Adaptation

*breathe in …. breathe out *

Adaptation with intention is on my mind and in my body right now.  Over the last months/years, my body wisdom has turned me again and again to closeness with the earth and to reverence of the earth as refuge–praying they help me/us adapt to this new soil with my/our values grounded. And this is an ancestral knowing always stewarded and alive now thank you to our indigenous siblings. Feeling how we live this when we feel the lessons of the seasons, the life cycle of a plant, the shapeshifting force of compost, the wisdom of roots. Sensing how all of this movement is mirrored in my life, in my body (many bodies), in all physical and nonphysical reality. Always. & especially in times of such profound unearthing and transformation. 

I know adaptation to be an ancestral creative practice, embedded in evolution, in our varying cultural histories, and manifested as mundanely in our processing air as breath right now. Adaptation has allowed the collective to survive to this point, and has allowed my own lineages to bring me to this moment. Through countless acts of rupture, denial, reclamation, violence (caused and received), human and non-human beings I am connected to have faced enormous uncertainty that left their surroundings, and often themselves, unrecognizable. Still, time and time again, within themselves, with each other, and/or with beyond-Earthly life, they found what they needed to continue surviving and creating. They grieved as they could, re-assembled their parts, shed what could no longer be carried forward, and embodied new shapes – internally, externally, individually, collectively. 

In my current adaptation practice spurred by this intense collective reckoning moment, I’ve found inspiration in the ways plants practice fortifying their roots when winds around them pick up speed and intensity. In other words, strong winds help plants strengthen their roots. The stronger the winds, the more plantitas burrow/grip/expand their roots for stability and endurance. The more plantitas reach down and across the earth as their network of roots hold them together through the storm. In their burrowing, they pull up stability and nourishment from places in the ground they didn’t previously know possible. Here, the plants are changed by the winds and the winds path changed by the existence of the plants. 

Wind/Air = movement, change, push/pull, intention

Roots/Earth = values, actions, stability, inner nourishment, community network & exchange

 

The earth writes our guides for survival for us. Moments of intense collective transformation where the winds in and around us are gushing, we are asked to burrow our roots deep into the Earth; to reach down into the soil and out towards each other for stability and resources and life. We are asked to clarify the ground we rest on – our values, our actions, our individual role within the greater collective web. We are asked to root down, harness our courage, and allow ourselves to feel and, as Octavia Butler taught, be changed by the powerful movement we are breathing through. All the grief, loss, joy, fear, innovation, uncertainty; this is an enormous call. And truthfully, the bigness of this call has frozen me almost daily. Though my Earth-deep commitment to evolve from this with an open heart, new ways of being and a rooted sense of accountability to the freedom of the Earth/us re-energizes and re-focuses me. 

I am re-grounded by the glaring truth that the panic I feel in my body during peak fear moments are breeding grounds for violence, hoarding, rupture, abandonment, trauma and more trauma. I am re-focused by the truth that if we do not ground, reach for each other, and move with intention / generosity / humility, we risk reproducing the long, long history of oppression. I am re-energized by my beliefs that if we are able to ground in this storm, let the feelings move through and beyond us like water, and practice new (sometimes scary) ways of interconnectedness and inter-reliance, we can really work with this moment to shift the course of our species’ legacy. With clear intentions and sturdy roots, this ground of global decomposition can be where we collectively remember our magic and finally alchemize the worlds of our physical/mental/emotional/spiritual liberation(s). 

May it be so. 

Finally. Finally. Finally.