Swarnali, I am so grateful for your voice in this space. And what is more, since your post where you recorded yourself reading, I read this with your own voice in my mind and it added so much richness! Loved it. So powerful and clear and inspiring. We stand together dear sister. 💜
Aww, I am so touched by your reaction Kelly. We are sisters in words, the kinship we feel is deeply founded in desire for a world we want to see progress. Let’s keep praying, listening, thinking and writing 💜
John, I feel your exhaustion! So good to know that you are taking time to detox. It’s an immense responsibility to take good care of ourselves and people we love in times like this.
Waiting for you to come back stronger from this John. Much love 🕯️💜
“But this is not only about me—courage is not an individual pursuit. If we are to create a world where truth matters, then we must ask: What are you willing to risk for it? What are you willing to create, to name, to refuse?”
This is such an important question that we all must keep asking ourselves and answering with our voices and hands and feet.
I love what you do with your words. In your work I can see so much life. Thank you friend, let us keep reminding each other about the deliberation of choice and on being active and vocal about the world around us, no matter the costs. 💜
You have articulated our cruel and heavy times perfectly, thank you, you write beautifully and i take comfort from it. Courage is everything 🙏
I feel anguish for my children who are just stepping into adulthood, one of which is already fighting for human rights (free Palestine).
Anxious times indeed and it is hard to stay present, but to respond to your question my salvation is community, and sitting in sacred circle with other women. On a micro level, I journal almost consistently, even if it's just a sentence. But more importantly, I (try to) be kind to self.
How beautiful Petrina! I am so touched by your revelation of daily rituals that keeps you grounded. Sitting in circles and practising self compassion is probably the most powerful tool to steer the inner life in right direction.
I am afraid for the future generation too and I strongly believe that my love for this planet alone will lead me out of these dark times, if all else fail. At the risk of sounding cliché, love is the only answer.
Thank you for this, Swarnali. My own words feel inadequate to meet what you have offered us here. I am still digesting it, and deeply appreciating it.
Yes, I share that feeling of exhaustion, frequently. It helps me to go into my backyard and tend to my apricot and plum tree, to water plants, to put my hands in the dirt. It helps to be around beloved friends who understand and often share the exhaustion. We lift each other up. Or we simply keep each other company.
Your daily rituals are such gold mine of practices. I also find a lot of peace in watering my plants. They seem to respond to your affection very well. And being in company of friends who understand your exhaustion is the most precious gift because such presence is truly rare.
My goodness. So much beauty, and pain and wisdom here. There is not a part of me that your essay didn't reach. Thank you. And, yes, I am totally, utterly exhausted. I've never gone into a baby bird season so bereft of energy before. This glacial apocalypse has me bone-tired. The only things I find to help, right now, are gratitude, prayer, my hands on the earth, on trees, releasing tears, reaffirming my love for life, reading things like this...💜
My heart is so full reading your words dearest. It is an insanely hard world to exist in and to make sense of everyday. ‘Bone-tired’ is exactly the word to describe how people who have empathy feel these days. I can feel your exhaustion right through the interface. I hope the baby birds foster you as much as you foster them. Those sweet little pieces of the universe. 💜
Thank you for sharing your ritual of affirmation my friend. You tread in this world ever so gently, with such grace and hope. Thank you for being you 💜
So good to hear you and all you have to say. Your words on attention were particularly helpful for me today. I, like you, am losing mine all the time. Our move makes me laugh because I'm physically moving while the world is slipping and sliding under our feet. I'm also perimenopausal, so my brain and body are in the midst of a monumental transition. Yes, I am distracted! But it has been warm enough to begin to be in the garden. That and my various exercises practices keep me here, right now, where I am. I am grateful that you are also here.
Oh Emily, that sounds like a lot! I have moved a month ago too although locally but god was it hectic! It sounds like you have stepped into a massive transitional phase with perimenopause too. Hope you are giving yourself much needed rest too.
I agree, exercise has the capacity to bring us back to our bodies and contain ourselves in the present moment. I love cycling, it keeps me mindful. Let’s keep practicing my friend. 💜
I will indeed keep practicing. It is a lot, but I seem to specialize in a lot. It’s a theme for my life (and I could say “a lot” more about that too:). Anyway, oddly enough, exercise is a way for me to rest because of its meditative quality. Thank you so much, again.
