13 days of water, sun and plant alchemy in ritual…begun a day late. Or in perfect timing…

One of my favorite quotes this year: If you want to make God laugh, make plans!

So yesterday was supposed to start the Summer Flower Bath Challenge, but the morning had all kinds of complications and by the afternoon I was not feeling well enough to record an opening ceremony.

A huge part of my journey with chronic illness and spiritual practice has been to trust in the timing…

Trust that everything, somehow, is happening exactly as it needs to. Interruptions are not obstacles, they are divine interventions.

And so I prayed and asked:

How is this timing in alignment with Spirit?

Then I realized that by starting today, on the 9th, instead of the 8th, the practice will finish on the Solstice, June 21, instead of the day before. Which makes more sense, actually. Ok. Good.

Then I asked:

How can I facilitate when I don’t feel well?

And Spirit said,

use what you have (one of my favorite spirit-led mantras), which is part of the preparation I gave to others for the practice.

Why would I not heed my own advice? Using what we have is creative, resource-full and empowering.

So I searched my files and found the above flower bath tutorial from 2015, plus many photos from over the years for inspiration.

But truly, this practice does not need special instruction. It is simple, accessible, adaptable to wherever life finds you. It does not need an opening ceremony. Every day is a ceremony, every day is an opening, an invitation to participate.

Today my “flower bath” was a hot soak in my tub with epsom salts, rose petals and a bay leaf.

Tomorrow, maybe it will be a spritz of rose water. The next day, an infusion tea, drunk on the way to the doctor. Who knows? But all is a blessing, all is an opportunity to live more deeply in relationship.

The lesson of the process is that intention makes a ceremony of our lives, and this practice is one way to bring intention to flowers, sun, water and prayer.

It was my wish to post daily, but I don’t think that will happen now. Instead I’ll share as I can, and I hope you will too.

Below is the link to the post with more information about this practice, along with free downloads and some modification suggestions:

One last thing Spirit said:

Lift up others in your practice. Make it an offering for them, too.

So today I dedicate this practice to all those suffering from illness, struggling with financial insolvency or who are in transition, facing major life changes. (And especially to my dear friend Deva, who brought this practice into my life and is navigating multiple transitions all at once. This is for you. I love you.)

May you find beauty even in the challenge, may you feel the healing joy of life flow through this moment. May you sense the everpresent love that is with you always, woven into the earth and through this community.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

With love--Lara

Guide for Making Effective Rituals

Original Post With Downloads

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(Dear Friends: This is part two of the Liminal Spaces series…which could also be called “Clearing the Channel” or “Things I Don’t Want to Say but Spirit Says I Need To.” Thank you for your generous and gentle reception of yesterday’s letter. I was moved to tears by your responses.

This one is tender to send. I was unprepared for the painful, lengthy disability benefits process. I am still in the process, have been since July 2024, and will be for at least another 12-14 months while waiting for a hearing. This writing is what I wish I had known the first time I applied in 2017, and I hope it can support anyone who needs it, as well as the friends and family members of people going through the process. Sending prayers for ease on the healing path. May the balance be regained.)

+++

If you have never had to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance, you might not know how difficult and depressing the process is. Long ago when I was well I assumed SSDI (which is available to anyone who has a disabling condition expected to last more than 12 months, and who has worked a job paying into Social Security over the past ten years) was something you would apply for and receive quickly. If you can’t work because you are disabled you need money, right? And you paid into these benefits your entire working life for just this reason, a social safety net to support you should the worst thing happen, an illness or accident that prevents you from working…right?

Wrong.

The first time I applied for SSDI was in 2017. I was so ill at the time I could not complete the application on my own. A volunteer from the Lane Independent Living Alliance helped me fill out the lengthy and confusing forms, but almost immediately I ran into a number of problems:

1. My diagnoses were still in process and did not fit neatly into Social Security’s “Blue Book” list of disabling conditions.

This meant I would have to work extra hard to “prove” my disability was severe enough to prevent me from working. And that, as it turns out, is a very difficult thing to do with my particular constellation of conditions.

2. My age (I was forty-two), education level (Master’s degree) and previous job (university professor) all worked against my approval. The implication being that as a young-ish, highly educated person I could surely find some form of work, even though I was bed bound most of the time, most days.

3. Finding credentialed providers to complete the disability paperwork was impossible. While I applied my family moved twice. This interrupted my medical care, which was already sparse. There were no specialists in Oregon that treated my primary disabling disease (ME/CFS) and I was on a wait list for the Stanford Chronic Fatigue clinic for a year. I could not find a doctor (MD) to complete the disability paperwork for me, verifying my conditions. I had supportive letters from a Family Nurse Practitioner, a Therapist and a Naturopath. But I was told by my PCP that Social Security weights their decisions heavily in favor of MD’s.

When I finally did see my MD at Stanford, in 2018, they would not complete the disability forms. He wrote a short letter for my file, stating I was limited to 15 hours a week for all activities, which would make work impossible, but my claim was still denied.

This is not unusual.

The initial approval rate for an application is 38%. This means 62% of people who apply for disability are initially denied. (1.)

Average wait times for that initial decision vary by state. But in 2018 I waited over a year for my denial.

I applied for reconsideration in early 2019. I sought out a disability advocacy organization to help me, but they were not attorneys and I ran into as many problems with them as I had with the Social Security Administration in terms of technical errors and unreliability.

But also, in 2019, I was in a miraculous remission thanks to effective treatment. I had started to work again and decided that I would rather bet on my recent return to health than continue to engage with the SSDI process. So I withdrew my application.

Which, it turns out, was a big mistake.

In April of 2020 I contracted COVID and my remission ended. I have struggled to work ever after.

Can I just say how much I love to work?

I love it.

I love teaching, writing and sharing my art. But I love other jobs, too. When I went into remission at the end of 2018, I worked for a few months as a front desk clerk at a yoga studio for fifteen hours a week, and I loved every minute of it. I’ve held a lot of jobs in my life, and even though work is challenging and has its problems I would always rather work than not.

The thing that keeps me from working is not a lack of desire, or even a lack of prospects (though after two years of unemployment, and a prior decade of self-employment, I can’t imagine who would want to hire me now). It is the unpredictable nature of my diseases that is the barrier.

Over the past two years I have not been functional enough to work at all. Day to day my symptoms are so variable, triggered and escalated by so many unknowns, that I can’t plan anything because I don’t know how I’m going to feel.

Everything impacts my body’s ability to perform. Everything. Lack of sleep, hormone levels, food, environmental toxins, stress, even good things like exercise or socialization can have deleterious effects if done too much at the wrong time. I can’t know what those effects will be until I am experiencing them, and when they surface…pain, fatigue, dizziness, nausea…I can’t just push through without making them worse. To recover I have to stop everything and go to bed.

I also can’t know how long my symptoms will last. Sometimes it is a day or two. Sometimes it is weeks. This past October I had a routine MRI and a violent reaction to the contrast caused a flare of symptoms that lasted for months. This past week I had an interruption in my medication triggering symptoms. Even after restarting the medication the symptoms are persisting. For how long, who knows? It is so discouraging.

Other dangers include things that are out of my control. Like wood smoke from the neighbor’s bonfires, extreme heat, inversion layer air pollution, or viral infections.

I have tried so hard to find ways to work with my disability. I was successful at self-employment for a time, but the stress of being a sole proprietor, unable to hire staff, unable to even communicate properly when I was ill, the constant disappointment of having to cancel when I was sick, the loss of income every time I was unable (for weeks or months) to work, all this takes an incredible toll. It makes self-employment unsustainable.

A few years ago I identified things that would possibly enable me to work with my chronic, unpredictable conditions:

The first is stable monthly income not dependent on my physical ability. This could be similar to a universal basic income (UBI), so that when I needed to step away my bills and business expenses would be paid until I could return. A basic income would have prevented me from deleting my platforms in 2025, when I could no longer afford the hundreds of dollars of administrative fees after a year of illness, but was too ill to engage at all with my communities. If I were approved, social security could potentially act as this foundational income. But given what I have experienced thus far, it is hard to trust that can happen.

The second would be an assistant or partner who could step in for me and keep things running when I am ill. This, of course, would require time, effort, energy and money, all things I do not have. And it is painful to have others depend on me when I can’t depend on myself. Because of this I’ve found that having more people involved in my work when I am ill is actually not easier, it’s more challenging.

Self-employment without supports is really not an option for income stability. I have explored other employment extensively, and there just aren’t any jobs I could do. I would love a job. But what one would accommodate this body? I’ve been through Vocational Rehabilitation three times (just started my fourth a few weeks ago and am on the waitlist, which won’t open again until next year), but there were, as yet, no specific resources to support workers with chronic, episodic illness.

I have looked for years now and have not found a program that is built to support people like me in gaining or sustaining employment. I empathize with the challenge. Who would want to hire someone who might not be able to work at all for months or years at a time? How could a worker with such complex conditions keep up with the natural pacing and relational environments of a workplace when they miss so many days?

I again applied for disability in 2024 when it became clear I could not work at all.

This time I consulted with an attorney who took my case. They will be paid only if I am approved, from a percentage of my backpay. I had a robust medical record, with hundreds of encounters, plenty of diagnostic labs and clinical tests to support my claim, along with paperwork from multiple specialists, all MD’s.

But I was still denied in October of 2025.

They said my condition was not severe enough to prevent me from working.

I applied for reconsideration. I had multiple new diagnoses to support my claim and over five hundred medical encounters in the past two years.

And my application was denied in March of 2026.

They said my condition was not severe enough.

(At the reconsideration stage there is an average denial rate of 85-90%, according to my attorneys.)(2)

I just completed the paperwork for a hearing. Which will take place sometime next year.

The rates of approval at the hearing level are 51%, the highest of any point in the process thus far. (3)

That means that just over half of all people are denied. Again.

Meanwhile, people become more ill as the stress of proving their disability, the loss of income, the depression of being deprived of both a purpose and channel for their abilities, drains their life force away.

Or, at least, that is what’s been happening to me.

In 2017 my family had to declare bankruptcy due to the debts we incurred at a result of my illness.

Now, nearly ten years later, will we have to do this again?

Being out of work is demoralizing, but being out of work with ever increasing medical bills and no end in sight is cause for despair.

I try to trust in spirit, but some days I have a hard time shaking the sadness, the fear.

Imagine, you work hard and pay into this system through taxes. Then the unspeakable happens and you are unable to work. But you cannot access the money you contributed, because your condition is determined not “severe” enough by some unseen metric hidden from view.

Meanwhile your savings is gone. You have borrowed everything you could borrow. Help dries up, credit card balances rise, and you begin to feel the strange pull of dissolving that is the liminal:

Not well enough to work, not considered disabled, either. Betwixt, between.

When disability is denied, people who have never encountered the system begin to whisper. “If it were really that bad, wouldn’t she be approved?” I’ve had conversations with loved ones about this. When the authority says your condition is not disabling, it is hard to convince anyone else.

Social Security Disability is not just a fiscal payment, either. When approved you are automatically enrolled in Medicare after 24 months, which can help to offset medical costs. And there are programs and resources available to recipients. Education, training, tax help, home help.

I am writing this in bed. Everything hurts today, but this is what I can do, right now. Give voice to the story.

This is how I claim my power even in the liminal: the story.

Listen: if you too are trapped in the no-world that is the liminal, please give voice to your story.

Let it be a healing, let it be an offering.

Speaking the truth is the antidote to despair.

Over the past couple of months in the midst of my physical ill/well cycles I’ve been writing again. Mostly lying down, often about this experience. It is not consistent, some days I can’t type, but when I can, I do. And that feels good after months of not doing.

I restarted this Substack and added a Ko-fi tip jar. I’m now making about $35 a month, but in April I made $200. And hey, that is something. That is, actually, after two years of unemployment, a blessing.

Thank you for this blessing. For your witness and listening.

For your belief in this process.

It is what I have, this voice. And prayer, and miracles.

And faith, that this all serves a purpose. That our work, however expressed, however limited, matters.

Between illness and wellness, between work and no work, between money and no money, between able and disabled,

in the liminal there remains a gift.

The question becomes, can we speak it?

In the service of the balance.

With joy.

With love.

Flower Bath Challenge Here

Liminal Spaces Part One

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1. https://www.ssa.gov/foia/resources/proactivedisclosure/2023/FY22%20Workload%20Data-Total.pdf

2. email to client, Evans Disability

3. Ibid.

Hi Friends—this next series is in response to spirit. I sure didn’t want to write it and I don’t want to share it now. But if I am a believer in truth, honesty, integrity,

and if I claim, as I have for years, that storytelling is essential for our healing and the healing of others,

and if I have benefited from another’s story medicine (which I still do, daily), there is a mandate to clear the channel, to share the tale.

The next few posts are from the underworld.

Even though I am here, being visible, I am still there.

And if you are too, may you take comfort in Our Lady Beneath The Earth. May you know you are not alone, we are kin, and there is somewhere a purpose to these cycles.

Even if we can’t see it just yet.

Part One: Not Ill, Not Well

“You have to trust the story. The story knows more than you do.” –Jack Driscoll

“The universe is made of stories/not of atoms.” Murial Rukeyser

“What secrets do you keep?” In the Mythteller’s Hut

I really want to be done.

It has been nearly two years. Two years next month. Two years since I disappeared into the webbing and hole of the medical system.

Two years since I last facilitated a class.

Two years without an income.

Two years without a purpose beyond seeking, constantly, health. Or at least healing. Or at least help. (The root of all these words is the same…)

Two years of solitude, more abrupt and contiguous than ever before. My children now grown, communities shattered by the pandemic, my city awash in division. Good bad. Right wrong.

