my waters flow with yours and our river remembers

As the full moon arrived last week, I found myself, too, full and heavy with my grief. 

My cycle has been delayed nearly three months, and with my internal hormonal cycles distorted and delayed, I’ve found it more difficult to bear the grief. I was homesick for a home I still haven’t yet made, weary from travel, missing my mother after the anniversary of her birthday, and grieving for our collective future in the wake of elections, devastating natural disasters, and ongoing genocides. 

However, as the climax of this current moon cycle passes, my body is finally opening — finally releasing, finally bleeding and shedding all that I have gathered and held the last three months. 

Maybe it is odd to start a letter with a reflection on menstruation, but just as I would tell you where I am and how I am, this is what is happening in my body. And my body is my teacher, my most intimate guide. My cycle reminds me the importance of release. When it is delayed or elongated, I become that much more grateful for it — and aware of the necessity of habitually and routinely letting go.  

Today I am reminded: I don’t have to hold onto everything that passes through me. Impermanence can be a gift. Cycles offer reminders of this. Reminders to loosen our grasp on what has already passed, reminders to unclench, drop down, fall back to earth. 

And indeed, I feel myself falling. I came back from Mexico begging for home — to come palms to earth by the creekside, and call upon my mother. The creek reminds me of the power of continuity: what is here now doesn’t have to stay. What I carry now, I don’t have to hold. What I can not bear, I can offer to larger waters. 

I live creekside, on Peavine Creek — a humble waterline that whispers and giggles behind my apartment, accompanied by a soft melody of crickets and songbirds. In the last three months I have traveled to far places, islands and beaches to be with the ocean, to bathe in the Atlantic and Pacific. But there’s something about being beside the creek — this whispering trickle — and knowing that what I offer here is carried through tributaries, into Peachtree Creek, down the Chattahoochee River, through the Apalachicola, to the Gulf, and eventually, out into the vast Atlantic. 

I grieve so often at the shore of the Atlantic. I think of our collective pilgrimage to Salvador, Brazil last year and the deep grief of the waters we bathed in there. Now, on my back porch, listening to the creek wander by, I am reminded all these waters are connected. All our grief is connected. My waters flow with yours and our river remembers. 

If for the last three months, my body was closed — if i have been closed off from you— today, my body is open. Today my spirit is able to receive. and so today, I share an invitation. Tomorrow I will be holding for myself, and for us, a full-day ceremony of release. I invite you offer up your grief — offer up what you can no longer hold, what you have held for too long — and let us release it to the waters together. 

In short, the ceremony is three parts: 

1. Day | Grief Offerings : Parallel play & reflection in a cozy living room.

2. Afternoon | Collective Procession : Walk to the creek's shore. Release collective water & grief.

3. Evening | Somatic Release & Play: Letting the rest out on the dance floor.

There are ways for you to participate in person and virtually, depending on where you are and what capacity you have to join. If you are feeling more capacious in these times, there are ways in which you can offer energy to the ritual; and if you are in need of relief, I offer ways that you can receive from our collective ceremony. 

More on how to participate and join in ceremony here. 

More soon, 

Raya