00:00:24.880Welcome to your weekly surviving whatever the fuck is going on prescription.0.99
00:00:28.920shit yeah like and you all know this if you've been listening if this is your first time listening0.99
00:00:35.900I'll just tell you these are prescriptions that Risa and I give to ourselves and each other0.99
00:00:40.800we are not gurus on a mountaintop we are trying to take this advice as much as we're trying to
00:00:46.220give it to you this is purely us talking back to the screaming voices in our brains you know
00:00:51.140trying to ritualize our own survival and and inviting you to come along for the ride
00:00:56.980and speaking of um I have not been doing well um you all heard last week that I
00:01:07.140busted my back and then I busted my ass just as my back was starting to feel better and I've been
00:01:12.420in this like anxiety bubble I do have a doctor's appointment coming up which you'd think would be0.95
00:01:18.540a relief but it's the idea of it is making me so anxious because I feel like if I can't find the
00:01:27.660right vocabulary for what I'm feeling like if I can't figure out the magic words that I need to
00:01:34.380say to my doctor then she's not going to help me or she's not going to know how to help me or I
00:01:40.440won't get any help so which is I'm seeking magic words one of our coven mates was talking about
00:01:47.500the diagnostic vortex. So as I go and spin into the diagnostic vortex, if you know the magic words
00:01:55.680to get help, please, please let me know. Gosh, I think so many people can relate to that. I know
00:02:03.040that feeling when I had a migraine for 10 years and I kept going through these cycles of giving
00:02:09.060up on getting help because the emotional and physical toll of trying to get help was too
00:02:16.900much on top of surviving the pain itself so trying to go and ask and say the magic words and deal
00:02:24.540with the doubt and deal with the sort of implications of teenage hysteria and whatever
00:02:28.640else that was just already crushing on me and it was there was so much anxiety involved in a migraine
00:02:35.040of course of course but to try to talk to somebody and find a way to explain to them and go through
00:02:42.160all my stuff of approval anyway I'm sorry I'm just relating so hard my love it does feel like
00:02:47.020you're looking for the right words to put in the right order and and so much of life is that
00:02:51.380and I have to like get a medical degree before I go so that I'm like well researched and I I have
00:02:59.380everything that because you know I had to when I got my hypothyroidism diagnosis a couple different
00:03:06.320doctors told me like very dismissively that you know my symptoms were probably just stress0.97
00:03:10.800And I literally had to go in with like a list of my symptoms and a list of the symptoms of hypothyroidism and like show them to the doctor to even get tested, which is like, I didn't go to school for fucking medicine.0.68
00:03:26.500I don't know how I managed to diagnose myself, you know, but I did.
00:05:48.680You're on the warmth that I'm weaving.
00:05:51.220and you know not everybody is lucky enough to have like great mothers who advocate for them
00:06:01.140at the doc at their doctor's appointments you know to hold their hand and take them but like
00:06:06.000we can be our own mothers and we can advocate for ourselves and you know the the really mean
00:06:13.880voice that lives inside my head is like not motherly so I have to counterbalance it with
00:06:20.140How would I talk to myself if I were my child, if I were my daughter? What would I say? And I think I might say, lay down. You're on the warmth that I'm weaving.
00:06:33.780and a friend of mine knew that i wasn't doing great and sent me this poem by uh richard k
00:06:41.580anderson richard by jared k anderson of the crypto naturalist called not a mistake
00:06:50.020it's not a mistake to need rest or seek help or make secret pacts with household spiders
00:06:59.580or find friendship in the dark beneath the log
00:07:03.320or to think hello into the night sky and wait for a response
00:07:08.460or sink your fingers into the soil to see if they take root
00:07:13.900or, despite everything, to love this world.
00:07:21.300So those are my prescriptions this week.
00:07:23.440Check out the Meat Puppets, Punker Than Punk, Super Weird Alt Country.
