​Many times during my teaching/learning career I have thought about my time teaching at University. I have considered ways that my teaching back then could have been improved, if only I had certain skills or additional knowledge.

One thing in my reflections that has stuck out for me, is my lack of embodied understanding back then that the intellect is intertwined and connected to the body. When the body is screaming danger, most minds are not learning.

I wish as a teacher I had invited my students more into their bodies when we were learning. I wish I had invited myself, felt comfortable enough to say “let’s take a moment and be with what is here in the room and in our bodies. Let’s take a pause to notice and re-orient." How much more we could have learned if only I knew then what I so passionately experience now!

But I didn’t have those skills in full form back then. As a facilitator and educator for 30+ years, the values of learning and growing into a more elegant convener, space holder, and educator have been my guiding lights. I will never arrive in these skills and that brings me comfort.

All that to say, take care of yourself when reading this newsletter…I invite you to do that with every newsletter, but I am acutely aware that I will not satisfy everyone with my writing while our world stands on a razor’s edge. I do not think it is possible to write something that can be satisfying in this moment. So that is not my goal. 

My goal is to not gloss over what is happening in the world. This newsletter has repeatedly been a place that asks us (you and me) to not turn away from aspects of life that are uncomfortable and challenging. But also don’t plow through your feelings, sensations, and need for a break. All things so important right now. 

I want to clearly acknowledge that I am not writing from a war zone. I have the privilege to read and discuss the events from afar. And I am a Jew. Something I have written about repeatedly in this space, so I hope that doesn’t come as a surprise to you. But it of course, like always, gives me bias and perspective that is unique to me (because as it requires repeating - Jews, Palestinians, Israelis, Muslims, Christians are not monoliths). We all have biases and perspectives which impact how we think, move, and take action. My hope for myself and our world is theses biases and perspectives become more conscious, so we can make different choices when the opportunity warrants a new way. 

This newsletter will not be adequate nor comprehensive. It is more philosophical than political or sociological. I strongly advise you to keep learning, as I myself continue to learn. 

Before the Middle East grabbed my attention, a dear friend, colleague, and mentor died. I was in the middle of an intense grief to be pulled into another intense grief. But life doesn’t slow down or stop because of this. So instead of writing a newsletter about all I have learned from my dear friend Shari, I am writing this instead (though I can see Shari’s wisdom all over it). 

People grow and evolve. As a writer I am very aware of this. What I write remains static, but I do not. And the world does not. And that is also part of my hesitancy to write. I am not static. I am an evolving being. 

I do not preference my client work on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, neurotype, relationship structure, political affiliation, etc. This isn’t to say I am for everyone. I am most definitely not.

But beyond my political beliefs/actions and worldview - there is additional way that I hold to be sacred. And that is the way of the human. This isn’t a “I don’t see race” comment…this is I see a person and context/social structures/identity/community AND I see the sacred, whole human before me. Frankly, is there any other way?

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Often what I think is missing in our understanding of being human is our ability to repair. We will f^ck up…a thousand times. To try and live a perfect life is an impossible task. But what so many of us forget when we are trying to be perfect, is that we can always reach out to repair if we messed up. And we will mess up (with each other, with the land, with the animals). 

In addition to a lack of repair, many of us were raised with binary thinking, only two options to choose from. Self or collective, right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Right now for me, binary thinking is the path to more and more conflict (with ourselves and others) and less of a path to repairing harm.

And just to be clear, repair does not mean forget, and sometimes repair does not mean reconciliation (repair is not immune from the binary). 

Because we were educated in binary thinking, we lost our skills as a culture to collectively hold complexity. We can hold multiple feelings at once. We can grieve for ourselves and grieve for another. We can hold the conflict, contradictions, and tensions that come with living. No one lives a life free from contradiction. And holding those for ourselves and others is where we can connect.

This is where I write from - our shared humanity. Everyone has the right for safety and self determination. Everyone has the right to live free of discrimination and oppression. Every child deserves a war free home. Every human deserves water, heat, medical supplies, and shelter. And every human deserves to be seen as a human - no matter what they have done or not done, where they live, and what faith they hold. 

Humans need certain things to grow. We need particular elements to thrive and inhabit the lives each one of us wants, and none of us live in a vacuum.  

People, especially those who have been marginalized, hunger for deep regard. You hunger for someone to believe your experience and witness and partner with you in your emotions without minimizing them or pushing them away, and being a committed ally. Humans need witnessing, curiosity, spaciousness, and an acceptance of the complexity that is our being-ness. 

Regard for humans is to me one of the most important qualities to cultivate. A deep regard for the person sitting across from me both literally and figuratively. I firmly believe that everyone on this planet is worthy of regard. And regard means the right to live free from harm - from individuals and from governments. People’s deserve to live without war and without harm. People deserve to be valued. No child deserves to live in terror and fear for their lives. 

Beyond the Middle East there have been reports of violence against Muslim, Palestinians, Israelis, and Jews around the world. I firmly believe that all oppressions are connected and no one is free (not even those with privilege) if others are oppressed. It sounds incredibly simple and yet it is totally complex when you move out of theory into the spaces of bodies. 

We cannot seek safety for self by seeking harm for others. I seek safety for myself and invite others into that safety. Safety is not a finite resource, but is infinite when we all care for another as ourselves.

Love your neighbor as yourself - but how many of us love ourselves in our totality?

