Notes from May & June

Updates, musings, and more

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Hello Sweet Community, 

It’s been a little while, and I want to thank you for being patient with me as I figure out new patterns with all of the different aspects of my creative practice. It has been an enormous time of transformation, which has asked me to be really present with my habits (the good and the bad), and get experimental with new ways.

It’s summer time, and I do feel myself emerging, though it is slow. It hasn’t been *that* long, but I do miss the consistency of my writing practice. Knowing that I have a community of people who receives some benefit from my authentic, unedited expression means a lot to me. So thank you for continuing to be here.

Over the past few months I’ve been focusing on my daily habits and refreshing my creative practice. I’ve returned to the studio with my music, and continued to lay foundations for Matriarch, brick by brick. There has been some exciting momentum with that project, which I can’t yet share, but I look forward to celebrating it with you all soon. In the meantime, you can still support the project through tax-deductible donations here. 

I’ve been reading The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté, a book which I truly think all human beings could benefit from. Here’s a passage from the book that pretty much encompasses what it’s all about:

“If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related. The ailing bodies and minds among us would no longer be regarded as expressions of individual pathology but as living alarms directing our attention towards where our society has gone askew, and where our prevailing certainties and assumptions around health are, in fact, fictions. Seen clearly they might also give us clues as to what it would take to reverse course and build a healthier world” (8).

This logic has become and anchor for me as I work through the many challenges of this moment. Every day is a struggle to stay in my body and to stay in my values—and I feel grateful for the elders and leaders who have offered their wisdom for new generations to build upon.

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Snippets from my journal May and June:

May 27th

Last night I sat by candlelight with a group of black women, each tenderly sharing edges of their souls that have been left in silence. All of the hushed, quiet questions that women are taught to never ask. We spoke of our sexual awakenings, and of that training into silence that has had us swallowing our truths (in Audre Lorde’s language), bit by bit each day. We are here in Lake Arrowhead, among the blue jays and pine trees. Across the street from suspicious, peeping tom racist white men, and on a street dotted with Trump signs. I went to sleep tired and grateful, not only because last night I felt that I could offer sweetness and wisdom, but also because I could see first hand what happens when you stretch to find understanding. Last night was an experiment in having the courage to ask questions and listen closely to other’s pain, especially when it feels far away from your world of understanding.

revasanto

A post shared by @revasanto

I wake this morning and it is memorial day. I am thinking of trauma that learns to make home in the body and my heart aches. Those who have died, and all of the lies that culturally we have swallowed, “commemorating those brave lives lost", and I resent the brainwashed narrative that a country is ever worth fighting for. I think of The Body Keeps Score and how trauma and PTSD survivors no longer are able to connect to the present as a result of the psychological/emotional damage. A lot of that damage not just from harm caused to them, but from harm they caused to others. War logic destroys everything in it’s sight.

On Instagram I learned that despite the ICJ’s rulings, Israeli military leadership exercised immensely cruel and horrific orders in Rafah, killing children and civilians in a zone that was declared safe. I see a post that says, Name what you are seeing. Name genocide. Say Palestine.

I did not look at the photos of the decapitated child that were circulating. Just as folks did not need to see video proof of Diddy’s domestic violence to believe it… I know that it is true, and my heart cracks open as I feel into the wounds that stretch across the earth to my cousins in Rafah.

In the kitchen, I hear the women laughing to the music, as they clean up the kitchen together. I feel warmth swell in my heart, because my favorite part of this weekend was these moments of care. All of us, with genuine love, choosing to work together to cook, clean, beautify, and show up for one another. Different folks stepping up to leadership when appropriate, and allowing others to lead when it is another’s zone of genius. I hold the duality of this pain and this sweetness in my chest, as we are all learning to. 

I think about how folks have been saying—we are all connected, no one is free until we are all free. And if this is true, then I have to also believe that these moments of sweetness are doing something sweet for all of us. That I should continue to lean heavily into them, to celebrate, uplift and amplify them and pray that over time this sweetness will drip into the next and the next and the next branch of this incredibly complex human tree.

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JUNE 17th

Today in my continued reading of The Myth of Normal I learn about how misaligned our care practices are for children, and how essential those “formative years” are. Maté talks about a process coined by Thomas Verny called “bodywide memory” —speaking to intrauterine experiences that “may not be accessible to conscious recall, but… can live on as a different kind of memory: emotional and neurological imprints embedded in the cells and nervous system of the human organism”.

Before we can think, we feel. And in those early years many children are immediately taught to school their emotions in order to receive acceptance. 

I think of this and suddenly it feels clear that being a mother, and supporting mothers is the single most important task I could ever take on. I imagine myself pregnant in a forest with a loving community, whose work is entirely centered on protecting those important early stages, and making sure that we welcome in nourished and healthy new spirits onto the land.

So much of our healing now is corrective for things our parents and our parents parents, and so on, didn’t know how to do better. But now that we know better, we can do better. I am grateful to know that there are so many women, particularly black women who are becoming doula’s and emphasizing this important work.

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I have much more to say, but will leave it here for now. An Iya mentor of mine, Alisa Orduña, posted recently a quote from the Odu Ifa— Ogbe di “When water touches the earth, a path is created”

So I will leave you with my continued prayer that we as species will remember and remember and remember, how to listen to the wisdom of this sacred planet as we search for new pathways towards healthier ways of living.

Until soon—

Love and Honey,

Reva