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Journeying to Reclaim an Ancestral Self Beyond Whiteness
 🌲The Land is Calling.🌲Our bodies hear it.🌲
. . 🌲For over a quarter century I have been in deep relationship with my own healing- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, culturally...and 25years in, I'm ✨ psyched ✨ (in that I know the work will be challenging, but the reward is literally life giving~ greater freedom, greater ease, deeper relationships, understanding, and community) for the next two or three or four decades- all of it rooted in a reciprocal, supportive, consistent- Always Present relationship with the Land. . . 🌲What I know and what I've seen: There is no greater healer than the Earth herself. Yes there are practitioners and healers and teachers and modalities that are pure potent and kïckåßß magic - bless them for talents from Hashem and their learned ways ✨ but where we are individually, where we are collectively needs tended to in a way that many of us have forgotten.🌿 Indigenous folks the world over have been saying this all along, for over century+ in a critical way, and they are saying it now.🌿 It would be wise to listen.🌿 . . 🌲The Land is Calling. Calling to bring ourselves individually, and together in pockets and hubs, so that we can be with ourselves, with the Earth, and one another in a way that our DNA, that our genetic memory recognizes. . . Join us. Registration: https://forms.gle/pD8FVxLwMjyQmQEf8 . . #land #healing #somatic #coregulation #slowdown #listen
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 Written 7/16/2020
✴️ BEET PORTAL ✴️ . . ✴️When food is so beautiful, speaking to celestial bodies and sacred geometry, you can feel it nourish you before you ever taste it. . . ✴️This patterning reminds me of a show that I saw at the MFA Boston...some 20+years ago. The exhibit featured the vast and epic art of India. What has stayed with me the most, are not the stories of the temples and their grandeur, nor the beautiful illustrations of the Vedas or the Sutras, although they were indeed magnificent. . . ✴️What I still remember, viscerally, is the videos of Indian women making mandalas out of spices. All together, crouched and definitively, they cast and sprinkled spices, from big pots of tumeric, paprika, clove, pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and more- and they made the most beautiful visual prayers. . . ✴️The Indian women knew that when the mandala was visually balanced, the flavor was balanced. They could now cook their magic and offer it to their loved ones. . . ✴️I think of that video more than you can imagine...the pace, the prayers, the love, the devotion...and looking at this beet, I'm compelled to say prayers for those women, and their children, and their children's children- because they were elder folk two decades ago. May their love and artistry still feed their people, and may that tradition be always protected. . . #beet #magic #sacredgeometry #terrestial #celestialbodies #ecoqueer #queerfarmers  Written 7/17/2020
🥬GROWING FOOD : FEED THE PEOPLE 🥬You can run from destiny...but only for so long. They will eventually take one long stride towards you, look you in the eyes, peer into your heart and mind, cut you lose, and POOF! You're either dead, or have found yourself smack dab in the middle of The Work. 🥬 Your Work. 🥬Food has always been one of my love languages- my Slavic DNA compells me to make four times the amount that is ever needed...but it's always good the next day. BUT- My Work, as in MY WORK, has been calling me for 21years- and finally we meet. In all honesty, I knew she was coming for me. I was making plans to be with them big time in 2023....but the global pandemic just jumped/blipped the timeline- and the seeds and the Earth and hills, and the hard red shale, and the compost pile, and the barn swallows, and the purslane and dandelions, and geezus the g*DD*MN 🐿️ chipmunks, and the rains and thunder and stars are like, "Girl! Woman! You! Being! FINAL-füking-LY! We have been waiting on you...and now you're here- let's get to it!". I wasn't early at all.... 🥬I've been doing my best to keep up- find sustainable rhythms, honor the necessity of rest, ---and the strength is returning to my body in a way I haven't known...and the vulnerability of my heart is being shown to me everyday when the plants thrive and when they perish...and when the fawns frolick, and when they meet their end. 🥬I will take food to auction Saturday. I will take food to the food bank Monday. I will give food to whomever shows up at my door. 🥬The season is passing so quickly...these plants are prayers for sustenance- yes for me, but together we're dreaming of abundant futures when the sweetness and chlorophyll nourish many, many, many more. #feedthepeople #growfood #food #raisedbeds #biodynamic #farm #farmingonawingandprayer #giveback #sacredwork #destiny #gardens #listentotheplants  Written 7/17/2020