I totally see you. Must be exhausting my friend to contain multitudes like you do. I am glad to know that exercise helps you well stay rooted and rested. Morning rituals of watering plants, burning incenses and dedicated mindfulness seem to help me a lot 💜
It was lovely to read your words again Swarnali, expressing a weary bewildered determination that I share. What helps me is to create daily, even if for 5 minutes or 2 minutes. Nothing high stakes, not my writing, just something playful. Maybe I come up with a new salad variation. Maybe I doodle. Maybe I sew just one seam on a garment. It helps keep my heart and soul alive. It feels radical, even revolutionary, to value our own small joys, like the flower photo you shared at the start of your post. The joys are fuel for my more overt resistance and rebellion against culture. Thank you. Keep going, my heart friend.
Your description of the joy of youth slowly evaporating in the dawning of reality is gorgeous and very relatable, I feel it deeply.
I love the nod towards films and books as if they had captured and kept prisoner all that evilness, as if it wasn't storming around as powerfully as it always has under colonial, patriarchal, capitalism. I too remember the slow realisation that these books and films had no impact on the powerful and their craving except to hide behind them and pretend to be other than what they are.
Powerful lines: I have inherited not a world of progress but one of repetition—where the same cycles of destruction replay with chilling precision. - Yes, progress, what a tricky sleight of hand is that hollow concept. True progress would be to never have to "sever the systemic apathy ingrained in me through the subtle normalization of violence in school education," because it was never taught in the first place.
Powerful lines: I wonder why children are so subtly exposed to the political ideologies of megalomaniacs but are not taught to focus on the spiritual crises of ordinary human beings overcoming extraordinary circumstances. - Yes, this class based indoctrination to continue the social war instead of contemplating Love and possibility has broken my heart for decades.
Powerful lines: My frustration lies in the specific theft of opportunities to know the people and stories that could have drawn me closer to healing the wounds of my inner landscape, fractured by apathy. - Yes, this is a crime beyond comprehension and unforgivable.
Powerful lines: The most insidious violence is not just in direct oppression but in the quiet normalization of cruelty—a world where horror is dismissed as routine, where suffering is made abstract, where no one is accountable. - Yes, and as you say the only option we have is to "reject the passivity that allows injustice to fester."
There are so many lines and ideas and powerful emotions here, Swarnali that rest in my soul. Right now I am struggling massively with my current employment, the way I am fending off the financial wolf from the door, which is all it is, and I am suffering. But your chapter "Steer My Voice" hit home perfectly. I cannot go on doing what I am doing. I need to change and I need to gather the courage to do that and sometimes reading the words of a wonderful writer like yourself makes all the difference. So I thank you for that my friend.
One last thing. I think the world has been behaving like a three year old having a tantrum, recently, and I too have had my creativity nullified. I have felt tired and low. I've struggled through it through the ritual practice of writing and thinking and remembering it is not my responsibility alone to parent this three year old! I know you've been going through the painful loss of your dear father too Sawrnali, and I'm so sorry for that. But remember that when you write such powerful words and share your kind soul you give us all the strength to keep going.
Jonathan, you are so massively kind. I have always known you to be the kind of person who can see the light where there is none to be found. I feel your pain of “fending off the financial wolf from the door”. I live that reality too. It hurts and exhausts massively. Capitalism is the devil that has convinced us that it doesn’t exist, and we all are its victims because there is always more bills to be paid, more stability to be sought. It’s never enough. Never. I believe creativity is the only way to defy its power over us. And this can be done even from within. You don’t need to leave your job for this. Keep writing even if picking up your pen hurts after a day long toil, that’s how you defy the systems from within.
I understand that the cost can be huge (physical and mental exhaustion) but the price of not doing it is bigger. And as you said, you are not alone responsible to parent the 3 yo child that the world has become. It’s all of our responsibility together. Which is why community is important, mindful conversations are important, deep listening is important, holding steadfast to love is important, unreserved compassion and support for ourselves and our fellow creators is important. That’s what we are doing here. Fostering this beckoning voices of revolution- you and I, and all of our friends in substack family.
Thank you for writing and voicing in this too grim a world my friend. We won’t extinguish, till we extinguish. More power to you 💜
i love this, thank you for writing it and I'm glad your words found me. Reminds me of something I saw from someone else (wish I could remember who) saying that to live creatively is to live with curiosity. Choosing to be curious instead of judgemental, we are free-er than how we are taught to live.
So beautiful and accurate Kiri. I totally agree. In pursuit of total freedom, creativity and curiosity are two most important qualities to harness. The ultimate freedom is when we are free from our own expectations of who we are, and such expectations can only be broken by doing something creatively challenging.
