the holding both place.

radical love note | a weekly bonus for radical love letter subscribers

Hey y’all, a quick preamble: I wrote today’s note over the weekend while on a retreat, and just didn’t carve out time to send it out. For new subscribers, the radical love note (as opposed to the radical love letters essay) usually goes out to paid subscribers on Fridays. The notes are more informal, less academic/less overtly radical, often more personal, and also include lists of recommendations. I’m sending it out today, to everyone, by way of an update and also an apology for taking so much time between the free essays. Ideally I’ll be back to a more regular schedule soon, but as you’ll read below, life has thrown some curveballs. I appreciate your patience with some hiccups in consistency, but I do know I’ll keep writing— the challenging times are always worse when I don’t. Thank you for being here. <3 

fire prepared with love & devotion by Chip the land tender. <3

Dear ones, 

I’m writing to you from the sacred land of Hope Springs, a retreat center in southern Ohio. I am here for the second time for a partially-silent weekend, sprinkled with various meditative and creative guided practices in between. There’s a lot of space to walk the land, to make art, to not be on phones. Last year at this time, I showed up a shell — I was still grieving my last relationship and overwhelmingly guilty for leaving it; my new relationship was long-distance and full of hurt; I was still confused, still depressed. I was going on about six months of feeling financially and emotionally under-resourced, and I was exhausted. The retreat held me so beautifully through the mess of that. “What if the pain and the joy come from the same place?” Gwen, one of the facilitators (one of the warmest, most healing souls), asked our first morning there. 

This year, I am here in a different way, but still desperate for this gentle land to hold me. Exactly a week ago, Peter had a seizure in a London train station. He’d been giving book talks in the UK and was on his way to the Netherlands when he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. To the credit of the NHS, he wound up with excellent care, and they insisted on keeping him there until they determined the cause. After CAT scans and an MRI, they found it: a brain tumor. The good news is they think it’s treatable, it looks well contained, and they don’t see signs of any other growths in the rest of his body. The bad news is: it’s a tumor, we’re afraid, and we’re an ocean apart. 

This retreat being mostly silent means it’s not actually a place for major unpacking. There are times where we go around the circle and speak whatever is asking to be spoken, but there’s no dialogue about it. Throughout the weekend so far we’ve heard brief shares about miscarriages, caretaking for sick parents, recovering from car accidents, and more of the kinds of intense happenings we all manage to hold in our muscles and bones everyday; and in response, there are a lot of big breaths, a lot of bowed heads, a lot of surprise hugs later in the day from someone who just wanted your shoulders to know they aren’t alone in it. We’re bodies here, not talking about our bodies. Even these quiet words, typing to you now, feel hard to pull. I’m hesitant, under the circumstances of the past week, to give myself permission to lean into this stillness, but it’s a gift when I do. 

The plan, before all of this happened, was for Peter to go back to Europe to do some book talks and then say goodbye to the place he’s called home for 15 years. We were processing some difficult things—our first year of trying to be together was full of more challenges than I care to list here— but we knew we’d get to the other side of it, and we were going to sort of celebrate moving through and forward with a little vacation. I was to meet him in Croatia where we’d go visit some of his friends, then Greece to see more of his friends, then a final few days in Catalunya before bringing him back to the states. I assumed this would no longer be feasible, but the doctors said it would be fine; good even, to take some time before finalizing a treatment plan back in the US. And so, knock on wood, I will still be heading there next week, reunited with my sick strong guy again, at last. 

The idea of joy and the pain coming from the same place broke me last year because I did not believe I was allowed to feel those things concurrently. I was committed to punishing myself for my choices— suffering, and somewhere believing I deserved it. “Grief is tidal,” a wave rising and falling, but I kept swimming to its highest point. I chose pain a lot last year, over and over: ‘this hurts this hurts this hurts,’ I said again and again, making it my story. And I needed that (because it did hurt), but if the hurt is the water, then the joy is too. It is all the water.

I’m grateful to be back here with this reminder because it’s wisdom I know I’ll need, and I think we all need. In spaces like I’m in now, I am often overcome with gratitude for being here and overcome with sadness (or anger, depending) on behalf of all who can’t be here. Everyone should have access to spaces of rest and healing, and so many don’t. How can we hold both? When we are awed by birdsong, we might also grieve the animal life for whom this planet is no longer livable. How can we hold both? When we have to shift relationships with people we love, or when people we love get sick, or when people we love are no longer alive, and we feel the tremendous weight of love with the equally heavy weight of pain….How can we hold both? 

I am writing to you from the holding both place, from the origin where the joy and the grief meet. I am writing to you with some newfound comfort there. 

I love you. 

love & solidarity, 

raechel 

Reading

Not a particularly abundant reading week, between the time spent on calls about P’s health and being at retreat. But I am working on a book review for the new edited collection Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex, and it’s been wonderful to read through the essays. A few substacks that I appreciated this week include: a heavy and richly-citation’d piece from Moses Moon on the death of Jordan Neely; Holly Whitaker’s reflections on two very bad years that made me feel less alone; whew, this piece on academia (and so much more) from Cameron Steele. And the retreat weekends are always full of poetry, here was one of my favorites from this round: “Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale.” 

Watching 

Nothing of note this week.

Listening 

I have been on a Smog/Bill Callahan kick, and I just dig that sad weird dude’s off-kilter tunes. 

Joy & Attention 

Hope Springs. circle. Nimbus the cat. Blake’s food (and Jess’s food; these were the two cooks at the retreat, and each added extra magic to the experience). women. queerness. non-constrictive clothing. the biggest brightest full moon. eclipse clarity. friendship. wisdom. community as a mirror, community as a portal. community for-real showing up for P and for me (thank you Rhizome, RBR, and various scattered friends gathering around us now). P and his strength; and his heart; and his sweet smart goofy being. doctors and nurses. connection. perspective shifts. Tara Brach podcasts/reminders. Appalachian land. lilac singing their scent like a song at full blast. laughter even when (especially when) it’s hard times. fire. my two, sweet familiars. family, and their help. everything being temporary. frog chorus. early mornings. artists. Spirit. love love love. & you all, thank you.