Yesterday I informed James that our relationship, which will be 29 in the autumn, had hit a new threshold: I'd just rattled off his social security number automatically without thought or reference. Why do I use this number often enough to know it by heart? Four times a year I make a bank transfer to the federal government, my quarterly income tax payment as a self-employed person. On the form for making this payment, you provide name and address for a particular tax year to verify your identity. A few years ago this form stopped accepting my own name from me for verification. It requires me now to give the information for the "primary spouse". That is James.
Why does the government need to tell me every 3 months that I am secondary? Is James primary because he is male or because he earns more money than I do? Why does either of us have higher status than the other in the eyes of the government? Surely it is not a horrific burden to simply allow us to be equal and attach both of our names to our records. Both our names must be there. Why do I need to be secondary? While I'm at it with WTF IRS (which we made, it's our IRS!) Why am I paying a higher percentage of my income tax than billionaires? Why do we HAVE billionaires at all when we could instead have food, shelter, and medical care for everyone? When I finished paying my taxes, I was angry. Why are we doing it like this? We are the world; we choose this world; why are we making THIS?
* deep breath *
Today I did the fun part: after I pay my taxes, I pay my tithe, making a donation of 5% of my gross income for that season. (For my new young readers: If you aren't familiar with "gross income", that means all the money I was paid. Sometimes people give a percentage of profit – the money left after expenses are paid–, and sometimes they give from the gross – all the money that came in, period. I do it the second way.) For spring, I – and therefore we if you have supported my work with payment – gave to the Food Bank Growers, an organization in my community which grows, gathers, preserves, and cooks food which is donated to the Jefferson County Food Bank and our local schools to feed my community. I love making this seasonal donation, and pairing it with paying my taxes is a helpful form of habit stacking, making sure I follow through on my good intentions by linking the voluntary action to the essential one.
Mary Hunt • January 31, 2026
I am often asked how people can stay awake to all of this: how can we remember what is wrong in the world and refuse to normalize it, hold the vision of a better, kinder, gentler, safer, healthier world, and also get up and function in the world we have now? That is what I aim to offer every day: space for meditation, yoga, and the consideration of how we go about our living in community and in private counsel. Opportunities to touch in with yourself at the source level, to feel your values, to let your emotions and thoughts flow and form.
I also find it deeply useful to thread reminders into the substance of my life. I began this 20 years ago when grieving for the death of my best friend from college. I still had all my grandparents. I was allergic to fur as a child and the pets I'd lost were goldfish. So this was my first reckoning with grief, and it took me to my knees. Well, literally, it took me to the floor, often, wailing, pounding the ground. Someone gifted me words that seemed useful, but were beyond my full grasp, so I taped them to the inside of the door to the bathroom closet beside the mirror where I would see them every morning. I've always collected words to guide my living – fittingly, in a book gifted to me by that beloved friend, but I needed to see these words all the time in that moment of suffering. Vicki, it is so sweet to know that you who gifted these words to me are reading them now; thank you again. This is Kahlil Gibran:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so much you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy. And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Reading this every day, over and over, helped. And in those moments where I understood anew the fact of my mortality, I began the meaning-making work of grief. I taped more and more to the inside of the closet door. Over the 13 years we lived in that house, the whole door got covered. In the early days of social media I posted a photograph of the door and James was horrified, saying, "It's like you posted our brain to the internet!" Happily, his reaction was brief and we share the words gladly now. If you'd come to that house when I lived there, I would've invited you to open the closet door and read. When we moved out I wrote them all down, so you can read them still if you wish. I still refer to them often, did so just this week in my Workshop for Living. Reading the words morning after morning over years, they seeped in. I know so many by heart; they are woven into me. It's a kind of personal scripture, a way of saying: This is what matters to me. This is how I want to see the world. This is how I want to be. Day upon day upon day.
In the apartment where we spent a year after that, there was no closet, and I knew we were only passing through, so I taped what caught my heart then right to the big bathroom mirror. Next we lived on a boat, where they were on the inside of the little cupboard you had to open to get a piece of toilet paper. Now back on land they are sprawling: on the side of the fridge, inside of the pantry door, on the bulletin board in the temple. As I type this I'm realizing that I miss seeing them first thing at waking and I'm resolving to put them in the bathroom again, too. There isn't any closet so I'll just put them on the small wall beside the mirror.
You might notice that most of the little slips of paper look alike – they're from the Zen Page-A-Day Calendar, given to me by my mother-in-love many years ago and purchased every year since. James and I read it aloud each day, discuss it, save the ones that really catch us. When we travel I rip off the pages for the days we'll be away. When we are apart, whoever is at home texts a photo to the other. It's a tiny way to thread spiritual contemplation into our mundane living: the calendar, the discussion, the accumulation and long-term contemplation of the expressions which we want to seep into the fabric of who we are. The ordinary work of meaning and value.
I can recite the words to a zillion pop songs and a tremendous amount of the script of The Big Lebowski. Mainstream culture is all over, and it seeps in, too. If I want my inner world, that which guides me, to be filled with things that truly reflect my values, daily contemplation is a way to bring it about. The sacred words I contemplate are a personal scripture I am creating as I live. I hold it close, in the spaces where I live every day, and sit with it every day. It helps. It reminds me of who I want to be and what I hope for for all of us. That gets me on the mat, calls me to close my eyes and turn inward for respite and connection, urges me to open my eyes to take action toward the world I want. We're making it, every day, in all of our choices. Each of us and all of us.