I don’t know why, but I could not access the entirety of this essay when you published it a month ago (meaning, my attention could not retain it, not that there was some technical issue). But today I came back to it and I’m so glad I did. I needed to feel the power of your words today. My attention has been shredded these past months, and when I put my phone away in another room and sit with myself, it’s the terror enacted by powers I’ve been conditioned to rely on for “safety.” It’s the smothering of all that is of value on platforms like this, where our voices kindled a connection but the noise threatens to smother the flame. I’m trying to hold my body in the world that is— the coming of age arch you describe at the beginning of piece resonates so powerfully with me—and it’s like trying to hold a poem that keeps flying apart (I’m echoing a poem I read in college with that language).
I think of you often, Swarnali. I feel a deep kinship with your words, and with the silence that stretches between them.
Shaina, I am so touched. I feel in my bones the tearing of attention you describe so poetically here. Modern digital networking apps validate so much of our fear of silence and prey on our deep need for connection. I believe true rebellion is showing up for each other in these sacred spaces of silence—just as you always do for me. I admire that so deeply.
In fact, I feel profoundly respected and seen when readers take the time to engage with my words in their own sacred, meditative spaces of reflection. That’s the way they are meant to be read—because it’s in those spaces that we feel the presence of the writer and find true kinship in their words.
I am so grateful that you see my words as companions in your meditation. It honours me beyond measure.
May we all find the strength to silently show up for one another and keep leaving our affirmations as we travel together towards the future we aspire to inhabit—no matter how mercurial the world seems, or how much stranger and more disconnected it becomes.
May we always belong to each other—and deeply to ourselves—within these sacred, meditative spaces amidst all the noise.
Swarnali, I am so grateful for your voice in this space. And what is more, since your post where you recorded yourself reading, I read this with your own voice in my mind and it added so much richness! Loved it. So powerful and clear and inspiring. We stand together dear sister. 💜
Aww, I am so touched by your reaction Kelly. We are sisters in words, the kinship we feel is deeply founded in desire for a world we want to see progress. Let’s keep praying, listening, thinking and writing 💜
Yes, also exhausted. Daily walks help. Now on vacation for a couple of weeks. It takes a few days just to detox.
Thank you for this, Swarna. Take good care. 🕯
John, I feel your exhaustion! So good to know that you are taking time to detox. It’s an immense responsibility to take good care of ourselves and people we love in times like this.
Waiting for you to come back stronger from this John. Much love 🕯️💜
“But this is not only about me—courage is not an individual pursuit. If we are to create a world where truth matters, then we must ask: What are you willing to risk for it? What are you willing to create, to name, to refuse?”
This is such an important question that we all must keep asking ourselves and answering with our voices and hands and feet.
Thank you for stating it so clearly here.
I love what you do with your words. In your work I can see so much life. Thank you friend, let us keep reminding each other about the deliberation of choice and on being active and vocal about the world around us, no matter the costs. 💜
You have articulated our cruel and heavy times perfectly, thank you, you write beautifully and i take comfort from it. Courage is everything 🙏
I feel anguish for my children who are just stepping into adulthood, one of which is already fighting for human rights (free Palestine).
Anxious times indeed and it is hard to stay present, but to respond to your question my salvation is community, and sitting in sacred circle with other women. On a micro level, I journal almost consistently, even if it's just a sentence. But more importantly, I (try to) be kind to self.
How beautiful Petrina! I am so touched by your revelation of daily rituals that keeps you grounded. Sitting in circles and practising self compassion is probably the most powerful tool to steer the inner life in right direction.
I am afraid for the future generation too and I strongly believe that my love for this planet alone will lead me out of these dark times, if all else fail. At the risk of sounding cliché, love is the only answer.
Thank you friend for coming here 💜
Thank you for this, Swarnali. My own words feel inadequate to meet what you have offered us here. I am still digesting it, and deeply appreciating it.
Yes, I share that feeling of exhaustion, frequently. It helps me to go into my backyard and tend to my apricot and plum tree, to water plants, to put my hands in the dirt. It helps to be around beloved friends who understand and often share the exhaustion. We lift each other up. Or we simply keep each other company.
Maia so glad you find your way to this.
Your daily rituals are such gold mine of practices. I also find a lot of peace in watering my plants. They seem to respond to your affection very well. And being in company of friends who understand your exhaustion is the most precious gift because such presence is truly rare.
