Become an elder in times of trouble
an invitation to greatness
I am slowly but surely becoming an elder.
(See bottom for my first upcoming workshop in ages! Free gift for subscribers who attend!)
It’s true that I’ve wanted to be an elder and intentionally learned about elderhood. But that’s also true that life just evolves. Elderhood is a natural stage in the evolution of human beings. If we consent to be in movement, partnership, and co-creation with life - as a way of life - then we naturally become elders as we get older.
Only colonized people strive to become elders, learn about becoming elders, and still fail to become elders. Colonized people become olders; full of complaints and confusion.
Colonized people strive to become elders because striving is how you refuse to take accountability for doing. You have to strive (ie work hard) when you fight life instead of receiving life’s offer of partnership. Don’t strive to be an elder, move forward each time life gives you opportunities to evolve. Don’t strive; evolve.
My work to help people unleash their aliveness is elderhood work. It’s not as important to I share the wisdom I’ve learned, as it is to equip and enable people to connect to their own wisdom (ie aliveness). I have the wisdom and the humility to know that your personal wisdom is more precious and important for you than my wisdom, or any one else’s wisdom, will ever be.
It doesn’t matter if Trisha Hersey knows how to rest. What do you know about rest and how deeply do you know it?
It doesn’t matter if Adrienne Maree Brown knows how to live in an emergent strategy. Can you follow your own aliveness? Which is your own ever-evolving, ever-adapting, ever-emerging strategy.
It doesn’t matter what bell hooks, Audrey Lorde, or James Baldwin know about dignity. If you don’t know dignity deep in your bones, their dignity is just a nice idea that you cannot embody when it counts.
It’s time for each of us to shift our hungry search for wisdom away from the gurus, teachers, and heroes outside us and back toward our own noble hearts.
You are everything you need to live a life of liberation.
Your wisdom (ie aliveness) is buried under layers of internalized oppression, but underneath the self-loathing, fear, shame, and grief, is your own blossoming elderhood. Your own ability to hold space for yourself and others with delight, fascination, and wise mischievousness. Your own ability to know with confidence that you will be okay and everyone else will be okay, some profound way, in the end. Your own ability to let yourself and others make mistakes, knowing that wisdom is on the other side of experience. Your own ability to know how to reposnd to tyranny and terror with flow and power.
So let’s become elders today!
In my June Liberatory Biomimicry Embodied Liberation Experince, we’ll be exploring how using Liberatory Practices can help us naturally evolve into elders. Elders support each person to unleash their aliveness, give their contributions to the world, and complete the sacred group assignment of their generation. Elders do this by being in movement, partnership, and co-creation with life instead of staying confused, alone, and independant. Tyranny is not new. Our power is not small. We can support all life by becoming elders now.
Come to the workshop or begin by asking yourself these questions:
How is life asking me to move these days?
Where am I resisting life’s movement because I fear the unknown?
Where is life asking for my partnership or offering me partnership?
Where am I rejecting life’s partnership because I feel safer doing things alone?
Where is life trying to co-create with me or asking for my input?
Where am I trying to “go with the flow” instead of telling life what I really want?
Elders tell the truth; even about their own imperfections, ignorance, and desires. The beginning of wisdom is the truth you admit right now.
What truthes can you admit today?
JOIN ME! I would be so delighted to see you.
Click for MORE INFO and TO REGISTER
I plan to host a monthly Liberatory Biomimciry workshop experience where we’ll use the Unleashing Aliveness Liberatory Practices deck to explore liberation through a different topic. We’ll begin with Elderhood on SUN, June 22nd. Sliding scale $30 - $60. I have some ideas for FREE GIFTS for subscribers who join me! A free Unleashing Aliveness Deck, an Unleash Your Aliveness Divination Reading, or some Unleash Your Aliveness merch??? Any thoughts?
Also, I’m offering free divinatory Unleash Your Aliveness Readings at The Oakland Museum of CA! Click to learn more
People call them “scary good,” “so accurate” and say they offer “suprising,” and “counter intuitive,” ways to escape oppression. Come for music, food, and powerful insights about your life of liberation 😉 Free event. $10 parking.
I hope to see you soon!
Thumbnail image credit Nsey Benajah