heavy hearts gather here

a place for you to lay down your grief at the start of this week

a print by Elli Zogia and one of the most precious gifts that i have received this year. it came at the most aligned time and unblocked a dam of grief that i couldn’t access prior which was sat right on my solar plexus. the power of art and the power of being seen combined, freed me from my hardest mental period this year. given to me by an earth angel i am so grateful to do life with.x

come and rest here a while.

whatever time of day it is when you read this, just take a moment to pause and breathe here and know that you’re not alone.

give yourself a few minutes of the day or night here, where there is absolutely no pretending.

as you read these words, take an exhale knowing that you are fully encouraged to let your mask(s) fall and be with all that is with you in this moment.

because our bodies know they are being forced to live in a world that has not only ignored but allowed, the most horrific October to October in living memory, for many of us.

they know they are being stuffed and contorted into shapes to keep up the most insane facade, forcing us to somehow function and set aside a tumultuous grief in a time where so many of us, hundreds of millions if not billions of us, are bearing fresh heartache daily.
the live streamed genocide in Palestine is one thing to bear, the lack of live streams from other genocides in Sudan and Kashmir and Haiti and Congo is another. the devastation of climate collapse world over from hurricane milton to the floods in Nepal, to the US election set against the backdrop of the genocide they are funding (and exhausting e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. world over), to our own countries, our personal lives, to oppressive systems -

and my god don’t we need a place to lay this all down? you are so welcome to lay it down here.

how are you doing in this month? what is your body remembering? what is it protecting you from? are you present, are you numb? what is your grief saying / screaming / wailing?

when i said there was no right time to start a Substack, i did so as i was leaving the country for the best part of this month; staying in remote places without internet connection and others with patchy connection at best.

i happen to be in the same place i was last October, alongside the repeat October eclipse in Libra that we also had last year, which is/was bringing up similar themes.
i can’t remember a year before this one where i have followed every single day of the year around the sun, like i have for this one. with a global community doing the same [even when it feels desperately lonely, we aren’t alone] witnessing the most horrific things that many of us have ever seen, in real time.

a year on i have an unbearable. searing amount of grief, rage and heartache that is both new and ancient, that i feel as though i may carry forever, and also some kind of birds eye view clarity as to what this year has meant for us as a collective as well as on an individual level. and i think that’s what has made me write this.

Greek waters in general are my solace but this bay holds a deeply divine feminine energy that has been my constant for the past 6 years

this time last year, i stood before the ocean waters of my favourite bay in the world; my heart on fire and my soul screaming at what i had newly witnessed. i ran into the water without flinching at any perceived cold, begging for mama wata to make it stop, asking why, over and over, this was happening; why the universe wasn’t doing anything to end it now, sooner, yesterday.

and her reply was consistent and loud and clear even then; that the universe did send someone to make it stop, many someones in fact; all of us on earth right now.
and she went on to say that not only were we all sent, but that it was ONLY us, that could make this stop. that this was a human matter, happening in the human realm; it was only for humans to intervene in this.

i knew the truth of it instantly, yet still i ran into the ocean every day last October asking, begging, crying for it to end now, end now, end now and since then, i have continued to thrash around with it for the best part of the year. not because i don’t believe it or don’t want it to be true, but that i couldn’t believe that despite so many of us doing what we can to make this stop, it’s still happening, and even more devastatingly, spreading.

this year i have returned to those same waters. the first time i stepped foot in her bay she was calm and patient, and so was i. there was a welcome silence between us as she waited for me to speak first. i floated on her for a while staring up at the same cerulean blue skies that were/are above the not too distant Palestine. when i closed my eyes we both spoke at the same time; me saying thank you and her saying you are held here.

she listened whilst i reflected that nothing from this past year will ever be erased from our collective being; nothing.
they will exist not only through our living memories and epigenetics, as well as the fact that everything that happens in the universe is recorded forever. but also in how connected our past and future is - isn’t this true of the whole world’s history? are we not being faced with ourselves as a species right now? the connections all the more glaring between western imperialism, colonialism and slavery as our most recent?
so many of our ancestors lived and died through much of the same evil, waste of life bullshit. so much of this is unresolved business continuing in cycles, the unrest growing louder no matter how many attempts are made to erase whole existences and cultures and peoples.
our collective existence itself in this moment is to ramp up the unravelling and unveiling, to intervene and resist, to revolt and rise in our time on earth in ways that haven’t been seen before - or perhaps more accurately, have been purposefully buried. the wider reason all of us are here, at this current time.
do you see it in all of us? do you see it for you too?

many might have known this for decades but this most recent chapter has made it perhaps the most undeniable, in the most visceral of ways.
it has and is causing people daily, to reevaluate everything on every level. the very things that are ultimately needed for the rest of our lives and the generations of those after us, to undo and reset what our species has done to the collective body.

our ways have led us to a path that is unrecognisable to the rest of life on earth; humans have become so separate from that which they/we belong to and those of us that are feeling this, are part of the ones who are committed to this shift whether we realise it yet or not. something i heard this month on the Chani app was that we are “working to restore the soul of the earth in these times”, and nothing has made more sense to me this year than that.

everything has changed from last October to this October. the level of mass awakening across the world, as well as the deepening of our understanding of the inextricable connection we have to one another has made a shift as deep as the devastation and atrocities have. and so we have a choice to reckon with as we move forward into another year with no end in sight; to keep on as we have or to move toward alternative ways to escalate, to free the people of Palestine, Sudan, Kashmir, Iran, Afghanistan - all oppressed peoples - and restore the soul of earth.

as despairing as it might feel, we haven’t come this far to only come this far. our hearts may never recover from this, but there is breath in our body no? and there is still life in all of the places that are experiencing this hell on earth. so we enter this second year with all that we have understood, all that we have witnessed, all that we have learnt about our current systems, political parties, what they have and haven’t been moved by and plan accordingly.

and in the mean time we lay down our heavy hearts together, so that the weight of them alone doesn’t stop us altogether. i hope to see you join mine here.

with love always. tell me how you are navigating this october x

click through this link for Elli’s print combined with words by Margeaux Feldman for extra medicine. i hope it might do for you what it has for me x