first love, first everything

One day during the summer before college, I left your house. Driving down your white gravel driveway, I felt a punch to the gut.

I didn’t want to be away from you.

You liked me. I liked you. You liked me, liked me. I just wanted to be friends. At least until then.

I didn’t know how to begin. I was paralyzed by how exposed I felt.

We were riding in the back seat together returning home from the Great Escape. There was a weighted hush in the air, like before a summer storm. I knew then that I needed to write you a letter.

You read it and asked with a grin, “And now what?”

“I’ll come over tomorrow before work.”

My hair was…disheveled and my mascara was all over my face when your mom came home unexpectedly.

I’m turning red and covering my eyes writing this…not from shame, but from bashful delight.

Your parents were the chill ones. 

You were the chill one. 

Mine and me were a little…crazed. 

We loved one another so damn much. We got one another through some real intense stuff. It was codependent as hell but whatever, it was still love.

I can hear us now reassuring one another, sorting it all out together. You held my grief. I held your rage. Your nuance. My clarity. When we got it right, we’d meet in the tender middle.

I was there when you… You were there when I… A lot of our relationship was a big hot mess. And it was also. Revelatory.

After more good than bad times, we broke up, and went different ways. We’d touch base once every couple years and chuckle about how I became more like you and you more like me. More than once one of us would say, “God, I was awful, I’m so sorry.” And the other would reply, “What? No! It was me. I was nuts!” Then we’d wish one another well and go on our separate ways again.

You always had a melancholy. I know now that I didn’t know the scale and magnitude. I guess none of us ever truly heard or understood.

Four and a half years ago you died by suicide. 

It’s been so hard.

I spent a little time on the mountain

Spent a little time on the hill

Things went down, we don't understand

But I think in time we will

Though it’s grown me up quite a lot, this grief’s got a shape so big and amorphous, I can’t get my arms all the way around it. Maybe it’s something like the despair you were trying to live with.

Now, I don't know, but I been told

If the horse don't pull you got to carry the load

I don't know whose back's that strong

Maybe find out before too long

Thinking about how I was among what added to the impossible pain in your life has brought me to my knees many times. 

I wish I had held you more gently more often. I still feel the weight of all that passed between us, soul to soul, the things you trusted me to hold.

And I hold close the moments I did get it right. When you felt able to tell me everything.

I write this under the same summer solstice sun, on the same line of earth that welcomed you. And still does.

With quiet awe, I met your wife and your son—your love moving forward through them.

You really wanted me to like the Grateful Dead but I really only ever liked Jerry’s New Speedway Boogie which is one of my favorite songs. I get it all more now.

Thank you, Sam.

Now, I don't know but I was told

In the heat of the sun a man died of cold

Keep on coming or stand and wait

With the sun so dark and the hour so late

I spent a little time on the mountain

I spent a little time on the hill

I saw things getting out of hand

I guess they always will

One way or another

One way or another

One way or another

This darkness got to give

erratic, not exiled

Grace for the ones who don’t match and stay anyway.

I am learning to belong the way an erratic does:

A stranger in the landscape.

Erratics don’t match and that’s how you know they’ve journeyed.

An erratic is a boulder out of place.
A remnant stone carried by glacier and
set down somewhere else.

Erratic, from the Latin errare: to wander, to stray, to make a mistake.

Perhaps, to bear its weight.

To stay standing through the movements -
A testimony of time. A carrier of endurance. A memory of movement made visible.

To feel erratic might be to feel like an erratic: A body of self that has survived great movement, deposited in a new psychic or geographical landscape, unfamiliar yet undeniably present.

Maybe an erratic is created in the after party of departure from the codependent cults in family, country, institution, normative identity, conventionality, relationship.

After the demands of obedience, silence and other costs of its faux-security are resisted.

After too many questions are asked.

After you refuse to be subject or object.

After the golden light turns cold.

After being unhooked and unhomed.

Maybe to celebrate oneself as an erratic is where the cult’s golden-child-turned-scapegoat finds warmth again, by staying in place and not position.

And on a collective scale,

through supremacy, war and displacement,

settler colonialism creates erratics.

Peoples dislodged from culture, land, story, ritual, center.

Memory.

Erratics without memory become erasers.

Erratics who remember become markers.

We hold back our own freedom and others’ when we cannot name what and who have come before us.

Sometimes, to belong to yourself

you have to become erratic:
unmoored, unclaimed, and misread.

You have to let the original root rot
so that something deeper, more honest, more mature, can break through.

You feel the clean guilty pain of growth towards the future and away from the growth-thwarting system.
You break from the national myth.

Not to wander forever but to make room for your full size within a different kind of belonging.

Maybe we can reroot right where we are. In the same landscape yet shapeshifted and demagnetized towards old cult dynamics.

This is the work of the ReRooted Rebelles -
those who say no to false belonging and want support tolerating growing past it. Ready to tap into resource older than capitalism and empire. Placement deeper than approval.