🌻SUNFLOWER : ANCESTOR They have taught me so much in the last few months about willingness, time, desire, tracking, constitution, strength, beauty. 🌻I learned this season that sunflowers originally are wildflowers of Turtle Island. They were used for food, building, and dyes by first nation people. They left their place of origin in the 1500's, and we're revered throughout Europe nforntheir beauty, and by the 19th century, Russia and Ukraine had began to grow them commercially for seed and oil consumption. 🌻I thought that they were indigenous to Slavic lands (but I was wrong and learned anew), because in 1997 my father and I drove by miles and miles and miles of acres of them as we made our way to Florynka from Vienna. They were so incredibly beautiful-- filling the foothills of the Carpathian mountains...their radiant faces comforted me as we drove towards my grandparents' village- our ancestral homelands. My father and I were both anxious...unsure of what or who we would find, and the sunflowers reassured me. 🌻On the way back to Vienna, I snuck one into my luggage-- it stayed with me for years.... through many moves....from coast to coast....and finally I had to release it. Let it return to the Earth. 🌻When I built the beds in April and May-- soon after, sunflower sprouts began showing themselves...in most of the beds....in little clusters....they came forth- plump, sturdy, and joyful...and it felt like we both were returning to this land, having finally found our way here, and to one another. P.S. They're approaching 7' in height. They lovingly tower over me. 📍Shared hunting grounds of many first nation folx #sunflower #wildflowers #ancestors #plantmedicine #plantancestors #returning #ecoqueer #tallflowers #ancestralfuturism #ancestralstories #uncededland  Written 6/8/2020
There are so many weaving new worlds. Those whose canyons are concrete and pavement with damp, tear stained cheeks, flaming hearts of true righteousness and red eyes soaking in the rhythm of brilliance, tragedy, and revolution- those with pockets full of seeds, backpacks full of saplings- vision and food for the future, dirt under their nails, washed in fields sopping with morning dew- those whose words are scalpel, ax, and laser beam calling out, via call & response, to cut through centuries of illusion. Those who pray, really, really pray in ancient, nearly forgotten ways, in alcoves and nooks that will never be seen by the masses. And those that we cannot see- those eight legged, six legged, four legged, two legged, one legged- those without legs at all, those of air, ether and spirit... calling into the deep recesses of our psyches to fükïng remember why we're truly here- together. . . There are so so many weaving new worlds. Those who have been at it all of their lives...those who drunk on privilege, are just now sobering up to true reality, and are striving to detoxify their system of lies, assumptions, and false pretenses. . . Time is of the essence, the seasons move on so quickly (they do not seek our permission)- there is so much to do, so many hearts needed, and it will take a multitude of cycles, many passings of the sun and moon for lasting, sustainable change, and yet the tide shifts when the moon but beckons it that way. . . There is so much to do, and the builders, the weavers, the demolition teams, the growers, the teachers...when moving in sync with one another- their imagining, their shaping the world that is just and safe for all people- follows the knowing of their fingers, voices, and instinct for a more just, beautiful, and equitable world...The revolution is as varied as a field of wildflowers. . . #weaving #newworld #spiders #ecoqueer #queernature #naturerevolution #doyourpart #allhandsondeck #whatwillyoudo #learning #antiracism #neverstops #ruralsolidarity #blacklivesmatter  In the seasons that pysanki were forgotten, were half-heartedly made, or made to follow some newly imposed and overlaid Roman fad, the Dragons would weep shimmering silver and gold opalescence when they found humans suffering from loss of true memory. Depending on how deep and staggering the amnesia was, after each tear, Zmaj and his cohort would breath deep into their bellowed lungs, and let fire woefully rain, singeing barns, cottages, the occasional inebriated farmer, and tall pines and other evergreens. . .
