: : : Invoking g r a n d m o t h e r

Rogue Anticipation in Times of Betrayal

I have started and stopped this newsletter so many times and am finally, lovingly, pushing her out the door- not without some protest even still as we hit the press. Words matter and I have been wondering at how- and when- I want to use mine. It is a privilege and an honor always to share with you here and I do not take for granted this intimate audience that traverses space and time. Thank you for taking the time.

I know that I usually speak to you sideways, through metaphor, simile, slanted sunlight through the gaps, and the echoes of nature inside your form. I do this so that the conclusions that you come to are fully yours and come about in an organic and uniquely embodied way that fits the mitten of your skin. This is my aim, my gift and my feminine expression- for you to find your expression, your way, your how.

But today I am speaking in exactitudes- as much for myself as for you as I find the next wrung on this life ladder (clearly the metaphor does not stray far). This share will come in two parts (and perhaps a novella) and today I’ll start with the caboose. Seems the right order of things on a planet that has much organized in what feels to be a rather backass’ards way. O so much to say.

I will always teach through echoes, art, and heartsong when we are working with the body and appealing to the unconscious mind, but I will meet it with episodes of attending to the mundane and the minutia, the tacked-down technicality, on the how and the where of it all. This sort of toggling into concretized containers can be so helpful also when engaging a conversation about things that are much larger than we- like archetypes, cosmic reverberations, and the expanse of the universe herself. But most especially when talking about the beautiful instigator of grandmother medicine.

Last friday night I sat among friends and offered a few themes for us to share from. Ones that I’ve been contemplating for the better part of a year, and those are grandmas and grief, and also of heroism. The archetypes andthe grittier lived versions in the form of bloodline and ancestry, and what these things bring forward for a culture. I cant tell you how many times in the last two years I’ve wished for/ prayed for/ sometimes dropped to my knees keening for, a band of grandmothers to go show up on someone’s or some system’s doorstep and lovingly but sternly say- “hey- you cant treat that person/group this way” or “hey, go over there and make amends you nincompoop” (ok that one maybe flavored with a little bit of me). Or any number of checks and balances that grandmother medicine brings. The one that this particular culture with its hyperfixation on youthfulness, adolescence, productivity, privilege and comfort at all cost, often lacks.

And so I’ve been inviting it in.
I sat and absorbed as the memories and shares poured forth. Several said, i had never thought of this in this way until now... or, i've never shared this before… Share by share., the masks lifted and time slowed down, at least for me. Tender places were witnessed and held and turned into works of art and on that winter night I felt like a patch in a quilt where every single piece was colorful, unique and completely necessary to make the blanket. Inside the containment of the collective- when that collective is aligned with genuine integrity- a fracture is a masterpiece and each person incontrovertibly belongs to the whole. This is web tending. This is GRANDmother medicine.

Some of the thoughts I’ve been scribbling out in note form about abuela medicina, are included below.

And may we never forget about the archetypal wise grandfather standing behind or beside grandma- the epitome of perdurable presence. If she is the wind in our sails, he is the organizing backbone complete with spinous processes worthy of our dinosaur predecessors- the real OG - original grandpa.

Today I will widen into archetypes and extract from stories by the fire that are truly heard and originate deeper than marrow. This will be the backdrop to a more personal share down the line. But for now this will do.

I think you will recognize some of the forces at play or lack thereof. As with all work of archetypal, ancestral reverberation, I invite you to read and let things land where they will. Let them take their own journey inside you. Words have the power to do that- to suggest something we’ve forgotten, ignite what we’ve let dampen and to gestate and articulate new life and new form.

★ ★ ★

When Elderhood Does Not Rise

Grandmother, Grandfather, and the Betrayal of Our Time

We are living in an era of exposed fractures.

Climate systems destabilizing.
Borders militarized.
Immigrants treated as threats rather than human beings.
Children held in detention.
Wildfires swallowing entire towns.
Profit prioritized over breath.

Across the United States- and increasingly across the globe- human life feels negotiable.

And underneath the politics, underneath the headlines, there is something older at work:

We are living in a culture where elder energy did not come forward.

Not fully.
Not clearly.
Not in time.

And yet-
Did elderhood fail to rise because it lacked courage?
Or did it rise quietly, only to find no listening bodies for it to land upon?

Wisdom cannot root where speed is worshipped.
It cannot anchor where grief has no container.