The boulder does not apologize for being there. It does not smooth its edges to match the local stone. It does not try to roll away, or make itself light.

It rests in its weight.

Calling all erratics ready to reroot and rise.

love: the original movement

Love that pulses—
irresistible, irrepressible—
through poems, drumbeats, sweat, and tears.
Through calm presence and quiet glances.
Through mutual gazes remembered forever.
Through shared laughter,
cackles that crack spells.

These reorder and rebalance.
They move the current.
They shift what’s stuck and stagnant.

A love that commands,
“Tuck me in really, really tight, Daddy.”

A love that surrenders,
“Fine! I’ll be home by midnight!”

A love that asks,
“Can you listen to me vent for twenty minutes?”

A love that remembers,
“You smell and taste just like last time.”

Love, a systemic wash—
rinsing shame, loosening fear,
dissolving distortion in the line.

Love makes room.
Makes space for disillusion.
Completes interruptions.
Opens space for true exchange.
Charges the body electric.

Love, the lighting of a candle.
Love, the letter unsent.
Love, a world beyond empire.
Love, a message whispered to the dead.
Love, dancing in the home-field of what’s emergent.

The love that speaks before language.
The love that arrives as raw instinct
and makes sense of everything.
The love that rethreads the wild.

Oh Love!
restorer of the field.

Love, the original movement, resumed!

Lineage of the Unfelt

“I had to face more about them than they could know about me.”
— James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

Beyond the waterproof center,
in the formless fields,
the unfelt coils beneath.

To the ones who carry what others cannot face.

When you're out from the center,
you can see it.
You hear its cracks.
Feel its irrepressible ache.

Cisgendered —
Honor the trans makers of gender fluidity and freedom.

Whiteness —
Honor culture and realness.

Straightness —
Honor loving in wide and pluriversal ways.

Marriage —
Honor ceremony, blessing, and the many ways life is woven.

Parenthood —
Honor planetary accompaniment and care that buffers and betters.

Employment —
Honor those laboring beyond systemic convention.

Higher education —
Honor uncertified compassion and wisdom.

Capitalism —
Honor ritual and reciprocity.

Citizenship —
Honor stewardship of the directions and land.

Orderly mind and balanced body —
Honor prescient chaos and those who walk nonlinearly.

Housing —
Honor the makers of home in exile.

Language —
Honor those dreaming in non-western tongues.

Wealth —
Honor unseen riches and abundance not counted.

Honor the residents of the margins, emergent.

Honor the weight.
Honor the cost.

Honor the keys without locks.

Honor the forgotten sorrows of the system.

Honor the weep of tears eternal.

love, respect and the fallow

There is a natural flow in relationships—toward and away—just as there is in nature. When that natural movement is interrupted, whether by force, guilt, or interference, it can disrupt a deeper balance that is trying to unfold. Love includes movements of toward and away.

Connection grows from understanding the delicate balance between distance and closeness, silence and conversation, independence and togetherness. Just as nature thrives in cycles, so too do we, in our interactions, our bonds, and our intimacies.

Sometimes, the natural rhythm of a relationship brings us closer to someone, weaving our lives together in ways we never anticipated. At other times, it pulls us apart.

When we honor the space between to receive fully the gift of what’s been, we often return to each other with a deeper understanding. We learn where self meets other in iterations.

We can come to understand that the strength of a relationship is not measured by its intensity in any given moment, but by its capacity to endure over time and space. Like a river that carves its path through the landscape, a relationship that follows its natural course will find its way, through obstacles, shaping both individuals in the process. Or like a field that lies fallow—not because it is useless, but because it needs rest to regain its strength and allow the soil to renew.

Family Constellations shows us that the natural flow of relationships extends beyond the immediate bonds between individuals. It reveals that our connections are shaped by deeper, often unseen forces rooted in our family systems. In every family, there are unspoken patterns, loyalties, exclusions and entanglements that influence the way we relate to one another. These invisible threads can either support the natural flows of life and love or interrupt it.

When we step into our family constellation, we begin to understand that we are part of a much larger web of relationships that stretch across generations. These ancestral patterns can manifest in subtle ways: inherited fears, interrupted movements, or unacknowledged grief that influence the way we navigate the world, including our relationships. We are also part of a larger web of resourcing than we might normally remember and perceive.

Just as nature has its cycles, so too do family systems. There are periods of harmony and times of tension, moments of closeness and moments of distance. The movements of toward and away are part of the larger dance of healing and belonging.

giving up to keep going

I give up

so I can keep going.

Obligated to live

to change

to engage

to regenerate

I surrender -

I’m good at this

I’m not good at that

I give up

So I can keep going.

They’re like this.

I’m like that.

That’s just the way we were

That’s just the way it is

I release them so I can accept me

continually

When I say let go, already

I mean to hold the stillness that is me, essentially

I give up

So I can keep going.

Choice

Fate

Destiny

I make contact

So I can keep going.

