it has always belonged to you: a tale of return

Sweet people, this is Pam writing to you from a ray of sunlight in Emily’s kitchen.

We have been swimming in this flush of heat and the kids have color in their cheeks. All our clothes are drying together on the line. The whole world is in a riot of spring joy here in Oxford - flowers spilling out of every corner, trees quietly exploding in pure happiness, the scent of lilacs in my mouth like sugar every time we leave the house. We took a giggly walk by the river upon arrival and threw stalks of sticky cleavers at each other. There are plans to make elderflower champagne. The hawthorns are in full flower. May is upon us.

The ordinary extraordinary of heaven.

There is nothing like talking with someone you deeply love every single week via the disembodied miracle of video chat and then getting them in your arms, finally, in a soft tangle of children and everyday errands and cooking and hilarity and sharing and epic hospitality, all of the physical realities of togetherness that no amount of video chatting can ever touch. My happiness is running deep right now.

And: it is incredibly weird to feel this kind of feral joy while everything catches fire back at home in the US. The emergency has arrived.

I do not need to go into details about this, as I’m sure you are as attuned to the unfolding as you wish to be, and I know, you know, we all know: we lean into love and humor and beauty everywhere we find it in times like these. Even now. Especially now. Strategically, defiantly, with commitment.

And, even knowing that, this is a very strange straddle of feeling.

The world spirals on. Tomorrow’s crop will show what seed we chose to sow today. I’m finding it necessary to take heart right now in everything that feels fully human, near and far. People everywhere are resisting and refusing and organizing with imagination and courage, leveraging beauty and relationship and all that we hold dear and I’m heartened by the staunch refusal to collapse, the networks of communications holding tension and attention throughout our communities like delicate spiderwebs, transmitting minute signals of tone. I’m bolstered by the result of Canada’s elections this week, by the constant clarion calls from people like this wonderful woman, by the intensity of work and the uncompromising joy and play that meets this moment.

Everywhere, we fight for what we love.

This week, in that spirit, I’m teaching Take Back the Speculum.

I’m doing it because one way I can participate in the fight is to spring the cages of belief and experience that keep us feeling small and frozen in our bodies, as the revolution happens in our bodies or not at all, and because I know in my bones that the thin tip of the wedge that sprang my life open, the thing that radicalized me, was reclaiming the speculum from its current use and its brutal history, elevating its liberatory potential and its application, in our own hands, directly to the existential center, the sexual and reproductive (and primary political football) aspects of our bodies. This is what My Body, My Choice means to me - not something abstract, or resting in someone else’s expertise. Mine.

The speculum is what made it clear to me that we have all inherited a system of beliefs that has us submitting to our own disenfranchisement and subjugation without even realizing it - and then instantly made it clear that we never, ever have to submit to that ever again, nor anyone else in our company.

It ends with us. We bring home what was always ours.

That shift in power has affected everything in me. It has changed how I respond to authority in all of its guises, how I recognize my kindred people, how I organize, how I select my fights. It has changed what I know to be possible, and has brought true agency over my own body within my reach.

Doing this together in community is very, very different than doing it alone, as one could with a book or with therapy. We are social animals, and when isolation is a central part of the poison, togetherness is always part of the antidote. Being witnessed and witnessing others in the spirit of mutual support is a profound act of repair. In this way we build culture, with power, as we intend.

So, this is your invitation.

If you would like to come unstuck in these ways, if you want to feel what’s possible, please join us. The doors are open.

Take Back the Speculum is running this Friday evening May 2 in Oxford and this Sunday afternoon May 4 in London. There are spots for both classes still open.

As of late last night, we are running a TBTS on May 12 in Brooklyn, NY - you, sweet readers, are the first to know. If you’re in NYC or anywhere near and want to come, you’re invited!

And TBTS will take place live in LA, and then online for friends in far flung places, in June.

If any of this speaks to you, and you could use a solid course-correct of fascination, mind blowing information and profound empowerment at this time, please reach out.

All info about class can be found here.

XOXOXO

Pamela