00:07:27.740um lay down on a warmth that you are weaving for yourself and despite everything
00:07:34.980love this world those are my prescriptions this week
00:07:40.180jared k anderson beautiful poet and super kind lovely person you can dig through our archives
00:07:50.300to hear my conversation with him late night talking about the woods and loons but also
00:07:56.040Jared has published books of poetry, but just published his first memoir. It is a heartbreaker
00:08:03.420for sure. What a wonderful thinker about mental health in these times and about crafting your
00:08:09.760own rituals to find your way through what can be a mental health nightmare in response to
00:08:16.140environmental collapse and late stage capitalism. It's called Something in the Woods Loves You.
00:08:21.220oh and he's such a great role model for like existing in nature as a human yeah that's you
00:08:29.160jared we love you we love you yeah i've been thinking about the eclipse you know in in our
00:08:36.940coven circles and in conversations with family and friends so much of my thinking about the eclipse
00:08:44.120really was guided by this idea of an ego death right like of a of the sun being fully covered
00:08:54.500darkness during the day of the fear that came that could come from that but also the release
00:09:00.360but recently I've also been thinking about at least for me you know the moon is very much
00:09:07.280my guiding planetary body very much my friend but the moon is also really a symbol for me of
00:09:15.680mother relationships um and of re-mothering of re-parenting of going back to what can be a
00:09:23.500wounded place um but also of the mother image eclipsing the paternal right and the paternalism
00:09:31.320Just for a moment during the day, that force that is whatever that counterbalance is to the light and the flourishing and the strong and the warrior and all the things we sort of associate with something gendered male that was put out.
00:09:51.900And then moments later, the wounded healers sort of made their presence known.
00:09:57.200And my family and my experience sitting on a hill with my husband and his family on a bench dedicated to his mother who had passed last year.
00:10:17.480And we she kind of out of fear snapped at May and then I out of fear protecting May snapped at my mom like moments after the eclipse.
00:10:27.900All of our sharp edges came out and we hurt each other, you know, and we repaired.
00:10:34.700We're lucky that we have that pattern and help to repair.
00:10:38.580I have a therapist. I have a therapist who talks about like, you know, weaving a nest of golden light around my daughter from my heart and repeating words like a magic spell as I come out of anxiety.
00:10:54.620You know, find yourself a therapist who understands the power of imagined light and ritual phrases, for sure.
00:11:03.080But that leads into, I guess, my sort of twinned thoughts with this prescription for myself this week.
00:11:09.940And both of them came directly from our coven, from our community.
00:11:15.000We met to talk on the eve of the eclipse about our warrior selves.
00:11:20.900i think it's important when we're at these sort of dark moments eclipsed moments that we both like
00:11:32.100lie fallow and allow ourselves to leap and go into the earth but also that we call out to the
00:11:38.780parts of ourselves and name and remember and list when we have been warrior um and all the ways and
00:11:48.380And that was something that was really astonishing and fulfilling.
00:11:52.180It sort of is like weaving a carpet to lie down on all of the ways that we have been
00:11:56.640warrior, you know, when we rested and tended to ourselves, our cells, our immune systems
00:12:05.220were warrior, you know, and when we found the words to try again and we got up the energy
00:12:12.900to try one more time to go back into medical systems, to go back into legal systems, to fight
00:12:20.020one more time against oppressive systems. When we gathered our forces and we returned to the battle
00:12:26.880one more time, we gathered our hope. That was our warrior selves. When we were, you know,
00:12:32.620librarians in the street inviting everyone to participate and share their glasses and look
00:12:38.280up at the sky that was warrior self harmony and and you know when we acknowledged how much it hurts
00:12:48.460and we tended to our wounds and we gathered our people around us and we fed them and we helped
00:12:55.820them through the desert that's what we write about in our chapter for the Aries new moon
00:13:00.780that's a warrior self too you know she isn't always at battle sometimes she's a leader for0.99
00:13:07.620her people. Sometimes she's just a leader for herself, being kind to herself. Sometimes she's1.00
00:13:13.520fucking fighting back against an aggressor in her home. You know, sometimes she's leaving in0.99
