Into The Shadows

Tis all too easy in the face of astrofuckery / 2020 / rampant life guzzling change, to feel the regular prickles of despair and despondency. Some of these yards are devastatingly hard. This is a year out of time like no other, its impact searing and irrevocable by design.And whilst this shadowdancer has no plans to lightwash the gong show or haul you back from your edges and their peculiar shimmering magic, life is yet conspiring to flip our age old narratives. The ones that live inside us that have held the ancient decrepit structures in place.Chief among these is how we are conditioned to abandon ourselves to them. To trade our unique progress through life for manic mass productivity. To sacrifice self care on the altar of looking after everyone and everything else first. To relinquish personal autonomy to unequal and harmful systems that do not bear weight should we need to lean on them. To trade sovereignty for the illusion of safety, as fear imprisons us in our homes and heads.The empathy deficit in our world is still staggering, lived experience yet denied or degraded. Care and compassion gated by ideology, politics and whataboutism. Our earth gasping and our hearts breaking at what yet continues. Every excruciating detail of the revolution televised and terrorised.Despite its late stage grabs and stunts, evil authority and mindless consumption alike have had their day and are now going off in the late afternoon sun. We are limping out of unconsciousness and dissociation, which means we are thinking and feeling into spaces that have been locked tight inside us. Each jimmying the lock on our own Pandora's box and blown away by the storm that arises from within.This is your workbench. Where you are called to diligently do your work, the kind that changes the world from the inside out. This revolution is seeded within, held in heart space and shadow, aching for the balm of your tender attention. It demands you prioritise it and protect it. That you do not turn away from yourself again or fall into the easy trap of thinking your work is get everyone else to change.Shadow work is an inside job. I'm here if you need a guide, an ear or just a start. Art: Thistles in a Field by Fedela Brudges, 1875. Described by gardener John Forti as the first woman in his town to wear pants. Hail Fedela, doing life her own way.Words c. Kerrie Basha 2020