If you'd prefer to read this in your browser, here you go! (And here's the December newsletter if you missed it.) The audio version experiment continues: it's still just me, the voice recorder app on my phone, and the words on the page. Click here to listen (it opens in a new window). |
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Hi, it's Alison, 2026 has arrived, and it's my first time writing to you in this new year. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind in every sense of the word, and so I'm feeling relieved beyond measure to be curled up on the sofa right now, a fleece blanket around my shoulders, enjoying the (electric) fireplace as I reflect on possible directions for this newsletter. But before I dive into today's focus, let's take a moment to pause and engage in a simple practice together. For the next minute or two, the invitation is to bring to mind a situation from earlier today, or earlier this week, that lifted your spirits, whether for a moment or longer. Just keep it simple: maybe you chatted with a kind stranger, or played with a three year-old human (or three year-old puppy!), or listened to a heartwarming podcast. It could be that you talked to a dear friend over FaceTime and shared a laugh. Just selecting one moment…Whatever it was that you were experiencing, your heart felt held, bolstered, uplifted…giving yourself a chance to relive it and letting the sense of heartful buoyancy imprint…and then releasing the memory and sensing your body breathing itself, here, now, human… This practice reminds me of an interaction from a class I was teaching several years ago. One of the participants asked a courageous question about grief: “Is it ok that sometimes in the midst of the grief I'm navigating I find myself enjoying the sunshine or laughing at one of my colleague's jokes? Then I remember that I'm grieving, and I feel guilty, embarrassed, bad. I find myself wondering if these moments are a form of bypassing the grief, or ignoring it—because I'm supposed to be grieving all the time, right? But I didn't choose these moments of levity…they just arose, and my heart responded to them. How do I reconcile these experiences with such a depth of grief?” I reassured her that “this, too, belongs” and that the beauty of a “close, delicate mindfulness,” as the teacher Rob Burbea puts it, is that we start to notice nothing is as solid or uniform as it seems—and the ever-shifting flow can actually sustain us, nourish us, and offer us great relief. This truth is especially important to remember in this era: that in the midst of pain, grief, rage, and uncertainty in response to losses and injustices in our own lives and the world writ large, it's ok to want to feel uplifted, to rest in moments (or longer!) of joy and well-being. And when we're gifted these opportunities, it's more than ok to allow ourselves to cherish them. Just as the heart alternates between diastole, relaxing and filling, and systole, contracting and pumping, our inner landscapes also need time to relax and fill in order to stay afloat. This month, may you give yourself space to be fully, wholeheartedly human. With diastole and systole in mind, this newsletter offers: ~ a collaborative poem: a “cento” [CHEN-to]! ~ closing wisdom from Rob Burbea on what a “close, delicate mindfulness” can reveal |
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Image description: A photo I snapped last week of the ever-shifting, all-encompassing sky during sunset above Lake Montebello in Baltimore, Maryland |
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In college, Tuesday nights meant Spoken Word Society: a handful of us would come together to write poetry, read it aloud to each other, give and receive loving feedback, and prepare to host campus-wide open mics. When open mic day arrived, a hundred-ish of our classmates, friends, and teachers would stream into a meeting room in one of the campus dorms and make a beeline to the platters of samosas from a beloved local Indian restaurant. Quick side note: it's entirely possible that some attendees may have just been there for the samosas, an all-too-welcome alternative to dining hall pasta. Then everyone would take their seats on well-worn couches and folding chairs to listen to their peers' poetry and prose, a supportive communal respite from the intensity of early-twenties life. One moment would elicit tears, the next uproarious laughter. Ever since, I've loved reading, listening to, exploring different poetic forms, and one of my current favorites is the cento, which comes from the Latin for “patchwork garment.” A cento is composed of lines from other writers' verses and passages. Recently, I've found myself savoring lines from other people's newsletters and writings, so in a fit of inspiration, I patched together my first cento (!!!), a newsletter cento! The award-winning poet Nicole Renee Good, who studied creative writing in college, composed this cento's sixth stanza. I wish she were here to keep sharing her gifts. Zichrona livracha, may her memory be a blessing, a motivating blessing that propels us to keep working towards a world in which everyone, no matter their identity markers or circumstances, can live with ease, safety, and well-being. Here we go: on this small marbled planet as it spins once again around the golden halo of its home star We absorb enormous amounts of stimulus each day; some of it settles in memory, some in the body, and there isn’t always a mechanism for release. Everything benefits from presence and compassion…if I let myself feel. I want to yoke my heart to the cedar waxwings rioting among the crimson toyon berries. I want to stretch my capacity to feel each ordinary morning in all its beauty and brokenness—like this one. We can take refuge in one truth: We choose the seeds we water in our lives. the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder” From the depths of this January deep freeze, I've been practicing with the settling, clarifying nature of winter, the season of water. And serendipitously, the Walk for Peace monks have been moving across America showing us exactly what this looks like. Be like winter water. Let yourself settle into the clarity of whatever is actually here: your tiredness, your confusion, your objectless love. There is no perfect response. Just whatever is here when you stop moving fast enough to feel it. grief and joy can coexist (Stanza 1: Rav Jericho Vincent, Stanza 2: Suleika Jaouad, Stanza 3: Sebene Selassie, Stanza 4: Anne Cushman, Stanza 5: Kaira Jewel Lingo, Stanza 6: Nicole Renee Good, Stanza 7: Tasha Schumann, Stanza 8: Alex Elle) May we resource ourselves in community, creative practices, and the courage to gently connect with the heart's capacity to feel. |
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Closing wisdom from teacher Rob Burbea: “If a curious and unpressured, moment-to-moment care of attention is brought to the experience of sadness...we will not find an uninterrupted continuity of that emotion. Instead, we typically find what is more like a string of beads of sadness, with gaps in between... We may find, for instance, there is a moment of sadness, perhaps followed by another moment of sadness, but one that is not so intense; this followed by perhaps a moment of another emotion, peace, say...a moment of what feels like an absence of emotion; another moment of stronger sadness, a moment in which a feeling of love, compassion, or tenderness comes more to the fore…Only a relatively close and delicate mindfulness will reveal this.” |
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Wishing you safety, warmth, and well-being, |
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PS: As always, questions, reflections, or ideas for potential collaboration (in person or via Zoom!) are warmly welcome. Just reply to this email or email me at alison@twowingsmindfulness.com. PPS: If you think a friend, family member, or colleague would be interested in one of these offerings, please forward this note along! They can also join the Two Wings mailing list here. |
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Two Wings Mindfulness
Washington, DC 20009, USA |
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