5 Good Things

5 Good Things.m4a

Here are 5 things generating gratitude, awe, and delight lately - because in the midst of war, and hard anniversaries, in the midst of cruelty and willful ignorance, there is beauty and generosity - there is evolution and sweetness, there is life, happening.

1. Joy Harjo’s medicine-in-poem-form For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet*: “If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.” Read or Listen:

2. If you too spent a decade of your life accompanied by a particular band, marking life events and everyday moments with their songs and ordering their latest unavailable-in-the-US CD from overseas and waiting weeks for it to arrive; if you subsequently lost track of this band in the streaming era, and if you too have undergone a substantial personal evolution to shed societal expectations and embrace your self, you also might understand my tears and shouts of joy when this post tumbled across my feed** with the realization of why this person felt so instantly familiar. Thank you, Sam, for being your self. It's beautiful to see you, hear you within your younger self and that like so many of us, in so many forms of becoming - you were there all along. The euphoria and hope the original recording of this song by K’s Choice produced in a mid-20 year old Mel is wildly expanded given this context.

3. This card keeps coming up, in the midst of big transitions personally, professionally, seasonally. Something is "on the move" as my teacher would say. Want the Change, from Abacus Corvus’ beautiful Wild Chorus deck)

“Around this ancient standing stone, a flurry of golden leaves fill the sky…As a powerful wind stirs the world into motion, notice where you locate yourself in the image. Are you caught up by the wind, scattered and tossed? Are you the stone, grounded and still? Or are you the wind, the choreographer of this chaos? Wherever you find yourself in this image, what would it mean to lean into this dance, to want the wildness of it?” -Corinna Dross and Jo Mosser of Abacus Corvus.

4. Darren Raven’s excellent Public Pedagogy series - an instagram-reel zine of sorts. This latest one really resonates, especially as my writing practice re-emerges for at least the hundredth time and I am simultaneously moving into deeper collaboration on my longest running and most communal project, Durham Community Bodywork. “Low stakes make starting possible. If everything matters, nothing begins.”

5. Ranunculus, and their incredible spiraling-infinity petals. From local grower Clear Black Flowers.

Pink ranunculus flowers from Clear Black Flowers

*Thank you Carey, for bringing this to our recent DCBW meeting.

**The internet is still (occasionally) capable of producing magical moments of seemingly random connection.

Patterns

Patterns.m4a

I had to instruct myself, embarrassingly, in the voice I might use for an overtired child - in the voice I remember my mother using in fact - wow, ok, yes, I have known this overtired, overstimulated state since my body was cabbage-sized.*

No email for at least 24 hours, better 48. Minimal texting only if necessary. Absolutely no spreadsheets, no strategizing. No budgeting, no money talk. No researching, no planning. There is nothing that cannot wait for at least two days (except the thing over which you have no control, for which you can only make your own versions of offering, of prayer, of plea.) Let your people know, especially anyone you live with, what topics you have tabled for now. Make an agreement to come back to anything pressing. Face the oak tree until your eyes actually register details of bark and leaves. Listen to the birds. Now that your eyes are online, watch them too. Water the plants and have some good conversations about their growth, the leaves they've lost, whether they like their new spot / pot, and so on. Sleep. Read. Think, sure, fine - but not too hard; ask the part of your mind that likes to run - & will keep on until you trip or collapse - to take a pause, you need it to be ready when these hours are up. Remember that "do nothing" days** were once a thing - a thing you attempted to do and yes, mostly failed, but you got some good quiet in the attempts. You already know how to work hard. You already know you can trust yourself to pick something back up later if it's important. And you know it will be easier for having had a break. Yes, ok, you can write a thank you note, but only as the impulse of genuine gratitude arises. Any subtle whiff of obligation and it must wait along with everything else. And since you're feeling grateful, by the way, thank your body for holding you up, for carrying you through all the difficult days so far, for vibrating with the effort of processing all it encounters. Thank your mind for all its exertions. Thank your heart for keeping on of its own accord, steady and consistent, modeling rest between every single beat.*** There are kinds of exhaustion that are or become akin to despair. You know this well. You've learned to catch them even though you don't, always. This time, you do.

