11.12.2024 Dear Casey and Compost Kin,

I wrote a single word in my journal on the morning of the election: Breathe.

On Sunday I had made my list of five beings to intentionally gift my attention for the week, my breath being one of them. I knew I would be holding it. Honestly I think we’ve all been collectively holding our breath for months.

I wonder about all the ways those breaths came out on Wednesday morning. Sobs, sighs, screams? Tinged with what? Delight, fear, grief? This morning the local radio played a story about a yelling choir in Portland. There was no mention of the election, but I suspect their membership may soon spike. I did not yell, but I know my long awaited exhale joined a symphony last Wednesday morning.

My breath also came out as the prayer below - a prayer to the decomposers and detritivores. I think we have a lot to learn from them, especially now, about getting dirty and gritty, churning through the dark, metabolizing and working the cracks, finding the ley lines of lignin and liberation. Inhaling the possibilities and pockets of air.

Your letter was a pocket of air for me last week in the midst of the mudslide. Even now, my attention and my breath still feel fractured as we orient ourselves to this new season. The next inhale feels tremendously important. What will we use this beautiful gift of oxygen from our plant kin for? I hope we use it to fill up this void of hurt with stories of abundance and love, resistance and repair, solidarity and solutions.

Inhaling gifts. Exhaling gifts.

With love,

Anna