Solnox #7 (Summer/Fall ’23)

Summer + Fall Reflections + Super Special Art Raffle!!

Oct 07, 2023

[If you’re new here, welcome to my quarterly newsletter that ~tries~ to go out around the solstices & equinoxes. Read on for reflections on the current season, the things I’m getting up to and lots of recommendations for music, jobs & opportunities, articles & podcasts recs, and so much more! Be warned, I am long winded—so read at your leisure, or skip ahead to the sections that speak to you.]

TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read, or a helpful summary of what’s below!)

Fall & Summer Reflections
Scribin’ + Vibin’: Hot Labor Summer!
Stoke Fall Offerings + Art Giveaway
Monthly Jamz + 4 The Culture
Jobs + Opportunities (Yobs +Opps): My fav list serves edition!

Fall & Summer Reflections

It’s officially Fall! With such a packed Summer, I wish I could say I enjoyed the season to its fullest, but often struggle to find gratitude for the season. Fall however, I praise and give thanks to, for offering such visceral signs of change. As if the leaves know it is holy to transform. Maybe they change their hues to remind us, you too can change, you can let go if you need to.

Fall transitions can feel hard, sad, even sudden, fleeting. But grief is celebrated here, and this in a strange way brings me joy. Here we make parades of our grief, dance with the memories of loved ones gone, decorate death with flowers, and skulls of sugar to say—oh yes, I am not afraid of death, of loss, of change. We have met before and we will meet again, we laugh and remember.

For me, Fall can feel like an extra manic moment. Change is energy in movement, and that energy encourages all the cells in my body and spirit to get moving as other energies begin to prepare for rest. It’s this way in spring too (unfolding right now if you’re in the southern hemisphere). I tell myself that this sleeplessness allows me to prepare for transition, a small condolence for my current insomnia. I tell myself maybe it’s the excitement of the muses whispering in my ear, asking me to stay up and put something into motion, something special that they’d like to see take shape and form.

Summer, however, is a gorgeous but cruel lover.

Unless you live in a place with free, accessible, and safe water to hydrate with, and to swim and cool down in; Summer is the exact counterweight to winter’s intensity and pain. Summer isn’t better than winter—its lore is just more celebrated. When I was a teenager I hated summer because I had to spend the majority of it away from my friends. Combined with the disregulating force of structureless days, I was determined to mope around for those mandated months that I now feel I wasted.

This Summer, I again found the teenage tendencies towards a sad and subtle grumpiness at best, and a clenched sharp rage at worst, bubbling up. In this new era of global boiling, I’ve been sitting with the ways that the heat maxes people out, leaving us at our lowest capacities to respond to each other and the world around us. Sleep quality decreases, and in high enough temperatures brain function begins to decrease too, not to mention the heart and kidneys are overworked and strained.

This overexertion of the heart makes me think about the archetype of Leo—the courageous corazon, ruled by the Sun (and ruler of the heart), a sign that, when in its full shine, reminds us each stand in our own confident and optimistic vitality. Summer felt overshadowed by Venus retrograde in the sign of Leo, in which I was reminded that when our hearts are overexerted, both physically and emotionally it’s harder for us to be in the fullness of our hearts. It’s harder to be with the tension/balance of holding each other with grace, while also holding our own self-determination and vision. What questions and tensions did your heart hold this past retrograde season?

This Summer, I did a climate chaos tour of sorts. I was in Massachusetts when there was smoke blowing down into the valley from the Canadian wildfires. The wind knows no borders. Grey skies and sketchy air quality made my throat hurt. I left only a few days before record flooding washed away a year’s worth of work and produce at many local farms. Our plant relatives, our food will see this chaos too. In New York and New Jersey I was lucky to be reminded again of the luxury of AC, and reencountered the heat island effects in cities. At what cost? I returned to New Mexico, to a record heat wave. I returned with a visceral sense that climate chaos is everywhere. In the air, in our bodies, in the water, on the land.

In seven years of intense Winters, I grew to love the quiet, the cold, because it says: Be still, it’s okay to curl up here, with this grief again. But in Summer, watching the devastation of fires in Canada and Maui, and heatwaves, and hailstorms, this never-ending climate grief swells. Sometimes my grief has no place to go, instead terrorizing my tender corporeal form. My over-inflamed and chronically in-pain body begs for relief—something I can’t always fully give in the slow heat of Summer. I do my best to tend to my heart, as Summer days slip into crisp Fall mornings. I remind myself that in times of chaos we must all be courageous. The solar light of Summer asks us to be courageous, even in the face of grief and uncertainty; while the winds of Fall remind us to keep our feet on the ground through every change and transition.