Two years of loss, again. Grief. Again. Two years of iatrogenic harms, again, this time more pronounced and requiring a lot of recovery. I am still recovering.

Two years of immersion in systems that feel abusive. Clinical environments, disability applications. A pattern persists: entering hopeful, only to have hope crushed by medical errors, a lack of informed consent, disconnected providers, misinterpreted notes, mistakes perpetuated impacting care, resulting in a glut of bills I can’t hope to pay. And few answers.

Some things have been resolved, it’s true.

(See the Interlude: what is wrong with you? below.)

And some healers are angels—more on this soon.

I have several diagnoses, some good treatments. But I am still existing in what the MS community calls “Limbo Land,” the liminal space where you meet some of the clinical or lab criteria for a diagnosis, but cannot be diagnosed.

There are things unresolved, tests being run, protocols in process. I can’t yet explain why I am still only able to do a few hours of activity per day. Why pushing triggers intense neurological symptoms, including dizziness, headaches, memory loss, along with joint pain and rashes. I still don’t know what is causing half my face to go numb and swell up, a lump over my clavicle, a stabbing pain beneath my ribcage, why my eyes go blurry and my hearing quits in my left ear for seconds, minutes each day. The doctors I’ve spoken with so far—neurology, hematology, rheumatology—all say it could be from the brain lesions. The damage, unrepaired.

In spite of this obvious liminality, I keep trying to come back, to be healed, to return. To restore some semblance of who I was in the world prior to the past two years.

Return is the supposed, purported, end of a transition. From my words in 2018:

“Return is the third phase of an initiatory rite of passage. In myth it often includes a ceremony of homecoming, coalescence, community honoring. On return the initiate may ritually take a new name, something symbolic of the new role or work they embody after transformation. Return can be a time of mourning, grieving and celebration simultaneously. It is paradoxical, an ending and a beginning, often without a place of pause in the cycle of transformation, but still marking a definitive change, a true death.”

Return can seem preferable to the second phase of a rite of passage, which is the liminal. The word liminal comes from a root connoting between…doorways, portals…and connects to words of boundary, like limit.

My words, again: “…the second phase (of a rite of passage) is the liminal, a no-time outside of linearity... The liminal time is disconcerting, often a time of great fear and depression. The uncertainty about the future is the only certainty. In the liminal transition-initiation phase of a rite of passage we do our deep work. This is where the ritual story protagonists meet the Dark Goddess in the underworld, where we can find great gifts by letting go of who or what we were. The liminal is a time for ritual, rooting in, communion, articulating priorities and allowing for transformation to happen.”

Every time I feel a little bit better I try to tell myself it is done, time to reclaim some of my past, to restore what has been lost.

I long to be in community, to teach and write and be supported in that work. So I reach out, I reframe, I attempt.

But every time, thus far, return has been met with resistance.

Examples:

I upload my art to sell on a POD site, spending days and too much energy so I am inflamed and exhausted, in a symptom flare after…and the account is immediately suspended for reasons unknown, all my work, lost. I appeal into the void.

I attempt to use Substack to rebuild community but find the format (crowded, noisy) is a problem for my brain. I lose things, I can’t remember how others work, I try Notes again but struggle with the formatting, comments and messages go multiple places so I lose them. It is a neurological Gordian knot, part of a whole new world now, and I don’t understand it.

I set up an appointment with a former consultant to draft a strategy for return and am too ill to attend. My first appointment becomes my first cancellation in two years.

There are more examples. That make me cringe, that fill me with frustration, exhaustion.

And I ask myself, why am I doing this?

Because I am lonely (true)

Because I miss working (also true)

Because my social security was denied twice and I have to wait another twelve to fourteen months for a hearing, so am terrified about finances (immensely true).

Because I long to believe my voice can matter (yes)

Because I want something visible in the world, in case this limbo land takes a dark turn and I am unable to create or reach out again (oh.)

All those things.

Another big one:

Art is a process, not a product.

I write to figure out what it is I am thinking. Writing makes my thoughts visible, better helps me map and articulate what is often obscure and opaque in my injured brain. Sharing art is, to me, a way to know better this life, to touch on pattern and make visible the story. The story I’m living, the story I must trust to survive.

Even now, this essay has made visible something vital (and maybe someone reading this needs to hear it, too). I imagine this straight from Our Lady of the Underworld, in her darkened wrappings and carve-backed chair, her arm cradling the sacred infant, her eyes blessed and closed:

It is not yet time to integrate your rite of passage. (She says.)

It is not done.

You are not through.

She says:

This doesn’t mean you need to hide your work. It doesn’t mean you need to disappear, even though you may want to.

(I do! Passage is embarrassing. I am not able to do what I was before, even three years ago. I am not the same. And it makes me sad, that lack of continuity. I mourn my brain, my old abilities…)

She says:

Release your shame. Destroying your web in the desire for a clean break, a full transformation, is not the way. There is no such thing as clean. All rites are messy, disorganized, imperfect.

Let yours be, too.

So. Here I am. Still between. Not ill, but not well. Not able to work, but unable to stay silent. Tired and sore, reluctant and flawed.

With love at the center, no perfection, only devotion.

Hello from the liminal.

We are still here.

Wherever here may be.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

(INTERLUDE #1: What is wrong with you?

I am answering this question for people who, like me, are deeply curious about the illness/embodied journeys of others. I have a long history of health issues that I’ve written about elsewhere (the Wild Soul Runes and Year of the Dark Goddess books both talk about my past experiences with severe ME/CFS and CIRS). But after the pandemic, with multiple COVID infections and a vaccine reaction, things really changed for me.

Here’s what I know: An MRI in 2024 showed a large number of white matter lesions in my brain. Some of these were demylienating, which is a possible sign of Multiple Sclerosis or a MS-like disease, but further testing could not provide a definitive diagnosis. In the MS world this is known as Limbo Land, and can last for years.

After hundreds of other medical encounters, however, I was diagnosed with the following:

Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome, an autoimmune disease causing hematological abnormalities that result in blood clots. It is acquired (not directly genetic) but can run in families (my dad has it too). Mine is seronegative, meaning I don’t have the labs to support the diagnosis. Instead I was diagnosed based on white matter lesions, which can be caused by blood clots, an occlusive vascular rash called livedo reticularis, a deep vein thrombosis in my leg and a history of miscarriages. I’m on anticoagulants and an immune modifying drug which prevent my blood from clotting.

Moderate White Matter Disease, a real bummer of a diagnosis, part of the “MS limbo land” spectrum. In addition to white matter lesions I also have some volume loss in my brain. This damage leads to cognitive issues, memory problems, speech aphasia and a laundry list of sensory/neurological symptoms that are much worse when I am fatigued, ill or exposed to toxins. White Matter Disease can be progressive, but mine has remained stable thus far.

Viral Reactivation. This has been a problem for me in the past and was at the root of my severe ME/CFS. I’d also shown elevated Epstein-Barr levels after my first COVID infection. Last year I started seeing a naturopath who specializes in complex diseases. She tested me for five viruses and all came back positive for reactivation. A two month course of the antiviral Valtrex eliminated my daily fevers and made a huge difference in my quality of life.

Mast Cell Disease with Hereditary Alpha Tryptasemia. Still figuring out what this means, I was just diagnosed this spring…but these conditions cause connective tissue problems, gastrointestinal issues, skin rashes, allergic reactions and environmental sensitivity. I am on four mast cell moderating medications and these have helped quite a lot, but there are still some symptoms that flare unpredictably and cause a lot of pain and fatigue.

What is still unknown?

I am still being evaluated for MS.

I have new vision and hearing issues that are likely neurological. There are good days and bad days for both, which impacts my ability to do so many things…including read, or have a conversation.

The mast cell symptoms include joint pain in the small joints of my hands as well as my neck and one hip. Physical or mental stress can exacerbate these symptoms causing pain and stiffness to the point where I am unable to write or type. I have not been able to draw by hand for years now. It is distressing to lose my art, but even more problematic is the pain that comes with the unpredictable flares.

I am being evaluated for a number of other conditions.

We will see what these next months bring.

My goal is stability and functionality, which looks different day to day.)

Next Up:

The Liminal Part Two: Work Limitations and Disability Denials

Also: Still planning on the Solstice Flower Bath Challenge (with some chronic illness friendly modifications…) which begins on Monday, June 8th…see this post for more details…

If you enjoyed this writing please consider supporting this work by becoming a subscriber.

If you would like to make a one-time or recurring donation, I am creating a support community on Ko-fi where I hope to offer free downloads, archive access and more for members:

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Some other posts related to this topic—both at Our Lady of the Underworld and my website archive:

Everybody Loves an After

Emerging From the Underworld

Archive

Thank you so much for your witness to this journey.

I am grateful for the weaving of these webs.

With love—Lara

**The paper was cheap and wrinkled under my fingers. My printer was old and coughing as it spit out several drafts. Cats crowd my desk so I was stationed at the kitchen table, cutting uneven circles around pages of words, taping them together as art. I have made many zines, fliers and posters over my decades of adult life, beginning when I was a teen. Booklets on recycling and organic foods, my senior capstone project a collaged poetry chapbook titled “In the Margins” with writings and art found in the literal margins of my college notebooks, and even a full-length handwritten guidebook some of you may have seen before (The Moon Divas Guidebook: Spirited Self-Care for Women in Transition). I have always preferred the touch of paper to digital clicks when it comes to the process of creation, but now in the futurescape of digital creativity, where photos and illustrations are often too perfect, where text is a little…disconcerting in its made-ness, the tactile seems less optional, more essential.

It is surprising, how long it takes to make a collage with paper and tape. The process is not difficult, but it is time consuming. At first the text doesn’t fit, details are omitted, the printer decides to take a pause. I am not anti-tech, I am clearly using technology now, but I am a fan of what Willa Cather names as “the irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.” (From one of my favorite books of all time, Death Comes for the Archbishop, recommended and beautiful…)

Once we were surrounded by handmade things. Not long ago in the scope of history, every aspect of a life was touched, crafted, by another. There was little anonymity in the creation of everyday objects. We would know the source—whether local or traded from afar—and we would know how to make many, if not most, of our own objects, too.

In my study of ancestral traditions one of my other favorite books is Irish Folk Ways by E. Estyn Evans. Evans was a Welsh geographer and archaeologist, who moved to Ireland in the 1920’s. He began to record and preserve a fading way of life, because

“…it seemed to him a short inevitable step to attempt recovery of its rapidly disappearing peasant culture and folklore.”[1]

Published in 1956, Irish Folk Ways is a synthesis of the sacred everyday, the made things that once rounded a life, and the daily, seasonal tasks that gave meaning and purpose to homes and communities. Evans documents with his own detailed illustrations toothed sickles, roof thatch, querns, cooking pots, chairs and seats, light holders, churns, gateposts, bog shelters, spades, ploughs, shovels, lazy beds, creels, turf baskets, ropes and mats, flails, salmon spears, fishing nets, Briget’s crosses, cursing stones—and these are just a rattle in the (handmade) crate of goods he details. Along with the illustrations is text that values and admires these traditions of craft. He writes in the introduction,

“However interesting we may find “bygones” for their own sake—and most of us take a natural interest in the way our forefathers lived—there is a need to know not only how these relics were made and used but also what beliefs were held about them…There is a clear relationship between the ways in which men’s basic needs are satisfied and the social organization. Nothing less than the whole of the past is needed to explain the present (ix).”[2] (emphasis is mine)

I wonder what Estyn would make of our world today, so disconnected from nearly every aspect of material needs. In America, where I live, many people no longer know how to cook, let alone how to grow food. Many do not even how most food is grown, harvested, processed. Likewise we are far distant from the manufacture of our clothes and shoes, furniture and utensils. We do not pump water from our wells, or cut wood for our fires, or make candles for our lighting. These hard divisions become evident in natural disasters, where few among us have the tools or knowledge to keep ourselves fed, warm and clean. We are entirely dependent on new technologies, municipalities and global systems whose delicacy is daily more evident.

There are, of course, movements humming below the surface—homesteading, preparedness, primitive skills—that are re-sourcing ancient knowledge, ancestral ideals of self-sufficiency and empowerment. These often feel exclusive though, especially to people with little experience, or caregiving obligations, or economic vulnerabilities, or who, like me, have health issues that limit their physical capacity. Camping for a week in the woods at an outdoor skills fest while learning how to forage every meal sounds intriguing, but access is limited to those who can take a week off work and have the gear, the income, and the bodies, to sustain them through the experience.

So, for some of us, technology and modernity are essential to helping us live, work and heal. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reclaim the ancestral, learn new skills and craft a life of more intentionality and self-sufficiency. As I make my paper collage, I am doing just that. The bar is pretty low right now, since the pandemic nearly everything is digital. In the past two years every online platform I used has incorporated an AI assistant, offering to make my images or write my text. Even when I deny these offers of creation (which I do, my dream AI interface is not creative, I actually love that work,) I feel the shift, a drift further from the real.

This disconnect shows. It crops up in a lack of collective ritual, our disappearing community spaces—two central aspects of our very tactile human past evident in Evans’ work. It is reflected in discontent, malaise, missing purpose and direction, feelings of grief, loss, burnout, depression, anxiety and despair. Not that people in the past didn’t experience these things, they did. But largely they did not have time to dwell on their feelings, so consumed were they by efforts to survive.

I often hear my ancestors laughing at me when a mood lingers and I am morose for more than a day.

