"Dine and Dash" where folks didn't have time to do a whole gathering. The idea was there was a meal ready at the same time each week, folks could come through and eat, not have to do dishes and get a move on.
At this time in our collective history, this performance is empowering and culture shifting. My hope is it has a lasting effect on how we approach the coming revolution.
First of all, if you know me, you likely know Biscuit Reynolds saw himself as my Feline Overlord and once I realized that I ceased to call him “my cat.” Or “the cat” but I wanted a title that would relate to more people.
I know four people who released their pets across the rainbow bridge during one week this month. I thought about things that have been therapeutic for me over the past year. (Cannot believe it has been a year already and yet it feels like it’s been forever. It feels like it was 2019, my entire world got uncertain, 2020-2023 blur together and were just one year and then the year Biscuit Reynolds passed and now today.)
If anything the grief compounds.
One thing I realized is that every time I lose one pet it’s like the grief for all the others becomes sharper. Macy, my dog for 13.5 years, went to be with the Goddess when the camelias were blooming in 2018. (Sometime in March, I don’t like to mark dates I like the ritual of nature’s rhythm.) Gathering camelia blossoms spent from bushes and putting them on the altar for her every year is special.
I don’t think we ever “get over” a loss that hurts deep. I think we get used to living life along with it and our joy practice gets bigger. Which means, since grief is like a spiral, we return to it at different places. My house felt so empty with no pets and that was a stark, lonely experience I had to be with.
If there’s a tool in this it’s radical self acceptance and just being with the feelings that come up without judgment.
In lieu of flowers, please send cookies.
I asked this when my dad passed and I did it again with Biscuit Reynolds. Grieving takes up a lot of calories. Our brains are a tiny part of our body mass but they use 70% of our calories! Grief is like having an open tab in our brain, especially acute grieving in the early part of the pain.
There’s a reason our ancestors brought food to one another during times of grief. Cookies are calorie dense, delicious and I love them. Giving people a clear task to do/way to help is wonderful. Your loved ones want to help! I’m so grateful for all the cookies sent my way during seasons of grief.
Lowered expectations around cleaning and “stuff removal.”
Some people grieve by immediately removing all the pet stuff from the house. I chose to be very gentle with myself and let things linger. I walked the cat box out to the dumpster three days after he passed like a pall bearer with a coffin. I let the scratching post stay in my front doorway for over a month. (Biscuit Reynolds knew he wasn’t supposed to scratch the screen door and did it anyway, so I was providing an easy alternative.)
I still have his clothes in my bathroom cupboard. I’m not stressed I know it’ll happen in time. I still have Macy’s pet bed in a house she never lived in (a STATE she never lived in!) because it makes a good laundry hamper, it’s a jolly color and I love and miss her.
Before I released Biscuit Reynolds I was already designing a standing grief stretch series for my aerobics membership because I know I can’t be bothered to clean my floor during times of grief. Thus, standing stretch is more accessible than doing stretches on the floor.
Once again this tool is just radical self acceptance and doing what you can, when you can.
Saying “Okay” out loud and embracing the waves.
It only takes 90 seconds to clear a strong emotion. I learned this from a Martha Beck book and it sounded like BS but, in fact, it’s totally true.
If I just surrender to the big Feels, the sob that is coming through, whatever, it takes usually far less than 90 seconds. It sometimes feels like I’m gonna die but I’m not.
We are trained to stuff our feelings away for other people’s comfort. But we have so much freedom when we can just feel the hard thing!
I found myself just saying “Okay” with a big sigh when I felt those feelings come up. It still comes through nowadays but it’s less intense and less frequent. I think I’ve just accepted his pain was too big to sustain his lil body any longer and I’m happy for his release from that and sad for my missed earth time with him.
Signs, Symbols & Synchronicities are messages from Spirit.
I got signs from Biscuit Reynolds immediately. I think the amount of work I’ve done to develop my openness to spirituality and my intuition has helped a lot. I believe love lives on and his spirit is still with me, bound by love.
I have heard him sneeze, I have felt him on my bed, I’ve heard him in the other room. Right after his passage I had several encounters with eagles (my strongest identified wild animal, though I am friend and collaborator with many wild things) that were too amazing to be a coincidence.
Believing the signs are loving messages is self care. Gaslighting my intuition is self abusive.
Tiny stuffed soft thing.
A friend of mine gave me this tiny stuffed incredibly soft elephant. My step mom Liz always comes through with elephants so that was especially comforting. I found having something small and soft to sleep with in those first few months was really lovely.
“Better a day too early than a day too late.”
There’s the moment you know your animal companion’s departure is within the next few months. Then you know it’s around the corner. And then it’s days not weeks. And then it’s now.
