For the past three days i’ve been feeling a pain in my sheen that was first not that bad, so I ignored it, buy now got to the point where I can not walk to pick my kids from school. From the google search, it looks like I have a sheen splint. The idea of it revolts me. I feel betrayed by my body. I feel frustrated because I will stop my activities and rest. I don’t like this idea. For me, at least in my current state, running, dancing and walking are forms of rest. If I can’t do that, just as the weather becomes nice, just as the forest blooms to life, just as the evenings become long and sunsets over the lakes become irresistible, then what on earth am I going to do?

Yet, there is something else that bothers me. In winter, when I was feeling really tired, angry and disillusioned, I hurt my back. Now, I have sheen inflammation, just as I realized how frantic, unsatisfied and confused I am. And tired, so tired. What is my body telling me? I thought I was in a better place, but am I? I am waiting for a response from the therapist. I need to figure this out.

I am so proud of myself today. For sending an inquiry for therapy sessions. For deliberately slowing down: as I slowed down my work rhythm, I noticed that the frantic pace of my thoughts and emotions also slowed and I am able to breathe again. For taking time to imagine what the new me may be like in a playful manner. For asserting my boundaries in small ways. For looking out for myself.

There is always a way

To do things lightly

To walk with ease

Not quite touching the tips of the grass

To abide in silence

To enjoy the transience

To go to bed early

To be the healer.

Yet, I always seem to chose

To rush head first

To ask too much

To dig through the dirt

And break the parts of me that can’t be mended.

I need to figure out

Who is this hungry part of me

Where she lives

What she wants

What she eats

So I can feed her

And hold her

And reassure her

So she can finally let me go.

Mama, I have something for you !

It’s a very detailed picture of him, his friend and Echo, our late cat.

Who is this? I ask, pointing to the tall figure, expecting him to say it’s you, mommy!

Instead, he replies, it’s a statue.

So, I am not in the picture. Apparently, I left. It’s a very good picture, although I am not in it.

It was a good day too, an eventful and successful day by all measure, but I feel spent, unmoored and extremely vulnerable. I feel like parts of my life don’t sync. I feel lonely and longing for connection. I feel like some parts of the conversation are always left unsaid. I feel like I’m not enough and I will never be enough.

Louise asked last week what is worse, the pain of change, or the pain of status quo. Honestly, I do not know how to answer. The problem is that the change is unknown, and the status quo is not all bad either. There are good moments, bright conversations, sunsets, cardinals and a dance class. The problem is, I don’t know what I will choose and I desperately want someone else to do this work for me. But there is no one else, not at the moment.

Monday is a contemplative day. I gave up the idea of being productive on this day. I gave in to my natural tendency to wander, fiddle, jump between ideas and occupations, talk to myself out loud. I fell in love with Kai Chang Thom and spent some time obsessively reading about her work and searching for her podcasts. I spent time reading up about the patterns on vyshivankas. I do not blame myself for being unproductive, neither do I feel bad. Instead, I feel the length of the day, the passing of time, the way things fit together, the echoes of Rosie’s drumming.

On the way to and from school we stop multiple times to perform the sacred ritual: pick up the ripe dandelions and blow their seeds in the wind. We are strategic, we try to blow near the grassy patches, choosing the ones untouched by the mower. When I was a child, I used to blow dandelions for luck, my kids do it with solemn trust that the seeds will give new life. When I was a child, I used to weave dandelion crowns, wear them, the leaves the wilting flowers to die. My children would never pick a yellow dandelion, they let them to the pollinators. But the magical ritual of the ripe dandelion preserves itself through the cultures and generations.

On our way to and from school we are stopping to listen to the tiny peeps of the nestlings. Then we notice a bluejay defending her nest against a crow and worry helplessly, wishing the crow to fly away, but not willing to offend her by throwing stones or sticks. Finally, the crow flies away. Then we look at two robins collecting food for their offspring.

The greatest gift I gave myself this spring and am now giving my children is learning to recognise and name the local plants and birds. I have always truffled with loneliness and lack of belonging, but now, as I step outside and see them, and know them: colt’s foot, dawny yellow violet, bloodroot, eastern phoebe, song sparrow, I feel that I belong.

The sky looks like a giant painted dome of an orthodox cathedral today. Of course, it’s cathedrals that look like heaven, populated by saints and fantastic creatures, winged angels and various representations of divinity.

I had a calm day, which made me restless. It’s hard to lean in to the calm after an adrenaline filled week. I realize that regardless of how hard I try to distance myself from the greedy, adrenaline-dependent part of myself (let’s call her Ego), I’m still drawn to speed, pressure, thrill and the feeling of constantly being at the edge of something. Like most people, I am drawn to self-destruction.

Here is to the dancing at the edge of the crumbling world

Because this is who we are

Because our ancestors danced

Under the stars and under the canopy of the thousand-year old trees.

They danced because they didn’t know any other way to feel alive.

