🙀 👹 🐸 Here We Are Together, Again! 🙈 🐷 🙄

It’s been very difficult to think of anything to say that’s worthy of sharing as polycrises –social, economic, political, and climatological-- endure and ramp up.

There are three directives I’m choosing to lead me during these hard times:

❤️💜💙 Love ❤️💜💙

🐣 🐒🐿️ Community 🐣 🐒🐿️

👊🏼 🫶🏽 💪🏾 Mutual Aid 👊🏼 🫶🏽 💪🏾

Selfie of my knee as I journal in a community garden

They serve as guideposts as I wander the wilderness of being a human in 2024. It’s hard being a human right now, and it’s been hard in the past, as well. And it’s absolutely delightful being a human right now, as it has been in the past, too. We are here right now, and so I am choosing to move in the direction of love, community, and mutual aid.

Love. Remember to be guided by love. Love yourself. You are enough. Love your family –however you define it-- and love your friends. Love the “stranger” which is an illusion, of course. We are all connected and can share love abundantly. It is a limitless, accessible resource.

Community. Remember to be rooted in a group. We are pack animals. We need each other. We need each other for different things. One community may not do it for you, but multiple may. I am part of overlapping groups that speak to and feed my many identities, including that of transformational consultant, performer, Jew, writer, Flatbush neighbor, yogi, and Orchard Hillian.

Mutual Aid. Remember to be in solidarity with each other in the sharing and receiving of resources. Respond to what is needed right now, anticipate what might be needed in the future, and use your communities to build networks of care in service to collective survival and liberation.

In these newsletters, I don’t normally list what I’ve been up to, however, I’ll share some highlights from the past few months as they speak to staying centered in love, community, and mutual aid.

This year my family is housing two college students from Gaza. They joined us in August and are attending a local university. We are deeply honored to have this opportunity to be of support, and we’re having a great time integrating two delightful humans into our family. It is also both ancestrally healing and direction setting for our family.

This summer, I worked with my Orchard Hill friend and co-conspirator Sammy Burhoe on designing and stocking a zine library in rural New Hampshire. Zines are self-published magazines and chapbooks created by all sorts of people on all sorts of topics. We focused on sharing ones that are focused on social transformation. The Center’s Zine Library both amplifies the values underlying the work and community at Orchard Hill and connects –metaphorically for now, as we build actual connections-- this place with “islands of coherence” across the world that share a similar vision of possibility.

Zine Library at Orchard Hill

For a few years now, I have also been working on an oral history project with Eleanor Elbers, co-director and founder of The Center. Over the summer, I took one small slice of her rich account of the people and the land to create a zine designed by Sammy about the founding of Erewhon in 1971, an intentional community that preceded Orchard Hill.

Erewhon zine side-by-side with my kid's zine!

Other ventures I have taken on include supporting a civics and performance space as they navigate their next; coaching leaders of an arts management group on succession planning; and working with the board of an environmental justice foundation to make crucial decisions about their future.

We are entering a tough season for mission driven organizations. It’s getting colder (metaphorically, if not in temperature!), the days are getting shorter, and there are many policy initiatives being tossed about, and often passed, that threaten our very existence. I would love to be of support to you as you swim in these troubled waters. If you’re local, let’s go for a walk or have a cuppa tea. If you’re not, perhaps we can connect by phone or Zoom. I’m here to talk, coach, and support groups as we build together a better world.

In solidarity,

Alissa

Chillin' in a pile of leaves!