Come on, they say, you have light at the flick of a switch, water pouring from a tap, an indoor toilet, heat or cool whenever you wish it, food at the ready, more clothes than many of us wore in a lifetime and you can read and write and access antibiotics. Your life, in comparison to most of ours, is not physically so hard.

But psychologically, I do think we are in a time of great hardship. We are missing something of life, something essential and central to our humanity. And I think that something is not necessarily transcendent. I think what we miss, what I miss, is connection.

And it is that, with handmade projects, I attempt to reclaim.

I say reclaim because I have not always been so isolated, so dependent on technology. (How about you?) I grew on twenty-four acres outside of Wimer, Oregon, the child of hippie homesteaders from California. For a while we lived without running water and electricity—this meant hauling water from the creek in garbage cans and heating it on the wood stove for bathing, purifying water for drinking, kerosene lamps and candles at night, a harrowing dark journey to the outhouse for eight year old me. It also meant a sweet quiet, with stories and stars, a warmth at the center where the light flickered at the table, laughter as my dad squeezed himself into the tiny tin washtub for his bath, and a different kind of power, freedom from grid and bill.

My parents raised animals for meat with varying successes, grew and preserved a lot of our food, and as a result I learned many skills—cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, sewing, baking—from them both directly and peripherally. I also learned that such a life was possible, saw it and touched it and ate from its table. This, I believe, is the greatest gift my parents gave me, second only to their love. To know, a little, of how to live by hand.

When my family did acquire electricity and plumbing, we still were rustic. Our TV required an aerial antenna, which sometimes allowed it to broadcast one station, but other times my dad had to to hold the antenna on the roof so we could see a clear picture. So we didn’t watch TV much. Our telephone was a party line, meaning (again, for my children’s generation) we shared the line with our neighbors and had to wait our turn to make a call. The big change in my childhood was the advent of a VCR which allowed us to rent movies on the weekends. Going to the cinema, or out to eat, or even wearing new clothing was pretty rare and not a focus at all. We were cash poor, lived miles from the nearest store and few of my friends had new clothes, either. My days, when not in school, were spent outdoors with my horse, a couple of sheep, our dogs, cats, and the creek, all infused with my own imagination.

Maybe some of you had similar childhoods, or an experience with a family member or friend or summer camp where tech was at the edges only, and the primary relationships were between people, the earth, animals… When I taught at Pacific University my first year seminar class was titled Discovering a Sense of Place. I found that nearly all of my students, even those with extremely urban childhoods, had an experience of connection—however temporary--to people and the earth, and were marked beautifully by it. Remembered it with joy. Longed for its medicine. Even if it was a drainage ditch near the freeway, a vacant lot, that connection remained.

But there is no profit in connection, in simple joy. When we are disconnected from the earth and each other we are more likely to be discontented, seeking connection elsewhere. Advertisers and marketers use this desire for connection to develop “emotional connections” between consumers and brands, playing off of our often unconscious desire for belonging.[4] When discontented we are vulnerable, and may be tempted by false promises so that we buy more things, surrender more readily our time, energy and privacy to corporate entities and, in return, trust the output of those entities rather than the messy daily challenge of in-person human doing.

It is pretty gnarly. And very intentional.

This dance has been going on a long while, but the pandemic was a final slice for many threads of in-person connection. In just my limited circles, support groups, book clubs and neighborhood meetings ventured online never to return.

E. Estyn Evans wrote in 1957: “But it is the changes which are taking place today…that are finally extinguishing the prehistoric traditions. Mechanization and mass production are invading the remotest glens, and things which were the commonplace of fifty years ago are becoming as remote to the young as the Middle Ages. Knowledge of ways of life that have altered little for centuries is passing away; skills whose loss the practical countryman may have cause to regret are disappearing.”[5]

My work in this life is crafted by hand. I am an artist whose painstaking and rare creations (because they are so labor intensive) represent many hours of effort.

I am a writer whose words generate from hand to page—sometimes via a screen, yes—but they are all my own words. And this feels important to me, to not use AI in my craft.

I also cook, clean, sew, mend and make where and what I can by my own efforts. And I make an effort to touch—physically--what I offer up to give, from coursework to dream pillows. I leave in typos and smudges—in my collage today there are embedded bits of red thread, stuck to the tape, a word misspelled and corrected in pen, places where the copy printed uneven. All of it is part of the imperfect intimacy that in this moment only I can make.

There are no mistakes. Not the scraggly stitches on my jean repair, or the slightly burned enchiladas we are eating this night for dinner. All of these are part of the messy goodness that is living, in this body, in this day, and making, in the best old way of our ancestors, however we can, a life.

My greatest wish is to return to community. I lost even those online threads through more years of illness. I seek it now in person—a hope that some of the folk from my online classes over the years, who live locally or are willing to travel, will come and share an imperfect meal, or a craft night, or a ritual, and celebrate life together. Someday. Soon.

In the vision I see us at the edge of the river, laughing into the wind as we eat something from chipped plates and drink fresh water drawn that morning from a spring to the East. One twines yarn through their fingers like hair, another has in their lap a twist of nettle, the next carries seeds to share with us for autumn planting. Somewhere someone picks up a guitar and a song begins, easy as the river, open as the wind.

This is a life our grandparents would recognize.

This is a life made by hand and shared in kind.

By this and every effort, may the balance be regained.

With love.

[1] https://biography.wales/article/s8-EVAN-EST-1905

[2] Evans, E. Estyn. Irish Folk Ways. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London 1957, xi

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6182728/

[4] https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions

[5] Evans, Ibid. x

**A note: This article was first written in 2024 and appeared on the Olden Practice blog. In the two years since its publication—much of which I spent ill and away from online spaces like Substack—I am astonished at how much has changed and the cavalier way in which art and writing, along with every other facet of life, has been transformed by AI. I still do not use AI in my written work, or in my art. Every word you read on these pages was written by me, every line of this art was drawn by my own hand. And that is important for me to acknowledge. I am slow, I am flawed, I am human. I am making. I am made by making.

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The title for this journey of a letter is from a query I received about a line in an earlier post:

Ceremony is our work. Story is our ceremony.

What does that mean?

And of course I had to think about it a long time, and ask spirit to help me clarify my own language. So goes life with memory loss. But here is the “answer,” elusive, effusive and shifting day to day:

In the depths of illness, when I struggle and shame and despair, the centering quality I lean into, reliably, above all else, is ceremony. Not high ceremony, pillars and formulae and blazing candles, but simple everyday ceremony, whispered by my ancestors:

everything done with intention is ritual, ritualize the routine.

I spent half of the past two years in bed “resting” every day. Not visiting, not talking, not writing, not creating or reading or even watching TV. Resting means doing actual nothing.

I was in bed not because I wanted to be, or because it felt luxurious and lovely, but because my body was so distressed and disregulated I could not sustain more than a few hours of any activity at a time. If you have experience with this you know how absolutely debilitating it is. It has been yet another time of internal struggle and trial. Of convincing myself that my life, at its smallest and most invisible, is worthwhile.

This time, however, even though the illness lasted longer than all others before, I had a tool kit: ritual. story. ceremony.

And in these days, ever uncertain, I turn to it still. The elements wrought by my ancestors and fine tuned through this sacred circle, through our communities…the Wild Soul Runes Gnosis practice, the Dark Goddess Project…are sustaining. For even when I am immobilized and wrecked I can make tiny rituals.

I can make a story of this life that gives meaning and purpose to pain.

This is, I suppose, what I mean when I say ceremony=work, story=ceremony. It is embroidered in all of the sacred liturgies and mythologies. It is visible to me, today, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, the 3000 year old initiatory tradition built on enacting the tale of earth mother Demeter (Da-ma-te) and her daughter, Kore, who becomes Queen of the Underworld. The story of loss/death, regeneration/rebirth becomes a ceremony. The ceremony, the symbolic actions that allow us to experience the cycle, become the story. It is a fluid motion, the cycle of ritual and the cycle of passage—which each ritual represents in miniature—becoming a kind of wholeness.

To me, this is the work. Wholeness. An ancient word whose root, hal, means health.

Even amid fragmentation, illness or change, we are whole.

Even amid loss, we are whole.

In leaning in to the smallness of a ceremony, we become a part of an entire mythos, of ancestral patterns and earth traditions extending back through all of time. We become part of a microcosm that is infinite in its complexity, mycorrhizae in a network. We become part of Mystery, a universe so vast and unknown it may only be captured in the sacred stories, in myth and cycle.

In short, there are no small ceremonies. And the work of ceremony, the work of life, meaning, purpose, is the story of the universe, our place in it, our miraculous living. It is spirit work.

What do you think, community?

With this in mind, how is ceremony your work? How is story your ceremony?

(If you feel like you need a healing myth in your sphere, here is a link to my retelling of the story of Demeter and Kore in our ritual story circle.)

The Solstice Flower Bath Challenge Returns—A Ritual Practice to Clear Energy, Deepen Connection and Increase Self-Love

You are invited to participate in one of my favorite practices for support in life transformation. The Solstice Flower Bath Challenge is a way to shift energetics, clear old patterns and habits, and realign. Some of you may remember this from our time together on Instagram and in the Wild Soul School Community. Here’s the practice photo record from 2023:

So fun!

Participation is simple:

Beginning on the Waning Half Moon June 8th I’ll post an “opening ceremony” meditation here, where we can commit to creating some form of flower bath—any combination of flowers, water, sun and intention—every day for 13 days.

The last bath will be on June 20th, with a special Solstice Plunge/Dunk invitation for June 21st.

We begin by setting intentions for the practice, and keep a record of our process in a journal or, if you want to create community, share photos and stories here in the comments or via Notes (I will be attempting Notes for this practice…wish me luck and more on this soon…).

The practice is infinitely adaptable—see below—and has an equally infinite number of applications (clearing, protecting, grieving, celebrating, honoring, invoking, manifesting, changing changing changing…)

Here are a few tips and modifications to start:

Download the Moon Divas Guidebook Flower Bath pages for free:

Moon Divas Guidebook Flower Bathing

162KB ∙ PDF file

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Plant alchemy for the flower bath practice in summer solstice climes.

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Be sure to subscribe to Our Lady of the Underworld if you haven’t already to receive the opening and closing ceremonies and daily practice shares, along with some seasonal meditations.

Subscribe now

If you are in the southern hemisphere, or if the Solstice ends up chilly, here are some additional modifications.

Southern Hemisphere or Cold Weather Flower Bath Modifications

This challenge is held in the height of summer for the North, but may be practiced year round and in any climate. Hot baths with plants, drinking tea infusions or using plants in steam baths (in the Winter section of the Moon Divas Guidebook, available as a free download below) are all adaptable modifications for cold weather. Please join us whatever the Solstice brings!

Moon Divas Guidebook Steam Bathing

230KB ∙ PDF file

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Plant magic self-care for the cool weather solstice season.

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The most important parts of this…or any…practice:

Use what you have. This applies to tools and implements.

Our ancestors reward our creativity.

No bucket or large bowl? Use any receptacle—a cup works fine. I’ve made flower baths in jam jars, salad bowls, tea mugs. Any container will do.

No fresh flowers? Dried flowers or even tea will work fine.

No flowers at all? Every plant is magic—sacred weeds, culinary herbs, leafy greens, evergreen needles, dried grasses all contain unique blessings. These baths are an energetic infusion, so while flowers increase the beauty of the blend they are not necessary to making a powerful bath.

No plants available? Make sun-moon-star water by leaving a bowl or cup of water drawn with intention outside or on a windowsill overnight.

Use what you have. This applies to time and availability. If you are stretched for time and space make what you already do into a ritual—I call this ritualizing the routine. You may make your shower, tooth brushing, hand washing into a sacred act for the purposes of this practice with the application of breath, gratitude and intention.

More information on the Elements of Effective Ritual available here.

And a little video on Ritualizing the Routine is available here.

Make it your own. I share this path with the hope that it will offer you inspiration to create your own version. Your practice will not look like mine once you begin to listen to your inner knowing, the spirits of the place where you live, your unique ancestral promptings. We become rich through relationship. All practice begins with examination and imitation, but it is when we add our unique signature in relationship to the plants, water, sun, air and spirit that true magic happens.

And remember:

The most important tool in any ritual practice is our focused intention.

Join With Others: solitary but not alone, we weave magic together even from afar. Here are some ways to share:

Invite your friends and family to join this practice. My children used to love to participate in flower bathing. And I highly recommend collective flower baths, if possible.

For virtual connection, some suggestions:

Consider taking a before and after photo or video of yourself. I ALWAYS wish to do this…and usually forget, but the energetic transformations of this practice are visible and potent.

Consider creating a collage or video montage of your practices and sharing it via email or post.

I will post Notes for each day of the practice, please let me know if you will be sharing your practice via Notes too so I can follow you! (I am new to this medium so will be learning as we go…)

Comment on the posts of the practice, feel free to share links, songs, poetry…inspire us.

Using this space serves a two-fold purpose of connecting in community and keeping a record of our process.

If you prefer to stay anonymous, you are welcome to message me or send me an email (laravesta@protonmail.com) with a photo of your bath, and I will craft a post at the end of the practice sharing our photos in an anonymous collage.

This is my first time hosting a practice on Substack, so please bear with me! I’m not sure what will be the best way, but in the spirit of “use what you have” I’m using this platform rather than trying to create another.

You can expect more emails on this and other Solstice gifts as we approach June 8th.

Here’s to practice in community. Here’s to the work of story and ceremony.

