To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair—despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... —Audre Lorde

Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast

Dear Friends,

Here in the Catskills, we had wildfires a few mountain ranges over! It finally rained + snowed at the end of the month…the shorn mountains + bare trees allowing previously hidden contours of the land to re-emerge. The palette is simplifying into its beautiful winter spareness, + the silence of falling snow is a reminder to slow down. I wonder how this time of growing silence + darkness is finding you?

Here’s what I’m up to in the next couple months:

• the new Study Tarot Series cohort beginning in January still has openings!…check out the cohort schedules + what people have said about the experience
• Tarot 101 is back: two dates + times to accommodate your schedule. Attend at no cost when you register for the Study Tarot Series…
• my dear friend Elena could use your help!
• I’m participating in this US Consumer Strike 4 Palestine: No non-essential corporate spending from “Thanksgiving” 2024 – New Year’s Day 2025 for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine + immediate arms embargo on Israel—WILL YOU JOIN ME? If you need gifts for friends + family, please consider purchasing directly from independent artists + spiritual workers ⭐️

My books are open for readings this month + it’s also easy to purchase gift readings for the people in your life.

Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing + generous ways 🙏🏻💚

Love + rigor,
shea in the catskills

You Might Be Interested

• “How Do I Take Action Where I Am? A Workshop Series for Grounding Ourselves in the Fight Ahead” via Mariame Kaba: “These five 90-minute online sessions happening in December + January are intended to provide concrete ideas and steps that anyone can take. Each session is facilitated by long-time activists and organizers. …These workshops are appropriate for people who are new to activism and organizing.”
• my painting teacher Suzette Clough is offering her Visual Medicine 5-week online course Painting With The Ancestors in January…I loved this course so much I took it 3 times + then did the Facilitator Training ⭐️
• Workshops 4 Gaza: a group of autonomous writers, artists + educators organizing workshops + classes to raise money for Palestinians in Gaza; check out their upcoming workshop schedule!

We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of critical mass. It’s always about critical connections.

—Grace Lee Boggs

end-of-year giving

Money is a creative medium, a form of communication, an articulation of our values, that we can use to create the world we want to live in. If you are in a position to do so—+ remember that even small dollar amounts add up!—consider giving directly to people who are:

• experiencing precarity in your communities
• doing undervalued creative, spiritual + cultural work
• protecting people’s access to abortion
• taking the biggest risks to protect the land + prevent increased militarization of our cities
• providing direct support to people in Gaza

How can you use your resources to directly support who + what you love?

community + creators I support with recurring monthly donations:

• the Phoenicia Library + Phoenicia Food Pantry
• Elena Solano’s feelingndealing: art-making, musings, custom art commissions!—I commissioned paintings for my niblings this year 🤓, the Millennium Lunarium podcast + more; Elena is also available for psychotherapeutic counseling services, esp grief work
• Beth Howard’s Working Class Love Notes
• I’m a National Member of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
• Gaza GoFundMe campaigns via Molly Shah
• see a full list here

artists, writers, + creatives whose work is nourishing me:

• Martha Crawford’s groups, circles, writing + more. I have done Martha’s Group Group, I’m currently in her Circling the Drain: Living Intentionally With Mortality Group. Her newsletter is 🤌🏻 + I hear her dream workshops + groups are superlative
• Cory Nakasue + Camille Michelle Gray are two astrologers whose work I recommend wholeheartedly
• Cosmic Dog House Press: Kingston, NY-based independent publisher (+ publisher of my own Tarot as Questions!)
• Nina Hatfield’s Co-Resting Groups: where I’m learning the power of zazen has no fixed form

What’s Inspiring Me Now

• my friends + family 🌈

• Beth fucking Howard: I watch this short video every day like a prescription medication! You can watch the whole post-election mass meeting here + become a paid subscriber of Beth’s amazing newsletter Working Class Love Notes

• Daniel Hunter’s incredible article making the rounds: 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that trump has won. In an interview with Kelly Hayes, Hunter also said: “We have to really take our inner state seriously… This is part of where the warfare is...”

• some actions that are not protesting or voting by Frontline Medics via Mariame Kaba

• action is the antidote

• Robyn Love’s gorgeous new hardcover book Branks, that documents this body of work she created 2018-2020 ❤️‍🔥🤌🏻

• Logan Grendel says it with the utmost clarity: “In general, it is amazing that we are wildly adaptable creatures, but there are plenty of things one should NEVER get used to, and yet we acquiesce.”

• ARTIST DOCUMENTARIES are keeping me nourished:

  • Detour by Tusharr Madhavv: “Depicting fearsome deities and the rich flora and fauna of Madhya Pradesh’s forests with striking color and animacy, Jangarh’s work gave birth to a new tradition of Gond visual art practice.”

  • the Netflix documentary Quincy: did you know Quincy Jones traveled to Paris in the 1950s to study orchestration with the woman who mentored Igor Stravinsky?

  • Wojnarowicz: Fuck You Faggot Fucker: I’ve listed this before, but worth revisiting just for the installation he did in Steve Mnuchin’s parents’ house 🤌🏻

  • Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own (thanks for this, Sarah!) + an article about her + her work in the San Francisco ChronicleThanks to those of you who continue to send me your inspirations!

De-escalate all conflict that is not with the enemy.

