Beloved friends,
As I write this it's a beautiful summer afternoon. I hung a new birdfeeder this morning, our sixth – a nyjer seed feeder has joined the nectar feeder on the front deck just beyond the loveseat where I write. The little pine siskins have already found it. I'm hopeful that the goldfinches, house finches, purple finches, and chickadees will, too. The nectar feeder is busy with baby hummingbirds, so tiny even for hummers. There is either a group of douglas squirrels or one very busy one who keep dashing over the deck; I hear their little footsteps dance across the boards just before they appear at the birdbath for a drink. The volunteer daisies that came up where we had to bring in a backhoe our first year to dig up and repair the septic system are in our third year taller than my knee and all in bloom, and the foxglove, OH, the FOXGLOVE, is taller than I am, and I'm 5'9". We're slowly ripping down the big ugly hogwire fence around the house and letting the wild in.
The folks across the meadow were away for a bit so I traipsed through the meadow a couple times a day to feed their cats. Upon return they brought me shells from their trip – big, lovely ones, so this time instead of hammering them to smithereens I laid them out whole to line the edge of the path.
The moon is enormous! Did you see her full rise last night? She'll be huge again tonite. We spend lingering evenings on the deck watching her rise above the Cascade mountains. In summer, when she is lower in the sky, her path arcs across our bedroom windows all night and we moonbathe in our sleep.
In the middle of writing this, my neighbor messaged with her annual invitation to come to her peony patch and cut some. I was chastised the first two years for not cutting enough, so this year I cut an armload; some of them are in the image above.
The cusp of summer holds so much sweetness. The natural world is filled with blossom, the berries are coming in, there are baby bunnies in the driveway and fawns in the bushes and there are festivals and gatherings of all sorts afoot here in the season where it is easy to be outdoors. My heart is so full! And then... there is the global polycrisis, flaming away, and the agony of all of that. Goodness gracious.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about hypernormalization, how I was observing it in myself and in the culture generally. Lots of folks reached out to discuss it, and I was buoyed and brightened by our sharing. Thank you. If you haven't read about it yet, this is my simplest summary of hypernormalization:
Often called The This is Fine Dog, he's the work of KC Green, who spoke to NPR about him a while ago. The New York Times ran another article that explores hypernormalization; this one is more personal, Russian and American journalist M. Gessen's comparison of her experiences in Russia and the United States. A useful read. Thanks to Kirsten for this and for the steady stream of thoughtful journalism suggestions with which she enriches our community.
As a followup to the hypernormalization conversation and to support you well in this moment of rising intensity, I have lots of resources this week, below in both the Resources and Resistance sections.
Love,
Dahlia
Resources
For Joy: a One-Day Annual Global Game
"The next Game of Shrooms happens on June 14th, 2025. On that day, artists from all over the world hide their original mushroom-themed art works in public places then they give hints (often on social media) for others to find AND KEEP! Game of Shrooms, started in 2019 by Attaboy, is like an Easter Egg Hunt for art and celebrates the spirit of unexpected surprises. Artists and gatherers from Hong Kong, Berlin, Japan, the UK, India, Russia, Switzerland, Tasmania, the US, and many more participate in this world-wide event every year. Envision a collaborative art movement spanning the globe, free from religious dogma, where people actively create, share, and encounter moments of absolute freakin’ wonder."
For Wellness: Spirituality and Depression
Not new, but new to me, and incredible: a 2014 study found a correlation between spirituality, brain health, and lessened risk of depression. A powerful incentive to center spirituality in our living, and particularly useful information for folks raising children in families with a genetic predisposition to depression.
"The researchers found that, independent of familial depressive risk, the importance of religion or spirituality, but not church attendance, correlated with thicker cortices in the left and right parietal and occipital regions, the right hemisphere mesial frontal lobe, and the left hemisphere cuneus and precuneus. Compared with the low-risk group, the effects of importance on cortical thickness were significantly stronger in the high-risk group, particularly in the mesial wall of the left hemisphere, the region in which a thinner cortex was previously linked to familial risk of depressive illness." “A thicker cortex associated with a high importance of religion or spirituality may confer resilience to the development of depressive illness in individuals at high familial risk for major depression,” the authors conclude. Quoted from JAMA Psychiatry. Here's the study itself.