Let it be an offering.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained. ᚨᛚᚢ

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Year of the Dark Goddess

Wild Soul Runes

Dear Community—Two emails in as many days! Not my usual but I happened on this ritual and the timing felt synchronistic. This Beltane ceremony was originally created for the Coven Invisible Patreon group several years ago, and I hope to dream it into being this season with some kindreds. I love to imagine our energetic sharing, weaving together even apart.

A note on ritual practice for physical or spiritual limitations: sometimes it can be enough to just read a ritual. I have spent many holy days in illness, and have reminded myself that intention and visualization are powerful. Anything we do with intention can be ritualized.

And now, a blessing:

May your road be filled with beauty. May your heart be filled with love.

Ritual for Beltane

(or Samhain in the Southern Hemisphere)

Ritual timing:

Beltane falls on a Full Moon this year, but I always like to remember that all the holy days==quarter and cross quarter—represent a season, not only a day. This can take the pressure off if, for example, today does not lend itself to celebration…you have the season. <3

Ritual Intention

The purpose of this ritual is

1. To release patterns and habits from this past half year (the dark half in the north, the light half in the south) that no longer serve us.

2. To invite blessings that enrich us spiritually and interpersonally in the half year ahead.

Ritual Elements

For this ritual you will need:

Two objects you can *safely* set on fire and walk between—this has infinite variety but may include candles or bonfires. If fire is prohibitive for you, the sun and another source of heat or light can work too. You may also envision fire, or even write the word fire on paper or draw a picture. Having some sort of embodied, physical representation is useful for the unconscious elements of the ritual to take hold in the psyche.

A source of flame—matches, lighter. If you wish to be authentic and tap into ancestral skills you may want to start your Beltane fires with a bow drill or flint and steel, as was traditional in Scotland, Ireland and Sweden.

Paper and writing utensil. Homemade ink from berries or ocher can make this ritual extra potent and connects to ancestral energies. You may also write with charcoal to imbue your words with the spirit of fire.

Herbs for burning and saining: juniper, mugwort and yarrow are all traditional herbs for blessing and protecting.

Ritual on the Eve

For many of our ancestors the day began at dusk the night before, so in planning ritual it often feels good for me to practice on the eve of the holy day/full moon/dark moon.

As it is a fire ritual, night is also best for luminosity and reverence. However, with my disability I find late nights difficult and prefer to rise very early for my rituals.

The Day of the Ritual

These are all preparation suggestions based on my own practices, please feel free to adapt to your needs.

Bathe in ceremony and clean your space. I use a cleansing wash of rosemary, sage and hyssop for mopping my floors, wet dusting shelves and in my bath.

In bathing I like to ask my helping spirits to be present and get me ready for whatever is necessary in the day. On ritual days I might make an offering of food or drink before I get in the bath, bless the water and I usually make sure to dunk completely in the water. I also don’t use soap on ritual days, as the water is a blessing and infusion in itself.

Eat light whole meals through the day if possible. Consider making a little extra for the spirits.

Make an herbal infusion to share with the spirits. I like equal parts raspberry leaf and oat straw with a pinch of spearmint, blended and added by the fist full to a quart jar. If sunny I will let it sit outdoors, if cool I use boiling water.

Spend some time writing with your helping spirits, articulating what you are releasing and invoking for the ceremony.

Some points of possible inquiry:

What patterns or habits do I need to let go of from this past half year?

What do I need to bless, protect, or open myself to for my greatest good/peace/joy/love in the half year ahead?

When you feel you are clear on your intentions for the ritual, write on separate sheets of paper using your homemade ink or charcoal your release and your blessing for the ceremony.

Roll these up or fold them with some of the herb offering and keep them on your person in a pouch or pocket for use during the ritual.

The Ceremony

If you have the ability, traditionally this ceremony would be outside on a hilltop. But it also can take place indoors…and we can always imagine ourselves on a hilltop, or visit a hilltop in a meditation or journey.

When it is time for the ceremony, raise some energy by drumming, dancing, singing or clapping your hands. Sometimes I verbally let the spirits know I am ready for a ceremony:

“Helping and compassionate spirits, I am ready for a ceremony. Sacred ones, I am ready for a ceremony.”

I will sometimes visualize a circle around myself in the web of wyrd by calling to the spirits of the directions, helpers, plants, animals, ancestors, and sometimes I just ask for any helping and compassionate spirits that wish to assist in this work to show up. Lately I have been singing my circle into being, keeping rhythm with my staff and using it to “weave wyrd” between the cardinal points around me. Creating ritual space is deeply personal. Follow your intuition.

Create your sacred container and call in your helpers.

Within the circle set up your fire points—the candles or campfires or imagined fire with sun and heat.

Leave enough space between them that you can walk around them and stand in the middle.

Begin to sing a galdr—song or chant or charm—to the fire. You could sing the word (fire, fire, fire) over and over again, or let yourself be drawn by a tune you know.

Bless your fire starter with the tune.

Bless your fuel (candle, wood, paper) with the tune.

As you sing start to kindle your fire.

If there is a fire spirit, God (Bel, Lugh, Loki) or Goddess (Sol, Brigid, Hei∂) you wish to invoke, ask them in to support the ceremony.

Pay attention to how the fire behaves as you start it.

Are the matches challenging to light?

Is the wind playing tricks on you?

What direction is it coming from?

All of this information could be important to the ceremonial effect.

When you have both fires lit, begin burning a bit of your herb, producing a good smoke. Walk around the fire three times counter-clockwise allowing the smoke to billow about you.

As you walk speak the things you are releasing and bring out the paper with what you are releasing. Imagine the smoke clearing these things away from you.

Call on your helping spirits and the fire spirits as you burn the paper. Move the release through your body. Release, Release, Release!

Then burn a few more herbs. Walk around the fire three times clockwise. As you walk speak the things you are blessing/protecting/bringing in. Imagine the smoke sealing these good things into your life and fate.

Calling on your helping spirits, burn the paper. Move the blessings into your being. Feel it in your body. Blessing! Blessing! Blessing!

Walk into the center between the fires.

Feel the ancient power of your ancestors moving through you.

Feel the power of your descendants, whether genetic or creative or all, moving through you.

Call in their power for blessing and release. Feel the joy of their survival living in you and through you.

If you feel called, make a commitment to them and to yourself.

Feel in to how your release and blessing can serve the whole of your lineage in healing and repair.

Any other ritual actions you wish may be performed in here:

Offerings Dance Song

Gifts given or received

You might choose to stay in the circle and write or make art as the fire dies down. Traditionally the fires were left to burn out on their own, and each household would take a coal home with them for their hearth. I can’t ever last that long in ceremony, so I bless the fire and extinguish it fully, taking some of the ash or soot from the candle wick to bless my home with sigils.

Then I close the circle, thanking all of the entities and elements present, reversing the order I used to invoke it.

“Thank you all who have gathered here, go if you will stay if you must, we are bound together by this, our trust.”

In the days following the ritual, consider seeking out opportunities for integration—where can you begin to nourish your intentions?

How are you witnessing the transformation?

Use your writing practice to clarify and realign your intentions with spirit. Proceed into the new half of the year, with blessing and grace.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained. ᚨᛚᚢ

This is a vintage video from nine years ago in 2017! It details one of the simplest, most potent practices I’ve experienced for moving energy and can be a great incorporation into the above ritual. Thank you to my beloved friend Deva Munay for teaching me this technique back in the early Moon Divas days.

Dear Ones—over, under, to the between and back. Honestly, I have been in hiding, stilled by grief and fear in a latest fall through the medical abyss. Grieving what has been lost again, which is enormous and uncountable (looking at you, my community). Paralyzed by the deficiencies I experience now in thinking, writing, working. Terrified at saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing when so depleted, when so much has changed.

Then, this week, I realized:

I can’t be alone in this.

I’m not alone in this.

You know it, too, reader.

This is the wound, it tells us that we are alone, and with it an ancient potent binding that silences our creative hearts, swimming us into a solitary illusory helplessness.

But we are not helpless.

We are wholeness.

We are possibility.

We are sacred.

A song I wrote in Afia Walking Tree’s class at CIIS eleven (!) years ago:

We are the children of spinners and weavers. (We all are. We all are)

We are the children of hands in the earth. (We all are. We all are.)

We are the voices for those who are silent. (We all are. We all are.)

We are survivors of death and rebirth. (We all are. We all are.)

Now, then. Hi. Again.

I’ve been through this cycle so many times, but am still nauseated by its spin. Over under over under, the weaving of the thread into the depths and up again.

Over:

Last year I emerged from a deep death cycle, totally changed. I smelled of change, reeked of it. Reek comes from the Old Anglo Saxon reocan, and references a fumagatory cleansing or recaning. Reocan is featured as a healing device in an Old English charm, number 17, against Ælfadle, Elf Sickness:

“Take bishop’s wort, fennel, lupine, the lower part of enchanter’s nightshade and lichen...then put live coals in a chafing dish and lay the herbs on them. Smoke the person with these herbs before the third hour of the day and at night.”

In the Over I had a diagnosis and medications to keep my blood from clotting, which, it turns out, makes you feel terrible and causes brain damage, so anticoagulation is amazing. In the Over last summer I had a few months of lessening pain. I restarted this Substack (note to self: in the next death transition do not delete!) and made some plans.

Then I had a routine MRI==still under observation for MS so these are every six months==and a violent allergic reaction to the gadolinium contrast, which began a chain reaction of events, more interventions, more medications, more failed treatments.

Under: a strange old story, a litany of woe

It has been hard.

I am angry in the underworld. Filled at times with

despair.

the endlessness of loss.

hopelessness.

loneliness.

aloneness.

poverty.

forgetfulness.

distrustfulness.

disconnectedness.

disappointment.

pain.

rage.

(maybe some of you can relate?)

In that place of unknowing I lash about with failure. I drop and release all hopes and expectations.

And I fight, but

surrender is the medicine of the underworld.

It is only through surrender that we can receive the gifts of these cycles.

In his incredible book Underland author Robert McFarlane says the work of the underworld is to “shelter, yield, dispose.” He is speaking of literal underland spaces, caves and rivers and the depths of the sea.

But I realized how thoroughly these descriptions apply to my experience of the Underworld.

The Under is shelter, a place strange and divorced from the usual rhythms of life. Storms blow over across the surface but in the Under there is only a stillness, the drip of time, the inevitable.

The Under brings us to baseline, basic, a strip to the essence.

Surrender is the ask of the Under. We are to yield, hold up those threads of binding, release the ties, and trust.

But I fight the descent, I gnaw at the Under threads. And, to my detriment, I resist transformation.

Every

single

time.

This Under I fought with furor at the conventional medical system for their lack of informed consent. The iatrogenic harms of the past two years have been enormous and preventable, and my body is permanently scarred as a result. This fall I had my fifth contrast-enhanced MRI in one calendar year. Every time I experienced a worse reaction, but in the confusion of multiple illnesses, I did not know that’s what was causing those symptoms. When I learned it was from the contrast, something I did not even know was possible, I crashed and thrashed and destroyed. I canceled important appointments and abandoned the medicine and support I’d worked for years to build. I put my faith solely in alternative treatments. Which ended up being both fruitful (some treatments did actually help) and dangerous.

In February my blood started clotting again. And it took multiple ED visits, weeks of waiting for appointments before I was able to restart the life-saving medication that keeps my blood flowing.

Now, eight weeks later, I am feeling better.

But there was a cost.

There is always a price in the underworld. This is Dispose.

This is the fleshy gnarl of Nidhogg (Níðhöggr: down hewer), the dragon who eats at the roots of the World Tree.

Dispose is decay, what dies must decompose. Must become something new.

And in the Underworld, or even sometimes after, it is not always clear what will grow from the compost of our transformations.

Yet, until that final descent into the underland of death, we will somehow emerge.

(Hi. Again.)

Over:

Emerging from a death transition==any life transforming event for which there is a distinct before and after==is, I believe, after witnessing and experiencing so many of these rites, the hardest part.

This phase of the passage, return, means confronting the wreckage, rooting once again into the sacred everyday, and moving forward, honoring what was left behind.

When you are transforming there is not much to do but attend the small. When you return it can be a shock, the whole landscape of your life has changed, the destruction nearly complete. Scorched earth, volcanic, nuclear. How do we even rebuild amid such loss?

(I ask the question as if I don’t know…but the truth is I DO know: small steps, prayer, ritual, practice, own the mythos…its just I forget everything in the Underworld, and it takes time to re-member my own skills.)

In these awakening days of spring I dreamed of a white bear and woke thinking of this illustration. One of the only things I brought back from my grandfather’s Norwegian homeland when I visited at twenty-four was a notecard with this image.

Now the story of Valemon calls to me. Another myth with the medicine of change in it. (If you would like a rare treat, this raucous and collective retelling by Martin Shaw, Robert Bly and Danny Deardorff is joy.)

Emerging in the Over I am scared, vulnerable, weak, disoriented, struggling to ground or root.

But in the old medicine of sacred story I also return with a gift: attention. Intention. Simmered in the mythic.

The wild daughter holds the wreath of integration and nothing could be more beautiful.

The wild mother finds her helpers in crone and child.

Every helper she encounters on her path, every tool of the journey becomes a part of her at last.

She knows herself and has come full circle.

She is ready to re-begin.

In all, a story: we re-begin at any time.

We weave the endless pattern.

We are the pattern that we weave.

Over, under, deft hands, again.

(we.all.are)

Where are you at this moment in the cycle?

What is the medicine you denied and then received?

Where do you fear being seen, heard or misunderstood?

What practices do you bear to aid others on the path?

Please, share.
With love.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

I made this video for the community. It was very hard to get to this telling, so forgive the meander. This story is ongoing and thus hard to articulate, but in the video are these intentions: share story, (re)build community, (re)connect, heal.