Perhaps the betrayal is not only that elders did not speak-
but that we did not know how to receive them.

If that is so, then cultivating listening bodies becomes part of the work now.

Grandmother Energy: Memory, Enoughness, and Truth
Grandmother energy is not about age. It is about continuity.

She is the keeper of memory.
The regulator of scarcity.
The one who says:
We have endured before. We will endure again. But not by abandoning each other. Her greatest medicine is relationship- weaving webs of togetherness across space and time and between heart and mind.

Healthy grandmother medicine does the following:

Holds long memory

Makes truth speakable

Establishes a felt sense of ‘enough’

Connects

When grandmother medicine is strong, cultures metabolize grief instead of exporting it.

When it is weak, distorted, or unrevered:

Silence becomes tradition

Survival replaces care

Image replaces truth

Betrayal becomes structural

You see this when ecological collapse is treated as inconvenience.
When history is rewritten to preserve national pride.
When the suffering of migrants is framed as necessary policy.

This is grandmother betrayal at scale.

Because grandmother energy is meant to interrupt harm early- not normalize it.

The Deep Betrayal: When Grandfather Does Not Step Forward

If grandmother asks, “Are you held?”
Grandfather asks, “Are you protected?”

Grandfather energy is meant to:

Draw moral lines

Stand between the vulnerable and chaos

Enforce boundaries in service of life

Make harm costly

The deepest betrayal of our time is not only cruelty. It is absence.

It is the feeling that those who could intervene… did not.
It is the feeling that intervention did not arrive- or did not land in time.

That institutions built to protect instead shield power.
That leaders enforce law without guarding life.
That ‘good men’ see harm and remain neutral.

The wound sounds something like this:

Why didn’t anyone stop this?

That is a grandfather wound.

When grandfather medicine fails, systems become predatory.
When it colludes with power instead of protecting the vulnerable, betrayal becomes institutional.

Policing without protection.
Borders without mercy.
Laws without moral grounding.

This is authority severed from elder wisdom.

And people feel it in their bodies- as hyper vigilance, distrust, grief, and sometimes simmering rage.

The Key Difference between Mother/Father archetypes and Grandma/Grandpa

Mother/Father → Developmental
Grandmother/Grandfather → Civilizational

Mother/Father → Individual survival and differentiation
Grandmother/Grandfather → Collective memory and moral continuity

Mother/Father shape a person.
Grandmother/Grandfather shape a culture.

We’re seeing what happens when cultures lack metabolized elderhood.
And perhaps more importantly, lack the capacity and ability to translate when it comes.
That’s a different order of conversation entirely.

Climate Collapse and the Failure of Elder Sequencing

Healthy cultures move in sequence:

Grandmother: Tell the truth. Hold the memory. Name the harm.

Grandfather: Draw the line. Protect the future. Enforce the boundary.

We have tried to skip the first step.

Climate science has been politicized instead of witnessed. Historical injustice is debated instead of metabolized.
Grief is dismissed as weakness.

Intuition and creativity are seen as inferior to logic.

And so when authority finally acts, it feels punitive instead of protective.

You cannot build just law on unhealed silence.

Without grandmother truth, grandfather power becomes authoritarian.

Without grandfather protection, grandmother grief becomes endless.

We are watching both distortions at once.

The Grief of Those Who Feel This Early

Some of you reading this carry early elder energy.

You have felt for years that something was unraveling.
You sensed patterns before they were widely acknowledged.
You grieved futures others still assumed were guaranteed.

This grief is not melodrama.

It is the grief of arriving before the culture is ready.

It feels like:

Knowing and not being able to make others know

Loving the future without authority to defend it

Holding memory without a seat at the table

Many early carriers become quiet.
Or exhausted.
Or mislabeled as cynical. Or crazy.

But what you are feeling is elder grief.

The sorrow of watching systems betray the young. And ultimalely everyone.

But for those ahead of the curve, this can be lonely and double the pain. Collectively revered elderhood recognizes the prophets and priestesses among us and gives them an important seat at the table rather than having them feel exiled in their knowing and lost along the way.

Historical Echo: When Grandmothers Held the Line

In post-dictatorship Argentina, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo stood in public squares demanding the return of stolen grandchildren.

They did not riot.
They did not disappear.
They did not forget.

