Yesterday, on the Wellness Almanac, I posted my 3436thth post. (Of a total of 4030 posts, thanks to a host of wonderful other contributors over the years.) I noticed this at the top of my screen, when I logged in to craft another dispatch, or ten, just after my old editor at Coast Mountain Life magazine shared a lament for the collapse of that ten year old publication during the earliest days of the pandemic.

It has made me feel reflective.

A lot has happened in the last ten years, and nothing feels very stable anymore. I have become a lot more used to things changing, collapsing or cancelling at the last minute. Not that it’s easy when it happens. Just that, it’s so much more common, I feel as if I should have been better prepared.

I think my relative privilege as a white-bodied middle-class heteronormative person has provided me with a lot of insulation and stability over the years, that wasn’t shared universally amongst people of colour or precarity. I suspect there aren’t many First Nations women of my age who enjoyed ten years of stability and consistency in the world around them, even as I was typing away, trying to explore the spaces that exist between us.

So even as I feel as though something is being lost, slipping away, I have to acknowledge the gift of it having existed in the first place… as a blessing, not a universal entitlement.

And while I still believe that writing, telling stories, talking to each other, sharing and hearing each other’s stories and updates, is glue – it feels harder and harder to see, or say, whether this is having the impact our community needs most right now.

The funding support that has powered this website for the last few years (gratitude to the Village of Pemberton and SLRD’s Pemberton and District Initiatives Fund, and to the Lil’wat Nation) ends at the end of this year.

And it feels to me like a good time to say, what next?

I have so many ideas of things we could do to strengthen community connection and resilience, but they, like many of my words, spend too much time bouncing around in one little room, behind one little screen, in the particular bubble of a relatively privileged person’s perspective.

So as this year tumbles into fall, it feels like a good time to reflect, shed and inquire: where are we at, folks? What feels most alive for you, when you think about the state of truth and reconciliation on this unceded territory, in our communities, in your daily life? What do you think needs strengthening? What supports would you need to feel empowered to make a good contribution? Where is your personal wellness at? How resourced do you feel, to respond to larger shifts and crises and disappointments and cancellations?

I’ve been thinking more and more about how we make an impact in the world, and what keeps coming back to me, of late, is to make sure you operate from your right size and right place. Right size is a way of acknowledging your small delicious significance – nothing too heroic, Messianic or egotistical, but also not losing sight of the interconnectedness of all things and the butterfly power of your actions and words, because who knows what ripple effects they have.

Right place is an idea I’ve been playing with, about paying attention to where you are. Ground yourself energetically. And then pay attention to the community you’re in, the context, the people and beings around you. Serve where you are. (Stop imagining that you’re alone/isolated/just a fragment and fit yourself into a system.) It’s still a concept that is coming to life for me, so I feel as though I’m fumbling to explain something I can kinda feel, brewing. But it feels important for me, to manage the sometimes-sense that I’m getting left behind, to try and cultivate a sense of right place. And to ask: what is my place? And then ask, what is my work to do?

I want to try and gather a sense of what threads feel common and shared enough, throughout community, that we could get a good hold of them, and start weaving. So, the next few months, I’d love to hear from people. Send a note. Give me a call. Let’s grab lunch or go for a walk. I’ll craft a survey, if you prefer to have a yes/no format… Gather a couple of friends and I’ll feed you muffins as you sound off.

If you think about the future, about community resilience and risk, about truth, reconciliation, decolonization, let’s chat. I’d love to be able to use this forum, over the next few months, to surface some of the things people are wondering and worrying on… and maybe even plant a few seeds for what a new season of growth could be. After all, that is the lesson of garlic – pick the best bulbs, tuck them into the dark earth with a song and a prayer and a cover of leaves or straw, let them nestle down there being imbued with a sense of place, until the spring impetus of growth begins to flow through them.