I am also working on returning some of my work to the public on my website archive/library. It is a slow process, but here is a start:

Lara Vesta Archive

Podcast Library

Share

Share Our Lady of the Underworld

This essay was first written and published on the Olden Practice blog in 2023. I have left most of the content in tact—everything still applies—and added a couple of thoughts as a pre-script here in the opening paragraphs. I hope that it helps someone—anyone—finally delete their accounts. (You have to delete them, friends! Don’t just disable. You will go back! It took me two years to finally pull the plug and I haven’t regretted it for even one moment. I am, in fact, grateful every day for that choice.)

Updates to the essay after an additional two years:

1. Not having social media has made my life more peaceful, easeful and joyful in innumerable ways. But there are three primary spots where it has made my life harder—these are social challenges that could be altered by our societal norms changing, reclaiming our social connections from these huge companies. The first—brought to my attention by a dear friend who is an elder—is the lack of common spaces for death notices outside of social media. There are no longer phone trees, regular newspaper lists or death announcements. The assumption is that everyone is on social media, so that is often the only place now where we learn that people have died. It is a symptom of a broader disconnection in our communities, and I’ve seen the grief this disconnect can bring. The second is that businesses, nonprofits and governmental organizations use social media pages as if they were web pages. They are not web pages, customers not on social media can’t access promotions, schedules and events if they are only posted on social media. (There was a local book club that would only post selections and locations on Facebook, and the only way to reach them was through DMs so I couldn’t ever join!) Meta used to allow non members to at least view business pages and click those posts, but that is no longer the case. Both of these issues have caused me some problems over the past few years. The third issue is isolation and lack of community, which I have continued to explore and have concluded that some form of online socialization is actually essential for some of us in the post-pandemic world…see below.

2. A question I’ve had in mind since writing this essay (and is addressed within): Is Substack social media? Like before, it depends on definition and use. I like Substack—past and present—as a blog/newsletter host, like Blogspot back in ye olde days—(if you would like to see my first and OG 2010-2011 online writing, it is still alive somehow at athousandpossibilites.blogspot.com.) Until this year I chose not to engage with the Notes feed, as it does have an algorithm, but after reading this post on the inception of Notes, I’ve decided to try it for a year and see how I feel. It may help with some of the issues mentioned above, specifically isolation and missing community. (How do you feel about Notes? Send me a message or leave a comment below, I’m interested in your perspectives.

3. Not having social media is much easier with a companion on the path. My husband also quit a little after I did, and it really does help for us to live in the void together.

4. Since writing this essay in 2023, AI has continued to transform the landscape of social media in unimaginable ways. The inability to distinguish real from not real in a technology designed to addict and influence needs out urgent attention.

5. Post-pandemic, with limited funds and so many chronic health issues interrupting my days, I am isolated. I have not found a good way to address this issue and miss my community, which was mostly online. It is my hope this Substack can be the seed story of a return to some semblance of woven interaction.

And now for the essay…(all picnic paintings and photos are from Wikimedia Commons or my private collection…<3)

In November 2021 I deleted Instagram—my last remaining social media account--permanently.

I wish everyone would quit social media, and I know now that we—people, families, friendships, global communities—would be better for its absence. Most people, I believe, feel this in their bones, even if they can’t yet articulate it. From the inside, when I was on the apps, there was always a nagging sense that something was deeply wrong with this model of tech-mitigated human engagement. And I know I was not alone in my disquiet.

After leaving, however, years later, I can say that social media was not my life. It doesn’t even come close to resembling this lived, real world connection, let alone a web of interconnected supports.

I began using social media daily in 2017 after illness cost me my job—as a working mother of three I did not have time for social media until I became sick--and while the obligation was always a challenge, it came with the promise of connection, something I desperately needed due to the isolation of my illness. But because my activities were limited by disease, time spent on social media meant I did not have energy to seek out friends or support groups in my local community. Again and again I chose social media for engagement, telling myself that the ease and convenience outweighed any negatives. I became more isolated, which meant reliance on social media for friendship, work and information.

Without social media eating at my days I have been able to reclaim time, space, presence, privacy and joy in my real life.

So, yes, I’ve found that life is better out here in the real world, but the purpose of this essay is not to preach about why you need to quit social media, too. You likely already know all the reasons, and if you don’t they’ve been explored extensively elsewhere.

No, instead I wish to entice you with the blessings, joys and powers that have become so evident as a result of eliminating social media from my life. The further out I am from social media the more visible the gifts have become.

First, a definition for clarity:

Social media is, to me, any for-profit algorithmically driven platform that encourages so-called “social” engagement but whose actual purpose is to increase advertising revenue and maximize data collection.

Many platforms have community features—message boards, posts, conversation threads-- but I do not consider these to be “social media” because they are not algorithmically driven, do not collect and sell user data and are not riddled with advertising, influencers, “sponsored posts,” etc.

So Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, X, Blue Sky, are all, by this definition, social media. My school on Teachable, with message boards, a private student Mighty Network and my personal Patreon, are not. Substack—which hosts this newsletter—is in a bit of a murky area as the somewhat new “Notes” feature uses an algorithm. (See above for current thoughts on this…)

I’ve also already written quite a lot about personal choice when it comes to social media. But after watching people struggle with the “stay or go” conundrum, it seems right to follow the golden rule:

If I was still on social media, I would want someone to convince me to step away.

May this be your blessing, your calling, your permission.

Gifts of a Life Without Social Media

1. The Gift of Time

One of the things I hear most often as a writing mentor and educator is how people wish they had time for creative work. They want to write, create curriculum, make music, paint, draw, and they want to do these things in a substantive way, to craft a legacy and make something tangible from their efforts. But they get overwhelmed by the scope of a large project, like a book, and often look for the “perfect time and place” before they will begin creating.

I have learned there is, not ever, a perfect time and place. There is only now. If you are a worker, a caregiver, a parent, a patient, a partner, you will likely never have boundless time to complete a large creative masterpiece. Instead, I suggest folks use micro practice techniques that can be integrated into nearly any busy life, and prioritize creative work, even if it is just a little bit every day. From these seeds grow dreams.

But any practice, however small, does require some discipline and the enemy of creation is distraction. It is unsurprising how quickly people will abandon even a micro practice for the comfort of their social media feeds. It is the perfect way to self-sabotage intentions by eating up any free time we might have, and to thus confirm/affirm the constant mantra that there is no time for our creations.

With social media I felt the constant tug of obligation leading me away from the reality of life before me—my family, friends, creative work--and back into the tether of my phone and its imaginary, filtered worlds. Even without notifications, the siren call of the app would pull me away from other tasks. I would tell myself it was “for work” and therefore somehow necessary. But the amount of time and energy I poured into social media was completely disproportionate to any outcomes “work” required.

Without social media, however, I find I have time to read, write, practice guitar, garden, play with cats, call family members and sit in the sun—all of this on a micro level could fit in the two hours a day most people my age spend on social media^[1], and could spaciously fill the nearly five hours a day the younger crowd invests in the platforms.^[2]

Life is made of time.

Time, in this life, is finite.

This is your life.

How do you wish to spend it?

What do you want to be remembered for?

If this were your last day on earth, what would you be doing?

At two hours a day, in an average life span, you will have spent two and a half years of your life on social media.^[3]

Take how long you think you might live, and subtract two and a half years devoted to apps.

Without social media I have the gift of time in my days for practices that enrich my life and bring me into alignment with my personal goals. And, even more precious to me, is the incredible spaciousness I have in my brain, created by the absence of all of the things seen, heard and demanded of me on social media.

Which brings me to the second gift.

2. The Gift of Space

The discomfort of social media was always present with me, but I convinced myself engagement was necessary, especially because I am a writer, self-employed, ill, etc. The unraveling of my illusions was at last undeniable in 2020. I am a very deliberate person with a neurological disability, meaning I like to think, deeply, and must consider, slowly, the things I am seeing and hearing. For me to formulate an opinion on a complex topic requires a lot of research, questioning, long walks and conversations with trusted friends.

But my natural thought pattern was no match for social media, especially in the dredges of the pandemic. There was no time to think—the sound bites and demands for performative action and expectations around what side of the algorithmically generated conflict you fell on, an insistence on slogan level declarations, the refusal to consider any different points of view or even ask questions—all occurred at a speed that was, to my brain, impossible.

I fell into any number of fallacies, arguments and corrections, felt tremendous pressure to be and act a certain way in alignment with things I hadn’t had time to investigate fully, and so much of my thinking during those months was anxiously filled with the thoughts, words and images of people I didn’t even know who were declaring with certainty what amounted to their opinions on social media. These people often professed to know “the truth,” without any substance or quality data behind their claims, and shamed anyone who questioned them or asked for clarification. There was no room for nuance, patience or deliberation.

Since being away I have returned to patterns of slow inquiry and curiosity, and because I am not constantly blasted with other people’s high pressure opinions, I can again cultivate my own. I read, a lot, and write (because that is how I figure out what I am thinking), lean in to difficult conversations with friends and family not in a spirit of shouting (which is always the volume I associate with social media) but in a loving desire to hear their perspectives. I can once again tolerate divergence in opinion, will not “cancel” people for thinking differently from me. And, as a result, I am also circumspect in how I express myself, knowing that those I care about might not share my perspective. I am able to hold opposing ideas gently, and am willing and open to changing my mind should the evidence warrant.

In the past two years I have changed my opinions about many issues where, on social media, I was once defiantly beyond doubt. It is a humbling and enriching experience, to realize I know so little about so much, to dust off critical thinking and research skills, to spend time with topics that matter to me.

My intention in conflict now is not ever to change someone’s mind, but to find, together common ground. This is a skill my grandfather taught to me, imparted over years of—sometimes intense—conversations together when I was a radical, opinionated teen. I learned from him that, as humans, most people care about the same fundamental things even if they disagree on the “issues.” There is little room for this alignment in social media, in fact, studies show that the most divisive content is promoted for clicks and we are quickly and intentionally siloed by the algorithms into impenetrable ideological camps.^[4]

Recovering space to think about issues away from social media has meant admitting I was wrong about a lot of things, re-learning to trust my intuition and support my arguments with quality evidence. This has required getting out again into the real world, talking with neighbors, family, friends, grounding into the variations of real time human interaction. Having space to think and talk to others in real time has repaired my faith in human capability, and made my life more joyful, too.

Also, now that I am grounded in social reality, my brain is no longer full of other people’s carefully curated images, sometimes hundreds a day, the edited mental candy of gorgeous vacations, worthy accomplishments, delicious meals, expensive clothing. My feed was not of real friends and students (though I followed many of those, most did not post regularly). It was other business owners, sponsored posts, influencers and algorithmic recommendations that filled my scroll. These accounts all embodied the purposes of advertising: to trigger pain points and provide solutions that can be clicked on for profit.

Because I am not immersed in the glossy world of Instagram perfection I am so much more satisfied with my life, as it is, however messy and imperfect. I am grateful for what I have, instead of feeling constant grief, compounded envy or dissatisfaction. There is nothing visual for me to compare myself to in the radio news program, the Willa Cather novel. I feel fortunate, blessed, even amid my limitations and challenges.

In spaciousness is simplicity, and it is a sweetness.

3. The Gift of Presence

Some of the concerns I’ve had and heard around leaving social media:

I will miss out on events, announcements and engagements.

I won’t have an audience for my creations.

My business won’t survive without social media.

More is better and social media gives me more access, more people, more reach.

Leaving social media has required me to put my faith in Spirit, to trust that the people I am supposed to reach with my work will find me, and if they don’t then maybe this isn’t my work after all.

Within this faith, I know everything I need is provided, and I will not miss out on anything vital.

It is such a relief to let Spirit be in charge, to exercise surrender, letting go of external expectations, metrics, stats and opinions.

Not only this, but my life is no longer curated for public consumption, and I am no longer spending my days crafting messages and images to entice the consumer. I don’t see my life through the lens of a camera any more, or think about how each piece of writing will be received by, not just my ephemeral audience, but the algorithm. When I create now it is devotional, my offering to divinity. And I am not looking at my life constantly through other people’s eyes or seeking their approval in the form of engagement.

There is an authenticity in presence that does not transmit when we are putting ourselves on constant view, thinking always about how others are perceiving us. In the beauty, the shabbiness, the strangeness of our days, there is an intimacy that cannot be captured and exploited for likes. It is one we share with our beloveds, but also that we share with Spirit. When we allow ourselves presence with the day to day, by the view of our own eyes, the touch of our own hands, even the most ordinary thing—washing carrots in the sink while sunlight plays on the water--may be a source of gratitude and contentment.

Ethically one of the primary issues I had with social media was that my content, the creation of which I poured hours into, was being used by the companies to keep my followers on the apps as long as possible, so they would be exposed to the most advertising. My lack of presence in my own life was bad enough, but I was pulling people out of their lives and that became unbearable to me. I didn’t want the staged version of my imaginary world (which is what photos mostly are) to keep anyone from the power of the real world: sun on their faces, a child’s hand in theirs, wild roses in bloom, a cat curled in their lap, all of it in real time is better than anything I could post. I could not let my work be used to keep people from their own sweet, sacred lives.

4. The Gift of Privacy

The fourth gift of social media absence is a return to a natural privacy, in the form of more intention and boundaries around what I reveal to strangers on the Internet. I still use online platforms to share writing and art, but compared to daily social media posts my current content is less laborious and more fun to create. Because my life is more my own, my work has slowly become less reactionary, and—at least in the process of creation--feels more authentic.