The Dragons would also roar with lament upon each fiery release, and instead of seeing these moans as cries and calls to remember, the humans would assume the worst, believing that Dragons were solely trying to terrorize them...when what they aimed to do was fulfill their duty as Guardians, and attempt to remind the humans to pause, orient, and be sure they were headed in the right direction- literally and metaphorically, and to lovingly make and share their pysanki. . . So, I bring our pysanki to the Sun&Earth...lovingly made…full of prayers for our individual selves, our collective self, including our dear planet, and especially for those that are bearing the brunt and burden of this hellish amnesia that has created the current circumstance. Seattle, LA, SanFran, Tribal Lands (we’re all on tribal land…),The Five Boroughs, Philly, P’burgh, and all of those clusters of neighbors and families that don’t have access to clean water, enough nourishing foods, Rx, Tx, testing, and medical care. I’m so sorry-- and these colors, these patterns, this basket of offering is for you. If it can and would help to know that you are not forgotten, please take this as that reminder. . . 🖤💜🖤From my lamenting heart to you and yours . #ancestralfuturism #pysanki #dragons #slavic #lemko #lemkolongdrop #slavicamerican #spring #springtime #ritualart #ritual #art #eggart #earthart #makersmake #qwyrdo  Zmaj hoped, but knew how very forgetful they could be. Zmaj never enjoyed wreaking havoc amongst the humans, and only used his divebomb belly-breath fireballs as remembrals when necessary. The Dragons, on behalf of The Mystic and Elemental Nature of All Things, desired that humans be in right relationship with themselves, one another, the soil, the animals, the waters and all the Beings that co-habitated, together, Here In This Place. The Dragon's wanted us to be in remembrance of the sacred as mundane, and the mundane as sacred, and that both can be joyful, fulfilling, and pleasurable...but the humans...they can wind themselves down roads that only loop to misery, led by false promises, distracted by non-sensical things that are not really real, and forget how to generate true love, and magic, and nourishment for all. .
Distracted by things that aren't really real (like thin paper rectangles with numbers and pictures of assuredly grumpy people painted upon them, or boxes that glowed and howled all day and night, about every silly thing you could imagine. Zmaj and friends did not understand why humans were so infatuated with the paper and boxes when you have butterflies, fawns, great oaks with their acorns, squirrels, curling brooks, thunderstorms, twilight, and fairy gnome thresholds to be curious about. Alas, the Dragons knew that cats also liked paper and flashing boxes, and they should not judge too harshly...as long as the humans kept their word in their compelled and important duties: pysanki). . So when the Great Wheel turned towards and slightly past the vernal equinox, Zmaj & Co would emerge, slowly rambling from the Inner Gates to peer around and over mountain edges, into little villages and homes, wondering: are they remembering how to be good companions to the water? To the animals? To the plants, the sky, the stars? To themselves and one another? Are they remembering their Springtime memos of affection, adoration, and awe? Where are their pysanki? Are they smiling and curious when they’re making them? #ancestralfuturism #pysanki #dragons #slavic #lemko #slavicamerican  Ancients Slavs~ dwelling and migrating from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the Danube east to the Carpathians, and into northern Asia, like most ancient peoples that dwelled in areas with four seasons, honored Spring's arrival, and its eruptive nature, its blossoms and buzzing potentiality, with art+ritual. . .
As the bears and bees awoke, as eagles and owls began their songs of joy, beingness, and invitation to one another, as seeds and buds pushed and broke themselves open to offer new life, our ancient kin knew that the Dragons of one of Earth's Inner Hearths were not far behind. . . One of these dragons, Zmaj, and his mythical clan folk, who were the Guardians of the Gates to The Mystic & Elemental Nature of All Things, would stir after winter's dreaming to check on the sweet, endearing, and oft times confusing wee-little furless, scaleless, featherless ones- the two legged mountain valley, seaside, plain, and river dwellers. Were they remembering? Were the humans setting aside time, a final long meditation before the spring + summer busyness, to remember and honor who was truly in charge: The Mystic & Elemental Nature of All Things. . . Would they remember...to make their springtime love signs to creation? Would they remember to share them with their friends, their beloveds, and the Earth Herself? Would they take primordial and elemental forms of Egg, turn them in their hands, apply wax, color, patterns, and place them in straw baskets to honor the beauty, abundance, and potency of The Mystical & Elemental Nature of All Things? . #ancestralfuturism #pysanki #dragons #slavic #lemko #lemkolongdrop #slavicamerican #spring #springtime #ritualart #ritual #art #eggart #earthart #makersmake #qwyrdo  Written January 25, 2020 Although I'm still feeling it-- this Aquarius New Moon has been gentler than most for me-- I'm no expert nor even a lay novice in astrology-- but perhaps my rising sign in Aquarius and moon in Taurus give way to a "lightness" in this lunar cycle moment-- (although the deep questions and the awareness of sooooooo many dynamics that are usually on full blast during