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Beltane Ritual Gathering

  • Gemini Rising 560 South Main Street Ann Arbor, MI, 48104 United States (map)
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May 1st, or May Day, has a long history in worker's rights movements as well having very ancient roots in pagan traditions as a halfway point between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. Join us as we gather to honor resistance, fortify resilience and share resonance with a Beltane ritual. Sliding scale $15-25 per person. 

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Earlier Event: November 1
Day of the Dead Ritual
Later Event: June 15
Latinx Healing from Colonialism at Allied Media Conference
The Detroit Institute of Art annual Ofrendas: Día de los Muertos exhibit opens today, September 28th and runs through November 10th. My wife and I created an ofrenda in remembrance of those who have died in the custody of ICE and CBP under the Trump administration. Our intention for the ofrenda is to honor the 28 adults and seven children who have passed, to remember their names and faces, and provide viewers with resources to support immigrants and asylum seekers in detention. The exhibit is free with general admission, free for residents of Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained more than 52,500 immigrants and asylum seekers. Immigrants held by ICE are civil detainees, not criminal, and their detention should not be punitive. Yet the Department of Homeland Security investigation reported ‘egregious violations’ at the detention centers it inspected, including nooses in detainee cells, inadequate medical care, rotten food and other conditions that endangered detainee health. “ICE has proven unable or unwilling to provide adequately for the health and safety of the people it detains. The Trump administration’s efforts to drastically expand the already-bloated immigration detention system will only put more people at risk,” said Clara Long, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. As of September 2019, at least 28 adults have died in immigration detention during the Trump administration. Many of these deaths were likely preventable. Human Rights Watch requested an independent medical analysis of 15 recent deaths; in eight cases, subpar medical care contributed or led to the fatalities. The top complaint reported by people in immigration detention is medical neglect. Employees of the Department of Human Services and ICE reported concerns about lapses in medical oversight and neglect that put immigrants at risk of harm or death, according to interviews and internal documents. Since 2018, at least seven children have died while in custody of ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP). (contd in comments)
The squeeze from the squares of Venus and Mercury to Saturn and Pluto got me this week, not gonna lie. At one point I started screaming and wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop 😩. But, moves to IM🍊and tomorrow’s Libra New Moon feel like crowning after a painful and loooong transition in the birth canal. I made a lil new moon card spread to help get some clarity about what is falling away and what is being born in this next cycle. Deep gratitude to Libra ancestor Gloria Anzaldúa whose birthday was yesterday and whose words inspired this reading. ☽DESCONOCER What has been in shadow or denial? “…encounter your shadow side and confront what you’ve programmed yourself (and have been programmed by your cultures) to avoid (desconocer).” 🌚BRIDGE What is supportive in building bridges in my journey? “Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar.”/“Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks.” ☾CONOCIMIENTO What is my wisdom, knowing, truth? “Conocimiento comes from opening all of your senses, consciously inhabiting your body and decoding its symptoms…Breaking out of your mental and emotional prison and deepening the range of perception enables you to link inner reflection and vision - the mental, emotional, instinctive, imaginal, spiritual, and subtle bodily awareness - with social, political action and lived experiences to generate subversive knowledges.”
Celebrating the birthday of Gloria Anzaldúa ❤️ ~now let us shift…conocimiento… inner work, public acts~ ~THE JOURNEY: PATH OF CONOCIMIENTO~ ~You struggle each day to know the world you live in, to come to grips with the problems of life. Motivated by the need to understand, you crave to be what and who you are. A spiritual hunger rumbles deep in your belly, the yearning to live up to your potential. You question the doctrines claiming to be the only right way to live. These ways no longer accommodate the person you are or the life you’re living. They no longer help you with your central task: to determine what your life means, to catch a glimpse of the cosmic order and your part in that cosmovisión, and to translate these into artistic forms. Tu camino de conocimiento requires that you encounter your shadow side and confront what you’ve programmed yourself (and have been programmed by your cultures) to avoid (desconocer), to confront the traits and habits distorting how you see reality and inhibiting the full use of your facultades.~ ~At the crack of change between millennia, you and the rest of humanity are undergoing profound transformations and shifts in perception. All, including the planet and every species, are caught between cultures and bleed-throughs among different worlds - each with its own version of reality. We are experiencing a personal, global identity crisis in a disintegrating social order that possesses little heart and functions to oppress people by organizing them into hierarchies of commerce and power - a collusion of government, transnational industry, business, and the military, all linked by a pragmatic technology and science voracious for money and control. This system and its hierarchies affect people’s lives in concrete and devastating ways and justify a sliding scale of human worth used to keep humankind divided. It condones the mind theft, spirit murder, exploitation, and genocide de los otros. We are collectively conditioned not to know that every comfort of our lives is acquired with the blood of conquered, subjugated, enslaved, or exterminated people, an exploitation that continues today. (Contd in comments)
