My first substack post
My friend inspired me to start reading substack because she was posting, so now I’m posting. It’s really that simple. That, and I have a lot to say. My daughter informed me that sometimes it might be too much so I’m heeding her words and taking it to a blog where folks have the choice to read or walk away. This first post is about connection and relationship. It’s written in wake of an ongoing genocide that is taking place — whereas of today 16,000 Gazans have been killed at the hands of an Israeli state. I keep wondering what does it take to pay attention in this moment and why are so many not choosing to look? I wonder if it has to do with the current state of our relationships with the human, the non-human, and the more than human worlds. The rest of this post is a reflection of healing and connection at this moment in time.
I recently listened to a student…
defend his dissertation on the essence of connection – more specifically the experience of connection and ayahuasca. He noted that connection could be explored through so many avenues like dance, yoga, or community art, but that he chose ayahuasca for his love of the plants.
Exploring connection, he discussed how many of us feel disconnected today. And that our feelings of isolation have lead to poor health. He referenced a study from the 1960s of an intact community. When the community dispersed, the health of the individuals declined despite minimal changes to their habits. He specifically noted an increase in heart disease.
I am curious, if connection heals, then what are we healing – is it really heart disease or could it be a broken heart?
The other night we had some friends over for dinner. While we ate, we swapped stories about the changing relationships in our lives. A parallel question arose, do plants heal us, like an antibiotic we take at the doctor's office to get rid of an infection? Or is it possible that we heal because of our relationships? A Shipibo friend shared with me not long ago that in her world, both illness and health occur in relationship. To go to an onaya (healer) implies an exploration into where one is out of right relationship. To get healed, is to seek repair or restoration of that relationship.
“I’m hanging out with my dad more,” my friend said at the dinner table. Did plant spirits heal him such that he wanted to connect and build upon that relationship with his dad, or did he simply choose to see his dad more, and it is the strengthening of that connection that is healing them both? A teacher of mine taught me that when you only see two things, search for a third. So what if my friend connecting with the world in a more thoughtful way, means that the world is connecting back with him more thoughtfully? And what if the thoughtful return is actually responsible for his healing? In other words, what if the healing of others is the healing of ourselves?
If we allow space for plant spirits to heal, then we begin to contend with the idea of a linkage between healing and our relationships in the world. And if healing occurs in relationship, then we can ask one another, where are we out of relationship? Or where are we not in relationship at all?
Sitting in intentional spaces with plant spirits, means that we not only acknowledge relationships with non-human, and more-than-human beings but we tend to them, build them like any other relationship. Building upon my ancestral ties I found I had to start with a shared connection to suffering and deep grief tied to centuries of colonial projects of domination, slavery, genocide.
I think there is a tendency in spiritual spaces to assume that connection to ancestors and healing always translates into direct and immediate positive experiences. But a pastor friend of mine reminded me, for healing to take place in restorative processes nothing moves forward without first acknowledging the exact nature and full extent of the harm that has occurred.
In other words, sometimes healing means acknowledging the pain we have avoided for so long – the pain and grief associated with imparting harm upon another.
Grief tied to relationship can be a reminder of our humanity – that at the root of it all, we care deeply. In a world where so many of us are hurting one another and fighting between differences, sometimes I wonder if we will ever find connection. If connection suggests unity, and unity is never uniformity, then what do we do with our deeply engrained differences?
Maybe we don’t always need to highlight our differences, but a simple nod can bring attention to the vast landscape of the whole -- what Zenju Earthlyn Manuel in her book The Way of Tenderness, calls the multiplicity in oneness. It is not our humanness that makes us one, instead our oneness is rooted in the notion that we are connected to the “same life-source as a flower or a bee.” So when we speak of relationship, connection and healing, it's not just for the ones over there, or over here, it is for the healing of all beings, all life-sources, and all relationships.
I love this. I appreciate the way you notice, wonder, acknowledge and appreciate so generously and wisely. Your words are a wonderful additon to Substack and an act of Tikkun Olam.