Hello dear ones,
It is a balmy 14 degrees celsius here in Toronto, where I’ve come for a quick visit home to see my installation, Soft Magic, which is at Tangled Arts & Disability Gallery as part of #CripRitual exhibit. I want to share some reflections on the ways in which rituals have become a vital care practice for me. But before I do, here are a few reminders:
You can submit your questions for OPENINGS Episode #3 by emailing me at hello@margeauxfeldman.com with the subject line OPENINGS SUBMISSION. Please keep your submissions to 150 words. You have until Friday, March 25th at 11:59pm MT to submit.
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THOUGHTS & FEELINGS
Ritual came into my life in the summer of 2017, along with dissociation and chronic pain. I’d sleep fourteen hours a night, nap throughout the day, and when I awoke, I felt as though I was in a cloud, hanging above myself, always on the verge of tears. The constant dissociation made it impossible to string sentences together. As a writer, I felt totally lost, disconnected from myself in myriad ways.
I fell in love with stories at a very young age – a love nurtured by my mother – and had been reconnecting with my love for writing when chronic pain struck me. My chronic pain and complex trauma are deeply interconnected: the former a manifestation of the latter. Not being able to write, to tell stories, only amplified the sense of fragmentation that trauma brings with it. I needed a new way to tell a story. I found it in tarot.
On days where the pain wasn’t debilitating, I’d slowly walk to my favourite park in Toronto, my tarot deck and journal in my backpack. As I sat on the grass and pulled cards, I felt a sense of calm come over me. It was a kind of magic. Lindsay Mack refers to this practice as “tarot anchoring.” In their workshop, “Trauma and the Tarot,” Mack explains that anchoring “is when we intentionally develop a root system of safety around a practice, or a tool — the breath, a certain person, deity, phrase or mantra, prayer, scent – so that we can call upon it in moments of distress.”
When our trauma responses are online, we enter a state of dysregulation. Our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) or our parasympathetic dorsal vagal (collapse or freeze) has taken over. We are living back in the past. We aren’t present in our bodies because we’re too busy trying to defend against the perception of danger. We don’t understand that the danger is long over. That we’re safe now. Each time I pulled a tarot card, I was activating my ventral vagal nerve, the part of our nervous system that enables us to occupy the present and feel a sense of safety. The fact that we can change the direction of our nervous systems by self-regulating is total magic. It’s an alchemical process in which we transform terror into safety, isolation into connection, shame into compassion. Prior to starting somatic trauma work in my mid-thirties, I couldn’t have imagined that this transformation was possible; that one day, I would feel connected to my body’s rhythms and needs. But I was already doing this work through tarot, tethering myself to story, bringing myself back to the present.
I can’t help but recognize how reading tarot mirrors the work of healing from trauma. Each time you pull cards from the tarot deck and lay them before you, you construct a story. At first, the story in front of you might not make any sense. But you work with those pieces. You take the meaning and significance of each card, look at their placements in relation to one another, and you begin to construct the narrative. Just as with a novel, you don’t have to believe that the story is true for the cards to resonate with you. You take the significance and let it guide you. I understand now that tarot was helping me return to my window of tolerance, helping me root down into myself and bring the storyteller in me to the surface.
I also found another way to tell stories by making affirmation cards. I began this ritual in 2018, a year after starting somatic therapy. Making these cards enabled me to activate my ventral vagal nerve, the part of our nervous system that enables us to feel present and socially engaged. Any creative practice will do this. I’d also found a lot of self-soothing potential through affirmation cards, but a lot of the messages I was reading didn’t quite fit with my values, politics, and identity: you’re so resilient; this too shall pass; it will all be okay.
I’m a queer sick and disabled femme deeply committed to social justice work, and I wanted to see affirmations that reflected the ways in which trauma is something that impacts us on an individual and collective level. I wanted to see affirmations that addressed how systemic oppression causes and exacerbates trauma. I also wanted to acknowledge that when we heal ourselves, we heal the world that we live in. Committing ourselves to our healing work is a personal and political act. And so I sat down and created the affirmations I’d wanted to see: your boundaries are sacred; your fear is valid; it’s okay if it’s not okay. Now, all 60 affirmation cards hang together.