I have encountered this pattern countless times - the one where I think I can keep going, or should, or would if only I were somehow more capable. I’ve written about it many times too. It is certain at this point that it will re-cycle in some form, reinforced by a culture in which any deviation from continuous, ever-expanding productivity is a failure. Sometimes when I manage to avoid the exhaustion part, or carried by a hearty wind of acceptance, grace, and the minimum effort necessary, I can imagine the pattern is complete, no longer necessary, no longer running on auto to - ironically - save energy. And many times I reflect on what's different when I find myself in exhaustion again; how am I different this time? What am I still learning? This time, I see more clearly another pattern that is also here, the long practice in grace and compassion, and of not making myself wrong. I see a space of self-trust carved over a lifetime; that even though I can sometimes unconsciously and sometimes choice-fully keep going well past when it is wise for me to pause, I also reliably treat myself well through my arc to chosen or inescapable rest. I know myself well, and many of my patterns I know well too. None of this is random. Every cycle following its purpose even when it has outgrown it's origin. Every part of me and of the cycle with it’s own dignity, no amount of restoration ever needing to be earned or justified. Self-respect, maybe, is what this is called.

*one of my mother's terms of endearment was mon petite chou; literally, my little cabbage.

**gratitude to an old friend Kylie, whom I have not been in touch with in far too long

***Thank you Angeles Arrien, from her book The Four-Fold Way - “But your heart muscle goes on working for as long as you live. It does not get tired, because there is a phase of rest built into every single heartbeat.”

Things I wish she were here to see

I try to write for, about, to her every year around this time. I tried to write a 5 things list of what I wish she were here to see. And then I remembered, I am the mom object. I've been inviting her to see through my eyes the glory of the springtime greening. I like imagining that this way she gets to see, gets to hear, gets to experience some of what I do - and maybe, if what we know about cellular consciousness is true, and the fact that her cells formed me, and mine became a part of her* - hers/mine (and all our relations) becomes harder to distinguish. I am glad she gets to see (feel) me more whole, more myself, carrying forward from how far she carried me. I like to imagine who she would have become in a world where her own child could have a whole new understanding of themself because we've gotten more free (despite what our government would have us believe, despite what the small and fearful do). I like to imagine her in her chosen wooded habitat, touching birches, pressing young pine needles between her fingers and inhaling, picking spring fiddleheads for a once-a-year gifted meal, calling to the birds, whispering all the unpalatable, impossible things she thinks to the beings who wouldn’t even need words to recognize her as one of their own. (This of course, is more of a memory than an imagining, but I do delight in the memories of her moments of rebelliousness, even those last days as she tried again to spirit herself outside; the tone and pacing of her under-the-breath mischievous retort. And I imagine her free-er, wilder than ever, fierce enough to send a call out, echoing through all our family cells (and beyond). Your whole self is waiting. We are waiting. For you.)

*These cross-generational transfers are bidirectional. As fetal cells cross the placenta into maternal tissues, a small number of maternal cells migrate into fetal tissues, where they can persist into adulthood. Genetic swaps, then, might occur several times throughout a life. Some researchers believe that people may be miniature mosaics of many of their relatives,: their older siblings, perhaps, or their[maternal grandmother, or any aunts and uncles their grandmother might have conceived before their mother was born. "It's like you carry your entire family inside of you," Francisco Úbeda de Torres, an evolutionary biologist at the Royal Holloway University of London, told me.

- Wu, K. J. (2025, June 10). The most mysterious cells in our bodies don't belong to us. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/fetal-maternal-cells-microchimerism/676996/

5 things on learning

5 things on learning.m4a

1. Green green greening. Every time I lift my head the trees seem more lush & full. The plants keep teaching me about cycles by being themselves, and I am still slow to learn despite their consistency. I can only hope someday I will not need to re-remember that there are times to reach and times to rest. I can keep imagining a world that honors this fundamental, natural truth. I can imagine a self that finally stops forgetting.

2. We learn by doing, through practice. Theory only goes so far. I've learned how to be in conflict by being in conflict, how to manage boundaries by managing boundaries, and sometimes, by doing so very ineffectively until I learned to do it better. There's a term in one of my somatic lineages (Strozzi, thanks to my teacher Carey Smith) that helps a lot: Generative Conflict. Conflict presents opportunities, if we allow for it, if we can stomach a potential change in our view of another, or the world.