My goodness. So much beauty, and pain and wisdom here. There is not a part of me that your essay didn't reach. Thank you. And, yes, I am totally, utterly exhausted. I've never gone into a baby bird season so bereft of energy before. This glacial apocalypse has me bone-tired. The only things I find to help, right now, are gratitude, prayer, my hands on the earth, on trees, releasing tears, reaffirming my love for life, reading things like this...💜
My heart is so full reading your words dearest. It is an insanely hard world to exist in and to make sense of everyday. ‘Bone-tired’ is exactly the word to describe how people who have empathy feel these days. I can feel your exhaustion right through the interface. I hope the baby birds foster you as much as you foster them. Those sweet little pieces of the universe. 💜
Thank you for sharing your ritual of affirmation my friend. You tread in this world ever so gently, with such grace and hope. Thank you for being you 💜
So good to hear you and all you have to say. Your words on attention were particularly helpful for me today. I, like you, am losing mine all the time. Our move makes me laugh because I'm physically moving while the world is slipping and sliding under our feet. I'm also perimenopausal, so my brain and body are in the midst of a monumental transition. Yes, I am distracted! But it has been warm enough to begin to be in the garden. That and my various exercises practices keep me here, right now, where I am. I am grateful that you are also here.
Oh Emily, that sounds like a lot! I have moved a month ago too although locally but god was it hectic! It sounds like you have stepped into a massive transitional phase with perimenopause too. Hope you are giving yourself much needed rest too.
I agree, exercise has the capacity to bring us back to our bodies and contain ourselves in the present moment. I love cycling, it keeps me mindful. Let’s keep practicing my friend. 💜
I will indeed keep practicing. It is a lot, but I seem to specialize in a lot. It’s a theme for my life (and I could say “a lot” more about that too:). Anyway, oddly enough, exercise is a way for me to rest because of its meditative quality. Thank you so much, again.
I totally see you. Must be exhausting my friend to contain multitudes like you do. I am glad to know that exercise helps you well stay rooted and rested. Morning rituals of watering plants, burning incenses and dedicated mindfulness seem to help me a lot 💜
Those rituals sound wonderful. Yes, multitudes:). Blessings.
Beautiful reflections Swarnali ❤️
Thank you Vanja 💜
It was lovely to read your words again Swarnali, expressing a weary bewildered determination that I share. What helps me is to create daily, even if for 5 minutes or 2 minutes. Nothing high stakes, not my writing, just something playful. Maybe I come up with a new salad variation. Maybe I doodle. Maybe I sew just one seam on a garment. It helps keep my heart and soul alive. It feels radical, even revolutionary, to value our own small joys, like the flower photo you shared at the start of your post. The joys are fuel for my more overt resistance and rebellion against culture. Thank you. Keep going, my heart friend.
You are not alone in all this. Thank you for sharing your beautiful writing and for your courage to keep on creating.
Thank you for finding your way to this. More power to you to keep on creating too! 💜
Your description of the joy of youth slowly evaporating in the dawning of reality is gorgeous and very relatable, I feel it deeply.
I love the nod towards films and books as if they had captured and kept prisoner all that evilness, as if it wasn't storming around as powerfully as it always has under colonial, patriarchal, capitalism. I too remember the slow realisation that these books and films had no impact on the powerful and their craving except to hide behind them and pretend to be other than what they are.
Powerful lines: I have inherited not a world of progress but one of repetition—where the same cycles of destruction replay with chilling precision. - Yes, progress, what a tricky sleight of hand is that hollow concept. True progress would be to never have to "sever the systemic apathy ingrained in me through the subtle normalization of violence in school education," because it was never taught in the first place.
Powerful lines: I wonder why children are so subtly exposed to the political ideologies of megalomaniacs but are not taught to focus on the spiritual crises of ordinary human beings overcoming extraordinary circumstances. - Yes, this class based indoctrination to continue the social war instead of contemplating Love and possibility has broken my heart for decades.
Powerful lines: My frustration lies in the specific theft of opportunities to know the people and stories that could have drawn me closer to healing the wounds of my inner landscape, fractured by apathy. - Yes, this is a crime beyond comprehension and unforgivable.
Powerful lines: The most insidious violence is not just in direct oppression but in the quiet normalization of cruelty—a world where horror is dismissed as routine, where suffering is made abstract, where no one is accountable. - Yes, and as you say the only option we have is to "reject the passivity that allows injustice to fester."
There are so many lines and ideas and powerful emotions here, Swarnali that rest in my soul. Right now I am struggling massively with my current employment, the way I am fending off the financial wolf from the door, which is all it is, and I am suffering. But your chapter "Steer My Voice" hit home perfectly. I cannot go on doing what I am doing. I need to change and I need to gather the courage to do that and sometimes reading the words of a wonderful writer like yourself makes all the difference. So I thank you for that my friend.
