Against Certainty

On practicing devotion to this sacred shifting world

“I invite you, young organizer, to embrace uncertainty as a terrain of glorious possibility. Let this uncertainty ground you rather than make you fearful.”¹

Hello, I hope you’re taking care. I’m returning to this space, for now, in the hopes of sharing longer form writing this year (I make no promises). So many of us started this year exhausted, burned out from the last one trying to survive under capitalism and increasing threats to our existence. This time last year I was just finalizing my name change, spending hours in various government offices updating paperwork (still didn’t get my passport done in time).

I know we are all worn out from the ongoing escalations of fascist violence. Despite the relative protections my state offers, I’ve been consistently othered and excluded from my chosen field as a trans femme herbalist. As a politicized care worker in a somewhat rural part of northern california, the lack of cultural competence is rampant in herbal education spaces here. Queer, trans, Black, brown, mad, disabled experiences are largely erased.

These last six years of abandonment have been slow torture. As someone committed to Indigenous and Palestinian liberation, embodied disability justice, preventing airborne illness with common sense masking, I’ve been treated like a stain (or worse, ignored) in MAHA-pilled wellness worlds. Those who cling to denial of our shared realities and struggles continue to race back to normal, an illusory certainty.

I’m exhausted by answers. Certainty offers me no comfort, and I raise an eyebrow at anyone who offers a way out of facing our own suffering. It’s really okay, necessary even, to feel whatever needs to be felt in this moment. If you’re feeling grief, heartbreak, overwhelm, it means you’re paying attention, and still in devotion to this sacred world ravaged by empire.

“There is no bypass or strategy of avoidance that can help resolve the difficult emotions we will encounter. Turning toward our suffering is essential. We must not only endure our times of pain and sorrow, hoping to get to the far shore of them, but we must also actively engage them and feel them fully. This move takes great courage.”²

What would happen if we let ourselves feel the emotions that accompany the fight for liberation, without needing to problem solve our way out of them? Each one another stream to cross, moving with great care as we travel. More questions, less answers. More of us asking how we can show up in service, share resources, open ourselves up to how deeply the world needs us.

A desert creek flows through the wash, fed by winter rains.

Since I left my wonderful somatics group in September, I’ve been in OCD therapy twice weekly, where I spend a lot of time just sitting with my own distress and discomfort and letting it move through me. It’s wild how we can turn toward emotions, hold them with compassion, and make them much less scary. Also wild how some health patterns evade diagnosis and appropriate treatment for decades.

In the last decade of doing politicized healing work, I’ve grown more accepting of the ongoing cycles of intense activation, small acts of organizing, and letting go of the need to control outcomes. Perfectionism, self-monitoring, relational trauma have been lifelong personal struggles, whose stories I’m still working to pull apart (spoiler: they’re all rooted in white supremacy).

“Letting go of control, outcomes, and certainty softens the space between us and all the others with whom we share this shimmering world.”³

We don’t need to have it all figured out before taking action. We will definitely make mistakes, and we need comrades who will offer us compassion when we do. With each escalation of fascist authoritarianism, I feel the urgency of the moment pulling me to act, alongside my own resistance (and need for deep rest). I hope you are finding ways to honor both — fighting like hell at the pace your body allows, in service to even slower planetary rhythms.

I’m doing what I can to resource myself and community. Last fall I got trained as a legal observer with our local rapid response network, distributed free herbs to frontline organizers and mutual aid projects, got zines and whistles and so many herbs into my communities. I’m still offering these, so please reach out if you’re impacted by state violence and needing resourcing.

I’m writing my local board members, listening to voices grounded in context. Listening to the sacred waters flowing in the creeks, the bay trees in flower, the utterly fucking incredible mistletoe in our native oaks. I’m slowly making medicine, planning my garden, buying seeds, going for daily pup walks, reaching out to dear ones and cooking nourishing meals for our house. Every act matters, however small.

Since Samhain, I’ve been in deep devotion of Irish ancestral plant kin, with my Foundations cohort of Celtic Isles remembrance, facilitated by Rowan of hawthorn and yew. Big YES to politicized ancestor work that is committed to dismantling empire’s violence, starting within. Reweaving cultural threads feels like a remedy and recommitment to repairing the extractive settler relations that live in our bodies, communities and Western empire herbalism.

Datura opening. Clear night sky filled with stars and Jupiter. Honeybee on desert mistletoe.

Plants relations still a resource, even in winter. Our native garden and rare manzanita are full of blooms and new germination. The oaks, poplar and elder are in bud. I was lucky enough to spend a few days in the Sonoran desert before new year’s eve, where we witnessed incredible blooms, mistletoe, aphyllon, breathtaking stars and sunsets, all alongside so much heartbreaking land abuse.

These borderlands are increasingly shaped by colonial violence, climate collapse & habitat loss at the hands of empire. Where our migrating kin lose their lives making deadly crossings, where agencies don’t lift a finger to recover bodies, and marines play in their fighter choppers. More writing to come that digs into the contours of the desert’s multi-species webs and my 15 years of visiting them.

Peach sunset over badlands. Basal rosette of dune primrose in flower. A rare winter superbloom.

I’m guarding my energy more fiercely this year, divesting from repressive social media algorithms, grounding myself in local community and tangible action without spiraling into aimless panic, victimhood or identity politics. There are many places you can find me and my work, this being one of them. IRL being another if you live nearby. Really welcoming all forms of connection that honor each other as the whole human beings we are.

I’m truly grateful to have capacity to keep responding how I can and for everyone who has resourced me and continued to support my labor in these hell times. I plan to expand my consultation offerings this year, and hopefully do some teaching when the time is right. I trust you’ll continue to practice devotion to this sacred living world and showing up fiercely in service of the one breath we all share in it.

White sage tucked in the mouth of a canyon, surrounded by bus-sized boulders.

1. Mariame Kaba, “Read This if You’re New and Trying to Find Your Way.”

2. Frances Weller, In the Absence of the Ordinary.

3. Ibid.