I hadn’t heard this saying before but the vet tech telling me that over the weekend living rurally one must be mindful–an hour to the closest emergency vet (with calm weather conditions).
In December 2013 I had to rush my cat, ALF, to the vet the morning after I knew it was days not months. In Brooklyn the vet was 20 minutes factoring in finding parking on the street near the vet and parking blocks away from your house. He was in intractable pain under the table in the kitchen and I knew he needed to go so fast because that was not manageable pain. (The ultrasound the day before had shown his body riddled with cysts.)
We (I was a we then) brought Macy with us so she would know ALF had crossed the rainbow bridge. As soon as I had understood that at home euthanasia helped facilitate grieving ease for the remaining pets because they can feel the soul departing, I knew it was the best choice back when I was blessed to be the mom of three.
I got to use at home euthanasia with ALF’s brother Bear (and a friend made everyone a pork shoulder and that was such a blessing) in May of 2013.
ALF passed so fast I felt lucky that Macy was so mobile and could be there. Macy loved to be included in fun and sad outings. She was amazing the whole time my Grandmother was passing. Slept right in bed with her for hours at a time.
Every time I hit another big departure of a soul I care for it feels like the cumulative grief folds in on itself. It feels like I was holding ALF in a towel on that long trip to the vet when he was in so much pain like just yesterday.
You don’t want it to get to that point if you know it’s coming, my advice to you. Macy’s departure was on a day she could still walk. I never knew consciously it was her time. I was too close to her and it was my partner and her Reiki healer that told me it was her time. (Months before her Reiki healer said that her ancestors were coming for her. “You mean my house is filled with ghost Shih Tzus???”)
I’ve learned that the pain of the body is necessary so that our souls release the body when we depart. I had such a hard time determining Biscuit Reynold’s departure because he was still eating and cuddling. But it happened so clearly that last weekend. He was in pain and I was so grateful my vet could take me first thing Monday morning. It was soooo sad and so beautiful and I’ll always remember he left during Aquarius season on the Pisces waxing moon, the moon looked like a cheshire cat smile just like him. I now call that phase of the moon a “Biscuit Reynolds Moon.”
I hope if you’re dealing with pet loss you know that their shorter life spans and unconditional love are here to teach us about release and phases of life. I’m sending you lots of love and tenderness. I hope your crying is cathartic.
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How can we show up for each other AS family? What is mine to do?
This was a question Chani asked in one of her year ahead or week ahead readings in January and I’ve been noodling on it big time. The Full Moon in Cancer and Mars retrograde in Cancer came in like a wrecking ball this year. Most people I know with strong Cancer placements (sun, moon or rising) tend to love feeding people.*
Queer folks have been creating families away from our blood kin for as long as cultures that discriminate against us have existed.
One of the things I learned most from the queer elders and melders (not young not yet an elder–a generation that creates connections) I got to hang with in my young adulthood was how important it is for us to act AS FAMILY to one another. Rupture and repair. Meet one another with compassion. Break bread.
Recently I’ve been blessed by local community gatherings that center a meal and require nothing but my presence. Both of the hosts are strong Cancer placements (Cancer sun & rising in one and Cancer moon in the other).
I’ve experienced community meals many times in my life but I have loved and appreciated the ongoing nature of both of these recent gatherings. (I also rarely take pictures because I prioritize being present!) I reflected on these in my podcast How to Build Community Part One, but in sum the ability to host a “third place” neither home nor work and provide a meal really meets human needs.
Danette, the host of one of the local gatherings, used to do something called “Dine and Dash” in a previous neighborhood she lived in where folks didn’t have time to do a whole gathering. The idea was there was a meal ready at the same time each week, folks could come through and eat, not have to do dishes and get a move on.
I love the premise because time is something most folks are stretched with. The very “come as you are I just want to nourish you” generosity of this concept is so great. Dine and Dash could be a Taco Tuesday, a soup dinner (I had queer friends who did a soup night every Friday for years), a casserole/hot dish night, a spaghetti feed…
It’s also disruptive to the billionaire hoarding of resources. If one Dine and Dash event per week saves one family from buying fast food, that’s depriving that corporation of money and putting it someplace else.
Colonization and coloniality have stripped us of the interdependence humans evolved to need. We evolved to walk on two legs because humans were living in tribes and could depend on needs being met through community during the 4th trimester.
Forcing us to rely on ourselves for everything is against what our bodies want and need. As everything gets more expensive, the folks with the resources and capacity to host something like a dine and dash or community dinner night make a huge difference.
If you aren’t up for hosting but want to cook for folks, consider a weekly meal you deliver to people who need it or drop off at a community fridge.
