Rainbow Corn seeds purchased from Native Seeds

As Diane Wilson puts in in her novel Seed Keeper, “We can think of seeds as knowledge holders, as story keepers”. I believe this framing around all forms life and how wisdom is transferred between life forms deep within my bones. I’ve used the language of gardening and for the sake of this article : planting seeds in regards to how I communicate with others. I am a keeper and sharer of stories. I passionately share my philosophies and the truths I am holding with others. I share my wisdom trusting that if it is meant to grow in a mind, it will take root. I do this not from my ego but rather from my inner and always developing elder.

As I am re-connecting with my indigenous parts I am affirmed in knowing that I am now, and in all my spirits lives, have been a teacher of the natural world. I feel a sense of pride in a good harvest but the seeds I sow don’t always grow immediately or ever even. Some are not meant to. Germination can be stalled due to to environmental factors most often due to lack of resources, language, capacity, or awareness. If you do not water a seed, it will not grow…Many human minds have been neglected just as the people who are tending to them have been. These are the silent echoes of the internalization of harm I am witnessing within the collective consciousness.

**We are both I and we, body and society, psyche and culture // **Thomas Hübl

This concept of seeds as keepers of wisdom is not lost to me as I contemplate the concept of evolution. In plant and mammal form we can look to genetics and our DNA for clues of who we are and where our spirits have been. We all carry ancestral DNA, and within these genetics…we carry stories. We literally embody them and I think that's rad, but this also means we embody the trauma stories too.

It is the generation that bears the scar without the wound, sustaining memory without direct experience. // Arthur a Cohen [on the manifestations of intergenerational trauma]

I believe much of why we have forgotten our stories is because over time we have been separated from our elders, our native tongues, connection to place and have allowed ourselves to become food and nature aka science illiterate. Wisdom has been outsourced, we are supposed to be obedient and “trust the science.” This is a way that colonization impacts all peoples who are touched by western culture and its extractive, exploitive, narcissistic and genocidal nature. It asks us to intellectualize our lives over feeling them. Our emotions are shamed and falsely labeled as weaknesses. Our emotions though, are where out true power resides. All our power lives in our hearts.

What 770,000 Tubes of Saliva Reveal About America [source Ancestry.com]

Trauma is actually not the story of what happened a long time ago, trauma is the residue that’s living inside of you now. // Vessel van Der Kolk

There is hope though.** I genuinely believe Healing is possible, and that it will happen in relation to ourselves, one another and our mother earth. We must learn to coregulate.** This could look like learning to navigate from an abundance mindset rather than one of scarcity, of which were conditioned to do through social and cultural norms that require ourselves to be good, quiet, obedient, strong, powerful, successful, productive, attractive, right etc. This is where our egos have gotten damaged as our minds have been developing within the pressures of capitalism.

These things have all helped me remember how to be human and have allowed me to heal in my journey :

• Seed to table // Growing, harvesting, preparing and eating food with community

• Singing

• Playing

• Dancing

• Grieving

• Healing or shadow work

• Witnessing each other

• Mentoring / teaching each other

• Art [any form]

• Collaborating

• Music

• Sharing wants, needs, desires, fears etc. [being vulnerable and asking for support when we need it]

• Learning about my ancestors and practicing some of the “hobbies” or trades they had. [Holding objects my ancestors held can often unlock memories and new ways of thinking or excitement about different ways to behave in relation to something or someone else]

• Resting!

I believe we can heal and thrive in community. I have been slowly envisioning a rhythm of gathering over the past two years. I would like to live, show up and heal more openly in community. I want to practice this with other beings in my lifetime. I would like to do so in ritual I call the 3g’s

The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma, or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and thier [her] situation in it. // Gabor Maté —* in the realm of hungry ghosts*

A quote from Bell Hooks critiquing narcissism and the perpetuation of isolation within the collective.

Trauma simplified // too much, too fast, too soon or not enough for too long.

We need each other.

Coregulation is natural, isolation is not.

We must counter hoarding energy // we must learn to share, not continue to compete for each others time energy, attention and affection.