I also love the privacy I have concerning other people’s lives. It makes my relationships deeper and richer when I don’t know what everyone is up to all of the time. On social media the sharing was swift and easy to miss or misconstrue. Now my online interactions are with people I am actually connected to—students, family, supporters, friends. Offline, my community’s activities, and mine, are revealed in conversation, letters or art, moving at the slower pace of true connection.

I am naturally a private person. I grew up in the woods and am from the last generation to make it through high school without home computers and cell phones. I was well into adulthood when social media took hold, and when I did finally get past my discomfort of revelation, I used social media for my work. Which created no end of challenge for me, as many of the people interacting with my posts thought that I was my feed, and expected me to engage as a very different sort of person than who I actually am.

A stream of interpersonal problems cropped up for me on social media, most often with people who I did not know and had no interaction with elsewhere. They would get mad when I didn’t respond quickly enough, or in the right way, when I didn’t post the right things at the right times, or when I didn’t participate in something they thought I should. I experienced this anger, along with crossed boundaries, creative theft and invasions of my personal life in ways I never have in the real world. It was stressful and exhausting. Because I had a public presence in this public space some people seemed to feel like the typical rules of human relationships—respect, kindness, checking in—did not apply.

I also felt the deep neediness at the root of these transgressions—for affirmation and attention—which fueled constant, revelatory posting: callouts, nudity, angry tirades, exploitation. People are so hungry for connection, but the algorithm rewards extremity. Bearing witness daily was a grief—because what I would wish is that we could all have circles of real friends in real time, people who love us unconditionally and would give us reciprocal focus. But in the absence of these relationships (or, occasionally, in the presence of them) we have dozens, hundreds, thousands of anonymous followers we push revelation to and demand response from.

I remember how small a circle of real world friends—colleagues, students, classmates, relatives—could be. I remember the gentleness of how information would pass between us: the excitement of phone calls, the anticipation of a letter. There was a great thrill when separated from a friend for a while in not knowing their business, and readying to share mine. I remember a specific lunch when I was in my twenties where I hadn’t seen my friend for several months due to her traveling, the joy in catching up, in choosing what to share because it would not all fit in the day.

One of the weirdest acceptances from social media is that everybody is in everybody’s business all the time. The assumption being that we share our “true selves” online in the same way we do in intimate, real world friendships. This is blatantly not accurate. Yet how many conversations begin, “I saw on social media…”

Returning to natural privacy has grounded me in my real-world relationships, and brought a level of nostalgic anticipation to each conversation. It has also quieted my days, protecting me from conflicts and drama, helping me to realize that my life is not for everyone.

5. The Gift of Reality

The final gift leaving social media has given me is a return to reality, the simple joys of real life.

There is no longer reality on social media. It has become impossible to tell what is real and what is fake, and any fragile distinctions that remain will not become more obvious in the months or years ahead thanks to the widespread use of AI technologies and continued economic incentives for fakery.

In my personal spheres I became troubled by the carefully curated spiritual posts of so-called “rituals,” how-to spells, for-profit ceremonies. I had a looming sense that to make these things visible, to charge money for spiritual information, to groom a feed with spiritual concepts was out of integrity. Because an audience who is spiritually starved could easily mistake Instagram fakeness for sacred reality.

So I did research, which supported my disquiet, adjusted my own values—never photographing real ceremonies, removing all “pay to pray” offerings, not using filters, but I still felt an imbalance.

After stepping away from social media I know the root of my unease: My spirituality, which I sought to share, is not able to be contained in a photo or caption. It is a living, breathing part of my everyday existence. And while photos of prayer, ceremony and ritual tools can perhaps inspire people to their own practices, they can also—even more powerfully—delude people into believing that spirituality is an Instagram feed: Endlessly beautiful, totally entertaining, full of things you can purchase that will make you whole and connect you with God.

In my experience, and in witnessing many other seekers, this only drives people to deep dissatisfaction, to spending dollar after dollar on classes and books that are never completed or read, objects never used, because the next shiny thing comes along promising even more connection/power/happiness/love/authenticity—for a price. The spiritual diet of social media is like cotton candy, which you can eat and eat while slowly starving.

Satiety comes from reality. From prayer, practice, structure in the living breathing day. From community in the parish or neighborhood and conversation over tea with kin and friend. It is work, commitment, daily engagement with time tested traditions, philosophies and rites. It means admitting ignorance, embracing imperfection, changing course and trying new things. Lived spirituality applies gifts only found in the real world—including those mentioned in this essay--and it is hard—I still do not wake up every day ready to pray, I still have periods of confusion and doubt. But I know that lived spiritual practice enriches my life and strengthens my relationships. I know it is a process and not a product. And I know this process is not for public consumption—in no small part because the rhythms of lived spirituality, in contrast to social media commodification, are not photogenic.

Yet they have transformed my life, opened me to possibilities, and I do feel like sharing our stories and practices is important. But true stories are hard to find in a scroll of imagined realities that make us feel ever inadequate to the task of our own practice.

For a few years, online reality was the funnel through which we were required to engage. Covid lockdowns, fear of contagion, political strife all drove us to online connection at the expense of the real. And for years I bought in, thought it was a good thing, it could grow my business, save me energy, and I did connect with some fabulous people around the globe, for whom I have real affection. They are, actually, true friends.

But the costs have been devastating.

Prior to my health collapse in 2016 I had multiple circles of friends in the city I called home. Many were from classes I’d taught, or classes I’d taken, some from my children’s schools, the local grocery store, the neighborhood.

When I became sick most of these connections fell away and I was critically isolated.

During my disease remission, in 2019, the first thing I did was get a job as a front desk clerk at a yoga studio. I was desperate for in person interaction and enjoyed every aspect of that job. I also started volunteering in the pediatric oncology unit at the local hospital, for the same reasons. I wanted to be around people after so many years of forced solitude, I wanted to offer my skills in the service of others. I made plans to return to school and change careers, to help other chronically ill people.

Then the pandemic hit. Online became not just a supplement or choice of life, it became life, an escape from the smallness and insecurity of our reality.

And because the apps and patterns we engaged with then are now ubiquitous and addictive, we have become a story wherein that virtual reality is preferable, still.

It can be challenging to transition back to the real. Real-world lived reality, especially in the beginning after being away for so many years again, has been difficult for me. In person interactions are messy and awkward and require a lot of energy and attention that I sometimes pay for physically. Internet interactions carry an illusion of ease—anonymous protection, curated content, speedy interaction and passive consumption are all more comfortable than in-person connection.

But reality, with all of its discomfort, has been better for my health. Returning to the world consciously, daily is a wholeness, a restoration that is healing and rebuilding what I have needed these many years: a web of living support.

And, in spite of the physical consequences, it is totally worth it to drive fifteen minutes to visit my counselor’s office each week, to see my doctors in-person, to meet a friend or former student for tea.

My intention with this essay is to inspire, and also to share this vision:

Of real lived experience, in real experiential community.

Of a commitment to reality, eschewing AI intervention in favor of human creation by human hands.

Of real social experiences that recommit us to our locality, to the visitation of the sick and disabled, to decreasing human loneliness and honoring our shared places on earth.

Of remembering life before social media, telling stories of that life (my kids were especially inspired by the life adventures of their nonagenarian great-grandparents) and helping those who don’t remember—anyone born after 2010, or those older with tech-induced amnesia—to have the option of this experience now.

Reality is a life our grandparents would recognize, and their kin before them, and theirs before that. We are in a lineage of time and space, of lives and deaths, and this awareness can make us hold our own life as a precious.

Your ancestors might remind you that death is always at the edge of our short lives, and being so near to death (even if we don’t wish to see it), we might be tempted to ask each other:

To what will you devote the hours of your day?

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

With love.

^[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/social-media-statistics/

^[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/teen-social-use-mental-health

^[3] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/social-media-statistics/

^[4] https://knightcolumbia.org/content/engagement-user-satisfaction-and-the-amplification-of-divisive-content-on-social-media

Dear Community—One of my intentions for this letter is to offer periodic inspiration through informal conversations about practice.

Calling these chats a podcast feels like a stretch to me—they are audio love notes about the ways in which we bring meaning and purpose to our everyday lives. They are not intended to be polished or edited, there is no intro or music. You enter into the conversation with us, and we travel the threads of thought together. In an era of ovredits and generative everything it feels rich to offer pauses, drifts and laughter as two (or more) humans share some space. (Also, my brain does not like editing software! I can barely remember how to post to Substack, or how to respond to comments…tech has become increasingly abstract and ephemeral in my healing…)

“Practice makes us ready,” so said one of my yoga teachers, Diana, long ago, and those words have supported and nourished me through the most difficult transitions. I see practice—which I define as anything we do with intention (which can be anything at all!)—as a critical tool for surviving the underworld journeys of life. And my small daily practices continue to help guide me through the dim, often painful, unknow. They surprise me, too, with possibility and joy in the dark.

It is my hope that these conversations will (re)begin, renew, restore a weaving of practice and community sharing, for delight and root in these challenging days.

At the center of every Olden Practice conversation is this question:

What olden practices are you reclaiming for the modern world?

My guests for this series are people I love and am inspired by, beginning with Zoë Ackerman. Some of you may recognize Zoë from Wild Soul School classes of old. She was a participant in the Wild Soul Runes thirty-three week practice and a member of the original Dark Goddess Project Cohort.

Currently she is an educator, artist (all of the illustrations in this post are hers), and founder of Runa, (a fascinating endeavor you will hear about in the talk). Zoë draws on over a decade of experience in participatory design, ritual and rites of passage, and embodied storytelling. Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, she lives in Curitiba, Brazil, on the ancestral lands of the Guarani, Kaingang, and Xetá peoples. You can learn more about her work at

https://runa.school/

If you have practices you love and wish to share please do so in the comments here!

I will be issuing a more formal call for contributions as this conversation project unfolds, trusting that together we can find multiple, new/old ways of sharing and remembering critical, ancestral skills.

For now, please enjoy this conversation, share with those you love, and know, always, you are a part.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

With love—Lara Irene

PS—if you would like more information on practice, all three of my books have clear instruction on how to create and sustain a daily ritual practice:

The Moon Divas Guidebook: Spirited Self-Care for Women in Transition

Wild Soul Runes: Reawakening the Ancestral Feminine

Year of the Dark Goddess: A Journey of Ritual, Renewal and Rebirth

This year was…a bog. And in it, I became the hag. Truly. I am so irretrievably changed, physically and personally, by the challenges of this past year that I hardly recognize myself.

That doesn’t mean it was all bad, the year, my 50th on this planet, but it does mean I’ve had to accept—eat—an extraordinary amount of humiliation and loss. And it isn’t over. How can I live with so much uncertainty?

Uncertainty is the Bog.

Survival is the Hag.

Who is the Bog Hag? This archetype, familiar to us, known in our bones, surfaced for me in late 2023 when I was skulking a thread about perimenopause that came up in my search results. A woman wrote something about embracing the Hag she was becoming, flipping the bird to expectations and taking up residence in her Hag hut. Yes. That will do, I thought, my heart opened and immediately wrote the poem that ends this letter.

She’s been there ever since, my Bog Hag, through all the MRIs and medication reactions, the disfiguring rashes and unnecessary iatrogenesis, blood clots, pain, fear, struggle for self-advocacy against a tidal wave of system. She has influenced so many of my decisions from what to wear (comfort, only, she says, what else?) to deleting all my accounts (begin again at any time, she whispers) to going off treatments I lobbied hard for as they did not seem to be working and came with other consequences (bleeding in my skin, retinal issues, long term vision loss). She doesn’t always make a lot of sense to others, she makes me question my sanity often, but following the directive of my inner Bog Hag has nourished possibility amid the bleak.

The Old Woman of the Woods/Bog/Swamp/Mountain/Wilds is ancient, more than a thought form she holds a space of myth. She lives in you too, whether by lineage or story, you know her. Seen in the etymology of the word Hag:

“One of the magic words for which there is no male form, suggesting its original meaning was close to “diviner, soothsayer,” which were always female in northern European paganism, and hægtesse seem at one time to have meant “woman of prophetic and oracular powers”…a figure greatly feared and respected. Later, the word was used of village wise women.”

In the past years of illness I have watched the world from the distance of the sick, in it, but not really of it. Watched meaning and purpose circle the drain of post-pandemic social life, and witnessed the drift from the real to a “reality” wholly imagined by not even humans...it has been stunning, disorienting. I don’t recommend it, but there is a gift in the perception of loss made visible, or at least conscious, by absence: Where is nature, where are the ancestors? Where is our livelihood? Where is community? Where is the Old Woman of the Woods in a study of endless everything, all edited and generated in a wave of rampant consumerism, and the emptiness such nothingness leaves in its wake?

(The Bog Hag stacks her cobbled boots on the porch rail amid a rain of earth, stuffs her pipe and chews thoughtfully at the stem. There are dark things out there, the Bog is not friendly. But it is sustaining, it is where she lives, and she loves it in her own peculiar heart.)

I don’t have the energy to write this right now, but She wanted me to share, to invite Her presence into another corner of the world and maybe Her shape will inspire the freedom in someone else it has in me…or maybe you know Her already, maybe you can introduce us to Her in another form, another life, another container of mystery. We need Her, as many of Her, as we can imagine. Right now.

I don’t have the energy to write. I am running a low, clinically unimportant fever and my lymph nodes are sore. My face is starting to swell again—isn’t that delightfully Haggish?—and I have been exhausted all week. The narrative starts in repetition: Is it medication, a virus, a bacterial infection, something old, something new (eye of newt, etc…Shakespeare knew the Hag…). Maddening. (We are all mad here, says the Hag, cribbing the Hatter but I am not going to edit her. Would you?)