new moon are swirling just off the edge of my periphery....) But the lightness is lending itself to a full bodied and continuum of gentleness, of rest, of resolution as well as curiosity....so my sense is that this cycle is showing me a sign post of how far I've come in the last solar year-- where the work I've put in for my own healing, healing as compared to growth (i'll speak to the difference for me below)-- is finally embodied enough that I don't feel like my psyche is turned on her head and melting face first into the OceanWell of MyBeing this new moon, with but a spiritual snorkel and some ancient flippers to help me swim. For those of you not in southcentral PA-- it is 46degrees here and has been raining for hours. --and my body and my heart are grieving that it is not cold enough for this rain to be a BIG snow-- and to pile gently on the land, on our minds and spirits to quiet everything and everyone down. The snow that isn't here-- really feels like it ought to be happening, so that the ground can sloooooowly absorb the white cold water form and fill the tables below the surface.... There is so much to life that is below the surface, and subterranean water ways is one, and I keep thinking of them... I've spent a lot of January grieving the loss of winter- worried about the trees-- specifically the maples....wondering if they will have enough time in the cold to move through their natural dormancy and sap cycle....part of this is selfish-- as I really look forward to tapping a tree to bottle and partake in some sweet COLD sap- and nourish my body with this lifeblood....and part of this is grieving the possibility that the trees will be so stressed that they struggle to move through their seasonal cycles, and it may have a long term effect....and there's nothing I can do -except tell them I'm sorry for the state of the climate-- ask their forgiveness, and if there's anything I can do to support them. The maples will learn to move northward...I know in the long run they will most likely be fine...their seeds and offspring will adapt and commute on the wind and animals many miles north...but central PA may lose this species at some point....and that just makes me sad for humans and the land and the little beings that love to eat those sweet maple seeds. It is a strange sensation to feel the surge of & surrender into this eco-grief....but it's an important part of where we are--. To comfort the grief, I am grateful of the healing I mentioned above-- -the healing as compared to growth, although honestly there is most likely some growth sprinkled in there as well...but it is not traditionally measurable (and I'm pretty done with absolutes/binaries these days-- so healing is priority, if growth happens, than I welcome it, but I do not strive for it.) If anything, I would imagine to some external measure, I'm not growing, but lessening---disengaging-- I'm working less, observing and Being more. I'm pushing less, surrendering more. I'm seeking less in most capacities...and instead I'm showing up more for myself, aiming for loving relation and time, SLOWING DOWN into the rhythm of the Body, Earth and Spirit instead of seeking quantity of accomplishment & connection. (this is the point where former manifestations of myself would have been freaking out about money...but I'm not worried about money or "man"ifesting anymore, I've wasted too much precious time on the systems that be-- and enough is enough....I'm now much more focused on "femme" and "queer"vesting, and bringing that MAGIC up-down-and into my life. Fuck "TheMan" ---it's been shitting on us for way too long...and if we at some point gotta' just eat buttered noodles and cereal again-- than we will toast that gorgeous sustenance! There are dreams and souls at stake peeps....learning to live YOUR LIFE isn't about meeting external standards-- I believe it has much more to do with building bridges and sanctuaries from and to the past/present/future and the Mysteries of your individual medicine and work to the world and Earth herself.) #recoveringworkaholic I'm stressing less and I'm dreaming more-- both waking and non-waking dreamscapes....and this dreaming has been magic-- and has connected me to what I've come to realize as one traditional Slavic way of healing for myself and others as a practitioner. ~Working with and through dream time has presented itself to me again and again in the recent weeks and month (and over the longer arc of my life), and I'm grateful to be connected and connecting to some dear folx that will likely be able to support me in deepening my understanding and working relationship with the SleeptimeDreamCamp. As well, over the last six months, I've finally given myself the grace to fully embrace and practice Shabbat on a weekly basis, and it is one of the biggest spiritual homecomings of my life. It's not big in appearance....it's not big in sound or announcement (although I love to sing and chant the prayers)...it's quite the opposite...it's the space to take space and time for myself-- to disengage with the external-- and to sway myself gently into a deep and pleasant listening of me without some austere dogma, and it is fabulous. It's time to light candles and listen to the quiet. It's time to eat, and maybe have deep or raucous chavrusa & conversation if I'm with others. It's time to not do the dishes or pay the bills WITHOUT GUILT, but nap on the couch with the doggos and binge watch Netflix if I want. It's time to pray-- to reflect on the week-- to give thanks for that which fed and supported me-- to feel into the shifts and magic afoot-- it's time to pray and think of