CEG parties (Creative Expression Group, CEG), but sometimes it feels like a powder keg, where you are astonished by the synchronicities that come into play when you have a circle of people and you have a few people sharing creative expressions - often it's writing, sometimes it's music, often it's art, and sometimes people just speak in the moment what's coming out/what's important for them/what needs to be expressed - and in this space, the ways in which stories mirror each other, the ways in which tiny little details, little shards of story are kind of passed back and forth and someone says something …

I wish that every single one of you muses could visit Creative Expression Group, because it is incredible the ways in which our lives are mirrors, reflections, fractals of each other's lives

And if you don't have a space in your life where you get to encounter a circle of more than just two or three people, I highly encourage you to seek out those spaces, because it's more than magic, it is Holy Spirit energy …and it's magic. It is all of the energies that our human souls crave, and we need each other at this time on the planet.

And one of the magical things about having been alive in this space where we have social media and a lot of times people are just like, It's you and your device, right? Like, a lot of people are very much like notencountering other actual embodiments of life, or if they are, it's like in these little dyadic interactions, or maybe it's in this artificial experience of thinking you're experiencing the world, but what you're really experiencing is the algorithm of a social media “whatever.”

Find yourself in spaces with other bodies. Coffee shops are some of my favorites, because they are very safe for most people, but/and if you are able to find spaces that feel safe enough to articulate and express the truth of who you are and to see others expressing their truth, and to have the experience of witnessing…

Ohh, my beloved muses, this is what the world is craving, and this is what humans have done all along: campfire circles, concentric circles of belonging.

And everything old is new again, at this time in the mid-20s of this century, because we lost so much: we lost so much by diving head first into our devices, and by other factors, like pandemics, that have pulled us away from some of the ways in which we have been connecting and had been connecting.

But this is a sacred season in which we can reclaim connection, and if you feel so led to put in the comments some of the ways you're doing that for yourself, I'd love to hear.

I feel like I have been greedily, gratefully receiving so much from many of you, and most of it doesn't come in the comment sections of Substack, and that's fine, but/and maybe this space - the Substack space - will be a space where there's more connection between those of you who are connecting with me, because some of you would really love each other. And many of you know each other, but many of you don't,

So we'll see how this space will transform in the year to come, because I will be offering more, and I welcome your input and your feedback, and I'm so grateful for each of you.

May you find the shapes and spaces, the concentric circles of belonging that nourish you for this season, that can be a heavy season for many, and that is also a season with changing light, with shifting light;

and even my musers who are in the southern hemisphere of the globe, who are experiencing the last of the expansion of light, and you're about to hit your summer solstice, even while we're in the contraction, moving toward the darkest day, light is changing, whether it be subtle, whether it be dramatic,

and this has been a longer muse than most, thank you to those who have listened; and the light has changed substantially just in the window, I've noticed it changing over these 22 minutes.

Blessings, thank you for being on the journey alongside me, even if you don't listen to the whole thing.