They embodied grandmother medicine:

Relentless remembrance.
Public grief.
Refusal to let truth die quietly.

They did what elder energy does at its best:
They made forgetting impossible.

That is power without domination.

That is protection through memory.

That is web-wise togetherness.

Why This Moment Feels Like Betrayal

Because at some level, many of us expected the elders to rise. This is not necessarily about chronological age. It is about the willingness to metabolize experience into wisdom. And to widen enough to hear.

We expected those with authority or power of any sort to:

Safeguard the planet

Protect migrants from dehumanization

Interrupt corporate harm

Place life above profit

Hold the powerful accountable for exploitation and abuse

Refuse secrecy that protects exploitation

Do this even in micro moments of every day in every way

Instead, we are watching short-term gain override long-term survival.

That cuts deeper than disagreement and feels like abandonment across generations.

The ones who can are running to circles of privilege to undergo elderhood medicine by dissociation- the grandmother Ayahuasca and granddaddy Wachuma bring beautiful vision- but without returning the insight into the tribe as was their original purpose, we become further confused. These medicines can bring about great insight and uncover stucknesses that needed a well flung crowbar (important to say that not all nervous systems are good with such extreme practices), but without the return, without the deep integration and reciprocity piece, the point is lost completely. And if the insight is not shared, if it is kept too close- or even more challenging still, used as escape, then it begins to stagnate, sour and even curdle. What was meant to nourish begins to thicken into something self-serving. And the medicine turns in on itself.

For as we know, the dose makes the poison. And a blessing hoarded becomes a curse.

What is equally or more problematic is when only a few carry the burden. The survival gig is gonna be all for one and one for all, should we choose. Spread across a plethora of hands, the boulder becomes a feather. Atlas trades shoulders for a circle of friends. Sisyphus starts to tap dance backwards and there are no hills involved but rather a network of interwoven roots, where every step lifts another and every hand held softens the fall. The weight dissolves into rhythm, into collective momentum, into a choreography of care that is as playful as it is necessary. Hills give way to horizon, labor becomes communion, and what once threatened to crush becomes a pulse of possibility, alive in us all.

What Now?

If we are in a culture thin on both grandmother and grandfather medicine that is integrated, where do we begin?

——>>> With  g r a n d m o t h e r . . . . .

Truth must be speakable.
And we must become capable of hearing it.

Memory must be held before law can protect.

Grief must be witnessed before boundaries can heal.

But we do not stop there.

Grandfather must follow- and fast behind, por favor. Not as dominance, not as nostalgia for patriarchy- but as accountable protection.

Boundaries that guard life.
Consequences that do not humiliate.
Authority constrained by wisdom.

Without him, harm repeats.
Without her, law becomes violence.

A Quiet Reframe

Perhaps the question is not-

Where are the elders?

But-

Who is willing to practice elderhood now? how do we learn to hear it? and how can we share in that endeavor?

Not perfectly.
Not constantly.
But rhythmically.

To tell the truth.
To refuse erasure.
To draw lines that protect life.
To bless departures from broken systems.

You do not have to carry the future alone- nor can you. This is what grandma knows.

But you may be part of keeping it possible.

And that is not a small thing. As a matter of fact, it is everything.

Last Wednesday was the birthday of Toni Morrison. In our Artful Flow zoom class I read a passage she wrote describing a time when she decided to let go of side hustles to focus on her writing- she says of that moment, “it was a purer delight, a rogue anticipation with certainty.” That phrase stayed with me for some time and struck me as a way we might express and experience this sometimes elusive thing called hope in times such as these on planet earth. I offer this not as someone that has bypassed the depth of her grief and the desperation of her inertness. I have visited those places. A lot. Part two will disclose something of that awareness, but to start today with the end, I want to also know what it is to grab some wayward, rogue-like neuropathway that might be an expression of something new. That invites anticipation, and yes even certainty. I hope for us all that we might emerge from time to increasing-number-of-times with some such sentiment or variation of a hopeful persuasion. And I know that is not always easy.

Rogue anticipation- the wild, unapproved stirring toward something not yet secured.
With certainty- the grounded willingness to build a life around that stirring.

It feels like the grown-up version of hope.

