Hello, friend.

I haven’t said it here yet, but Happy Pride Month! It honestly feels a little strange to string those words together in this moment when so much is on the line for our community and when so many terrible things are happening all over the world. But it also feels incredibly important to take time to celebrate resilience, strength, and even joy. Most of all, I feel like it’s an important time to take a step back and consider what community really is and what we might need to rethink when it comes to our interconnection.

Being part of the LGBTQ+ community, I sometimes hesitate to even use that phrase – we kind of throw the word community around all the time these days – you know? The “Insert Descriptor Here Community” has really become a marker for categorization instead of what community really should be: connection, collaboration, cocreation. Relationship.

And I am afraid that in our increasingly hyper-individualized and fractured society, this kind of misnomer for community is closely tied to our redefinition what community really is. As a result, we’ve lost the deeper and more important meaning and forgotten why we need community in the first place.

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Lilla Watson is often credited for putting words to a sentiment we often hear in activist and social justice spaces – that your liberation is bound to mine. That helps us understand a deeper truth: There is no individual liberation without collective liberation.

What I am about to say next goes against much of what I was taught and trained to believe in western and colonized psychotherapy and mental health counseling. But over the past couple of years, it’s truth rings louder and louder in my heart, and I can’t ignore it when I see it demonstrated, whispered, and present in the wild or wild-ish places. Here it goes:

Your wellness is bound to mine. And there is a deeper truth: There is no true individual wellness without collective wellness.

(deep breath)

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Yesterday morning, I worked in a garden bed that I have neglected for several months. The only thing in this bed are perennial walking onions and some native volunteer wild plants like henbit, wood sorrel, and a black cherry tree that sprouted up. As I uprooted some choking grass and thinned the onion bulbs, I couldn’t help but notice the abundance of insects, crawlers of many kinds, and the interconnection of the roots I tried to preserve the best I could.

The bed was healthy and strong, and though I’ve thought about moving the onions somewhere else, I decided not to – there is no way I could replicate this healthy soil without years of work, which is how long this bed has been around.

Like that garden, we too are one and a collection of many.

The walking onions are not just connected with the other plants, but with the soil and microbes, the sky, the sun, and with me – the gardener.

We also are connected not just to each other as humans, but with the earth, the sun and moon, and with beings who are not human, like the animals and plants in our world.

Over the past several years, I’ve noticed in conversation with clients, workshop attendees, and colleagues that something is missing when it comes to our concepts of well-being. At the same time, I have been (and am still) on my own journey of re-integration, detangling from westernized and colonized views, and rewilding myself.

I believe we’ve dulled and even severed our interconnections. I believe we have fragmented and compartmentalized parts of ourselves and at the same time, divided ourselves from neighbors and from the earth. And I believe all of that is making us deeply un-well.

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Over the next few letters I send you, I’ll talk about this more. We will dive in to not just specific ways we have individualized and compartmentalized, but I will also give some thoughts for how we work for restoration and relationship and more well-being.

For now, I’d like to offer you to reflect on this idea through a couple of journal prompts/reflection questions.

1. What is your initial reaction to my statement? Your wellness is bound to mine. And there is a deeper truth: There is no true individual wellness without collective wellness.

2. What do you notice in your body as a reaction to this statement?

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Feel free to reply if you'd like to share your thoughts. I’ll be back next week with more.

With love,

Charity

Where I am finding hope/inspiration:

1. From Gaza, to immigration, to the environment, to healthcare, LGBTQ+ rights, and more – it did my heart so much good to be with others protesting for these causes last weekend. But most of all, just meeting another protester who was there alone, and her asking if she could stand with me for a bit. I heard a bit of her story and what moved her to take action, starting in 2020. I was reminded of how important it is to tell our stories and to hear the stories of others.

2. I read a post from a conservation photographer, Danae Wolfe, responding to the viral story on firefly population decline. She offered practical suggestions for what we can do to help – like no chemicals, letting our yards be wild in places, leaving leaves on the ground, and having damp areas. She closed her post with one of the most powerful statements I’ve heard in a while. “Don’t let fear steal the magic. Let it call you into care.” Let’s be called into care for the many many things we deeply care for.

Here is her website which has great tips for helping insects: https://www.chasingbugs.com/

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Offerings/Ways to Support My Work:

Want to brush up on how to be an ally in this moment? The replay of my workshop is still available here:

$25.00 Embodied Allyship Workshop Learn how to move beyond words to true and embodied allyship in this moment we face together. We will reflect on... Read more Sign up now!

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Need a good read for Pride? Or a story about fighting for justice and hope? Might I humbly recommend my first novel, Broken to Belong?

You can find ways to purchase it here: https://books2read.com/u/bw1Kxy​

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