So this writing is an offering. An honoring. To the Hag. May Her gifts be many, may Her bogs be restored.

Oh. And I am to mention New Year Intentions.

Which She says are not Resolutions—implying goals that may be failed, at least in the more modern interpretation—but rather in alignment with the roots of the word “intention” which mean, “to stretch.” Intentions are meant to stretch us. The Bog Hag loves a good stretch.

We are still in the liminal time of the Christmas season, the twelve days from Christmas Day to Epiphany next week, where the spiritual world is palpable, near and kin. The reason Intentions are created at this time, one that has bled into our largely agnostic modernity, is because our helpers (be they ancestors, saints, land spirits, divinities, Bog Hags) are rousting close, ready to support our stretching. Traditions of feasting the spirits on the eve of sacred days, including the New Year Eve, with food and drink are thanks gifts for all they have, and continued to, provide.

Bog Hag Intention

There is only one, she says.

(She is bustling round the fireplace now, making pecan sandies charcoal burnt at the edges and feeding butter to the cats. She drops into the flame symbols of our potential self jailing: dollar bills, moving boxes, test results, whole telephones, the internet in the form of a tangled ball of synthetic yarn, our general malaise as a pile of snapping pine pitch, sticky but useful. It is done, she says. Now it is up to you to change the pattern.)

Be Who You Are

In the world, without fear.

That is the Bog Hag intention for this year.

(She asks: What are you tolerating? Why? Where can you let go? Where do you find yourself engaged in the same exhausting process over and over again, with the same outcomes over and over too? Stretch, take action. Today. Not tomorrow. This is a practice. Spirit driven, spirit adapted, you can change what is no longer in alignment. There is no time for pretending anymore. There is no capitulation or endurance. Live True. Have a cookie. Tell the story. Stop second guessing. You are, already free. As I am. As we always were. As we always will be.)

So here we raise a glass of raspberry infusion to shedding outworn skins, to the Bog Hag our other, sacred kin.

Today I choose to live true by tending the small, cancelling appointments and healing my own damn self. Now. Today. Not tomorrow. Today.

Today I will wear the Bog Hag’s clothes and tear up some corner of neglected earth, planting wildflower seeds with words of hope and joy. Maybe they will sprout come spring. Maybe not. It is an act of devotion, it is a prayer.

Today I will write the Story, this Story, right now, the one we all live, the one we, most desperately, must wake up to. Even if I don’t feel like it. Because it is what She would do.

Where is the Bog Hag in you life?

Where does she live in your lineages?

Do you feel called to or repulsed by her sacred spells?

How are you drawn to living more true?

In the year ahead, to your heart, I wish you her blessing.

On all you are creating.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

With love—

Lara

I will be the Bog Hag

I will be the forest crone

I will be the wild force

Howling moonrise all alone

I will ride the largest horse

Steed unbridled falcon flight

And I will bless in my due course

The start of day

The end of night

I will have my worthy friends

Creatures of all shape and form

And will no longer make amends

For speaking truth or breaking norms

In my hut you’ll find a kettle

Cauldron full and hearth in flame

Rafters hung with sage and nettle

Candle poems I know by name

Outside wanders through the heathing

Drifting thatch and creeping snow

Hobnail boots and shawl web weaving

Water voice and stones I know

With pockets full of ancient rhythm

With mugwort whiskering my hair

Wyrd mind threaded through decision

Abandoning the road more fair

There is a freedom here beginning

Feel it neatly at the bone

Touch your feet to earthen midden

Find in body your way home

We will be the Bog Hag

We will be the made right crone

Whole in our unselfing, bidden

Gathered here, ourselves we own.

—November 2023

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Once upon a time…

When I used to teach, that simple phrase would be enough to put even the most recalcitrant student into a gape-mouthed trance. Try it. Adult, child, all will pause and listen, carefully, for the beginning spun in those words. It is beautiful, how we attune to story. It is rich how easy community can be in the shared room of a sacred tale.

In the Northern Hemisphere now we reach an apex of dark—physically, metaphorically. Do you feel it? The time for another story, approaching?

In the dark—of the year, of our lives—all is story.

It is in the dark where stories may gestate, develop, become.

I’ve spent the better part of the past two years in the dark—physically, metaphorically—gestating, always, a story. I tried to emerge from this essential, primordial void several times, only to get sucked under yet again.

(I learned this time the key to underworld survivals is laughter. You have to laugh at the absurdity, the intensity, the edge. In the myth of Demeter and Kore, Baubo raises her skirts and even in deep grief, Demeter laughs. The world is restored, in part, by laughter.)

I’ve tried to imagine how to tell my story. How to return.

But how do you share a story that isn’t finished yet?

How do you tell a story that never ends?

This is the lesson of myth, and so life. An ancestral lesson we can wear on our skin, or just beneath in veins like waterways, like leaves: we are a part of something too potent to comprehend. We fit it, humanly, tenderly, and sometimes with force, into thought forms and archetypes. Myth cycles and fingerprints—signs like bread crumbs along the path…you know the tale, fallow it, true.

What do we know of stories?

Storytelling is how we survive, said Alice Walker.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms, said Muriel Rukeyser.

The world is made less by wars won and lost than by the stories it loves and believes in, said Harold Goddard.

What do you know of stories?

Of your own story?
The story of your place?

The story of your people?

The story of your time?

The story of your being/becoming, genesis, the story of your survival or revival?

How do you tell the story? Is it with a bowed head, a sense of shame? Is it in the broader scope, a synergy with earth temporals and tumbles of history—some stories have patterns that can be traced around the globe, emerging in places and times where there would be, seemingly, no connection.

Some story patterns are older than we can even imagine:

Beauty and the Beast: 4,000 years old

Jack and the Beanstalk: 5,000 years old

The Smith and the Devil: 6,000 years old

These stories are so much a part of us we cannot extract our human thought patterns without their forms.

Which is why stories can aid us when we struggle, hold symbol when we lack words, and transform us when we cannot see the way through the darkness of our living.

These stories, ancient stories, can help us tell our own stories when they overwhelm us, when speaking to reality causes a paralysis of word.

Stories can heal and shape, delight and root. Myth holds our attention when all else seems diffuse, offering a landing place in the wild dust of change.

That is, after all, the heart of any good story: change.

How to Write a True Story

First thought, best thought.

Don’t let your pen lift from the paper.

Just keep writing.

This is what I used to say to my expository students during free write exercises. We would begin with a simple prompt, embedded in a sensory activity. Stories live, after all, in the body:

What keeps you awake at night? (walking a labyrinth)

What do you love? (scuffing through fallen leaves)

What would you change? (tag, you’re it!)

The key to story is opening, letting the story in, allowing it to flow through you.

“The story knows more than you. You have to trust the story,” said my late mentor, author Jack Driscoll. His words echo in my heart every time I write anything at all.

Don’t think.

Just write.

We are not the story.

The story is more than we are.

I believe in stories, their power and primacy. And I believe we all have stories to tell, stories lining up, wishing to move through us like wind or water, old stories picking up our cellular debris, the riff of change from our thoughts and skin.

Another mentor, the poet Dorienne Laux, said in a craft talk once that if we love a poem we should learn it by heart. That we owe it to the poem to take it inside of us, allow it to transform us. (I have been working with her poem Antilamentation in this way for years: “Regret nothing.”)

I believe this is the truth of stories, too. They long to be made a part of us, not just to live again in the world, but to be transformed by the journey through yet another human life. (And another, and another…for as we share the stories, we gift them in kind, they round through us like sunlight, like breath.)

I thought when I started writing this that I would tell a story, my story, but I grit my teeth now in pause…because

What story would that be?

And I realize I am not here to tell you a story, but to urge you to tell your story.

Once again, this reminder from the depths of the underworld: life is short.

What will you make?

What is your offering?

Tell the truth. Tell the story you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you there is magic in it, said Dorothy Allison.

This morning I will go outside and sing an ancestral song to the dawn:

Hail Day

Hail Sight of Day

Hail Night and our Kinswomen

Oath Helpers, look on us now

See us forth and grant us victory *

I will offer grains of bee pollen to the ancestors of the land where I live, and set my feet to the earth.

A synergy, between my blood and the land. A willingness, a gift that costs nothing but time and effort.

A story.

This whole ritual takes about two minutes.

It is repeated, nearly every day now. Repetition is the key to learning, said my former husband. But with an injured brain, I now say repetition is memory, is attention and intention. Do we think the myths and fairy tales that still permeate our consciousness survived because the ancestors were creating new things all the time? Or because they were lived and remembered in the telling and retelling?

Repetition is survival.

Repetition is creation—in the moment—adaptation and restoration in our nervous systems, in our bones.

In the blood that flows like rivers through our veins like leaves. Remember?

In my beginning is my end, said TS Eliot. Repetition reminds us that in mythic time there is no end. We begin, and end, again, at once.

I’m not sure yet what my intentions are in this place, or how to meet beginning, again.

But for today I send you this wish for stories to illuminate your living (dark to dark, light to light) and the potency of cycles to force your attention.

What story is speaking to you now?

What story is more than memory?

Where do you notice repetition in the story, in theme, symbol, language?

How can you honor story, plant its seeds, tend its bones, with your own precious life?

Welcome home, kindreds.

Blessings on you.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

From the return, again. With love—Lara

If you would like to read some mythic stories and learn more about how we worked with stories in the Dark Goddess project, the Year of the Dark Goddess book has four mythic retellings and instruction for how to entice a myth into your life:

Year of the Dark Goddess

Please subscribe here to be a part of this making—your energy and support craft the story whole:

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If you think your loved ones and communities might benefit from this work, please share! I deleted all of my accounts during my most severe illness last year and would love to reconnect with others on the path:

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As you read these words, you become a part of my story, and I am now a part of yours, too. This is the magic of creation, of art and spirit. Thank you for being with me in this co-creation. It is an honor to weave with you (newly, again).

“Vasalisa took her doll from her pocket and offered her the crust of bread. She whispered, “How will I ever sort that millet? It is a task for days, not only one night.”

The doll warmed in her hand and said, “Let us call on our many helpers, Vasalisa, in this night they will come to our aid. By morning all will be well.” And the doll sang a song that had no words, and soon the larder was full of the tiny birds Vasalisa had learned to feed in the winter forest. They quickly sorted the millet, and as they left Vasalisa curled up on the floor and slept a dreamless sleep.”

—Vasalisa the Brave in Year of the Dark Goddess a Journey of Ritual, Renewal and Rebirth

Hello friends—back in September when I started this Substack I had one very particular vision: to create a space for sharing the ancestral tools and practices we are reclaiming to help us navigate life’s challenges. I was emerging from months and months of illness, thought I had an answer to what was wrong with me. Then, on October 4th I had another routine MRI with contrast, and reacted violently to the gadolinium. Back to the underworld with me!

So…crawling out again, battered and imperfect, but determined in this at least:

a vision, a story, a sharing, a weaving

This is not an after. Not a big reveal. Not a makeover scene from a daytime talk show. This is an ongoing, challenging story but it is also vital that we see these stories, share our stories and speak to survival.

So. In this first talk from Our Lady of the Underworld I share some of the practices that have sustained me in these past two years of outrageous health transitions, some typical, others surprising. And I also speak about my intentions for this space, which are threefold:

1. Weaving a space to share ancestral stories and practices that are empowering and nourishing us right now, wherever we find ourselves.

2. Creating a home for healing stories—mine, yours, others—as well as the stories of healers.

3. Centering art—as healer, as teacher—in making, instruction, form, inspiration, purpose and path.

I don’t know what I am capable of, I still have two legs firmly in the earthen. But it is a hope to dream, share, ritualize and honor together in the moons ahead.

Already I have a Solstice post on stories ready.

And am imagining a ritual for the New Year, blessing beginnings:

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.

Not all things are blest, but the

seeds of all things are blest.

The blessing is in the seed.

—Murial Rukeyser

With love—Lara

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Hi.

Again.

I don’t really know how to do this, even though I’ve been here before, emerging from a major health crisis, a death transition, an embodied rite of passage.

But this time feels, somehow, really different. Like every birth is different. Every death, too.

“Everybody loves an after,” one of my colleagues told me years ago, and she meant, when you are better, when you are well, your story will be worth telling.

There is a kind of shame in continual illness. In never being “better” or “well.” I think this same shame exists for lots of difficult transitions, the death of a loved one, divorce, job loss, where the “after” takes too long and the process of becoming is too hard.

That hardship, drawn out, extended, can feel shameful. As if we were creating it, somehow. As if it were our fault.

And we may feel in those times of extended challenge that it is, in fact, endless:

What if we never return?

What if we cycle deeper and deeper into the mystery of hardship, and disappear?

It is feelings like these, along with overwhelming pain, that caused me to withdraw this year, delete accounts I’d maintained for years, my school, Substack, Patreon. I could not do anything. I could not focus on anything. I was surviving: a haywire body full of pain, a medical system that seemed oblivious to my pleas. That was all I could do. And it felt endless.

It wasn't endless.

It is, rarely, in its most acute forms, endless. Our pain, our hardship, our grief. There will be an end, even if all seems dark.

As I have emerged these past months, into healing, after finally connecting with compassionate physicians, receiving a diagnosis and effective treatment, I still carried-carry!-shame. And the thought of being public, again, with my work, bore an innumerable extra weight.

But here’s the thing. This work is what got me through this past year. It helped. It helps. Myth, ritual, story, practice. It heals. It has seen me through the dark, now, more than once. It is a gift.