With Dahlia
Feeling called to increase your self-support? I'm here and I'd love to connect! My Workshops for Loving are, to my eye, the heart of my work in the world: we practice meditation and talk about how to be human together. Summer's session is Energetic Integrity, a form of practice that emphasizes somatic experience and visualization to help regulate our emotional well-being. A longtime practitioner of the technique we'll be working with says:
"I really love this practice. I love the feeling of home, safety and comfort exploring the field. I feel nourished and replenished. I like how I feel afterwards. I like how I can escape from life around me for a little while, but still be within myself. I like how I'm getting to know myself better. I like that I have more trust in myself to handle thoughts, feelings, situations. I like that I am better able to sit with the impermanence of life, both for the good and the bad." - Amelia Urban Romaine, MA, ATR-BC, LPC, Grief and Traumatic Loss Therapist
You can find full information here. There's a free preview this Saturday June 14. All are welcome. I'd love to see you there! We'll meet from 8-9:30 Pacific Time right here. Folks often ask my permission to share with others about my work, and the answer is always: Yes, please! This is how I eat. Thank you for support of my work in the world. If you want to join the preview but can't make it, it'll be recorded. Drop me a line if you want the link sooner than the next newsletter!
If you're feeling more called toward movement, my longstanding Morning Series yoga sessions have a couple of open spots right now. We meet from 7-8:15am on Mondays and Wednesdays for a practice which aims to strengthen and stretch the body and mind. By subscription along the wheel of the year, 6 weeks at a time. You're welcome to drop in to try it out; just drop me a line!
And if you can't make a commitment but want to connect here and there, the weekly Meditation Gathering on Tuesdays from 8-8:55 is a sweet place, and free and open to all.
Sustenance
I recently committed to reading Rebecca Solnit's new book, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain. That's it on my loveseat! I'm excited to dive in and I'd love to share that experience with you if you want to read along at home. I am not able to host a full Community Reading in summer, but I'd love to host a discussion gathering. If you're interested, drop me a line! I'll plan a time for this if there is interest.
Resistance
No Kings Day: Saturday June 14
This weekend there will be peaceful protests all across the United States during our President's military parade. If you are concerned about ANYTHING that is happening in our nation, protesting is a wonderful action. 99% of most protests is joyful: people gather, sing, dance, march, admire each others' witty signs. You don't need a witty sign to attend; just GO. Show up. Be a peaceful, joyful presence for good. I'll be in the streets in my small town with my favorite sign. You're welcome to copy it!
Community member Jenifer Fernandez Ancona is a co-founder and the leader of narrative and political strategy for Way to Win, "a donor network that invests in data-driven strategies to fund new media and grassroots efforts to win long-term political change." Way to Win has put together a TV ad to encourage participation in the No Kings protests. Sharing it is a great way to encourage folks who don't usually protest to get out there!
Feeling Distraught? Help with De-catastrophizing
Amanda is an amateur historian whose "Amanda's Mild Takes" can really take the edge off. She's clear, down to earth, and a wonderful remedy for mental spirals. Here's a great example of her work, in which she lays out all the ways the president is having a very bad week this week. You can follow her on Instagram or TikTok. Slate had a great interview with her (and 12ft.io is great for viewing there.)
"Educated resistance through humor is what I’m trying to get at. There are so many studies of authoritarians and dictators in history that show that making fun of them is one of the most effective methods of resistance, because the last thing someone who is an authoritarian wants to be perceived as is silly or weak. And Donald Trump is both of those things. He’s such a clown, and he is ruling by executive order because he’s too weak to get anything done through Congress. It is really important to me that we let off this messaging of panic and “America is doomed” and “the Constitution is dead,” both because it’s not true and because that is obeying in advance.
If you position Trump as what he actually is, which is a desperate, ridiculous figure trying to cling on to power, and you come at it from a position of knowing how the government operates, and knowing historically how we have resisted moments like this before, then I think that that puts us as a party in a much better position to resist what’s happening right now."
Laughter as Medicine and Weapon
Sub-Radio has an absolutely hysterical riff on Cake's "Going the Distance" which mocks JD Vance. Laughter helps to break the spell of powerlessness and lifts our hearts!
Ride for Palestine
"is an annual fundraising project of the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA). MECA works to protect the lives, rights, and well-being of children in Palestine and refugee camps in Lebanon." MECA has a 4/4 rating on Charity Navigator. The ride takes place on July 20 in Berkeley, CA. Thanks to Jessie W.
Vote Forward: Letter Writing Now
Vote Forward organizes get out the vote letter-writing campaigns. They do research on their efforts and adapt their techniques based on this research. They've just opened up a new campaign to write to Pennsylvania voters about a state Supreme Court election. I'm signed up!
Feeding the teacher
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