The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) will be voting on 10/4 to possibly rescind a regulatory statute that could severely impede access to mental health services. Many of the providers at our practice would be affected as Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs), and we don't want these changes to block access to much-needed services. For more information see link below and to protect LPC coverage, sign the petition ~~ link in bio! #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #licensedprofessionalcounselor #michigan #lgbtqiamentalhealth #pocmentalhealth
@healingbychoice is launching our first-ever individual donor fundraising campaign! We would love your support for sustainable, healing justice community care. Any amount is appreciated! Ioby link in bio🌸 🌸At Healing by Choice!, we believe that each person is an expert of their own experience, body and needs, and that it is necessary to address the roots of trauma and injustice for individual and collective transformation. We do this through offering a range of healing modalities for self-care and the reduction of racial harm in mind, body, spirit, and institution. Some of the modalities we work through include Reiki, Meditation, Tai-Chi, Peace Circles, Herbal Consultations, Ear Acupuncture, Massage, and Food as Medicine. Our hope is that in addition to our own areas of expertise, that all core collaborators of HbC! have a base set of shared tools and knowledge (for example, emotional first aid, physical first aid, herbal first aid, etc.). We fulfill our mission and carry out these modalities through collaborative movement building efforts. 🌸Some of our most formative accomplishments have come from being identified as a ‘go-to’ healing group for those entering Detroit looking to host events. Facing Race, the Women’s March, and Creating Change have hired us to offer healing circles and safety measures when Detroit has been a host city. Still, it's our local work that drives us. It is with our neighbors, friends, and fellow organizers that we reimagine what is possible for Detroit. Working with local and national folx means that we are increasing awareness about how interweaving healing inside of activist work is imperative. 🌸In 2019, Healing by Choice! hopes to grow by hiring an additional co-madre (co-director) and expanding our capacity to offer services. We are still building out infrastructure to ensure that Healing by Choice! can be a better sustained community resource. We need your support! 🌸For more information on us and to get to know our practitioners visit: https://www.healingbychoicedetroit.com/ (link in bio!)
Decolonizing our Hearts, Minds and Movements... day one of this powerful week and I’m blown away by the beauty and brilliance of Indigenous, Black and POC folk gathered here to do this work. Held with skill and grace by Michael Yellow Bird, Sherri Mitchell, Leah Penniman, Sachem HawkStorm, Neftali Duran, David Ragland and Stephanie Morningstar. Dreaming a new world for the next seven generations ❤️✨🙏🏽 #decolonize #decoloniality #collectiveliberation #healingtrauma #ancestralwisdom
Have been moved with gratitude this week for the work of Toni Morrison, and the outpouring of reverence for her upon her passing. Of the quotes and images in my feed this week these were the ones that spoke straight to my heart, and have been helping me get over myself and just Do The Dang Thing, imperfectly. Writing doesn’t come easily to me, but I’ve had the voices of my ancestors whispering in my ear (ok, shouting at times) for a few years now to tell their and my stories. To share what I’ve learned for myself and through the honor of holding space for others about healing from trauma, both individual and intergenerational. There is no individualist solution or remedy, my friends. The work is and must be collective, cultural, embodied and radical by which I mean GO TO THE ROOTS and dismantle the systems of oppression that bind us. Thankful for the work and inspiration from Beloved Toni Morrison and other ancestral scribes (looking at you, Gloria Anzaldúa), and ever so humbly aspire to create work that is worthy of your influence. #tonimorrison #ancestralhealing #giveupthethingsthatweighyoudown
Not a day goes by in my practice without a client sharing that their health is adversely affected by the need to overwork, by exhaustion, by feeling under-resourced. My ideal treatment plan would include reducing work hours, building in more rest, shifting the nervous system into ventral vagus parasympathetic mode, aka social engagement, aka “rest and digest.” Capitalism is directly opposed to these practices except for the privileged few. Another reason why community-care is radical resistance! #communitycare #sequelaeofcapitalism #sideeffectsofcapitalism #nothealthyforlivingbeings
Grateful for my fellow intersectional anti-oppression politicized therapists and healers at @empowermenta2 and @healingbychoice ✨✊🏽✨✊🏽✨✊🏽
And that’s why I do what I do 🙌🏾 Posted @withrepost • @comadre.wellness 🧬 DNA SHIFT TIME 🧬 #polyvagaltheory #ancestralhealing #traumahealing #traumarecovery #collectiveliberation #nospiritualbypassing #shapechange