Dear all,
We have just come back from celebrating 40 years together, and our 37th wedding anniversary. I am so grateful and amazed about how this dance of relationship continues to deepen and become more beautiful and at times ecstatic, in ways I have rarely, if ever, heard talked about. I am so happy that Ya'Acov and I are on earth together. And grateful for all the wise help, love and support we've had along the way.
It's worth the challenge, and it is challenging, as in long term relationship there is, ultimately, nowhere to hide. You will become known, to your self and the other, in all your faces. And I know how much I (and maybe most of us) long to be known and at the same time, dread becoming fully known. I can only recommend the journey, and the embodied listening practice which has changed our lives.
Right now, apart from this, I am aware of four powerful strands moving through my life:
At first, they may seem like quite different things. Yet for me, they are connected by the question of what we receive, how we allow it to transform us, and what we choose to carry forward as we offer what is ours to offer.
First, I want to bow in appreciation to Ya’Acov, who has been working so deeply, strongly and consistently while I have been bringing my book about accompanying my parents through their last seasons towards publication. I'm so grateful for his support, both for my book, and for us all as a family.
I've been working on this book for 3 years consistently, and was writing about the journey with my parents before that. Publication is getting closer now and I can finally share its title and front page:
The title is my mother’s words when she learnt that she had advanced stage 4 cancer, and the art work is my father's.
I feel profoundly grateful to have had the time, over these past years, to continue digesting what happened and to bring the inner experience of it into words as authentically as I can.
As I have been writing, I have come to recognise that this book is also a bow to my parents, my ancestors and my lineages. They were not perfect, but they carried special qualities, including a deep sense of responsibility for the soil, the Earth and our human part in caring for this planet and each other.
Part of what moved me to write it was the response I received when I shared some of my journal entries and “letters from the hospice” while everything was unfolding. Again and again, people told me that they had never heard death spoken about like this within a family, and that I should share the story more widely.
Writing it has been a deep and emotional experience in which I have tried to stay with simply telling the story of what actually happened, trusting the reader to discover their own meaning rather than being tempted to turn what happened into teaching.
And it is quite a story, full of unexpected twists and turns. At its heart is the ordinary, and at the same extra ordinary experience of accompanying two people I loved in the end of their lives.
The way I was able to be with my parents was deeply informed by the practice of embodied listening: listening not only to the words being spoken, but to the arc of a conversation and the arc of a life.
I am proud of this honest book of love full of grace and full of grit. I hope it will be published before Christmas, and I'm very much looking forward to sharing it with you.
Writing the book led me back to some deeply distressing experiences in hospital with my father. His life was saved by the NHS and the care he received in intensive care was exquisite. But after he was transferred to the general wards, some of what I witnessed was shocking.
Writing about this prompted me to turn the distress I was still carrying into a formal complaint. I tried to communicate honestly and responsibly in a way that did not demonise anyone, and yet was crystal clear about what the lack of empathy and gentleness costs everyone. The hospital received it with real care, and then I was surprised and heartened to be invited to write an article for the BMJ (British Medical Journal) about why gentleness matters in healthcare.
So much of this comes back to the emotional intelligence fostered by developing our 'interoception' - which is why we focused on this theme on the Study Hub this September. My big thanks to Kirran Ahmad for your help, support and encouragement with this.
Ultimately my respect and deep thanks to my father for his deep clarity about the life changing significance of gentleness and alongsideness.
You can read the BMJ article here;
[Gentleness matters in healthcare]
Having my father to live and die with us, and then writing this book has taken place alongside another profound passage in my life: travelling through menopause and emerging around the far side of what I think of as the menopausal bend.
It has been a life-changing journey for myself, Ya'Acov and the space between us, unsettling at times, but also extraordinarily beautiful, moving and surprising. I feel myself bringing a different energy back into the world now: energy I have discovered, uncovered and alchemised through this metamorphosis.
An important part of that journey was our connection with Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer of Red School. Ya’Acov and I had some extraordinary conversations with them, exploring the depth of menopause and the spiritual architecture of this passage.
You can listen to our conversations and share what they helped us make explicit here:
Red School's free series of talks and workshops on The Spiritual Power of Menopause starts on 12 Oct. If you, or someone you know, is approaching or moving through menopause, you may already know how profound and disorientating this transition can be. Red School offers skilled guidance, companionship and a way of understanding the larger potential of the journey.
[Explore Red School Menopause Month]
The third strand is our continuing relationship with the Amazon rainforest and its Indigenous peoples.
Our forthcoming journey with Fundación Pachamama is filling up, and there are now only a few places remaining. Together with Chumpi, Belén and Manari, whom many of you know through the Long Dance, Ya’Acov and I will accompany a group into the Amazon.
This is a rare opportunity to spend time with Indigenous elders and shamans, to experience the living presence of the rainforest and to take part in ceremony.
We need to be clear about the purpose of this journey. It is an invitation to become a more deeply committed ally to the Indigenous peoples of the forest and to the protection of the rainforest itself. It is not a tourist journey. It's about aligning vision, action and contribution.
At its heart is a relationship of mutual support and empowerment. Participants are supported to listen, learn and grow, and to bring what they receive into the heart of their lives and the contribution they want to make in the world. In turn, they are invited to deepen their commitment to the forest and to those who have protected it across generations.
The elders who hold this knowledge and these ceremonial traditions will not be with us forever. To meet and learn from them is both a privilege and a responsibility.
If you feel drawn to this journey and want to understand more about its purpose and what it asks of those who come, read on.
[Dancing with the Heart of the World; Amazon Journey June 2027]
Perhaps this is what joins these three strands for me.
My parents gave me life, love and a lineage that I continue to digest and carry forward.
Menopause has asked me to surrender an old form and discover another source of energy, authority and offering.
The forest and its people invite us into relationship, reciprocity and responsibility for what we love.
In each of these passages, something is received. Something is transformed. And something is asked of us in return. The 4th strand is what all of these threads seem to share: relationship, mutuality, a sense of global village where individuality and community are understood as mutually enhancing.
That's part of what I love about Movement Medicine, as it is growing. I am so very proud of our teachers and the multiplicity of ways they are bringing this medicine into the world.
I wish you all the very best on your journey, and with the alchemy of your own life. I rejoice when we can meet in the room or in the forest, and that we can also be together through the Movement Medicine Study Hub, and Tribal Heart online ceremonies.
See Founder's Events for more info for how to join Ya'Acov or myself in a journey, whether its a brief one online, or a longer one. You are welcome as you are.
With love,
Susannah
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