These are just two of the many rituals I’ve developed over the years. Years later, I’d read Jessica Fern’s book Polysecure and be introduced to the acronym HEARTS. Each letter represents a different practice that helps us build secure attachment with others and with ourselves: H is for being here and now; E is for expressed delight; A is for attunement; R is for rituals and routines: T is for turning towards after conflict; and S is for secure attachment with self. It makes so much sense to me that ritual can be used to build secure attachment. Each time I pulled a tarot card, took a bath on the full moon, engaged with the objects at my altar, I was turning towards myself and being present with whatever it was I feeling in the moment.
Rituals are also a practice of world-building. The curators of #CripRitual explain how “#CripRitual describes the things that disabled people do to create new possibilities and realities. Rituals are transformative: they change us and the world around us, whether through incantation or ceremony, private practice or public protest.” Anything can be a ritual. The key is that we’re doing something with intention and reverence. Making your morning coffee can be a ritual. Planting flowers in your garden can be a ritual. Going for a walk to visit your favourite tree (as I plan to do in a few hours) can be a ritual. In ritualizing our care practices, we can turn something seemingly mundane into something full of magic.
#CripRitual is on until April 1st and you can book a virtual tour or visit the gallery in person by clicking here. I’d also like to invite folks to participate in the group ritual that is part of my installation. You submit your fears to me, using this google form, and I’ll email you a digital ritual based off of one of my affirmation cards. You’ll also be invited to attend a live ritual where we thank and say goodbye to our fears. Happening on April 1st (time TBD).
PRACTICES
Altar Creation & Sensory Tour
If you don’t have an altar, I invite you to create one. There is no right or wrong way to make an altar. All you need to do is gather special objects that bring you a sense of calm, connectedness, curiosity, softness. If you already have an altar, then I invite you to take this next step.
Take a sensory tour. Before you begin, just take a minute and notice how you’re feeling: are you anxious, calm, restless, tired? Are you hot, cold, short of breath, light headed, calm? No need to judge whatever you’re feeling. Just notice where your bodymind is at.
You can begin by picking up an object at your altar. Feel the textures. Notice whether the objects are hot or cold. Roll them around in your palms. Trace them with your fingers. Pay attention to what happens in your body as you feel each object. Does the softness of your altar cloth cause you to take a deep breath?
Then we can move onto smell. Raise each object to your nose – even the ones that aren’t purposefully scented. What does the picture frame smell like? Are you surprised? How does the smell of lavender fill your nostrils? Notice what happens in your body as you take in these scents.
If you have objects at your altar that you can taste, I’d invite you to do so. And as you do, really pause as you put the object into your mouth. Feel the texture of the orange piece before you bite into it. Let it sit on your tongue before you start chewing. How does the eruption of flavour move through your mouth and into your body?
Once you’ve spent time with each object, take note of how you’re feeling at the end of the sensory tour. Has anything shifted or changed? Before stepping away from your altar, take a moment to thank your anchor objects for being there for you in this moment.
This sensory tour is an adaptation of the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 soothing exercise. If you’re away from your altar and need some support regulating, you can move through these prompts, and adapt them based on how you sense and engage with the world:
5 things you can see
4 things you can physically feel
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste
What I love about this exercise is that you can do it anywhere and no one would be able to tell. It’s like a little witchy spell that brings us back to our bodies and the present moment.
ACTIONS
My friend Nisha Mody is raising money to support BIPOC scholarships for her program Boundary Work for BIPOC: Breaking Cycles. Here are some words from Nisha’s GoFundMe:
“As many of you know, I'm a South Asian American woman, a daughter of immigrants, and a Feminist Healing Coach. I coach people about how to move through life through an anti-oppressive lens.
I created my BIPOC Healing Fund to provide scholarships for my BIPOC clients to access my services. I think it's so important to support the healing of BIPOC as many have gone through generational trauma due to past trauma including enslavement, colonization, displacement, war, and more. This doesn't have to happen to someone directly to affect them. This manifests through patriarchy, ableism, casteism, homophobia, and transphobia often resulting in physical and emotional abuse, carceral punishment, neglect, a lack of access to healthcare, food insecurity, housing insecurity, sexual trauma and more.
Through my own experience as a daughter of immigrants, being in an abusive marriage, the death of my father, and my divorce, I have been on a healing journey that continues. I have so much hope for BIPOC to heal from intergenerational trauma, to feel a sense of inherent worth, and to feel safe in their body and their home.
This is why I have started this fund. I provide scholarships for one-on-one coaching and group coaching. By donating to this fund, you will also support the effort for BIPOC to break generational cycles and heal from systemic oppression.”
I’m so behind on reading things and just saw your shout out for me. THANK YOU 😭😭😭 Love you so much Margeaux!