August 13, 2023

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What Space do you take up?

I write to you while actively digesting this weekend's Permaculture Design Course. One of the ways we prepare our students to pursue ecological design is by giving them tools to perform a niche analysis. All organisms human and more than human occupy niches. A niche is a space and our goal is to understand we and the beings we steward take up that space. A niche includes our physical living space and how we use resources and interact with other organisms in that space. The interaction among organisms within or between overlapping niches can be characterized into five types of relationships:

1. Competition — when two or more organisms rely on the same environmental resource
2. Parasitism/Predation — a symbiotic relationship where one organism feeds on another gaining benefit while harming the other
3. Commensalism — a symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits and one does not benefit but is unharmed
4. Mutualism — a symbiotic relationship where both organisms benefit
5. Regenerative— a symbiotic relationship that not only benefits the organisms in that relationship but the whole system as a byproduct of their relating.

Expanding this analysis to the level of culture we can see that predation and parasitism are relationships defined by and create cultures of exploitation. They degrade the base of the survival of the other. While commensal relationships occupy a middle ground, mutualism and regenerative relationships might be understood as those that create, what Aunty Robin Wall Kimmerer might call cultures of reciprocity.

The bond between the organisms in this framework is material exchange. It’s about the movement of stuff and things. The stuff and the things that beings need to survive and thrive. Food, water, shelter, care. Our bonds are based on our basic needs.

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I have walked this world as a being with tremendous love privilege and tremendous need. Over the past week, I have had to face the shadows of exploitation that live within my relationships. In particular, to understand the space that I take up in the world, I've had to analyze the balance of materials I consume and especially my disequilibrium of care. I have been a really needy bitch and that need has made space for me to be greedy bitch. It has caused me to take up more space and consume more resources that threaten to degrade the material reality of those around me.

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And I am not wrong.

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Need. Hunger. Has us focus on our own bellies. Has us center our own fullness and satiation over the needs of others. Prolonged experiences of need disrupt our ability to recognize satiation. Recognize enough. This is why Dandelion is one my favorite cures for capitalism. Bitter roots often contain phytonutrients that reintegrate our relationship to the hormonal signals leptin and ghrelin. The signals that let us know when we should stop eating. They let us know when we are whole, complete and perfect.

Dandelion: The Root of the Matter The perfect accompaniment for late summer. READ HERE

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Feeding Ghosts

My co-facilitator Adam Brock, after a lecture about the 8 forms of capital and abundance, evoked the Hungry Ghost, a Buddhist cautionary tale of insatiable beings.

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And I saw the ghost in me.

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Ah, but my ghost is a Holy Ghost. A holy haint. An ancestral spirit that needs recognition so that it too can take its place and occupy the space of lessons learned and relationships transformed. In the Root Tradition that I belong to, we feed our ghosts so that they needn’t hunt us. We listen for what they need and we provide that. In that provision, we can bend time, regenerating relationships over vast distances eschewing the boundaries of life and death.

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As a byproduct of them being fed, of having their needs met, these ghosts, our ancestors, give us gifts that enrich ourselves and the world around us. These relationships are regenerative.

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The goal of an ecological and social designer, the goal of a rootworker is to shape the relationships we steward towards regeneration. In social relating, this may look like a process of reparations. This can look like the redistribution of stuff and things, but also, the redistribution of all the forms of capital. Intellectual, cultural, social, financial, natural etc.

In interpersonal relating... this may look like an apology and the redistribution of the most sacred thing. The redistribution of care…

Monthly Updates

Hmmm…Patrons. Beloved beings. How art thou? Are you feed? Are you needy. Are you greedy?

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Welcome, your monthly update has transformed into this newsletter. It’s one of the many changes to this platform that you will see in the upcoming months.

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Thank you so much for supporting my personal growth as a writer, earth educator and small business owner. This platform has and continues to help meet my needs. And in doing so, the abundance that springs from your support is materializing.

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Thank you so much for all of your feedback over this past month. You all beta tested my first event, reviewed my new website and told me about this very platform. I am integrating your needs, wants and desires with delicate care and designing a better way of relating with you all. You will see the evidence of this relating in the changes that I will roll out over the next few months.

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Deeper and More Abundant In-Person Workshops & Special Events

Your material support gives me the energy to offer low-cost, no-cost in-person learning experiences that weave community with various farms across the FrontRange. Shoutout to those of you who attended this weekend s Mullein Medicine-Making event!

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And no worries if couldn't join, I'll be posting an in-depth article about Mullein soon!

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As a result of y’all’s material support, I have more space to pursue intellectual and cultural capital. I’ll be entering a nutrition program in the fall and creating powerful teachings for the Nourish subscribers as a way of redistributing that capital. I am also entering into private mentorship with my favorite Chinese Doctor and permaculturalist Marco Lam to continue my studies in Chinese Medicine. If you’d like to meet Marco and get a taste of our relationship we are coordinating a farm-to-fermentation lunch, tasting and teaching on the art of Jun fermentation.

My skills in Chinese medicine are deepening relationally as I build towards financing formal studies. You all will benefit from the sharpening of my alchemical analysis as I slowly and reverently integrate Chinese Medicine into my framework for people’s medicine and traditional African American Rootwork.

Speaking of which.

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Culturally Affirming Programming This Fall

The ancestors have called and I have responded. I am launching a course combining ethnobotany, culinary arts, nutrition, and food sciences with ancestral reverence called SOULFOOD GENIUS beginning in October. The whole model of Bones Bugs and Botany is regenerative relationships via powerful partnerships (the two bees). This course has been co-created with Chef and Ethnobotanist Justin Robinson for over two years as an experiential healing space for people of the African Diaspora. Join the waitlist for exclusive pricing and share the waitlist with the black people you love. There may be an opportunity for nonblack beloveds to join a self-paced experince, that has you use the lens of soulfood to remember your own culture's culinary genius. Justin and I a brewing up possibilities so let me know if something like this would interest you!

Deeper Medicine Bags This Winter

Thank you to everyone here that sponsored, attended and taught at my very first Winter Herbal Immersion. We have integrated all the feedback, transformed what and how we will deliver content and have set the dates for the second immersion. Take a look:

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Well darlings,

I hope you've enjoyed this new newsletter.

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Bye, bye beloveds.

-a

2544 Joliet St, Aurora, CO 80010
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