Setting Foundations in the Year Everything Changed

I don’t quite know how to open this piece except to say that this is the year the world as we knew it came to a halt. This is the year we will tell our grandchildren about. The year that we’ve gone through more loss than we can quantify. We’ve learned to slow down and learned what it is to fully grieve. This is the year many became radicalized in a real way for the first time. We had to stop to question what our lives are about and how we can best be of service in the dismantling of the dominant culture. 

Our stories are all different but we share a commonality that, I imagine, future generations will not quite understand. I suppose it’s similar to what our grandparents experienced going through WWII and the Great Depression. Though we, rather than learning how to be successful under capitalism and tightening our bootstraps, are learning how to be of service to our communities and how to build a new world. 

Up until now, I’ve been a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of person. Part of this was due to some unprocessed trauma that didn’t allow me to stay still or present, but a lot of it is because we live under capitalism (which is also traumatic). There was no room for rest or resetting. I didn’t have a minute to stop and think about what I wanted long term and could only think about how I was going to survive.

I began and let go of two businesses between 2016 and 2018. My work as a doula became unsustainable and I burnt out. And my collective, Hathor House, became bigger than me and I didn’t know how to hold it. I had to let go of these passions, these callings, because I hadn’t had the space, time, or know-how to keep them going. I’ve spent a lot of time grieving the deaths of these dreams. But they have informed what I do now. What I learned about holding people through transitions in birthwork and what I learned about community building with my collective deeply informs the practice I’ve spent this year creating. 

When the pandemic hit I was studying various somatic healing modalities and was deep in my own healing around my traumatic history (mainly focusing on sexual abuse and spiritual abuse). I was also managing a popular neighborhood restaurant. It felt good to be so busy and to have money coming in. It felt good to be learning so much about myself and about how to run an already thriving business that didn’t belong to me. It felt good to zip around and meet people and hear their stories. But I didn’t have a lot of time to myself. I didn’t have time to dream or create or put what I was learning into practice with other people. At the time, this felt like something that could wait.

In March, that restaurant closed its doors. As a person who was experiencing financial abundance for the first time in life, it felt like a huge blow. My partner had just moved in with me and was finally finding some substaintial successes in his acting career. My roommate was slowly beginning to search for another place to live. We were all expanding in these beautiful ways, and so so quickly all the timelines changed. The industry (Hollywood) shut down. My roommate moved out to the desert. I was out of a job. 

I’ve always used my body to make money. Whether it was in care work or within the restaurant industry, being around people was what I knew how to do to sustain myself. My partner and I were lucky that we were eligible for unemployment. Something that is now dwindling before our very eyes, though we are finding ways to manage.

I threw myself into my studies and eventually decided I wanted to build a session based practice. Initially, I imagined a particular vision for what I would be offering. It had a bit of pomp and circumstance that I wasn’t quite comfortable with but I had a platform I was ready to dive off of. Quick quick, go, fly! But it didn’t feel quite right. Little roadblocks or hits of intuition stopped me time and time again those first few months. 

Eventually, through slowing down and adopting a practice of stillness while chaos swirls all around, I came to understand that the thing I am best at is sitting with people and meeting them where they are. Acting as a friend and confidant who happens to know a lot about trauma and healing and community. Acting as someone who has experienced various traumas and abuses and knows how to hold that within other people. 

I began taking business courses for the first time, initially through Sister Is, and eventually with Yarrow Magdelena. I didn’t want to fly by the seat of my pants anymore. Here was an opportunity to slow down and build something out. Here was a chance to learn foundational aspects to creating a business model and a practice in a way that was magnetic rather than forceful. I was tired of rushing ahead with something out of a fear that if I stopped, all progress would disappear and I would be destitute (and that is not an exaggeration). 

Slowing down like this allowed me to deepen my anti-racist work. To do the inner work required to show up as a good ancestor (to use a phrase coined by Layla Saad). It allowed me to stop and question the icky marketing schemes I’d been taught by social media. And it gave me space to dream of the kind of future I want to live in. One where healing isn’t gatekept or gurufied. During this time I came to understand the power of my voice and built confidence in myself as a writer. I’m beginning to understand what it looks like to be an anti-capitalist business owner and how to provide care that is accessible and equitable. 

I’m building something that is influenced by everything and everyone who came before me, but is still so uniquely mine. And it feels good to not have to reach for a title or a schtick, or to feel that I’m doing something that’s not quite in my lane as a white person. 

Refining what I’m offering, and how I’m offering it, has certainly been a big part of this year, but on a personal level I’m learning to give myself what I need. In a time that’s so chaotic it’s nearly impossible to count on anything external. Which means I’m really learning to turn inwards and work from there. This year has allowed me to weave my spiritual practice into my day to day. Rather than something I lean into when I have the time or when I really need it. I’ve finally learned what rituals I need to stay rooted and grounded. And they are simple things. Like pulling a tarot card and writing in the morning while coffee is brewing rather than waking up and grabbing my phone. I’m learning that some things get to just be for me and I don’t need to monetize them. I’ve finally slowed down enough to recognize and celebrate where we are in the wheel of the year. Something I’ve always wanted to have a more embodied sense of (which is difficult in Southern California where we don’t have acute seasonal changes). I began writing what I’m calling a Customs Journal where I illustrate what our household looks like. What do we hold dear? How do we eat? How do we observe holidays? How do we resolve conflict? It’s something I imagine passing down to my children or grandchildren. And maybe they won’t want it, maybe it’s something they won’t be into, but it’s certainly something I wish I had from those who came before me. A record of what life was like in times of tumult. This slowing down has allowed me the space to really ask myself how I want to fully live and how to put that into practice. 

I’ve been working really closely with the archetype of the King of Coins. I was introduced to the idea of the suit of coins as “soul calling” rather than material abundance a few years ago from a friend (I believe that friend learned this from Lindsey Mack). It changed the way I viewed the King of Coins from a patriarch who hoards his wealth to someone whose kingdom will last because of his deliberate efforts. Piece by piece he builds his empire. He is intentional with every last brick and understands its place in the greater structure. This takes time and a patience that, before this year, I was unable to access.

I’m still building, slowly- brick by brick. I have days where I want to speed ahead. Nights where anxiety gets the best of me and I can’t sleep or wake up with a sore jaw from grinding my teeth. Some days my body just won’t do what I think it should- I use these days to sleep and grieve. And even this feels good, in a way, since there was never room for that before. Uncertainty about finances and what the future holds is still acutely present, but I’ve learned to hold that gently. To pause and sit with the trees and let them show me how long it took them to become what they are now, just by sheer virtue of existing. 

Coming into slowness, despite the anxiety of survival mode, has allowed me to create a fertile ground from which I can bloom in the coming years. It has allowed me to build something whose roots reach deep and wide. While none of us know what the rest of this year (or really what this period in time) holds, it is a marker in time which we will always remember. Who we were, who we became, and how we showed up.