The spider’s web is web of protection around art-making, around play, and around intentional community. It is an offering for spaciousness from social media. This work is meant to bring hope back into creation. This work allows me to take time with my daily practice, with myself, and with my communities that feels easeful in my body. I hope that these offerings will bring you more ease and consideration in your own body.
Thank you for joining me here. Y’all are welcome to share this offering with your communities. I just ask that you credit my work @meredithannewhite. Thank you so much.
I come here with an offering as I sit drinking tea watching an unlikely snow blanket my neighborhood. This last week I was fortunate enough to spend some time away for my solar return in the mountains. My time away was beautiful. My time away was challenging. I told myself “I’m going away” and therefore expected the rest of my body and mind to understand that in its entirety. I found that just because I physically went away from my home, my studio, and my work did not mean that my mind and body were accustomed to being “away from it all.”
What does it mean to acknowledge rest while also holding yourself accountable to practice when your mind and body still feel uneasy?
I found triggers surfacing while away. I found that I still needed to sit with uncomfortable emotions. Perhaps this was because I had given myself enough spaciousness to sink further into those crevices. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that it was so quiet. Perhaps it’s because the weight of a new year feels palpable. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s yet another birthday amidst a global pandemic. Perhaps it’s because I’m still in my Saturn return, bless.
What does it mean to hold both frustration and hope at the same time?
It feels like I’ve been digging, unearthing, and identifying systems that no longer work for me or the collectives around me. So much has been brought out into the midday sun to be uncovered this last year. I recognize that so much has been uprooted, and yet there’s still so much hacking left to do.
What does it mean to face the reality of collective exhaustion while also holding onto hope for what it is we are actively choosing to build?
Right now for me it means allowing my body to recognize how tired it is from operating in a space of survival mode for so long. It means allowing myself to recognize the grief that’s lingering under the surface even if the root is often disguised. I find that I’ve been pushing myself to hold it together, when in reality this last year was hard and sad and deserves to be acknowledged as such.
It takes me back to the summer of 2020 when I found an episode of On Being on ambiguous loss. Krista Tippett and Pauline Boss delve into grief surrounding loss without real closure. The two talk at length about receiving news of loss at such a large scale. This is absolutely related to death. It also corresponds to many other circumstances like illness, financial loss, job insecurity, immigration, mistreatment of land (and resources), adoption, etc. This episode continues to give me a cushion to land on when it feels like I’m gripping for tangible closure when it doesn’t necessarily exist.
*Pauline’s book is titled “Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief if you’re looking to dive deeper.
How do we continue to operate within the thresholds of death and rebirth on a daily basis?
I find myself operating deep within my inner worlds, while also allowing for massive expansion in my outer worlds. My practice takes a spiritual presence that is quiet, honest, and often uncomfortable. That spaciousness allows for the shapes, the movement, the words, and the work to come from a more authentic source. Then I’m able to show up here in community more honestly. So maybe that’s the cycle. The cycle of contraction and expansion. It’s the cycle of plant life shifting by the season. It’s the way the moon guides my moods, my menstrual cycle, and thus the conversation in which I nourish myself.
I took a course a few months back with Narinder Bazen, a death worker working in Atlanta. They allow for honest discourse for many practices, rituals, and resources surrounding loss. Their work takes absolute courage, and I’m so thankful to have been able to learn from their experiences. It’s allowed me to deepen my relationship with spirit, as well as being able to talk more openly with those in my life about grief and death. Because for me in this lifetime, I would be robbing myself of living fully if I were unable to face my grief along the way. I think there’s a reckoning that happens when we’re able to face our grief. Because when I move through grief, I find deepened gratitude and love on the other side.
How might I grant myself more grace for not knowing the outcome? How might I grant myself more grace for choosing to take a step anyway with courage?
This last year brought me to my knees over and over and over again. As I peek my head around the corner of a new threshold, I am reminded that it’s less about the physical boxes to be checked. For me, it’s more about making sure I’m feeling aligned with my steps along the way. I never know what each day, week, or month has in store. I will never be able to control the circumstances around me, but if I touch the hard questions along the way there’s less stockpiling.
I found this lovely post from the astrologer Rachel Howe that talks more in depth about the current year that we’re stepping into being associated with The Lover’s Card in the tarot. It reminds me that these moments of in-between allow us the space to choose how we’d like to actively participate in our roles this year.
I leave you with a bleeding body, a lighter heart, and gratitude. For those who expressed interest, I’ve created a small collection of sweatshirts you may find in my shop here. If you’d like to commission a textile piece, please send me an email! I’m working to offer sliding scale for some commission work as well :) I’m happy to explore with you.
With love,
Thank you for joining me here. Y’all are welcome to share this offering with your communities. I just ask that you credit my work @meredithannewhite. You can find me here, on my IG @meredithannewhite,and my website. Thank you so much <3