Lost it all

I give up

So I can keep going.

It’s all my fault

It’s not my fault

I give up

So I can keep going.

Gave it all up

I give up

So I can keep going.

Something new comes in

And just like that, irresistible

I’m pulled in

Faith

Trust

Dignity

I’m pulled in

I give up

So I can keep going.

Cara Andreina

Right now, they’re holding your funeral in Padova. I’m holding your hand. Mi manchi.

Grazie, Andreina.

When I write your name, I’m immediately grounded. My sit bones deepen. My shoulders go back and my chin goes up. My lip trembles. My eyes well with tears and I’m held in them. I smile. I place my hand on my heart.

When I spoke to you on your last birthday, you were in a lot of pain. Yet you still greeted me with your characteristic effervescence.

You lived over 94 years. You hid under a bridge in Vicenza from American bombers in World War II. You practiced fascist calisthenics as a girl in the piazza.

You were a very independent young woman and insisted that you would never get married. Instead, you were the first of your girlfriends to marry when you met your man from Abruzzo. He died young. I wish that I got to meet him. I met him through your daughters and granddaughters. La nonna.

Thank you for taking me to your cherished Dolomiti with you on Sundays. When your daughter wrote to me, she said:

Ed è andata nelle sue montagne in serenità.

The first thing you asked me is why I described my ideal host as a single older Italian woman. No other ragazza americana had asked for that before. I said that my grandmothers both died before I was born and…you interrupted me with an abbraccio forte.

Then we went for a passeggiata to the supermercato. You taught me how to take the bus. You taught me how to make risotto. You said, “Brava, Mattie!” after I outlined the history of Venice at the dining room table.

We made fresh tagliatelle con pomodoro e piselli. We went to the prosciutto and Prosecco festivals. When we visited the rose garden, I was so proud to help you hold steady on my arm.

You and your family welcomed my aunt, my ragazzo sorrentino and many friends for meals over the years. When my mom came to visit, you two went to the De Chirico exhibit together. You didn’t have a language in common but came back delighted to share that you kept pointing with preference to the same paintings!

You and your family came to the agriturismo that I was working on outside of Bologna to celebrate your 80th birthday. We chuckled about the curmudgeonly owner.

Thank you for always asking about my brother.

I thought I would spend a semester abroad and that would be it. Instead, you ushered in my love affair with Italia and ultimately, a decade-long global lifestyle. You knew where the marvelous and mundane met. You knew how to stay down to earth and rise up all at once.

You used to say, “let’s have a goccio of vino so we sleep well tonight.” Dormi in pace, Andreina.

Con tanto affetto,

Mattie

Che forza. Che tenerezza.

spirit, make me congruent, make me a resource

We want to work with these times in many different ways.

It’s important to know how to feel good, play, appreciate, make love and trip the light fantastic. It’s also important to know how to widen our capacity to be disillusioned and the meet the moment we are living in with a devotional seriousness.

Keith Aaron’s Transformational Coaching - Actually transformational. I’ve worked with him for a year and a half. I thought I had the embodiment piece down. I didn’t really. I’m gratefully deep in that groove now.

Matthew Stillman’s Poetry Course - When I attended the first time, I reconnected to what’s real and alive in me. When I attended my next time, I deepened inner counsel while in the liminal between the urban and rural. In the current one, I’m accessing reinvigorating life force through aspirational devotion to Red. Let the poems get in you, and they just might enchant or reconcile a thing or two for you. I’ve known Matt for 8 years.

Clarinda’s Matriarchial Marketing - Clarinda actually comes from a culture. (American is not a culture.) Actual indigenous wayfinding. I’ve been connected to her for 5 years.

Idola Stellarum’s Talismans - astrology & psychology minus superficial / predatory bullshit equals Magic. Sirius & Venus. #iykyk

Engage with the material of great liberatory writers beyond one-off (often white-washed) trending quotes. James Baldwin’s Nothing Personal essay is a good one.

Reesma Menakem’s book The Quaking of America.

The whole abuse of power / narcissism thing isn’t just an individual pathology. People without a culture, without an attachment to land, tend to attach to imbalanced personality dynamics. People racialized as white are behind. We need embodied reps to build our capacity to confront and be a part of the change. I love the practices in this book. Repetitions to fortify our minds, thicken our skin and soften our hearts. Until we’re dead.

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond - One of the most potent anti-racist experiences available from a 40 year old organization. Understand structural inequity. Go from stunned to serious.

SURJ Showing Up for Racial Justice - Affinity group for white folks serious about undoing racism. I’ve been connected to them since 2016. Just sign up and show up.

Have you widened your worldview yet to be aware of the racialized imperial structure that we’re steeped in? This grounding will help you quake less, understanding the left and right are closer than they appear.

And of course, singing, dancing, and other art-making.

Oh and Constellations and other consultations for soul-nourishing balance and order repetitions with yours truly.