A side note: Though Solnox is a seasonal newsletter, I blew right past the Summer solstice and even the Fall equinox. I am discovering that I’m never quite ready to write you all on the solstices and equinoxes. I am usually still gestating and chewing on the energies of the season, and these days I am now trying to edit more intentionally, (big shout out to Jaye Elizabeth for the editorial support). So thanks for sticking around and being along for the ride as I play around with new rhythms for this newsletter <3

Now onto the rest of the gatherings—enjoy!

"I have crawled from the wreckage of enough heartbreak to know who will be standing when I emerge and who won't, and I hold those still standing close to me." - Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

Scribin’ +Vibin’: Hot Labor Summer!

On my summer tour I was lucky to be able to visit and work with some of my favorite collaborators and movers and makers in Western Massachusetts and New Jersey. Here’s the highlight reel: Working with Springfield E.A.T.S., a food justice and policy coalition, and Gardening the Community, an incredible food justice and youth leadership project, was every bit as sweet as it sounds.

Then I celebrated worker power with CIWO in the midst of an incredible summer of labor organizing. I graphic recorded and scribed, also getting to share some reflections on visual storytelling as a tool for building women’s labor leadership around the globe. I'm still blown away by the incredible women of color feminists across the globe that I get to dream and scheme with.

(Just a reminder that I’m not taking on new clients until 2024, but if you’re looking for other amazing & social justice oriented graphic recorders and scribes, please check out Cori Lin’s incredible ‘interdependent ecosystem of creatives’.)

"The longer I live the more deeply I learn that love— whether we call it friendship or family— the work of mirroring and magnifying each others light. gentle work. steadfast work."

- Maria Popova

STOKE Collective: Fall Offerings + Art Give away!

A friend of mine recently commented on the many lives I somehow live— and if you know the deep joy and profound struggle of finding balance among the many different kinds of roles and skills needed for social change work, then I both revel in the highs and endure the lows with you. Being a part of a worker-owned facilitation cooperative that supports and builds the capacity of organizations and groups on the frontlines of social change work is one of the roles I play to make change and build towards visions of movements and communities rooted in healing, care, and justice.

I am proud to say that through STOKE’s workshops, trainings, culture assessments, and long-term organizational accompaniment we tend to the foundations of social movements (relationships, values, vision) that need regular tending and care for groups to stay aligned and build collective power. STOKE’s offerings and work with our partners provide tools and practices to develop organizational cultures that are supportive, just, and deeply accountable to their people.

STOKE frequently gets requests for our conflict transformation and organizational accompaniment work, and while we want to be able to meet the moment without sacrificing the financial well-being of our members or our fledgling coop, we have often had to make difficult decisions as a collective. Most frequently, STOKE members have kept our services cost-accessible and our organization afloat by donating our time, taking retroactive pay cuts month-to-month, and/or working multiple jobs to help ensure we can still work with underfunded groups. We’ve recently launched a campaign to call on our networks for support to help us keep this work more accessible. If you are able, please check out our full campaign and consider joining our network as a ‘STOKE Shiftmaker’ and monthly sustainer. Be a part of nurturing a larger culture of community care for our movements!

Bonus: when you donate or sign up as a monthly sustainer, you get a chance to win an original piece of art by yours truly!

Another way you can support our work is checking out a couple of offerings coming up. If you’re someone who comes to movement organizing and social change work largely in part because of the grief caused by legacies of colonialism, patriarchy and racial capitalism, then I’d love to invite you to this invitation only offering ‘Grief & Resilience in our Movements’ In this webinar/workshop we will discuss and build practices that acknowledge and work with grief, with the goal of integrating them into our movement work.

If grief isn’t where you thrive, but you’re wanting to better navigate conflict & deepen relational culture, there’s still time to sign up for our Transforming Conflict Training Series!

I’m consistently amazed at the magic that can happen when groups come together with intention and care. I’m thankful I get to continually learn while supporting movement groups and spaces through facilitation and culture change. If you have any questions about the work we do, or want to sign up for one of these offerings but have questions please don’t hesitate to reach out!

"What is a relationship if not a constellation of habits?" - Simone Seol