We scream and criticize ourselves internally, we hold ourselves up to impossible standards. We shun the uncomfortable, the emotions that challenge and destabilize us, we shun the desires we think others can not understand, we shun our impulses to be our true selves because society has told us the “right” way to be. And this shunning of ourselves directly relates to shunning another. The personal and the community are deeply intertwined. 

Stating one is afraid is seen as a moral failing and a weakness. But I am left to wonder if those in charge admitted their fears more, would we be standing on a where we are now in the world?

What would happen instead of acts of violence against another we said I was taught to fear you and I no longer want to act from that fear, how would our world be different? If we admitted we feared the other and moved closer to understand the person, culture, nation, might we move closer to seeing our shared humanity? What if we admitted I am afraid I will be wiped from the earth, and so I build walls, would that open a space to change anything? And what if we spoke, I was taught to hate you and that too stems from fear, would we move closer to ending the battlefield?

Amongst all sound bites and headlines, the overwhelming cry from all sides - is we are human. We want peace. We want freedom from harm. We want a home. We want to stop having thousands of dead to mourn, generation after generation. STOP. Stop dehumanizing. Stop killing. Stop moving from fear, hatred, and contempt. But to stop moving from these states, we must first recognize we have them and we need each other to do this. 

Now more than ever, we culturally need spaces that welcome our vulnerability. Where we can honestly say we are afraid and not have our fear be taken as a morally failing. Where we can share our experiences, our learning, and our unlearning. We need spaces where we can be honest with ourselves, beyond the societal norms of politeness, correctness, and the judgements of others.

Please find the people, community, spaces that honor your vulnerability as a crucial part of your humanity. Yes take action, yes speak with others, yes to creating a world filled with regard for all. And yes to a world where each one of us can be held in our full humanity. 

In humility and learning, 
Valerie 

Here we stand in the in-between, the doorway from one year to the next. I was born at this in-between time. I was starting life on the last day of the year, when everyone else (except my birthday twins) was closing a chapter and readying to pick up with the new. It is a strange time to have a birthday (in my experience). Lots of energy, lots of expectations, and a celebration where the focus isn’t really on the present but what’s to come when the clock strikes midnight. For me, birthdays are joyous certainly, and they also conjure up deep reflections within. This paradox is much like standing in a threshold - you are neither here nor there, OR maybe you are both here and there. 

In my tradition, thresholds are something to be sanctified. We place a ritual object called a mezuzah within our doorframes. This relic for me is a deep reminder that beauty and the divine can inhabit the smallest of spaces. And no matter how small or large a space is, it can be a place for contemplation, connection, and devotion. 

At this gate of the new year, I invite you into reflection with me. Not to change anything (you can if you want), but to take account of your life lived. To create space for what dwells inside you: your hopes, dreams, frustrations, disappointments, resentments, insecurities, talents, grief, gifts, and everything else which resides in your being-ness. Where are the thresholds inside you - the places where two emotions, two feelings, two thoughts touch? What is the smallest drop of reverence and devotion you can invite into this internal threshold? What oh-so-very-ordinary, mundane space inside you can you adorn with a sacred, beautiful energy to show how miraculous the ordinary truly is? 

I hope as you move into this next year, the threshold is a space where you can leave behind what no longer serves you, and step into the mantle of wisdom, compassion, gentleness, and knowing. 

Blessings, 

Valerie ​

It’s the end of the year and I am tired. Thank goodness it's the season of rest (said no human ever in December, though the natural world in the northern hemisphere would disagree). It has been a year of personal accomplishments and spectacular failures. A year of deepened relationships and relationships lost. And a year of several personal health quagmires and recently a death in the family. My year could be your year. It is a year of being human. 

And being human is not a moral failing. We react before we can think, we respond when we are more aware, we hide when we are frightened, we get sick, we mis-communicate, and we perpetually learn what works for us and what is no longer needed. Life is a laboratory where we are continually experimenting and course correcting. But instead of resting in this tinkering, many of us suffer trying to strive for a static arrival. 

I don’t want any of us to suffer. But denying suffering isn’t not suffering. It’s denying. Sometimes denial is a much needed survival skill and other times denial is what keeps us from the freedom we seek. To cozy up to denial and willingly take a peak around the corner takes courage and requires deep vulnerability and humility. It takes embracing that we are human. And humans are collective, transitory creatures. Knowing this - how can we rest in this knowing of our ephemeralness, which we spend so much of our lives trying to deny?

One simple way is to remember we and all of our neighbors are part of nature. Not separate from it. The trees shed and we shed. The crops have a cycle and so do we. Each form we take builds upon another and another. The weather is dynamic, the seasons change, animals migrate & hibernate, and the physical ends while the luminescent remains. Surrounding all of this in every nook and cranny is the invitations for joy, engaging our senses, communing with others, celebrating, creating, laughing, weeping, mourning, and above all else being. 

So in this pause of the solstice. A marking of time of one extreme before we make our way back to the other end of the continuum, I invite you to pause and give witness to your very human year. Everything you have experienced has been witnessed by the moon, the stars, the trees, and other living creatures. Who has supported you? Where has reciprocity been experienced? Where has there been a falling short? And finally what are you most proud of? And how can you savor the tiniest drop of that pride to help sustain you throughout this season? 

For 2023, my wish for us all is a year of being seen and support by those who care for you, a year where you become more you and are welcomed for it, and a year where being human is filled with more ease and joy. 

Solstice Blessings, 

Valerie ​