Myqueerium Retreat registration closes Friday, that’s tomorrow at NOON! The retreat is this Sunday, October 26th, from 10 AM to 8 PM at Willow River State Park. We would so love to have you join us for a day of queer connection, reflection, and rest. It’s so late because we will be having dinner and a FIRE as the sun sets.
👉 Register here: https://forms.gle/sUeBgPJNNr1sR9XH9

It is so helpful to be in community, to rest, sometimes just meeting one person or having one conversation can turn your day, week, year around. Come hammock, rest, forage, journal, eat with us.

The cost is on a sliding scale of $75–$200, pay what feels accessible to you.

Hope to see you there! 🌈
Eiko and Nell

Song of the Week

Listen to this song as you read to help open you up. Save Me by Aimee Mann. 

Updates! GHOST FLOWERS.

The world is big. The world is small. The world is nourishing, and can also be so disappointing at times. Taking time to be in each of these magnitudes is so helpful. A week ago I was curled in a hammock at Mystery Cave State Park, a friend had a robust fire going with lots of wood her father provided, everything smelled sweet, smokey, and resinous in that balmy way. I was reading as she tended the fire, and the book mentioned a nature documentary called Microcosmos: The People of the Grass or Mircocosmos: Le peuple de l’herbe. It’s a documentary that is committed to tiny invertebrates. I’m going to watch it tonight, I’ve been looking forward to watching it all week. Want to watch it with me? That link leads to that FREE documentary, check it out. Appreciating the small things helps me get through the big disappointments and the despair that comes with being alive. Look for the small things with me.

Speaking of, I found some Ghost flowers a few weeks ago. Ghost flowers are magnificent. They tap into a symbiotic relationship, their roots curl around the node where trees and mycelium meet underground, right where they are doing a bit of a resource exchange. The Ghost flowers roots here, and draws nutrients from both the tree and the mycelium, which I think is astounding. Ghost flowers are breathtaking, they are achlorphyllous so are translucent, white, and pink-ish. They look like a whole family whose grown too tall, too fast, in a dark cave, then decided to spend the rest of their lives looking down, examining the earth, spine curved, head heavy, contemplating whence they came.

They look lonely, except that I know that under the surface they are tapped into one of the most connected, expansive, decentralized organisms that there ever lived— mycelium! Meanwhile, they are also tapped into a solid, stable, consistent, predictable old tree, the secure attachment we’ve all been looking for! Maybe that’s what I like about their situation, they have a solid, stable parent, and a more wild free one, which reminds me of my own upbringing. Another amazing thing about Ghost Flowers is that they have been used to assist with reducing physical pain and anxiety. People report that it doesn’t make their pain go away, but helped them sit beside their pain, so they can see it without being overwhelmed by it. Kind of like what good therapy does. This spectral flower’s appearance reflects it’s medicinal qualities— it just looks like a spirit/emotion guide. I’m not a doctor, or an herbalist, so take this with a grain of salt, AND I am always looking for plants that could be good to know about should we need/want to produce our own medicines.

Finally, I’ve only found this stunner in forests that have good soil and older trees, which adds a sacredness and mystery to it. The ingredients of time, protection, and care— perhaps our oldest and most potent medicines of all. Your fun homework this week is to take action around giving yourself time, protection, and care. Build up your old growth forests and soils. Lose the gimmicks that mimic real medicine, and create something that is holy and worth living/fighting for. Pass that on to your future self, the next generation, and the next, and the next, and the next.

How to do this? In the wisdom of Ricardo Levins Morales at the Confluence Panel last weekend, “Let our disappointments be propellants, rather than repellents.”

Schedule With Me! Refer a Beloved!

OTR/L, BA, MHP, LMT,
she/they) Integrative Therapies

I offer trauma informed individual, couples, somatic therapy, craniosacral therapy, Swedish massage, Thai bodywork, myofascial release, group workshops, and healing through art, play, and connecting to nature. Free 15 minute consultations can be booked on my website if you’re intrigued or have questions.

Community Events

Do you need to be serenaded by a gay choir? I DO. I went last year and loved it. There were lots of flambouyant scarves wrapped around elegant necks, what else do you need? I karaoke with one of the singers, and damn, these folks are good. November 15th at 7:30P. Buy tickets here. $9 and up, a good price.

Thanks for READING! Share my newsletter with a beloved if you think they might like it!

xoxo Eiko