We all carry wisdom. The spirit needs to be witnessed. [social media knows this and it’s missing the mark and messing with our dopamine centers and lowering our attention span]

When we begin doing “the work” of healing we tug at the threads of our individual AND collective intergenerational trauma. We must learn to pace ourselves in our healing…Healing is not a competition or a race, there is no finish line, we cannot perfect ourselves we can only progress over time spiritually, some may call this transcendence.

**Tending the collective trauma body can be perceived as a marathon, taking form as a relay of events carrying themselves out over the course of many generations. **We can overstimulate ourselves if we move too fast, fail to reflect, feel, process, integrate and seek witness and care or support. We can also re traumatize ourselves when we neglect our spirits need to heal. When we isolate in our healing we are hoarding collective intelligence as well as emotional capital and we are hiding our survivorship from one another when we should be celebrating our will to survive.

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. // Peter A. Levine — In an unspoken voice

In **grief **we gather, often around a fire, to share what’s alive in our collective trauma body. Here we will create a unique opportunity for ourselves to be witnessed, validated and supported in our individual and inherently collective healing journeys aka life! *People used to heal themselves and each other before the slaughtering of indigenous peoples and the burning of witches. Big pharma took away our ability to practice alchemy and the media shames us when we speak of magic and energy. The medical industry really is capitalizing off of our suffering! All this emotional care in the collective is being outsourced to such violent and isolated systems. *I recently had the opportunity during a Microsolidarity gathering to attend a “BoneFire” facilitated by a magical being named Mars…

In my bones I know the power of gathering collectively around our grief and long for more opportunities to be in communities and crews committed to doing this sort of emotional labor, invested in interdependence and collective self care. Mutualism lives here.

In **growth **we gather to seek out our truest selves. We are tapping into our authenticity. We aim to get grounded in the myriad of identities we each carry. We can learn to communicate about our experiences of marginalization and oppression; believe it or not we can even do this through our oppressors tongue. **We seek peace in our minds, bodies and voice and learn to navigate this language we were born into in peaceful ways. **We share the lessons we have learned while navigating conflict in our daily lives. We seek wisdom from elders but we also invest our time, energy and attention into them. We learn to live in reciprocity. We practice collaboration over competition and learn how to share resources. Perhaps this looks like leveraging privilege, social capital, influence or sharing an acquired skill with another person who wants to develop in an area of thier life or helping someone pay a bill. We lift each other up. We support one another. We learn to listen, reflect and respond to life in a grounded way.

The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma, or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and thier [ ̶h̶e̶r̶] situation in it. // Gabor Maté — in the realm of hungry ghosts

In **gratitude **we gather to celebrate the abundance that is present. We cook, eat, dance, sing, make music and play together. We awaken our neglected inner children, the arts and we invite them in. These are serious times we are living in, we must be able to tap into curiosity and joy. When we can experience them we are more attuned to thier presence and will begin to truly advocate for them in our lives…this behavior will ripple out.

My final thoughts on this little decolonial social engineering rant is this //

I have recently collaborated with Jordan Lyon of “Our Mycelial Selfs” in partnership with U Productions on a community newsletter whose name resembles to me a sort of collaborative invitation : “Seeding Community”. We aim to co-create digital and eventually physical spaces for our our beloved PNW community to witness, express, celebrate and support our magical selves. You can check out the newsletter here , don’t forget to click subscribe!

I hope this article helps give some shape to the inner workings of my mind as I am discerning my place within my environment and the collective trauma body. I look forward to dropping in with those who feel called in these times to grow spiritually.

Aloysious looks through a large green fan leaf, sun kisses their only visible eye, they are happy.

I fancy myself a South African and Indigenous Descendant. I am a Life Giver and a Land Steward. I am A Queer, Polyamorous, Autigender and Disabled Anti-War Veteran of Color who is also AUTISTIC AS FVCK (even if you can’t visibly notice) That’s an ever growing mouthful I’m feeling pretty comfortable leaning into and I trust it to evolve as I continue to learn more about myself.

Naturally, like most folx these days, I am a trauma Survivor. There isn’t a day that goes by where I am not whole-heartedly practicing liberating myself and others beyond our experiences of oppression, marginalization and the colonization of our minds. Healing is possible.