Hello. Before anything, here are a few announcements and resource suggestions that I believe are worth your while:
One of my Gabay mentees, Arianna Alcaraz, published an essay on up//root (they describe themselves as a “collective and publishing platform that centers radical ideas and conversations within libraries, archives and/or the greater information landscape”). Arianna’s essay offers a glimpse of her story of migration and returning to the Philippines. Reading stories of cultural identity and liminality demand a certain level of emotional capacity, but writing pieces like this take tenacity. I applaud Arianna for saying yes to this writing opportunity. May we feel known in her exploration of home.
green dreamer has launched a 8-week audio program called ~ alchemize ~. Enrollment is open, and the program starts January 15th. As both a contributor and consultant for the program, I’m proud to be a part of an experimental and imaginative series into collective integration and healing. For years, we’ve been accustomed to de-construct, de-colonize, and dismantle (and necessarily so). We need just as much approaches and resources for re-construction and regeneration: To create more than we critique, and to co-weave more than we obliterate internal and systemic structures of harm and violence. I believe that ~ alchemize ~ is one of those re-creative resources in our time.
A reminder that enrollment for advaya’s Contemporary Spirituality is ongoing. You may get a 15% off discount from enrolling in my course using the code: TEACH-CS-TORRES
It’s the new year (if you believe in time), and the 2024 Many Moons Lunar Planner is still available for purchase. Catch my written piece towards the end of 2024!
HIMIG, TULA, AT GALAW NG NINUNO is a webinar series that I highly recommend for Filipinos who are interested to learn Indigenous knowledge, music, poetry, and embodiment practices. The series begins February 17, so be sure to review the webinar info!
A 2024 playlist for you :) still building. Make sure you play in order.
Now, I’d like to be more honest with you about how I’m doing..
I just had my least sentimental holiday break yet. The obvious culprit would be the ongoing atrocities by Israeli occupation and their genocide on Palestine. Many of us continue to feed our fury. Rightfully and necessarily so. And this led to some collective disenchantment during the holidays.
It hasn’t been easy on a personal level, either.
Between October and end of November, I’ve been swerving from one virtual strategy meeting to the next, coalescing with grassroots organizers who needed someone to teach or refresh their knowledge of legislative advocacy and evaluate their campaigns towards permanent ceasefire and the end to military aid—the latter, being (has been) a longer journey.
Towards the end of November, I needed to take a short break. As most of you know, grassroots organizing is mostly unpaid work. With that, I struggled financially. Hosting these meetings, co-formulating and developing tactics, and assessing the power structures within each jurisdiction were some of the least I can do in times like these, but at the same time, I wasn’t about to activate the neural network in my brain labelled “savior complex.”
Within that same timeframe, I finished covering a climate story in Tacloban City, interviewing climate survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda, one of the deadliest typhoons in history. In-between interviews, I remembered my time in grad school where I studied about vicarious secondary trauma—the stress one experiences from solely witnessing or listening to other people’s traumatic experiences. If left unattended and unprocessed, the build-up of stress can lead to trauma.
So yes, some things took its toll. I suffered a month of intense gut issues. I’ve had them before, but this time was different. I occasionally endured intense abdominal pain where I nearly passed out, and I was dry-heaving. A lot. I was terrified for my life.
Worse things happened in early December, which I’m not willing to disclose at this time. But you get the gist that there are some of us who need to take a beat, and it has more to do than taking a break. I’m thinking long-term, bigger-picture methods of sustaining us in our work— all while living under the monstrous capitalist project.
We talk abstractly about community care way too much, and I need us to enflesh what this notion actually means at a local level. I have no concrete answers other than the steadfast belief that we’ve got what it takes to enflesh community care. Now’s the time, because I seriously doubt I’m the only grassroots organizer (in the Global South at that) with gut or other bodily issues and vicarious secondary stress right now.
We are the change we want. We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.
thank you for sharing this with us! i’ve been deeply thinking about some of the things you mentioned, especially the part about pivoting and focusing on reconstruction and regeneration rather than criticism or obliteration. as someone who does anti racism and anti oppression work, it feels sticky, like somehow i might be abdicating a “really important role.” i would love to hear more of your thoughts on this graceful pivot. i know others are arriving or have arrived to this point that i’m just discovering and reading you mention it is so validating! thank you for your beautiful thoughts 💖