I just finished a conversation with author Sophie Strand and we, too, are practicing “dissolving”—or becoming more porous to this life, leaning into the infinite conversations our bodies are having with pollen, season and memory. Losing this boundary of self is something illness teaches us over and over again, all the usual trappings of ego unable to stick when illness insists another way. Sophie described it beautifully when she said, “I have not been inside a love story. I have been a love story: my very body a clamorous, complicated interplay of beings disagreeing, singing, swooning, and melting together. As a year, then two years, passed during which I did not take human lovers, I realized that I was not really “single.” I was deeply plural: my whole life was erotic, flush with sensual, multispecies love.”
Thank you Josie for reading your beautiful essay. 'I remember then to sit with a sigh.'
Yes! That sigh is a wonderful release of the tensions that we hold onto in a day. It is the sound, like a soft chime, that reverbrates through one's body to let our nervous system know that it is time to relax, calm down, breathe. Release.
That was so beautiful. The little endings that bespeak all other endings. Preparing the way for beginnings that, themselves, will dissolve into truth. Uplifting stuff Josie.
Listening to you and the blackbird, I felt my own body begin to dissolve just a bit. Especially sitting with these words - "Song I am and song he is, and song the blackbird is too, and the idea, then, of us all having edges, all being these hard little boxes convinced of our own separate, self-important journeys, it seems ridiculous, so I laugh at it." This feels right, important, beautiful, a gift.
I loved this Josie. For me, dawn and dusk are a sacred process that enables dissolution. Lights off, just the growing or fading light of the day, soft at this point of inflection, making everything else soft also. In this magical turning everything feels fine and enough just as it is.
Thank you Josie for another beautiful, inspiring, thought provoking piece. And I love love your precious image - so rich, it draws me in again and again. Thank you.
I wish you knew how much I needed this today Josie
There is so much going on that I feel I am strung out so hard that I will surely snap.But I can’t as something even bigger has loomed and I have to try to use what little strength I have left to fight to stop the enemy that is trying to destroy the peace around my family,around me.They are huge and powerful but ordinary people are gathering and uniting to give it their best shot,which fills me up to overflowing❤️
But tonight my little faulty body is weary and battle worn so I will try to empty myself so that tomorrow I can put my boxing gloves back on with a brave heart to face what’s ahead🥊❤️xxx
I just finished a conversation with author Sophie Strand and we, too, are practicing “dissolving”—or becoming more porous to this life, leaning into the infinite conversations our bodies are having with pollen, season and memory. Losing this boundary of self is something illness teaches us over and over again, all the usual trappings of ego unable to stick when illness insists another way. Sophie described it beautifully when she said, “I have not been inside a love story. I have been a love story: my very body a clamorous, complicated interplay of beings disagreeing, singing, swooning, and melting together. As a year, then two years, passed during which I did not take human lovers, I realized that I was not really “single.” I was deeply plural: my whole life was erotic, flush with sensual, multispecies love.”
Thank you Josie for reading your beautiful essay. 'I remember then to sit with a sigh.'
Yes! That sigh is a wonderful release of the tensions that we hold onto in a day. It is the sound, like a soft chime, that reverbrates through one's body to let our nervous system know that it is time to relax, calm down, breathe. Release.
most nourishing piece i've read all day!
Such a beautiful expression of melting into now. It’s something to read and reread.
That was so beautiful. The little endings that bespeak all other endings. Preparing the way for beginnings that, themselves, will dissolve into truth. Uplifting stuff Josie.
That is solitude in wild nature for me. Losing myself is such a relief.
Listening to you and the blackbird, I felt my own body begin to dissolve just a bit. Especially sitting with these words - "Song I am and song he is, and song the blackbird is too, and the idea, then, of us all having edges, all being these hard little boxes convinced of our own separate, self-important journeys, it seems ridiculous, so I laugh at it." This feels right, important, beautiful, a gift.
I loved this Josie. For me, dawn and dusk are a sacred process that enables dissolution. Lights off, just the growing or fading light of the day, soft at this point of inflection, making everything else soft also. In this magical turning everything feels fine and enough just as it is.
You are heaven. This is so beautiful. And my blackbirds from the antipodes sing across the oceans to yours.
Oh so beautiful. Dissolving...love that!
This is beautiful x
Thank you Josie for another beautiful, inspiring, thought provoking piece. And I love love your precious image - so rich, it draws me in again and again. Thank you.
Lovely metaphors.
I wish you knew how much I needed this today Josie
There is so much going on that I feel I am strung out so hard that I will surely snap.But I can’t as something even bigger has loomed and I have to try to use what little strength I have left to fight to stop the enemy that is trying to destroy the peace around my family,around me.They are huge and powerful but ordinary people are gathering and uniting to give it their best shot,which fills me up to overflowing❤️
But tonight my little faulty body is weary and battle worn so I will try to empty myself so that tomorrow I can put my boxing gloves back on with a brave heart to face what’s ahead🥊❤️xxx
What's the author's equivalent of a chef's kiss? That 😘
Dissolving. So beautiful thank you Josie.x