in which we make the world anew

a brief check in from the center of the storm

My beloveds.

We are back in L.A. The past three-ish weeks since our return has felt, truly, like 10 years. Outside, the world is raging. There is a compass for action in my bones that is a treasure purposefully laced through my DNA by my ancestors, and it has woken and leapt into action. That is not a metaphor.

We are in times of horror and survival and rough, gritty, muscular beauty. I’m wrapped around my kid. She came with me to the protests this past Saturday, and she felt the surge of intensity and rage and ferocious joy with me, and she turned to me and said These are our people! And I said Yes, baby. These are our people.

If you’re reading this, it’s because you somehow found me and/or my work. I do not know the majority of you offline. But if you are here, if you have decided to receive me into your mailbox, I imagine that it’s because we are aligned in our commitment to the earth, to justice, to the equitable sharing of resources and access and real, actualized freedom for everyone.

I imagine that you, like me, aren’t even remotely OK with what you’re seeing happen out in the world right now.

I’m here to tell you that I am beside you, and I’m so fucking grateful to have you by my side too. I don’t want this shit to be happening any more than you do, andbut when I cast myself forward in time, I can feel through it to another time, and you are beside me there too. Families have been reunited. Those who must be stopped have been stopped and are in frank disgrace. Things are being called by their names. We haven’t gone backwards, and we haven’t accepted lesser-evil, and the agreements of our societies and our culture have been reshaped by this ordeal into something that lasts, that actually listens, that builds out of the broken pieces of the broken world we’ve all known our entire lives.

It begins with us, together.

I’m seeing in lots of places the phrase We Keep Us Safe.

I’m not sure I believe in safety, but I do believe, very much, in trust.

Trust is relational, beginning with trust in ourselves. When we feel ourselves and know that we can locate the vibration of truth in ourselves, we become able to hold relationship and recognize that same quality in each other.

One of the ways I am moving very quickly during this time is in finding my way to the center of that exact experience with myself, every day, and then with as many other people as I can. The experience of feeling ourselves, together, and of finding the place of truth from which we can commit to protect all that we love, to fight when it’s time to fight, to rest when it’s time to rest, to care deeply for ourselves and each other in an ever-unfurling web of mutuality and indebtedness and resource. The world to come made present, material, pulled from everywhere and everywhen into Now.

It is happening every single day in big and small ways. Which is partly why every day feels so gigantic.

Three weekends ago, just after we came home to L.A., we celebrated my friend and mentor Carol’s life at her memorial, and there I got to meet many of her people who had been only legendary stories and sepia-tinted photos in my mind for the past decade. In meeting, I felt them offer to me (and to all of us who want it) an irresistible transmission and a mandate of liberation.

Two weekends ago, I stood with a crowd of brilliant and beautiful birth workers and care workers, people who I’m very proud to know, and we offered Pap Smears for Queers for the 4th consecutive year at Dyke Day LA. Over the course of one afternoon, over 20 people received essential, respectful, trans-competent healthcare they otherwise would not have, and their labs were paid for by the donations of supporters who threw in whatever they could.

This past weekend, after the day of No Kings protesting in parallel with 47’s tragicomical birthday parade in DC, I went to Carol’s house, with the generous permission of her children, and taught the first in-person Take Back the Speculum in L.A. for years, which I had thought of as a very niche seance and something that Carol would have absolutely loved, and which did not disappoint - 3 separate times, lights flickered in meaningful response. It was wild and amazing to stand in her living room and continue to do the things that have always happened there, and to feel her joy and her critique and her impassioned thoughts on how to do it better next time swirling in the space with us.

And, next weekend, Mo and Willa and I are joining forces once again to offer Antlers of the Heart online, and you’re invited.

Antlers is our twice-yearly communal offering of tools & skills for tending to our chests and breasts, and through them, to our beautiful hearts full of love and grief, to our systemic immunity and resilience as mediated through our lymphatics systems, to our larger fields which long to be recognized and held in community, and to the needs of this moment, where we and our people are facing down an overwhelming amount of violence. This is a container to be with one another, co-regulating and making time and space to actually feel our bodies, when many of us are strategically dissociating in order to make it through the day.

The subtext of this class is that it is an experience of radical self-love, and we mean that, deeply, in the most communal, most inclusive, you-are-a drop-in-a-vast-ocean sense possible. We feast together, and everybody eats.

Who is Antlers for?

It’s for everybody. All sexes, all genders, all histories. Anyone who has a body.

In particular, it’s intended for healthcare providers, bodyworkers, birthworkers, anyone who is/was/will be breast/chestfeeding or supporting someone who is, anyone who has or whose family has a history of cystic or fibrous breasts, and anyone who has had or is supporting someone who has had breast/top/thoracic surgery.

It is NOT for anyone who has an active infection, who is fighting illness, or whose scars from surgery have not yet fully healed.

Here is an IG live we did this morning to talk about it.

Class is sliding scale and scholarships are available as needed, because we are clear that not being able to pay for it shouldn’t be a barrier - please write to us at antlersoftheheart@gmail.com if you need assistance.

More information and registration for class can be found here.

I really hope to see your face in there.

+++

Last thing, some tools for outward action that I’m finding extremely helpful right now to focus, prioritize, and spend my energy wisely:

Jessica Craven is an organizer and catalyst (and a fellow mom in my community) who offers clear prompts and moves mountains in a beautiful way.

The Mutual Aid LA Network compiles a solid list of opportunities for local action here - if you are elsewhere, poke around and see what already exists in your area. If there isn’t a structure, maybe your action is to get to get with your loved ones and make it so.

To that end, the wonderful Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg offers us this excellent Good Trouble Checklist.

If you are interested in direct action for damage control in these times, there are community defense/self-defense trainings in places across the US, teaching people how to set up neighborhood patrols and deal effectively with ICE abductions in real time.

This is a compiled list of digital security resources, which EVERYBODY, no matter what, should learn about and implement at this time.

And PLEASE, please please please, call your senators and tell them to kill this insanely stupid monster of a bill, HR1, which Trump and his ghouls call the “One Big Beautiful Bill” - it is truly the worst and most destructive piece of shit bill ever written and it deserves to die unceremoniously in the Senate.

+++

I love you. Thank you for existing and loving and making noise where you are.

Send me your recommendations and resources, please, if there’s anything I should know about or there’s anything you would like for me to amplify.

Sending you huge courage and care.

XOXOXO