Love What Survives

This is a long one with lots of photos— best read by clicking through to the whole thing! Ten years ago, the anthology I edited “Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement”, a compilation of 35+ queer and trans voices launched into the world. CELEBRATING THAT! I don’t even know how to begin sharing about the last 16 years— 6 years of compiling and preparing for publication and 10 years, now, published in the world.

The annual spring sale— 22% off tinctures, teas, botanical oils and balms, flower essences, breathwork recordings, and the two books I’ve written/ edited: The Power of Breathwork book + Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement. Use code: BLOOMING. Join the next virtual, sliding scale breathwork group— BREATH ELECTRIC on Thursday April 30th 5-6:30pm MT (recorded if you can’t join live).

Writing to you with two offerings this month, from the thick of the March 2026 high desert heatwave where the temps are 20-30 degrees higher than normal! Very little rain since the fall. Snow pack is the lowest on record. Temperatures are creeping higher and higher without much reprieve in sight. What I will say is that every year since moving to the rural high desert, I feel the ache of climate crisis grief even more.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I want the mountain. The apple tree. The ancient waterway bringing life through the valley. There is the wreck, the wreckage, and what lives, after, the gun, the shots, the fall. Connected by Cottonwoods, tall and reaching. Chamisa, yellow bursts rivaling the sun. Chamisal Creek, cold like that mountain I want. I want. I’m no howling, desperate dog But not because I don’t want to be.

I’m writing from inside a ricochet of snow and hail and sun. The high desert is always communicating loudly. Windy season has also seemed to have started a little early this year. Juniper pollen swirling and getting stuck in nostrils, the wind freaking out our sensitive (big) dog. Yesterday I was preparing to teach my restorative breathwork workshop, I got lulled into thinking about practices that help me slow down and through this slowing down, I can become more present.

This time’s missive is my 1x a month email letting you know what’s happening in my healing arts practice. I will be back to sharing more creative writing soon. 2026 has already felt like it’s been a million years long already. There is violence and overwhelm in every direction. There is beautiful mutual aid and solidarity in every direction too. It can be hard to show up to this moment, to feel into these times of great instability, great unknowns.

Please note— this is a long one, full of photos and videos so do click through to read more easily! I am writing you after a full year living with, in, and in service to 50+ apple, few pear and one peach tree—many if not all planted between the 1950’s and 1970’s. In service to a small, now private chapel that used to be a beacon for travelers the world over. In service to a small adobe home that had been in one family for generations. Responsibility at every turn.

I’m imaging some time in the near future where I will write about the bounty and beauty of our first season tending the ancient apple orchard. All that we learned. The way it reconnected me to the land of the living after an unexpected death of others and myself. I imagine sitting down over my holiday break, the first one in two years, and remembering high summer. But something else wants to come through first. I am still haunted and words still need to be found.

Many years ago (nearly two decades ago, as a matter of fact) I was training through an NYC hospital program to be an on-call rape crisis counselor. The hospital in Manhattan had social workers and staff during the day who supported folks who experienced sexual violence who came in for medical care but at night, they had us on-call folks who would wait for the call to rush into the hospital to be the advocates for folks in some of the worst moments of their lives.

Please note— this is a longer one today so might be better to tap through to the post rather than reading in your email. Oh dear, it’s been such a long time since I’ve felt like I’ve had any writing I can share here, in such a public space. Ever since Rose and I witnessed a double homicide outside the house we were renting in the summer of 2024, my writing has felt as if behind a one-way pane of glass. I’m writing as a kind of survival tool but I can’t quite share it yet.