I gave up, well, almost gave up social media because I got tired of finger pointing and constant us vs. them rhethoric. But now is a good time to reflect how this rhethoric has been showing up in my life for years. The war is an obvious example. It is so easy when your hate is legitimate, shared and justified. It is so easy to hate the bad guys, it’s what all Marvel movies are about, but then Marvel movie becomes your life and all of a sudden you’re no longer clapping. It is when the same rhethoric permeates your personal life when it becomes truly really problematic. And, I have to admit that the lines get blurred because have I truly never hurt anyone and am I hurting myself by holding on to this half-truth that it is us on one side and them on the other. So, what I want to do tonight is let them go. Them, whatever side they are on and whatever truth they are holding on to, I will let them go. I wonder how and what kind of ceremony one needs to do that. I remember, vaguely, a year ago Melanie Goodchild was speaking about letting go ceremony. I don’t have anyone who could perform it for me, so I’ll have to figure it out by myself. I have better things now, better company, including my ancestors and friends I have not yet met, I no longer need THEM, the enemy, the other side to exist and advance. I no longer have to hold on to my pain, it’s been over a year now and in kairos time it’s been so much longer. I can be on my own now. I know I can step in these boardrooms and no longer wonder if I’d ever be one of their own. I do not belong in boardrooms. I know I am there by accident and they know it too. I do not belong on the streets either. I know, I have tried. During the months of cold winter, outside, right downtown, part of the chanting crowd. I was so darn sincere, but I was never the one climbing the barricades and facing the guns, I knew I couldn’t. So, who am I? Not a soldier, not a rebel, not a corporate, not a faker. Who am I? I don’t know, but I know that when I go to the forest, it never asks me questions. It never questions my belonging. I am not a hunter, not indigenous, yet it never asks. And by the way, I hate the pronoun it. It doesn’t exist in my language. In my language, everything is he, or she, or it, but not the same it as in English, more like the German das. River is she, Earth is she, Ocean is he, Sea is it and so is the Sun. Star is she and it is also a woman’s name. Moon is, you will never believe, he. Forest is he. Mountain is she. Road is she. I often make mistakes in other languages, because it seems that one can never unlearn the gender of things one learned as a child. These things matter, because by digging deep, deeper to the roots and the mycellial networks around your roots, and to the quality of the black earth, the topsoil that in Ukraine is over one meter deep and rich enough to feed and sustain one even across the ocean, one can define oneself outside of the corporate food-chain. I just need to remember, on Monday and in two weeks that it is not us against them.