One last thing. I think the world has been behaving like a three year old having a tantrum, recently, and I too have had my creativity nullified. I have felt tired and low. I've struggled through it through the ritual practice of writing and thinking and remembering it is not my responsibility alone to parent this three year old! I know you've been going through the painful loss of your dear father too Sawrnali, and I'm so sorry for that. But remember that when you write such powerful words and share your kind soul you give us all the strength to keep going.
Jonathan, you are so massively kind. I have always known you to be the kind of person who can see the light where there is none to be found. I feel your pain of “fending off the financial wolf from the door”. I live that reality too. It hurts and exhausts massively. Capitalism is the devil that has convinced us that it doesn’t exist, and we all are its victims because there is always more bills to be paid, more stability to be sought. It’s never enough. Never. I believe creativity is the only way to defy its power over us. And this can be done even from within. You don’t need to leave your job for this. Keep writing even if picking up your pen hurts after a day long toil, that’s how you defy the systems from within.
I understand that the cost can be huge (physical and mental exhaustion) but the price of not doing it is bigger. And as you said, you are not alone responsible to parent the 3 yo child that the world has become. It’s all of our responsibility together. Which is why community is important, mindful conversations are important, deep listening is important, holding steadfast to love is important, unreserved compassion and support for ourselves and our fellow creators is important. That’s what we are doing here. Fostering this beckoning voices of revolution- you and I, and all of our friends in substack family.
Thank you for writing and voicing in this too grim a world my friend. We won’t extinguish, till we extinguish. More power to you 💜
"I will unweave the bystander from my soul."
This ❤
Thank you Rena 💜
You are the inner voice that must be heard. I love your writing Swarnali, your attitude, your strength. Thank you.
These lines:
To create is to reject the passivity that allows injustice to fester.
I will unweave the bystander from my soul.
They are a poem unto themselves. Thank you. I'm going to do my usual with your writing and read this again and come back to make a proper comment.
Thank you Jonathan. This is high praise coming from you for I admire your craft so much. I shall wait for your thoughts my friend…
i love this, thank you for writing it and I'm glad your words found me. Reminds me of something I saw from someone else (wish I could remember who) saying that to live creatively is to live with curiosity. Choosing to be curious instead of judgemental, we are free-er than how we are taught to live.
So beautiful and accurate Kiri. I totally agree. In pursuit of total freedom, creativity and curiosity are two most important qualities to harness. The ultimate freedom is when we are free from our own expectations of who we are, and such expectations can only be broken by doing something creatively challenging.
Thank you for finding me. I hope you stay 💜
I don’t know why, but I could not access the entirety of this essay when you published it a month ago (meaning, my attention could not retain it, not that there was some technical issue). But today I came back to it and I’m so glad I did. I needed to feel the power of your words today. My attention has been shredded these past months, and when I put my phone away in another room and sit with myself, it’s the terror enacted by powers I’ve been conditioned to rely on for “safety.” It’s the smothering of all that is of value on platforms like this, where our voices kindled a connection but the noise threatens to smother the flame. I’m trying to hold my body in the world that is— the coming of age arch you describe at the beginning of piece resonates so powerfully with me—and it’s like trying to hold a poem that keeps flying apart (I’m echoing a poem I read in college with that language).
I think of you often, Swarnali. I feel a deep kinship with your words, and with the silence that stretches between them.
Shaina, I am so touched. I feel in my bones the tearing of attention you describe so poetically here. Modern digital networking apps validate so much of our fear of silence and prey on our deep need for connection. I believe true rebellion is showing up for each other in these sacred spaces of silence—just as you always do for me. I admire that so deeply.
In fact, I feel profoundly respected and seen when readers take the time to engage with my words in their own sacred, meditative spaces of reflection. That’s the way they are meant to be read—because it’s in those spaces that we feel the presence of the writer and find true kinship in their words.
I am so grateful that you see my words as companions in your meditation. It honours me beyond measure.
May we all find the strength to silently show up for one another and keep leaving our affirmations as we travel together towards the future we aspire to inhabit—no matter how mercurial the world seems, or how much stranger and more disconnected it becomes.
May we always belong to each other—and deeply to ourselves—within these sacred, meditative spaces amidst all the noise.
Much love to you, sister.💜
Art must resist doom,
risk image, verse, word for world.
Brave hope meets horrors.
Yes 🙌