Fracturing for liberation

and allowing spiritual conflict to guide me

Thank you for being here. This particular newsletter has taken me weeks to put together, so thank you for your patience in my practice. If you are new here, this is Root Inward as written by Meredith White. I’m so happy to have you. I’m offering a discount on my paid subscription as we enter this new year and threshold. This space recognizes spirit, of taking our time, and of building community around art-making and sustained practice. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber so as to directly support my writing. A portion of these proceeds go back to Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta each month.

This current season of life is full of fracture. The fracture of identity, of heteronormativity, the fracture of belief system and why some people in my life choose to show up in that with me and why some people in my life have chosen the latter. I’m witnessing myself hold grief in ways I’ve never known the gravity of before.

I go to markets, I sit in sessions, and my experience shows me that so many of us are holding immense grief. We continue for our families. We continue so we can pay the bills. We continue for our communities, for the people that depend on us, we continue to allow fracture to guide us in the ability to instill hope.

I look at my grief, as individual as it is sometimes, and recognize that I’m not alone. I recognize that my relationship with grief, with witnessing, is somewhat new. I recognize there are so many others who have reckoned with grief long before me. I recognize that this level of grief allows me to expand my capacity for care. I recognize that my relationship with grief is carving out pockets in my body for growth.

I use my hands to process, to mourn, and to learn. I stitch with my grief in this season of fracture. I pull cards in this season of fracture. I light my protection candle and repeat the names of those whose stories, whose homes, whose families have been murdered by the so-called leaders of my country.¹ I sit with y’all and share stories of my own grief so that you may feel more akin to your own.

The stories and lineages of those killed remain in our hearts and our voices so that their memory is not lost in the truth-telling of history.² We continue to share what is hard to see and hear and read because we know that the collective keeps the collective safe and accountable and held and loved. We allow despair to organize us.³

I allow myself to fracture in ways I’ve never known because every single time my body has fractured in the past a beautiful new iteration of Meredith is birthed from its ashes. I rise from my hopelessness. We rise from what is broken for those who can’t.

I look back on the life I could be living right now and I’m reminded of the life I am actually living. I awake from dreams of the routes I could have taken to end up where I am, and I open my eyes to what is real. The life that I wake up for with each passing day and express deep gratitude for as it means I’m still becoming.

Something that continues to become increasingly aware to me is that spirituality is political. Spirituality does not get to be passive. Spirituality is not about keeping the peace. Spirituality requires integrity and integrity requires conflict. Spirituality requires justice.

As I take my spiritual practice into my practice with abolitionism, I’m reminded that relationship requires truth-telling and as we dismantle outdated ecosystems of living, we witness conflict. We witness death. We witness the root of genocide that has taken place for centuries.

Spirituality in practice requires decolonization. Spirituality in practice requires honoring collective liberation as the root at which it allows our own bodies to become more liberated in personal practice.

If we, as spiritualists, choose to believe that we are all one then we must believe the experience of someone outside of us directly impacts the experience of what is within us. If we choose to see the interconnected nature of plant and tree medicine, the impact of the mycelium webs on our bodies, then we must also see the connection of climate activism and landback movements of the indigenous peoples. If we honor love as the deepest form of embodiment, then we must honor the sacred beauty of queer and trans liberation.

Commission for Ro (with Bilbo claiming it as his own on the trail), as stitched with grief and queer love and kink and transition

I sit and look at the intersections of my practice — each additive piece paving the way for another portion to completely deconstruct. So much of this work I claim as spiritual has been the direct route to my queerness, to my abolitionism, and to my craft that is derived from all of the spaces of tension within my body.

The work I’ve done with spirit over the last decade has been messy. I have absolutely fucked up; I’ve appropriated practice; I still have so much to learn. I can almost guarantee that I will fuck up again, but I commit back to the practice of learning and unlearning for as long as I am here in this lifetime.

I sit with more questions than answers. I pull the suit of swords as a source of reckoning. I come back to my words and my family and my book club with a heavy heart. I come to each offering with tension and visionings of what the world might look like if my care was beautifully intertwined with your care. I wonder when my safety and privilege became more important than someone else’s life.

How have we used our spiritual practice to bypass the messy, violent, and surefooted nature of revolution?

How might we better use our practice to better advocate for spiritual justice?

How can we instill our bodies with hope as a source of courage when having hard conversations with family, with clients, and with peers?

What does it mean to use spiritual practice alongside movement?

What does it mean to allow spiritual practice to guide us with greater conviction in our bodies so as to provide greater conviction in community?

🧡 I have my last market of the season tomorrow 12/17 at Estoria from 12-6pm. I have 9 candles left and I will not be pouring more until the new year. Prints and tees will be there too with bundles available.

🧡 I will hold online tarot sessions through the course of the end of the year. I am offering a 10-card spread that will specifically look at the new year for those seeking clarity.

🧡 I will do my last shipment on Tuesday 12/19 after the Global Strike on Monday.

Thank you as always for being here,

Meredith &

1. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/12/1218694329/palestinian-writer-and-psychologist-discusses-dangers-of-dehumanizing-palestinia

2. Israel & Sexual Abuse

3. https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-more-of-us-there-are-the-more-of-us-there-are/