00:13:19.680the middle of the night. Sometimes she's the first person in her family to ask for help to break a
00:13:24.980cycle. Those are warrior selves, you know, all of those people. I just want us to see them. And I
00:13:33.640want to acknowledge how much it hurts to hope um that was a song that our covenmate erin brought
00:13:41.960and i've been thinking about it a lot since it's a boy genius song written by lucy dacus
00:13:49.180and the lyric at the end is the one that will chime through my own mind especially the end of
00:13:58.500verse not everybody gets to gets a chance to live not everybody gets the chance to live a life that
00:14:05.140isn't dangerous it hurts to hope it hurts to hope for more
00:14:12.340you know that coming from a place where our life
00:14:27.940has been endangered if you are in a place where you know what it is to live a life that is dangerous0.96
00:14:35.240you know the great privilege of not having that you don't want to be fucking resilient one more
00:14:40.680time you want to be on the other side of that privilege and to imagine that it could be different
00:14:46.840and to see that other people have it different can be so hurtful that can hurt so much that's
00:14:53.980wounded healer too you know to be someone who imagines what it's like to not have chronic
00:14:59.820illness to look around at other people just going about their day not crippled by anxiety that hurts
00:15:07.360it really hurts the injustice you know I want to acknowledge that I want to let us all cry with
00:15:14.560that you know please know that we we know that we hold that witchcraft isn't all sort of summoning0.99
00:15:22.280in your next fucking double the size paycheck or manifesting a bigger house fuck no so often0.98
00:15:31.160it's just about acknowledging injustice and holding hands together astrally0.99
00:15:37.100to to go through the the pain of hoping for something more to go through the pain of that
00:15:44.500birth even if you're just doing it so your kid has a life a little bit less violent than the
00:15:49.860you had you know there is tremendous power in that so that's part one of my prescription
00:15:54.960and part two thank you to sat lean and others who brought up bikini kill and especially the
00:16:02.380song rebel girl and especially the moment in this song where i hope you feel so seen
00:16:10.980because there are moments when we can feel so other we are so the weird one i know i mean our
00:16:18.900coven is 300 people strong now I can safely say that part of what unites us is that we were weird
00:16:27.500when we were young we were other to the people around us there was something about us especially
00:16:32.920if you were in a religious background or a culturally conservative background and you
00:16:37.980wanted to dance to punk music and wear black and hug trees and imagine a world where you weren't
00:16:44.220shat on for being a woman or that you weren't told to shut up when you were a little kid that
00:16:50.220you were told you're maybe you could imagine your voice mattered I want you to imagine the other0.79
00:16:56.480little girl who saw you and how to her you were magic and that's what I think this song is
00:17:08.100she says when she walks the revolution's coming in her hips there's revolution when she talks I
00:17:30.620hear the revolution in her kiss I taste the revolution rebel girl you are the queen of my
00:17:36.500world I want to take you home I want to try on your clothes just that adoration we have for each
00:17:43.140other when we find each other and the world seems like it could be what we imagine we see it in her
00:17:49.920in her wildness in her bravery I felt that when I met Amy I was like I am going over to that0.98
00:17:55.180bitch's house anytime she lets me because that's part of the world I want to live in0.86
00:18:01.040And so I want the end of our prescription in our new moon eclipse circle this week was an invitation to choose one of those two songs, either the Boy Genius or the Bikini Kill.1.00
00:18:17.060Have a pen and a paper, start the song and write and do not lift your pen until the end of the song.
00:18:24.300let the words come force the words to come let them be messy let them be sloppy but imagine that
00:18:31.200you are writing a message from your rebel cells the ancestors that are inside you the ones you
00:18:38.620don't even know who fucking fought to survive what do they tell you right now as this eclipse0.92
00:18:45.440portal is closing they have messages for you please that is the prescription for myself I0.97
00:18:52.080want to hear them and hold them close to me as the last of the snow melts and despite everything0.95
00:18:59.780love this world bless it fucking be all bless it fucking be we love you0.92
00:19:06.520if you want to support the missing witches project join the coven0.98