They danced because they just started realizing that they were alive

And it was all too much.

And now, what we have left is concrete and partly defaced murals

What we have is a lack of space to exercise our humanity

What we have are the cracks between the asphalt and more asphalt

Where we grow dandelions, fern and tiny seedlings of trees.

We must dance, no

We must choose to dance

Because there is still no other way to feel alive.

Children dance when they hear the music

Hunters dance for good luck in their hunt

Warriors dance to give themselves courage to face death

Women dance to please ancient goddesses whose names they’ve forgotten

Lovers dance for each other.

I like to imagine that we are flying in space, in an ever-expanding universe, still propelled by the force of the big bang that dragged us all from nothingness into being. And because we will never be able to possibly even remotely make sense of it all, because we will never be able to put it in words, we let our bodies do the speaking and the comprehending. We dance. We make love. We dance.

Wow, what a day.

I’ve been waiting for it and it didn’t disappoint. I am in a state of deep vulnerability hangover. I am on so much endorphines now that my cheeks burn. Simultaneously feeling like too much and not enough. Also, making a mental note to do a deep dive on the adrenaline vs. oxytocin-fuelled work and how this may show up in my work and my life. I believe that I have heard about the dangers of relying on adrenaline-fuelled work in the beginning of the year at Taiaiake Alfred’s lecture. Months later, I have heard about the role of oxytocin (manifesting as both care and eros) in the work on For the Wild podcast and I feel in a very quiet and anti-climatic way that it’s time to bind them together.

My daughter brought two snails from school. She has put them into a snack containers, emptied of mango pieces I’d cut for her this morning. She even put soil, blades of grass and a half-open dandelion. She said that she rescued the snails from some younger kids and was planning to let them go in our garden. She gave them the names: Johnny and Tourbillon. When we got home, we said good-bye to Johnny and Tourbillon and set them on the grass in front of the house. I watched them for a while, while the kids ran off to see friends down the street. Then I went for a walk and when I came back Johnny and Tourbillon were gone.

I watched a screening of Dolly Kikon’s documentary Abundance, which I did because Rosie invited me and I do want to show up for Rosie so badly. The film was about the relationships of Lota-Naga (Dolly’s and Rosie’s people) with the forest. In the end, the subtitles explained how the gouvernement of India tried to strip Lota-Naga of their Indigenous rights and use the forest for development. And I thought, wow, Dolly could have just made a film about that – political struggle and resistance and all that and no one would have blamed her. Instead, she chose to make a film about foraging technics and living in abundance and harmony with the forest.

I find it funny, almost ironic, how I meet all these amazing people under the pretext of speaking about systems change and climate justice and activism. I drink these conversations like one would drink maple water in Spring. But if we were to boil down all these encounters, the verbal and the non-verbal part, the metaphors, the laughs, the stares, the gestures, the moments of pure connection, the warmth of our bodies, the raw, the human, the divine, if we were to make a syrup out of the sap of this day, it would boil down to ferns, snails and joy.

I almost got a piercing today.

I walked into a salon that I’d been passing by every week, thinking every week that I should go there and get a piercing. I finally walked in. I signed a release sheet and chose a jewellery and got ready and then the piercer started telling me all this stuff about the healing period and all the things I will have to avoid and all the things I will have to do and for how long. And I thought to myself, shoot, I should have planned this better. I should have googled, at least. How come you google every person you come in contact with, the names of books you saw once in a library and song lyrics, but you don’t think to google how to avoid infection after getting your cartilage pierced. But hey, it’s me. I walk into things on pure instinct, trusting my gut, not planning through. Most of the time it works. Montreal worked. Dancing classes worked. Most of my commitments to people and things worked. T

he piercer said, it’s a bigger commitment than a simple ear piercing. I’m fine with commitments. I walked away today, but I’m still resolved to get my piercing. I will do it in the Fall. When I will be seeing a therapist, when I will have more clarity, when I will be closer to turning the page. I really will.

Now, though, I know why they don’t charge you up front in a piercing salon.

I am sitting in the dark womb of my son’s bedroom, listening to quiet music that is supposed to help him fall asleep, but usually works on me faster, than on him. At five, he still refuses to fall asleep alone. At five, he still crawls into my bed every night. Now he is sleeping and I am looking for reasons to delay my exit. Light and work and maybe a glass of wine are waiting for me in the living room, but I like being in this liminal space, out of time and tethered to the present moment. When I was a teenager, I’ve been told, and I believed for a very long time, that the only right way to live was to look beyond the present moment and into eternity. My don’t know if it was right, but it surely didn’t make me happy in the long run. Now I am feeling more and more the irresistible pull of the here and now. The warmth of the setting sun in my face, as I am walking home after a run. The first sip of strong latte from a coffee shop on my way to work. A glimmer of a lake somewhere in the distance. Feeling safe and well right now, feeling love towards so many people. Wanting to tell them: I love you. Send them a letter. I love you. Be well.