January 9 2024

I've been having a lot of vivid dreams lately, and many of them are showing me areas in my life where I’m giving my energy away. At first I thought that the dreams were disempowering because I was meek and submissive or feeling dominated, but when I reflected more carefully on the scenarios being presented to me, I realized that they were giving me important messages about people who I have a connections to, and boundaries that need to be set.

I’ve also been connecting to the moon again, really beautifully, and I asked that my menses go back to being in sync with the new moon, as it got a little bit out of whack during all of my travels. It seems to be working, as I haven’t started bleeding yet.

And speaking of menstruation, I just started re-reading Carrie and I’m reminded of what an incredible author Stephen King is. It still blows my mind that he threw the original manuscript in the garbage and his wife fished it out and convinced him to continue with the story. It’s so disturbing in the beginning of the book when Carrie starts bleeding in the shower room and thinks she’s dying and the other girls are yelling “Plug it up, plug it up!” and throwing tampons at her.

I think I was about 9 years old when I first read this book, and I turned into a huge Stephen King fan and would read many of his other books over the years: Christine, The Stand, The Gunslinger series, Different Seasons, Night Shift, Dolores Clairborne, Pet Semetary..

The character in the book is physically completely different from Sissy Spacek, who ended up playing Carrie in the film adaptation. Though the film is brilliant and stands on it’s own as a dark and beautiful piece of artwork, and Brian de Palma is one of my favourite film directors.

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Solitude begets fortitude, in my case at least. Though I do have my feline friend here to keep me company, and I’ve been reconnecting with some old friends online, which has been great. It’s nice to still have connections with people who I’ve known for over 20 years, even if they’re far away and I may never see them again.

I’ve also been working through my feelings of fatigue and burn out since following the situation in Gaza for 2.5 months, watching what’s really going on on the ground, and then following up with letters, phone calls, rallys and conversations with people who only know what they're presented with through the mainstream media. I’ve questioned my own involvement and perspectives many times and make sure to read the perspective of Zionists and pro-Israelites so I can understand where they're coming from. Yet as I peel away the layers of lies, my position has only grown stronger. It doesn’t mean that I support Hamas, because I don’t at all. But I know that anarchists, feminists, queers and neurodivergents in Palestine will have a better time when they’re free from American / Western endorsed Israeli aggression. I also recognize that a lot of the conflict is rooted in White supremacy and antisemitism in Europe, and I have a part to play in that on an ancestral level. Palestinians are paying the price for the sins of Europe.

In many of the sources I've read, which try and justify Israel’s position, there is reference to God having promised Jewish people the lands that are modern day Palestine; and in reading that I’m reminded about the horrors of the patriarchal Abrahamic religions, which have caused so much harm on this planet. So many misguided humnas follow the word of the mountain god Yahweh, the god of the so-called Holy Bible whose ego got out of hand, whose glory and divinity flows through the Kings and patriarchs of the world, who bring him their flesh offerings in the form of mass genocide, rape, paedophilia, and slavery. On the other side, there are Islamic extremists who justify their own violence against innocent civilians and their own people because of religious beliefs about the glory of Allah and martyrship.

I’ll be over here honouring the Sabbaths, planting seeds for a new world and sending vibes over to the innocents who are suffering so deeply. And being real about how the lands that I live on were colonized and the ongoing genocide against the Indigenous people of these lands.

Thanks to the inspiration of Adrienne Maree Brown, I'm not closing my eyes, and I’m working through the numbness and disconnect that happens when I get overwhelmed. I’m staying strong, staying active and keeping my tears flowing. I’m also doing meditation for peace and taking breaks when needed. I realized that I was bombarding myself with too many traumatic images every day, so I followed a bunch of music and art accounts on Instagram* now, and some cheesy 80’s retro accounts and memes, so I’m not only getting political stuff when I go on there.

I was also feeling quite isolated in my activism, which is easy to do in Lekwungen / so-called Victoria where people are so fucking stuck up and cliquey, but today I felt a rush of resonance with the growing global movement and was appreciating how huge it is. And I know that even if Israel thinks that they’ve won that they’ll never crush the spirit of the Palestinian people. Eventually there will be justice and reclamation. And that goes for so many other power imbalances of the world. Eventually these old men wars will stop and we’ll rebuild a new world out of the literal ashes of the old one.

It’s a fucked up thing to be a witness to a literal apocalypse. And it’s even stranger to be living in so much comfort. Yet I feel the responsibility of that, because: no one is free until everyone is free. The fun that we’re having in the West will only ever feel empty and superficial until we start working for the emancipation of all of humanity, and recognize that so much of what we have requires so many people to have nothing; because at the end of the day, it’s less about religion and holy wars, and more about money, land, and resources.

When I went to a pow wow last summer with some old friends, I asked them what was the single most important thing that needs to happen for Indigenous people to be honoured and the answer was: Landback. Same goes for Palestine.

What does that look like? Does that mean that I should give my family home to an Indigenous family when my parents die? I personally would be willing to do that, but I don’t know if my 3 brother who will also inherit the home would be. Also, the house might get sold before that’s even a question. So I don’t have much power there. But what I do have power over is pressuring the government, corporations and other influential people to take action in regards to honouring Indigenous land rights and sovereignty. That should involve giving a lot of land back, and should include fully honouring UNDRIP, the 94 calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Report, and the 231 calls to Justice of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry. Communities should also be given the funding that they need to thrive so that they can make informed decisions about whether to involve themselves in harmful environmental projects like the Site C Damn and the Kinder Morgan Pipeline.

“When you hear the words decolonization, white supremacy, patriarchy or even racism, do you feel something? Do you get a chill down your back, randomly start crossing your arms, get tense all over your body, or even just feel an urge to resist? Well good! When your body is cold it shivers, when it’s hungry it growls, when it’s in fear it shakes and when it’s sad it cries. Your body is meant to respond, whether that be physical or emotional, and it’s the same when deconstructing what you’ve been taught. It tells you that something is there and that you must go through it and find ways to process it.” – Kris Archie, Executive Director of the Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples.

The more we confront the aspects of so-called Canada that mirror Israel and other oppressive regimes of the world, the closer we can get to justice for Indigenous people on these lands, and truly begin healing. We can’t expect Indigenous people to babysit us through this process, though the more that each person learns, the more they can hold space for other non-Indigenous people to go through their own deep processing and be accountable and empowered supporters.


* I know I talked before about going off of all social media, and I did for a few years, but I had to set up an account for work and started follow political accounts. I left that job and now I feel torn because I don't want to support Meta in any way, yet I see what a powerful tool social media can be for social activism..