So. Hi. Here I am, again. Returning. Bringing my satchel of tools because I hope this story, my story, of challenge can help support your story: Of survival, strength, transformation, growth.

I am changed. I can’t remember much, I have a bunch of brain lesions—the result, we discovered, of small blood clots, strokes—and lose words, my own and others. Releasing all expectations. Releasing everything. Centering into the story brings me to these words.

So here, some old things and new.

Again, again. We return.

Again, again. We remember.

The Three Phases of a Rite of Passage

“Death transitions are life transformations. In life, we cycle through many changes. These transitions are constant and often simultaneous. All transitions transform us, but none so completely as death transitions. In most life transitions everything carries a modicum of sameness, even as you change. Death transitions are wildfire, volcanic, meteor, flood. The entire landscape of your life changes. Nothing is recognizable. In the liminal space of a life transition you can still feel the wyrd webs of support shaping your outcome. In death transitions the liminal is dark, chthonic, you are liquid, acid, dust. What happens next is inconsequential, it cannot be visioned. Your dissolution is that absolute.”

I wrote these words in 2018 right before my first death transition through illness. In that time I became a student of myth, attempting to find answers in the old stories for my unspooling. What I discovered were tales of initiation, story after story modeling the rite of passage/death transition in form. Initiation is not something we speak of much in contemporary culture. We mostly do not honor rites of passage — major life events that change us — except in secular ways. As a result we are left with unintegrated changes, communities that cannot honor our transitions, powers unclaimed and no way to return home.

Return is the third phase of an initiatory rite of passage. In myth it often includes a ceremony of homecoming, coalescence, community honoring. On return the initiate may ritually take a new name, something symbolic of the new role or work they embody after transformation. Return can be a time of mourning, grieving and celebration simultaneously. It is paradoxical, an ending and a beginning, often without a place of pause in the cycle of transformation, but still marking a definitive change, a true death.

In a ritual story the phases of initiation are easy to recognize. Where return is the last, the second phase is the liminal, a no-time outside of linearity. The liminal time is disconcerting, often a time of great fear and depression. The uncertainty about the future is the only certainty. In the liminal transition-initiation phase of a rite of passage we do our deep work. This is where the ritual story protagonists meet the Dark Goddess in the underworld, where we can find great gifts by letting go of who or what we were. The liminal is a time for ritual, rooting in, communion, articulating priorities and allowing for transformation to happen.

The first phase of a rite of passage is separation from the known world. It can happen in a marked way — suddenly, everything is different — or can occur without direct attention, where we only recognize it in retrospect. Roles, identities, communities are stripped away. The initiate moves out of the self they were relative to others or in a social context. This is a phase of acute loss.

Do you recognize yourself in these phases? Remember, they can be multiple and simultaneous — don’t be fooled by the linear. Transition is a spiral, a woven pattern we often cannot see when we are in it, but we can begin to make these transformations conscious, to bring awareness to the rite itself, mirroring it in myth work and ritual practice — which both share the cyclic rite of passage path in form.

Acknowledging death transitions and bringing awareness to their processes doesn’t make them any easier. The challenges of the myth path are many, and death transitions are painful transformations: illness, divorce, death of a loved one, job loss, home loss, betrayal are a few I’ve experienced. But the old stories assure us that these very human changes are part of our larger journey, they exist to strengthen and anneal us in the unique magic we are meant for in this life. I’ve found tremendous gifts in my initiations, one of the greatest being a determined resolve to be fully who I am, share my loves and live with reverence.

That, dear reader, is the purpose of this writing.

This, dear community, is the beginning of another ancient story.

And now you are a part.

By this and every effort may the balance be regained.

With love.

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Year of the Dark Goddess: A Journey of Ritual, Renewal and Rebirth

Buy Year of the Dark Goddess

This post first appeared on the Olden Practice blog.

A few years ago now, I made my way to the post office each month to retrieve a packet of eleven letters from participants in the Dark Goddess Project, a correspondence course/process for integrating difficult life transitions.

Some letters were typed, some written by hand. They contained at various times ribbons, yarn, photos, colored ink, seeds and scraps of cloth. With each page they carried a record of the participant’s journey, scribed in character and line. Some held answers to questions posed by the curriculum--also sent through mail, quarterly. Some were poetry. Some a record of the day to day musings that comprise a life. All moved me to laughter, tears and hope: this is how we heal, through the tactile sharing of our hearts in this real, living world.

At the end of the year the participant letters were returned. In their hands, now, the story of a year spent in intention and community. It was such a powerful process to witness, and I am still honored and moved by the growth those letters contained.

The alchemy of letter writing is two fold. First, it is the tangible, the process itself--so different from writing an email which may or may not survive a decade, depending on the whims of technology, and will likely never be seen again. Placing pen to page, or typing for print purposes changes the nature of the communication from the start.

The second transformation of letter writing is the audience. We are writing to someone specific, and choose our words accordingly. That person holds, temporarily, a part of us--cellular, substantial--in a way that is impossible through online communique.

Tactile + Audience = Clarity, Creativity, Connection and Endurance

In this post I have five ways you can reclaim letter writing for yourself and encourage it in others, offered in the hopes of inspiring a return to this olden practice.

All the fabulous photos in this post are from Wikimedia Commons or the Library of Congress and are in the public domain for reuse and sharing.

Correspondence contains our human story--it is, in fact, history, the written. And this record would be pale strands without the pattern of letters to bind it.

While emails and text messaging may have taken the place of letter writing in some modern human landscapes, the record of our experiences can never be fully held in the digital. Reclaiming letter writing is a call to relationship, romance and story. It is a reminder about what lasts beyond us, what makes history, and what will, ultimately, survive.

#1 Write a Love Letter

When my husband and I first began dating our children were on opposing schedules, so we were separated a lot. As a result we spent hours on the phone and wrote each other romantic emails--he was so charming, funny, charismatic and magnetic in his writing, totally irresistible.

Years later while organizing my personal archives (read: storage bins :)) I realized that while I had a stack of sweet letters from my first boyfriend, and some amazing love letters from other beaus, I didn’t have that record of my husband. It was in the ethers. I printed out our email exchanges and made a book for him on our anniversary, so we could revisit, on occasion, the written roots of our love. But if I hadn’t brought those copies into being, they would exist only in memory, rarely seen, never touched.

Now my husband and I write letters to each other on birthdays and our many celebrations of firsts (first date, first kiss, first making the relationship official) and our marriage. I love to reread these gatherings of intention and appreciation, his handwriting accompanied by small illustrations in the margins of the text.

Writing a love letter transforms an exchange. Whether known or anonymous--like the letter pictured above--telling someone you love them in ink powerfully marks the moment. I cherish letters I received as a college student (including some quite good poetry), even from people I never dated, or for whom the feelings were not reciprocated.

To write a love letter all you need is an object of affection--this need not be romantic love, but romantic love aligns you with the classics of the genre, like the letter below written by King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, promising to marry her.

Love letters also need not be sent by post!

In my shy youth I would write anonymous love letters and slip them in lockers or pockets, sometimes with a flower or other token. Usually these expressions came to naught, but I learned many years later the joy and mystery of receiving anonymous letters. It is a treasure, a gift, unconcerned with outcome.

#2 Write an Elder

My grandmother Mary is ninety-five years old and lives in an assisted living community. She has a large and active family that visits, calls and corresponds with her daily and she is a masterful letter writer. All of her children, grandchildren (six) and great-grandchildren (eleven) receive handwritten cards on their birthdays, still.

She says that there is an epidemic of loneliness in her community. Most people are not so connected to their families, and with technology moving our focus away from familial connection, our elders are lacking in communication and care.

Learning how to write and receive good letters is elder craft. My grandparents all grew up in a time where letter writing was a necessity--long distance phone calls were too expensive for regular use, traveling overseas or across the country was also prohibitive. All of my grandparents wrote letters to me at one point or another, and they just lived down the road in California.

If you have elder relatives who still are capable, letter writing can be a wonderful way to hone your skills while learning from the experts. Olden practice letters don’t need to be complex--my grandparents would usually just share some anecdotes about their experiences, or ask a lot of questions. Letter writing can also be a wonderful way to learn family history, gather stories of ancestors or treasured memories. Even my parents, grandparents to Gen Z, grew up with letter writing and love to receive mail.

If you do not have elder relatives for correspondence, check with the local care homes in your community--many have residents who would love to write with you and the staff can help set you up with your elder recipient.

Or you can connect with the following organizations for help finding an elder correspondent in need:

Love for Our Elders connects elders who would like to receive letters with volunteer writers bringing joy to mailboxes at the first of every month.

Letters Against Isolation started as a COVID project reaching out to elders in care homes and has expanded into a global enterprise connecting lonely seniors with compassionate letter writers.

#3 Letter Writing as Process Record

The image above depicts the first recording of the Southern Cross stars. It appears in a letter, as do so many great scientific discoveries, creative inspirations, historical accounts and detailed timelines.

In the Dark Goddess Project letter writing became our process record, the inscription offering experiential awareness. In working with students for the better part of the last two decades I’ve found that we tend to dismiss our accomplishments, relegate the facts of our lives to side notes and misremember our experiences. Crafting a written record of any major life experience--relationships, pregnancy and child birth, coming of age, death of a loved one, professional shifts, the making of a project or creative work--allows us to see our journey, and to share it.

Finding a companion to receive the record of your journey or process can feel challenging, but I’ve discovered that most people are open to sharing experiences, we have only to ask. Choosing a friend or relative can feel safest, but I had first year college students writing with strangers so they did not have the comfort of the known, or the collusion of censorship. Not only this but there is a degree of formality and professionalism in writing to someone unknown, or not known well, that helps with how we tend and articulate our ideas.

So where to look should we wish to correspond in process? Kindreds on the path are a great place to start. What classes or communities are you currently drawn to? Where in your past did you have a place of interest and intention that sparked your heart? Were there particular people on those paths who you felt friendly with? Be brave, reach out, and see if they would like to participate in a grand experiment.

You can also ask a mentor to engage in correspondence with you. I do this with some of my mentees and love the opportunity to support and nourish their work through this systematic recording of their process.

#4 find a pen friend

I have had several pen pals in my life--people who I didn’t know hardly at all, but our friendships and relationships developed exclusively through letters.

When I was sixteen or seventeen my best friend’s cousin, Shiloh, who was four years younger than us, began corresponding with me after we met one summer. She always sent the most magical letters, was incredibly intelligent and insightful for someone so young, and I learned a lot from writing with her over my late teens and into college.

Also when I was a teen, at the start of the first Gulf War, I began corresponding with a soldier, Dan, in Iraq. He was kind and funny, shared anecdotes about his family and photos of the work they were doing. I had been firmly against the war and Dan’s insights helped me develop a more intricate and compassionate view of our involvement through the eyes of someone who was there.

In my late twenties I wrote with a writer I admired for a couple of years. What began as simple admiration developed into a true mentorship where I gained a tremendous amount of insight into craft, history, story, and grew both personally and intellectually.

Pen friends, pen pals, are a way to weave a wider web in the world around us. Anyone can be a candidate for a pen friend as long as they like to write and receive letters. One of the best and easiest ways to begin a correspondence is to write a letter first. Here are some suggestions for folks to inquire with:

Old friends, roommates or colleagues you meant to stay in touch with.

Former teachers or students who inspired you.

Aunts, uncles, cousins or distant family members you were always curious about.

Artists or writers you like and admire--no guarantees the correspondence will continue but you can always write a letter and see what happens!

Other options for potential pen friends that benefit people in need of connection:

Military correspondence--there are many organizations online that facilitate military letter writing. Soldier’s Angels has a Deployed Adoptions Team that sends care packages and letters to deployed service members once a month.

Writing with the Incarcerated--Letter writing can be essential support for people in prison. There are a number of necessary guidelines when writing those in prison. You can learn more, view the guidelines and be paired with a pen pal at the Innocence Project.

You can also check out the many websites devoted to connecting pen pals worldwide--Global Pen Friends is one--and sign up to correspond via snail mail.

#5 Write to a Child

Beatrix Potter, of Peter Rabbit fame, never had children of her own due to the tragic death of her fiancée. But her creative offerings and shared gifts have inspired children for generations.

The entire repository of her stories rose from letters she wrote to two brothers, Eric and Noel. It was the brothers’ mother who encouraged her to seek publication of her tales.

If you have children in your life, I hope you tell them stories and write them letters. And if you don’t yet write to them, this is your invitation to begin.

When our children were small they each had a fairy house in the yard where they could leave letters for the fairies. Sometimes the fairies would write them back, or leave gifts. As a blended family it was helpful to have some traditions on the day the children returned home together, and one of those traditions included checking the houses for fairy letters.

My children were fortunate, too, to have grandparents and great-grandparents who sent them mail: postcards and letters, some as simple as “I love you and miss you,” mail was a great treat for them. They also had other grown-ups in their lives who would write to them on occasion--neighbors, housemates, friends--and that attitude of connection and enchantment was contagious for both.

If you don’t have children in your life you can still bring joy into the life of a child in need with letters.

Letters of Love is an organization that provides cards of hope and encouragement for children struggling with serious or chronic illness.

Braid Mission sends Cards of Hope to children in foster care to celebrate birthdays, and support and encourage both the children and the social workers that are helping them.

I hope these suggestions inspire you to your own reclaiming of letter writing as ancestral craft and olden practice! I am looking forward to exploring more sacred writing traditions--including the art of cursive writing, fountain pens, paper making and typewriters--in future posts.

With blessings to your reclaiming of this olden practice--Lara