Carried by Current, We Leave to Remember

EXISTENTIAL NAVIGATION  •   ECOLOGICAL GRIEF  •  NEW MAPS

Hey everyone—Corina here, writing to you from the first truly wintry morning in North Carolina where I’m visiting Jo. I’m drinking tea for a sore throat, curled up in an oversized recliner, and wanting to talk to all of you about how to access the magic of this month’s spell in these devastating times. 

Our image this month is a family of penguins navigating through ice floes in a small boat. We don’t know where they are heading—they might not know either—but they are figuring it out together. There’s a feeling that they can’t go home again. They may have no home to go back to. When we created this image we were thinking of climate change and ecological grief, of animals displaced from vanishing ecosystems. At this moment, there is also so much more happening on a human level that brings up this heartbreaking grief. 

How do we face fear of annihilation? How do we hold the memories of genocide and displacement that run through our family lines? How do we imagine a just and inhabitable world? Is this moment opening up these wounds for you? I know that it is for me, and for many of my friends and colleagues and clients. What breaks my heart even more is how divided we often feel from each other. I’ve seen families split apart, people with common cause not being able to find it, public discourse splintering along lines of who really deserves protection and care. I think of these chunks of ice in this image, once part of a whole that made a home, drifting apart from each other in the gaping abyss of the sea. 

I promised you that there is some magic in this spell that we can access, even in these times—but my sister is going to help me do that part. 

Hey y’all, Jo here. When we made this image over a year ago, we infused it with the magic of emergent togetherness in times of unbearable uncertainty. Bringing my body onto this boat with Corina, and you, I imagine the cold winds on our ears and the warm bodies around me. There is so much grief. Oceans of grief have swallowed our oars, our rudders, our maps. The current is carrying us toward what we need to remember—towards what we will find in the final line of our year-long spell next month. Please, spend this month with us, grieving and gathering and being carried by time. 

**If you are wanting a dedicated space to grieve, we recommend contacting our dear friend, Ekua Adisa.