These are the words I went searching for yesterday for my Workshop, for someone seeking guidance about the cultivation of writing as a practice. They live inside the pantry door. Julia Alvarez, living Dominican-American writer:
“For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world."
This to, me, is a spiritual life, too. A life of connection and meaning, like the connection I share with you. Thank you.
Love,
Dahlia
Resources
We Are Not Alone
Researchers have documented a new level of cognitive capacity for bees, documenting the first example of goal-directed problem-solving by an insect. And did you know that ants can recognize themselves in a mirror? Dogs and cats don't, but in 2015, Marie-Claire and Roger Cammaerts proved that ants do! Insect research is showing that our old assumption that it was the size of human brains that gave us certain abilities which we thought were special is not correct after all, and our abilities are more common than we told ourselves for a while there. Thanks to Kirsten for the tip on bees. If you see science about animal cognition, send it my way; it's one of my favorite topics! With every little fact we gather we affirm the knowledge that we are not alone in consciousness and that life is astonishing.
The Trees are Together, Too
Another place we had it wrong was in our conception of trees, which we used to imagine as individual and separate entities. Now, however, we know that trees, just like us, pass each other nutrients. They do this both within and between species. Trees warn each other of pests, which allows the chance to secrete defensive compounds. If this topic interests you, the Mother Tree Project and Program is a fantastic resource.
"The Mother Tree Project is a landmark scientific research experiment launched in 2015 by Dr. Suzanne Simard. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive forest experiments in North America, designed to investigate forest connectivity, tree communication, and regenerative forest management in the face of climate change. The project includes a network of long-term research sites located across British Columbia that test how different retention levels and seedling sources affect forest regeneration, biodiversity, and carbon storage.
The Mother Tree Program builds on this foundation. It encompasses the broader set of research, outreach, and knowledge-sharing activities that have grown out of the original project. These efforts include new field studies, student training, public events, workshops, multimedia storytelling, and collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities."
Dr. Simard's book When the Forest Breathes is on my wishlist; looks incredible!
Thanks to Sarah
The Groove
For weeks now our mainstay album has been Mexican Institute of Sound's 2012 Politico. (Bandcamp, Spotify) Mexican Institute of Sound is the electronic music project of Mexico City-based DJ and producer Camilo Lara. If you saw someone driving along with one arm out of a black convertible, doing a weird little one-arm dance, that might be me.
Less Pain
Like many healers and deep thinkers, my nervous system is wired with an unusual degree of sensitivity. And you know that description that someone old is "long in the tooth"? It refers to the way that gums tend to recede over time as we age. The newly exposed tooth doesn't have as thick an enamel coat, so it's more sensitive. At 56, I've been feeling this! I've been using nanohydroxyapatite, a nano-sized form of calcium phosphate, for over a year now, and it is amazing. As the enamel on my front teeth wore thin, too, they begun to get translucent, and are now visibly more opaque and whiter. They are also less sensitive. Yesterday when I had my teeth cleaned I tried what I read a dentist online suggesting – 600mg of ibuprofen an hour before my appointment – and holy everything, I did not wince once! My hygienist told me she takes it before any dental appointment. What an improvement.
Resistance
Changes at Vote Forward
Vote Forward is an organization that I learned about from several of you, and who I've been glad to work with myself over the last few years. Their work in the past has consisted of letter-writing campaigns to improve voter turnout, accompanied by research into the results of the work. In the 2024 presidential election, they found that the usual campaign did not improve turnout as in the past, so they are doing more research and experiments with their action.
"Vote Forward is evolving from a letter-writing program into a hub for volunteer-driven action that strengthens our democracy. Some of the campaigns will focus on getting voters to the polls, as we’ve always done. Some of them will also newly address deeper challenges that shape voters’ participation in elections and trust in government. Volunteers will still be writing letters where and when the evidence shows they continue to have strong effects—like in races that garner less national attention, and when letters bring something new to the voter (like when it’s a voter’s first time receiving a letter or there’s something novel about the experience or message)."
If you're looking for a place to get involved, this moment of change could be an interesting time to step up! They have a couple of new programs going as well as several of those more targeted races where letter-writing is still useful. Several are open for signups now, with letters not needing to be mailed until autumn. I signed up for 20 North Carolina voters while I was on the site gathering this information. Want to join me? It's easy, and when I sit at the dining table writing brief, fervent letters about democracy I feel connected to the efforts of people throughout history, sitting at their tables, trying. Learn more.
Here's the doc where I collect resistance options if you want more!
Supporting me in supporting you
This is entirely human work – my work, done by hand, with my own mind and heart. I do not use AI in the creation of what I offer you. I don't have one. The half day I devote to creating this each week is a labor of love for which I earn about $15/hr. You can chip in on giving me a raise! You could make a one-time donation of any size, or upgrade to a paid subscription for as little as $5/month.
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PS. Hello and welcome to my newest readers, who have the distinction of being the first people to subscribe to my newsletter who came to my yoga class before they were born. We rolled around on the floor when they were in their mama's belly! It's so sweet to think of you hearing my voice in that way then and in this way now. I'm glad to have you here, S&P! Welcome welcome to all new readers. It's wonderful to weave with you in living. Thank you for listening.