—Margaret Killjoy

major arcana 17 the star: reorienting

Some people seem to think about hope as ‘wishful thinking.’ For me, it’s not that at all. Rather, because I don’t know how things will turn out, I choose to take action in the direction that I want to influence. I devote my efforts to make what I want to happen actually happen. Nothing can happen if we don’t take action. As Annie Dillard writes: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” I would add that how you do anything is how you do everything.
—Mariame Kaba (emphasis mine)

I didn’t write about the election last month because I deeply resented the energy + resource being spent on the narcotizing spectacle of ruling-class celebrity politics. That said, I worked my tail off with a lot of other people to try to prevent what we’re now facing. I told my comrade + organizing mentor the day after the election: I’m gutted but have no regrets.

I feel a deep channel of vitality running under the surface of things right now, under the noise + urgency—the kind of energy that only becomes perceptible + accessible when we stop clutching on to illusions, blame + what ifs, + start orienting to the terrain we’re actually on. Taking refuge in reality, if you will.

I’ve written elsewhere about major arcana 17 the Star: When our carefully constructed life comes apart in the Tower, the rupture releases a tremendous amount of energy + leaves us here. In the dark, with nothing left to hold together, we are free + vulnerable. We look up + are reminded of the scale of Life + our place in it. This is a moment of profound reorientation. When we know what our true North is, all the everyday decisions we have to make become clear when held up against it. When we have discerned our priorities, desires, values + vision, life is simple, even if it’s not easy. The Star asks us: what world do we want to create as things are coming apart?

In listening to several long-time organizers who I deeply respect, as well as SURJ, my movement home, I’m learning that the terrain for how we need to organize is changing. Kelly Hayes: “This is a good time to establish and fortify small, adaptable groups that can take action and reduce harm…” This means gathering with friends + neighbors locally + could look like soup exchanges, skill-shares, game nights, political education, mutual aid fundraising, reading groups, circles of all kinds.

Small, in-person groups like these—through regular meeting, exchange + connection—are laboratories for practicing relational skills + trust-building, + so are better equipped to respond effectively to challenge + crisis. SURJ is offering one way to do this through their Gear Up cohorts—a training + action program for white people. Being in regular community with others where you live is the antidote to isolation + feelings of powerlessness.

Daniel Hunter, in his phenomenal essay, talked about the need to tend to our inner states: trusting in ourselves + each other, making room for grief, getting clear about what we can + can’t control, not obeying in advance. Rebecca Solnit: “The resistance will mostly look like ordinary people’s noncompliance.” I’m thinking about the ways we are deeply socialized to obey, conform, passively consume, await direction from an authority, + be “good.” I believe it’s time to deepen into a practice of morality from within an authoritarian context: #villainera 😈 How will we practice lying, disobeying, refusing + resisting to protect who + what we love?

As this year draws to a close, these are the questions at the forefront of my mind:

• How are we practicing stepping into that deep, thrumming current of vitality that sits at the foundation of our life?
• How can we be rigorously honest about what we’re doing with our life force each day—not as a test to pass or fail, but as a matter of maturing—politically, relationally, emotionally, spiritually + otherwise—into the times we’re living thru?
• What are we learning about what helps us access our vitality? What makes it feel distant?
• What fears do we have about stepping fully into that current?
• Who + what can help us stay connected to this current of our vitality?

I want to share some of the practices that have been helping me access this deep channel of vitality:

1. Getting in touch with my needs + communicating them to the people I love. As I’ve written elsewhere, my reflexive judgement of others’ “neediness” has become a dashboard indicator light that I need something. Learning to begin to let myself have this experience of true relational interdependence has been deeply humbling + transformative. I am learning that I need co-regulation, care + tenderness 🥴 What are you learning about your needs right now?
2. Accepting help + support. Socialized into individualism + I can do everything myself/I don’t need anything, this is challenging AND: it is precisely what is giving me access to that deep current of energy. We cannot survive these times by ourselves—practically, materially, emotionally, spiritually + otherwise. When I went down to NJ last month to tend to some family business, my friend Quinn asked me to stop by on my way out of town so she could hand off a cooler full of meals she’d prepared for me. Two nights later, as I enjoyed a bowl of hot congee with a perfectly soft-boiled egg + condiments in the AirBNB I was staying in, I felt deeply connected + fortified by all the people who love me. What kind of help + support feels possible for you to receive right now? From who?
3. Redistributing resources. This can be its own creative practice: how am I using money to create the world I long to live in? How can I move excess resource to help those I love + protect what is dear to me? The word currency comes from a root meaning “to run,” like a flowing river. Dayna Lynn Nuckolls says: Abundance is shared enoughness. Everything else is theft and/or hoarding. How are you sharing enoughness + keeping your resources moving + flowing?
4. Feeling. Our culture not only doesn’t support this, but actively discourages it thru speed + urgency, demobilizing/pacifying mass media + entertainment, thru precarity + insecurity. But letting ourselves feel—grief, fear, rage, joy, ecstasy—is not only essential to our mental, emotional + spiritual life, but also to motivating us to act. Our emotions are a critical source of information that give us access to that channel of life-force energy: break my heart in order to keep me moving. My friends are helping me to practice this by receiving my emotional self with love + tenderness. I’m learning that I need to slow down + be with others to let myself fully feel. What are you learning about what helps you feel your feelings?

What practices are helping you access the full measure of your vitality right now?

Find out more about my tarot work

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

—Wendell Berry

(h/t Nina 🙏🏻)

WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU NOW?