Kristinha M. Anding is a writer, mother, women’s group leader and community organizer. She has served SOULand in both training and support roles, being involved in the Grief Composting and Returning to the Earth What is Stolen and the Life Carin for Extinct Species. initiatives. She lives in Encinitas, Calif., with her two sons.
It was the Christmas party shooting in San Bernardino, not so far from my own Southern California home, that finally broke me open. It was an event that left the 6-month-old child of the perpetrators orphaned, in addition to 16 dead, an event barely discussed in my social group because there had already been too many mass murders in America, too much loss, and we no longer knew how to hold onto much more than a headline. After dropping my children off at school, where “active shooter” drills had become as commonplace as fire preparation, I drove home and listened to radio coverage shift jauntily from the shooting to an upbeat story on holiday cooking. No, I thought, suddenly hit by the enormity of our undigested collective grief. I cannot do this anymore. I found myself on the floor of my living room wailing in pain for people I didn’t know, but realizing I was keening for us all. A series of synchronicities put the eloquent words of Martin Precthel and Malidoma Somé in my path, and I learned how grief expressed generously in the village, a practice largely forgotten in the West, supports human maturity, belonging, resilience and compassion—qualities direly needed during our era of global cultural and ecological change. But it wasn’t until I met Azul-Valérie Thomé that I discovered beautiful, grounded steps to reclaim our fluency with this forsaken, regenerative emotion. I participated in SOULand’s Grief Composting Circle Training in California and later supported both the training and community circle in Totnes, U.K. My involvement with SOULand has led me to hold reparative ritual on land still ravished by the legacy of gold mining in California; facilitate a local grief circle; and host an artistic community event and fire for Remembrance Day for Lost Species. My current projects include bringing a permanent memorial for extinct species to my city, planning more community circles, and allowing the mycelium of SOULand to wend its way through my writing. I am so grateful to Azul for her offerings, which have deepened my sense of reciprocity within the web of life and brought me the courage to step more boldly—and broken-heartedly—into service. |
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