I think one thing that really gets in the way of folks starting something like this is fear of rejection. Most of us are trained that rejection is the worst thing in the world. I know it has felt like that to me many times.
I have grown a lot through necessity because marketing requires a resilience to rejection and no one learns about my awesome aerobics classes without my putting myself out there. Entrepreneurship is a personal growth path with a business attached. My limiting beliefs put a cap on how many people I could serve. I don’t want to continue to get in my own way.
One of the community dinners I go to I was invited to by a stranger. He has invited probably hundreds of people to this dinner and the success rate of attendance is probably not super high. Yet he persists! I’m grateful for this resource and I know most of the time people who say no to an offer of help is nothing about the person it’s the offer.
But if you’re persistent, you’re probably going to change lives. I think that’s true for anything on your heart you want to birth into the 3D world.
Vulnerability is strength, there is no intimacy without vulnerability. And to do something like this we need to be vulnerable. When you want friends and community it starts with strangers. I have benefitted greatly by taking the vulnerable risk going to a stranger’s home for soup and fellowship.
Everything going on right now can feel so overwhelming. But I find “What is mine to do?” such an empowering consideration. We need one another more than ever and I encourage you to find more ways to reach out and help wherever you can. Or to reach out FOR help–you are not a burden. You are human!
I rarely recommend books I haven’t finished reading, but I got Rejection Proof from the library and so far enjoying it! Also suggest the book Mutual Aid by Dean Spade.
*My mother is a Cancer sun and when I was vegetarian for seven years would always suggest things to me to eat and I thought it was SO ANNOYING. I have worked hard at harmony in our relationship, and consider my relationship with my Mother my greatest success. (We fought for many years and I went no/low contact for most of my 20s/early 30s because I didn’t feel safe with her.)
Once I started studying astrology it helped me lighten up about my mom. Observing how she acts out her Cancer sun by wanting to feed me even with my variant dietary needs over the years; and communicating with me through her Sagittarius moon (both Sag and Cancer can be prickly/mean communicators especially when they feel unsafe). I love astrology both for teaching us about the present moment through archetypes, but also for teaching me about all of our diverse personalities.
I believe all humans are different by design and astrology is the great Pattern that God chose to create that harmony among diversity. I have received a lot of peace and groundedness in these wacky times listening to Chani’s week ahead readings each week this year and the resources in the paid section of her app (a birthday present from my friend McKay).
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My current hyper focus is Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance. “You can’t fake influence.”
I was so out of the loop of the overculture and social media I didn’t know that the Super Bowl was happening (proud of my ever improving social media boundaries for that). Once I found out Kendrick performed I streamed it on you tube and bypassed all of the sports!
I was pet sitting at a place with you tube premium and an incredible sound system. Why not watch this incredible piece of art as many times as I care to? Always something new to catch. You can also listen to it on Spotify.
At this time in our collective history, this performance is empowering and culture shifting. My hope is it has a lasting effect on how we approach the coming revolution.
“The revolution about to be televised–you picked the right time but the wrong guy.”
This video by BlackySpeakz is a great overview of the symbolism Kendrick used.
This video by Bobby Foster has more about the video game symbolism and a depth to the revolutionary messages in the piece.
A write-up of still more of the symbolism by History Can’t Hide!
I dug around and the letterman jackets worn in the performance by Kendrick and Sza have their songs on them (Gloria for Kendrick, a song of his recent GNX album and Crybaby on Sza, a song from her Lana album).
Many enduring and prolific songwriters have strong Cancer placements. Dolly Rebecca Parton (my fav) has Mars in Cancer.
As an astrology nerd, I am very intrigued that just two weeks after the Super Bowl–Mars is going direct in Cancer at 17 degrees in the sky (basically, Mars is making a U turn). Kendrick was born when Mars was in Cancer at 17 degrees. He also has Mercury at 16 degrees Cancer. Here’s a write-up from astro bestie Chani on Kendrick’s Mars placement.
Kendrick’s Gemini Sun & Pisces Moon is just like Prince Rogers Nelson. But Libra Rising so Kendrick is more wired for fame than Prince (Scorpio Rising is an uncomfortable placement for fame with an intense need for privacy).
My favorite Kendrick album is Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. None of those songs made it onto the list for the Super Bowl but the album in its entirety is worth a listen if you’re newer to Kendrick. (Or if you’re in a season of grief and want to feel witnessed.) He mentions Eckart Tolle at least three times–I love the Mr Morale album for the raw look at healing trauma. We don’t hear themes of trauma healing or, as in his album GNX, talk of reincarnation frequently in hip hop. I love depth and unexpected alignment in art!
If you find more analyses of Kendrick’s performance you think are valuable send them my way!
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