To foster diverging life-force, and to come about it with ‘certainty’ has needed some doing on my part. This is where the fierce grandfather medicine- the containment comes in. I don’t know how many times across a lifetime I will need to lose my practice and come back to it in order to understand what it offers, but there have been a few. Building bodybound beauty, being intentional about mind and bone, having a practice that weaves prana throughout, and being consistent with that (unless i’m not)- this is what takes some rogue creation from being merely a flippant firework to a real connection of synapse-fired CERTAINTY. Yet again, the alpha/omega, masculine/ feminine, yang and the yin (those who have undergone the meditation series have sat with this paradox). This is the grandfather to our grandma. The protection of subtle body kindness and care in real time, real breath, truth.

Not bypassed. Not sentimental. Not blind to grief. But practiced.

Because rogue anticipation without structure is just spark.
And certainty without imagination becomes stale toast rigidity.

We have seen what happens when power severs itself from memory.
We have felt what happens when protection loses its moral spine.
We know the cost of elder energy that does not rise or cant be heard above the noise.

So perhaps what is being asked now is smaller and more radical:

To practice elderhood in real time.
To let grief mature into boundary.
To let vision anchor into muscle.
To let rogue anticipation find a body.

For me, that has meant returning- again and again- to practice.
Through the seasons when I drift and forget what it offers.
And then there are seasons like this one, when I understand that without intentional weaving- breath across bone, awareness through pattern- inspiration remains a lost firefly flicker instead of a firm-footed foundation.

Practice is what turns vision into synapse.
Synapse into habit.
Habit into character.
Character into culture.

** Which is why, the first weekend in March, I am gathering a small circle in the same home that has held our Wintering Retreat for a weekend away in Emerging Retreat.

Not to escape the world.
But to strengthen our return to it.
To tell the truth in rooms that can hold it.
To move grief through muscle and not just mind.
To cultivate creativity that does not sever from responsibility.
To remember what grandmother and grandfather energy feel like when integrated in the body.

There will be yoga- not as performance, but as nervous-system literacy.
Meditation- not as transcendence, but as integration.
Hiking, poetry, play, shared meals, sauna, silence.
Women practicing the radical act of belonging to one another.

Grandmother energy also holds space for the parts of us that want to be infinitely innocent, playful, sexy, and contagiously alive.

Rogue anticipation becomes certainty through repetition.
And certainty becomes medicine when it is shared.

Archetypes are a mood. An inquiry . A curiousity . Not something we can plot out or pivot toward, but rather, open into, allow and be rearranged by. Sometimes we need space to make that happen.

There are a handful of spaces remaining.

If something in you recognizes that wildhaired neuropathway- that quiet, insistent stirring- you do not need convincing.

Email to reserve. Or to ask q’s.

It feels to me that a rogue vision may be our charted course.

But practice makes it real.
And integration makes it wise.

March 6-8.
Friday afternoon- Sunday after lunch.

Investment + Lodging

This retreat is held in shared space- slumber-party style- an invitation into both privacy and proximity. Come with a beloved to share with, remain open to meeting someone new, or reserve a room to yourself.

Master bedroom- 875 per person
Queen rooms- 775 per person
(or reserve the full queen room for 1025)
Plush futon “star” room- 675

One space is available for needs-based partial exchange / trade / assistance. If that is you, reach out.

If this strand of thought feels like something you’d like to keep tending, I am gathering these writings on Substack. You are warmly invited to subscribe and walk alongside.

And if you feel called to support this work materially, your contribution helps keep the practice- and the press- alive. It is received with gratitude. Your presence- reading, reflecting, and participating- is the most meaningful offering of all. And by all means, in the spirit of weaving - if you think of someone that might appreciate, please share and scatter further afield. As we know, that’s what grandma does best. Button below.

___________________

May we move forward with rogue anticipation, grounded in certainty, carrying elder wisdom under our arm, and hope into this wild wondrous world of ours. She’s the only one we got and I think we can all agree she’s the best thing around.

And maybe.. we could do this now. Beyond esoteric circles of mediated medicine moments and into real time, fully lived, boots on the ground webs of care and truth, and protection- yes, of the most vulnerable, but of all that is in service to love and life. More on all that in part two.

Let the earth cradle you as it spins. May we all play our part. For after all,

Today is always here.. tomorrow never ~
Toni Morrison

And this love is worth it.

______________________________

Image above- JUDITH F. BACA (United States, 1946), Matriarchal Mural: When God Was A Woman, 1980 - 2021