3. We can start in the middle, and come around to the beginning again, and again back to the middle. Practices are adaptable, changeable. Just like us.

4. Ummm, and by the way, I mean so much more than our zeitgeist-y current level understanding of boundaries as a method of self or space protection, I mean the physical, emotional, energetic, intentional, attention-al ways that we connect and differentiate. The overt and the subtle. Conscious and semi- and sub-. Verbalized and embodied. And everywhere in between.

5. If we are in relationship long enough, we will disappoint each other. To be more accepting of my capacity to fall short is a welcome loosening of ego, control, and - if I am more truthful and use the word I really mean - dominance. The semi-conscious desire to be seen a certain way? Dominance. Perfectionism? Dominance. We have learned to do this to ourselves as well as each other. My younger self could not imagine not taking things so personally, and it is so incredibly freeing. Accountability has generally not been my issue as I - yes, I know, this tracks - am known to take more than my fair share of responsibility. Related, somehow: As a friend said this week regarding relational challenges: we can't have liberation because we can't do this [conflict] yet. Yes. Also, also, key word YET. Practice, practice. That's really it. Just keep trying. Keep opening to the vast possibility beyond what we think we know. There is a little letterpress card on my board from Ecotone Magazine, by Malinda Maynor Lowery (yes I am fed by the name symmetry of this wise historian who - in a greater and more foundational symmetry, is a member of the Lumbee tribe, whose land I am on.) It says: Admit. Atone. Act. Rest. Repeat. Wise guidelines. Critical - and compassionate - self-reflection is key.

A glimpse of my bulletin board: Letterpress Card from Ecotone Magazine that says: “Admit. Atone. Act. Rest. Repeat.” by Malinda Maynor Lowery of the Lumbee tribe. Little Mel. An image of frosted flowers from a dear friend.

5 things for her, of her

5 things for her, of her.m4a

Melinda Chase Hunt

1. I found myself wishing, as I (now remember I) do every springtime, that my mother could have experienced this southeast Springtime exuberance. The wish came with a deep ache as it tends to do, sharp in its unexpectedness even after so many years.

2. The traditions I was raised in didn't impart practices of relationship to those who have passed. I've only encountered some sense of this through my somatic lineages, a felt sense of connection to what and who have come before. The white western cultural engorgement on self, on NOW, on unattainable, untenable future states is a keen defense against a multi-directional connection to others, to past and future, to ground and sky. It is easy to forget that there are many realities beyond our own experience. It is meant to be easy to forget. This is a deep deprivation that I am thinking, in this moment, contributes to shriveling exhaustion and despair.

3. I have been longing for a deeper relationship to my mother, not to her memory, but to Her - her essence, however it is that she exists now, beyond my experience and limited conception of death, dissolution, transmutation, or spirit. I panned around my room seeking a "mom" object, something connected to her to feel and hold in my hands, against my skin. From my seat my eyes couldn't find something quickly enough. And I barked a laugh and clapped my hands over my mouth as the snap of alignment came (hands, mouth) - I am it, I am the mom object. This living, breathing, moving body; everything I do and all that I am, living evidence of her. Right here even closer than touch, right here in me, so obvious as to be invisible.

4. She knew the magic of connection - to nature, to source, to something bigger. She embodied a longing for it. She was belittled for it. And she passed this aliveness of ever-increasing awe to me through her very cells, a living inheritance. I used to tell the story of my scythed awakening after her death as her final gift to me, mother to child: her eyes closed, and my eyes opened, aware suddenly of a deep misalignment between my longings and my choices. And here this is now, 20ish years later - another awakening. There is no final gift - here I am, a continuation. There is no final gift from her, I am the gift.

5. I wish for words to say this truly, how it feels - to not overstate or diminish this insight or its reverberation through this physical body. I am not her only child nor am I the only life she touched. There are living impacts of her care in many people and families and generations of plants. She had a whole life before and alongside partnering, gestating, mothering. And I have the incredible gift of not only being shaped by but made by (of) her.