others and the world-- and it's all free-- no costs, no memberships, no transactional form of belonging....just being and shaping my life from the comfort of my home-- and that is just the best. I feel that whether we're talking about Christianity or New Age Spiritual practices, the dominant norms for the US, -- the externalization and commodification of spiritual space is just a given...it's an unwavering "necessity" which is capitalism in action, and one of the beauties of holding Shabbat, is that it shows how untrue that necessity is. Shabbat for me is whole and healing unto itself- it is ancient, it is simple and flexible within a lovely rhythm, and it is evolving for a feminist-pagan-reconciling-reclaiming ancestral Jew like myself. And I wouldn't have passed through this threshhold without the support and love of a few new friends, who I am deeply grateful to. XO My desire and intention that I set early last year to create non-commercialized spiritual community has been met 1000 times over in ways that I couldn't have imagined. Whether with new precious friendships on Instagram or MarcoPolo, to having my hand held as I learned and found resources to hold Shabbat each Friday evening, to continuing the path and forging connections between different practices of dreamwork-- the constant restlessness and questioning that was gnawing at me for a long, long time has found a sweet pot of honey to which to sip and enjoy, and it is such a pleasant relief. I share this because my wish for you dear one is for you find a sweet pot of spiritual honey-- or maybe it's a cup of cocoa or a sour lemony spiritual treat-- whatever would feel so so good to you-- for your body, mind, spirit, soul, home and day to day-- I pray that it finds you--and you find it, and you'll be woven together in a love and support that you have been seeking, or may not know you need. I could go on and on about the art I'm making or want to make, the dynamics of sharing different forms of work online that friends and I are wrestling with. I could go on about resting and relaxing into the the feat of having 1700 baby plants in the ground at the farm, and so I'm not taking the winter to push into creating anymore projects there at the moment (although there's always repair work to be done, who's got a drill and wants to come to the mountains this spring? ), or how at 43, and in my fourth decade, I believe I've finally realized that I'm no longer going to back in and out of the queer closet here in Lancaster. If people are going to not like me, they can do so with full knowledge of who I truly am and the community that feels most like home to me-- QUEERDOS--- which is another threshold that I consciously and unconsciously danced around for years and years.....whew. Heteronormative religious patriarchy is a real pain in the ass. SO-!!! HAPPY FULL MOON DEAR HEARTS-- I wish you sweet, loving, abundant blessings this weekend, and if you haven't seen or heard about Lyla June's #fastforthefuture or Saltwater Stars' EMOCEANAL SUPPORT gatherings-- take a look...there's some awesome women of color/FEMME and QUEER led movement shifting and shaping our world right now. Thank Goddess. And all of this is leading up to the CELEBRATION OF THE TREES on 2/9-- Tu Bishvat! and this is the Grandmother Beech Tree that we will be chilling with to celebrate-- such incredible Asherah Spirit! XO  Sometimes the beauty of life is not being able to detect when the Memory and Truth of the Land's & Ancestors' becomes your dream, future and vision.
. . Sometimes the dreams and remembrals are the same...and we just have to tune our ears and hearts and minds and spirits to their song. . . A hum in the setting sun, a yip of the coyotes, an ancient drumming desire of the Earth at our feet or behind our heart -- to be restored, replanted, reseeded, or the call of the song bird, crow or other feathered being...they are there/here all the time. . . In October the first installment of native food sources were planted at Phoenix Farm thanks to a grant from the DCNR. BabySaplings were tucked into the Earth over 16 acres. 1700+ plants that will someday be bearing fruits, nuts, seeds, barks, pulps, and material for sustaining Life, and there is more to be planted next season. . . I am ever mindful that as work unfolds and moves, the aim is to restore this land that is unceded, but nonetheless is at our heart and feet to work with for the time being. . . Through all the pain and hardships and atrocities that this land and all the peoples that have lived here (incuding myself and my family) have endured-- I do have a sense of joy and hope that these plants, this work will perpetuate healing that I may not see fully, but can absolutely feel the possibility of. . . This planting has been in the making for years... literally, three to four years of conscious working, and decades, if not centuries of unconscious planning. The grounded, embodied, planted feeling that it brings to see these protective tubes across the fields, as they shelter the young bushes and trees is incredible. . . Come for a visit and feel it in your bones and viscera. |
AuthorTrella (she/they) is navigating her way to an ever deepening sense of humanity as she reaches towards her own ancestral knowledge- socially, culturally, and spiritually. This space is dedicated to anyone, no matter how you present, or what identities society has assigned you, who are committed to healing ourselves and our world, with an anti-racist, queer proud, decolonized, and inclusive perspective. BIPOC to the front. xo Archives
February 2022
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