5 Ways To Alchemize The Soul

a new series

Friends,

Thank you for being here. We are a few weeks into summer now, and it definitely feels that way here in the Philadelphia area. My garden is a gorgeous haven of life and care; sanitation workers are striking in Philly for better pay so that they can care for themselves and their families; we are sending our love and support to Texas flood victims and those still being searched for as we grieve a government that does not prioritize eco-disasters and their aftermath; and farmworkers in California will soon be announcing a strike to demand respect from our government.

Hold on, hold hope, hold resistance, hold care, and keep going.

Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash

I can’t think of a better time to start this new series on The Liminality Journal.

In our daily life, we are constantly finding ways to alchemize the soul—we take what the soul holds and is, and we let it transform itself into its true presence, a way of returning home.

In the world we live in, we are disconnected from ourselves. So taking the time to alchemize our souls is incredibly important; it’s the way we connect with others, the way we find space to know ourselves, it’s how we grow in relationship to Mother Earth and our creature kin.

The scientific definition of alchemy is: transforming ordinary matter into something more valuable.

You and I both know that the power of our souls is that they are both ordinary and magical. They are already more wise than we are, if we could stop and pay attention to what they have to teach us. As many mystic teachers have reminded us throughout the ages, our souls are ancient, deep, and enduring. We’re not trying to change our soul’s mind, not really. We are trying to remind our souls of who they are as we remember, constantly returning to home.

We are alchemizing the ways of the soul, the journey of the soul.

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

As I shared last week on my post about Ren, a new artist I love and the collective solidarity in his music, this is how difficult things usually go for me, the ways of processing:

1. I get really sad about the state of the world

2. I get really pissed about the state of the world

3. I exercise/climb/play and spend time with the beautiful people in my life

4. I eventually calm down and turn to nature/quiet/space

5. I alchemize my sadness and rage into words

When I get to that moment of beginning to alchemize, I begin to understand that my soul is shifting to create something, to squeeze medicine and life from the shitty stuff.

So this is the breakdown of our five week series:

1. Through the grief/rage process

2. Through sacred practices & imagination

3. Through cyclical living

4. Through creative resistance

5. Through dreams and vision-casting

Today, we start with the grief/rage process, because that’s always a good place to start, to examine the process itself of alchemy.

Let me use a very, very personal example from the news this week:

Conservative talking head Ann Coulter said this week “We didn’t kill enough Indians” which in an era of authoritarianism, genocide and ongoing colonialism isn’t just a tweet. And the added terror of this is a president who sits on social media constantly being spurred on by his racist supporters.

So, what do I do with this moment?

First I wish I could stop seeing these words, that they’d be taken back into the universe and disappear. I’m heartbroken and reminded of the deep and tragic history of colonialism, of Indian boarding schools (including people from my own family), and the ongoing terror of lands being taken again and again in our society and especially with this new administration.

This is real for us.

And now I get angry. Sometimes when I’m angry, I listen to loud music. I play piano and write. I rage through exercise, pushing the energy through my body. Right now, I’m here, holding this rage with all of you because I know you’ll hold it with me. The realities of what we are living through are horrible on a number of levels, and as an Indigenous woman, I’m feeling that.

And the longer I sit with this, moving through the sadness and rage, something else begins to happen; I shape the grief into medicine, the actual work of alchemy in the soul.

I’m alchemizing right now, creating this letter, this space of resistance on behalf of myself and my Indigenous kin. We are still here. Our existence is resistance. We hold liminality as sacred life.

A letter to Ann Coulter

Ann,

You wished recently that you’d killed more Indians, a harkening to exactly what this nation was built from: the eradication of the Native.

You’ve reminded us that when we think we have progressed to an age of kinship and care, we still hold genocidal malice in our hearts—and there you are.

I’d love to tell you what it means to exist today, how my children let the Potawatomi fire that burns in their hearts chart a daily path of sacred living, of changing the world one moment at a time.

You will never know the sacred strength our ancestors passed down to us, a strength born from the trauma of a land and people who did not want their existence, cultures, ways of life.

The fact of the matter is, I see you, Ann, and your shallows. You will be offered medicine again and again and you’ll refuse it, and the shallow shell you build of hate speech will only hold for so long.

Our story begins on the turtles back, where we learn that community grows just as the land does, that our spirit shines because the whole earth thrives in kinship.

Until you know that, Ann, your life will remain empty, and every hateful word you utter will only fill the empty space you’ve created.

And we will keep finding ways to heal the world.

Seamus Heaney once wrote, “On the one hand, poetry is secret and natural, on the other hand it must make its way in a world that is public and brutal.”

This is so, so true, and my soul finds alchemy when I practice both. Sometimes I write from the secret, the earth, the natural, and sometimes I write words straight to the public arena, where we fight for justice and care. Most of the time, I feel all of it, which shows us how powerful alchemy truly is.

May we take our grief and journey alongside it, asking what the journey looks like along the way, and how our souls take shape and change as we go.

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Below is info for the October trip to Iona for a festival of writing and storytelling!

Come to Scotland and celebrate my new book!

Listen to my newest podcast interview on the Matriarch Movement:

NEW ONLINE EVENT!

In this workshop, which is part of the Resistance Journal Club, we will explore our Ancestral Realm, asking what it means to consider our place in history and to learn from those who came before us as we care for future generations.

As we learn from global Indigenous wisdom on this topic, we will journal and share in groups, getting ideas on how to become more embodied as we care for ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth.

Grab a spot here!