On Reclaiming Life, Opening Your Imagination
Responding to Robin Wall Kimmerer
Hello Friends,
It’s been longer than usual since I’ve written here and it feels strange. Every so often I come to a moment in my life where I recognize that my old patterns and habits are no longer serving me. It takes a minute of introspection and I suppose, refusal, for me to get back in touch with the truth-telling part of me. I needed a breath to reevaluate.
Life has felt in many ways completely overloaded. The world we live in at times feels one straw away from collapse—meanwhile, my personal life has also been rapidly changing. I’ve found myself literally feeling dizzy from the double helix spinning of all these changes.
Nevertheless, yesterday was a full moon and this morning I woke up aching to write. I sat down with a book that I’ve been very slowly digesting— Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer— and opened it to the mid-chapter I’d left off on. In this chapter she describes sacred harvesting practices, and lessons she learned from her elders about how to create a sustainable relationship with the life giving natural elements.
She summarizes:
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
Over the past month and a half I’ve been editing the first full rough cut of Matriarch, and have had a lot of time to reflect on care practices. It’s been beautiful and strange to look back at these interviews from the past 5 years and digest the messages that I gathered then. I didn’t know it, but intuition was gifting me with exactly what I needed every step of the way. Now, I have the opportunity to weave these gifts into a story that heals me, which I hope will eventually heal many others as well.
There are times when I read this book and feel melancholic, and others when I feel a supreme wave of peace wash over me. The melancholy comes in those moments when I recognize how disconnected the modern world feels from the simple acts of living, being, connecting, and feeling. How have we slipped so far away from the truth of who we are? What would it take for us to find our way back home?
Living life in accordance to “Matriarchal principles”, which is to say—care practices and a culture of reciprocity, is the only way to actually sustain life. Perhaps these honorable harvest guidelines that Kimmerer outlines can also be used as a model for how to engage with the fast-paced, hyper-consumerist world around us. Perhaps through these practices we can begin to slow down the vertigo-inducing time warp speed lives that we are living.
I want to reclaim moments like these where I can hear the water trickling nearby, am attuned to the clack of my keyboard, and the sensation of warmth in my body. I want to imagine a possibility for life that is different to this world we believe to be supreme truth.
So, I’m going to try gifting myself these Sunday mornings for gentle reading and writing. I’m not sure what form that will take, but I look forward to experimenting and seeing what unfolds.
Here is a prompt for you based on a statement that stood out from this chapter.
“Imagination is one of our most powerful tools. What we imagine, we can become.”
What is something that you would like to imagine into reality? Paint the picture vividly. Notice all of the sensory possibilities of that world. I’d love to hear your responses in the subscriber chat this week, linked below:
Love + Honey to you all 🌻🌱🌹
Reva