Running For The Shore
Cold In Our Bones
Dear Ones,
Hi soul gardeners. Soil preppers. We cycle through 5 gates of grief. Change is here. All outcomes are possible.
Welcome to a social laboratory called modern times.
I feel exposed to this harsh old life, don’t you? I hold your broken hearts in my heart right now. And there is still vacancy. How beautiful.
It is winter. Winter rest is crucial. I am not ready to emerge in spring. I go easy on myself. Hanging on with tethering solace. Spring flowers slowly emerge to signal life.
Does sleep still abandon you? Sleep and I go way back by now. How about wakefulness? Wakefulness is a gradient. We each have different take-off and landing zones. Sometimes we do not meet in the same field. Solitariness is alchemical.
Do you want to know something curious? Even after all this amnesia and anesthesia, I think and feel that we can still grow flowers from all the sh*t.
We can at least plant seeds. What else can one do?
There is a chill in our bones.
Have we finally reached cold dark saturation points?
I practice warming light rituals. Repetition is vital. As is the presence of now.
STIMULI SHAPES GROWTH
What is this place? Are we inside communal hallways of shared grief? Burrr. It is cold and dark here. There is a light we cannot see. We take to warming rituals. It takes longer to warm up these days.
Like plants, people adapt and change according to touch. So many things are touching. Think thigmomorphogenesis- the process by which plants change their growth and development in response to mechanical stimuli, such as touch, wind, or rain. Humans have a similar gift.
STORYLISTENING
We each have our own experiences. Our experiences shape our brain pathways. They color our perceptions of reality. My experience of life on Earth is fundamentally different than yours. Revelations like this blow my mind. To pieces actually. Thankfully. Please do not tell me what or how to experience this moment.
I conduct extensive intergenerational research. Review in-real-life notes. Prelim findings indicate that our boomer generation and progeny struggle with the healing art of storytelling and listening. Stories of today morph into kneejerk judgments. Brain health is impaired and relations have completely ruptured. We see a trickle-down effect on all the other generations.
Was it WW2? I suspect something happened long ago- perhaps 200 years ago. Please share stories with us so we can begin to repair the ruptures.
NESSA TIP: Intergenerational Storytelling and Storylistening. We are being called to swap healing stories and listening skills. This is quite an invitation. We can still learn from each other. Instead of judging, reacting, peacocking, or changing the story, we practice listening and emotional regulation at once.
Say you are in conversation with someone. That someone is talking. The story is the story of the storyteller. It is their experience and chosen words are their expression of their experience. May we choose words of expression wisely.
PAIN IS A DOORWAY
On the topic of ancestors and descendants, many questions surface:
How can we become good elders?
How do we surrender, knowing we do not always know how to show love and support?
Can we listen without judgment?
Can we build containers to share heartfelt stories safely?
Pain is a doorway to aliveness. Who knew this juicy info!? Aside from perhaps the wisdoms in every single spiritual tradition for 2000 years or more.
Pain is a doorway because it helps us feel alive in this human body. Embodied is how some call it. Pain hurts us. It also helps us stay connected to this body. To this body of the Earth.
Addiction is a response with a purpose to numb pain. Feeling (and therefore releasing and transmuting) pain is the anecdote to pain. It turns pain into love. Unbelievable developments there.
This nerd can’t get enough of that truth.
ONLINE PIAZZAS
If only there was a piazza that strangers could all meet at. A village square. A gathering place of sorts. For storytelling. For gathering and releasing.
For now, this online portal will do. It feels safe here. Everyone and no one is a stranger at this point.
Thanks for being here.
Creative and new ways to connect will emerge in spring. Drop the heartseeds now before the rains come.
Do you see yet how technology helps us with unification of consciousness, Sapiens? Fortified by grief and love. Across time and space.
WE ALL HAVE A GIFT
Hello darkness, my best friend. What a gift it is to sit with you. Not run away trembling. You are so touchable now. I no longer deny you. I no longer fancy people who deny you.
That’s not even an option now.
We all have a gift. In the form of a light. I have to say that again. For you and for me. We all have a gift in the form of a light. A gift light. We were born with it. I am still studying said light. I study it mostly by living in it. Take notes. Share stories of my experience.
Sometimes the gift light within us is easy to access. Sometimes it is harder. I recognize a light pattern like a beating heart. Expands. Contracts. Fills. Empties.
FATHER AND SUN
The following is a series of beautiful moments in time. Of father and son/sun. Doesn’t it seem like the son is leading the father?! Ahh, the sacred power of intergenerational wisdom. Nessa January 27, 2025 © Ventura
GRATITUDE RITUALS
May we all live and breathe in daily gratitude rituals. This practice keeps me grounded.
I am grateful for all living beings past or present.
I am grateful for non-living beings.
I am grateful for protection by my body and mind.
I am grateful my brain is open to deep thinking and rethinking (devoted really).
I am grateful when my lungs fill with clean ocean air.
I am grateful for the still-beating hearts of my loved ones despite tragedy on tragedy.
Thank you for experiencing this labor of love with me. Sharing, commenting, liking, connecting, and subscribing = loving.
May All Beings Find Peace.
To contact, click on calendar link here or reply to this email.
Nessa (born at 333 ppm)
Birdwings
Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced
and coordinated
as birds' wings.
-Rumi, 13th Century Persian Poet
Nessa my beautiful MD sister I’m still in the conventional sick care world as a Hospitalist transitioning to an integrative functional care model
When I hear your words I feel like if I had not lost my creative voice to trauma this is exactly how I will speak
Thx for being my soul’s voice .
Your words thoughts and heart open up like a flower to warm and be warmed and they ward off the chill.