🌑 May 2 - May 7 Poetics: I am Not a Wellness Journey and the Courage to Shapeshift
new moon(ish) to new moon poems for national poetry month
Friends, what started out as a practice to encourage myself to share more and find a rhythm this April has turned out to be a good way to understand what I am actually doing here! These daily, turned weekly notes, combining art, poetry and personal reflection have been good medicine for me. Ideas for workshops have become more materialized, ways to create community continue to grow in me, returning to my own practices and teachers seat, beginning to sink into my daily living and being.
Thank you small group of humans attending me through this first phase of opening my work up to a wider audience, for being here with me. I am beginning to find the courage to shapeshift as I need with others eyes on me, this is a small miracle as someone who has, as one teacher offered me, ‘painted herself into a corner’ with fear for years, especially in community (years and years/lifetimes?).
Sharing personal essays, art and work that brings me back to myself alongside others is something that I am finding cathartic, natural, and is a huge learning curve for me to actually *do it*. Whew! There’re the tears. I now know there is no paint, no corner and I did not do the painting alone. Back when I heard this, I was on the precipice of a type of distressing experience that would take me into the beating heart of this fear. I have recently started to really acknowledge this experience as something I can teach from, not just wish to teach from. This is a cycle and spellbreaker moment for me and I look forward to sharing more about this process.
And that brings me to today.
This is the final installment of my new moon(ish) to new moon poetry series (it is today! it is in Taurus, my very own moon sign). Instead of writing my own notion on this I recently received a lovely invitation in my inbox from
asking: what are you planting? Personally this last moon to moon has been a confluence of several seed cycles opening, closing, and practical possibilities for renewal. This Taurus new moon has me planting my feet on the earth, my head in the heavens and my body, present to this now unfolding terrain. I am looking at how far I’ve come by my own intentional steps. There is grief in my landscape. And there are double rainbows. This is what feels like healing.I wrote the lyrical essay/ art poetic I share below in 2017, almost a decade after my own free fall into personal crisis, meeting systemic injustices inside and out, introductions to meditation, bigger views on what it is to be human, navigation of and harm from the medical complex as well as in spiritual practice, and so much generational trauma work. When things fall apart over and over, when support comes in forms that no one else is talking about, or fails you in areas everyone says is beneficial, there is a lot of shame to move through. And a huge gain in the arena of the paradox of healing. I mean to say, living humanly / liminally.
{Right here I wrote another 4 paragraphs about this period in my life, and as I continued to write, and write…. and write, I realized there is just too much to share for todays note and topic. So it will rest.}
As I learn more about my particular blueprint for transmitting my work, I recently wrote in my notes:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb38c5a3c-78b8-4d8a-bae5-1ee4951fec8c_1170x325.png)
And then I proceeded to outline an offering I can do now from this new collective of information. I think this is so good. A release point where knowing who I am and what I am here to serve aligns with my lived experience as a human humaning. An f u to the culture that strips this from us. The many years of dismantling my internal struggles between my deep values and what’s conventionally seen as worthwhile work; a fools errand & plucky and ripe. Where we struggle is our opportunity for shapeshifting.
Unhappiness is the first sign that something powerful stirs within you.
Shed your skin in cycles and reflect your power to renew.
- hexagram 49 Molting/Revolution as translated by Kari Hohne from The Essential I Ching (one of my absolute favorite translations)
Like who else wants to talk publicly about death, illness and suffering, not belonging and beauty in one breath, and write about their day to day lives as practice, ritual encounter and talk with the living earth, oh, you do too? Well, this feels alright. Okay! Am I finding community? Am I creating it within myself first by sharing? Yes! You can see my first installation in a six part lyrical essay series on motherloss, which inspiration has me sending on my own mom’s birthday /right before mothers day. Am I tactless a jerk? a small voice asks. Or a heart beating wider and wider through their lived experiences. I feel whole. So I keep going. This is the secret sauce for living life as creative beings. & I will say it forever, you are a creative being.
I’m here to shapeshift with you, and encourage you to configure yourself according to the ever present aliveness you are gifted here and now. I will lovingly be the fool and weirdo friend who walks there with you. From a whole human, who’s learning how to keep changing (aka be alive!).
With love,
Erin
Please note, I’ve recently (as of June) paywalled this poem and the corresponding artwork because I’m working on editing and collecting some works for submissions right now. If you want a peek please reach out and I will send it to you gratis in an email ~ if you’re an editor even better! :) So much of my work is unedited and raw, unfurling as I go, and I love it this way, the on the spot creation is where I thrive, however to submit and polish work is also an artform, and I’m learning how to do it as an untrained and I suppose outsider artist type. Luckily research is something I’m excellent at and taking workshops, haha. It’s been a pretty cool experience to lean into a new field, find new folks and opportunites and create a public vehicle for the things I’ve carried alongside me for so long. Thanks for your interest!
And if it strikes you to become a patron of my work as a paid subscriber, ever grateful for that type of gesture too.