Alas, my poor heart aches

In the excellent book How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, author Mia Birdsong writes about the importance of community and of acknowledging our interdependence.

Birdsong argues that the deep loneliness and isolation in modern USAmerican culture (and, to a lesser extent, other Western cultures) is a product of what she calls “American Dreamism.” This ideology saturates every aspect of our culture. American Dreamism says that to be successful, we need to be totally independent and self-sufficient. It says that to be happy, we need to successfully perform social norms like heteronormativity, monogamy, and the nuclear family. It says that we must see other people as competition and keep them at an arm's length. As Birdsong says, “The American Dream is white supremacy culture bound up with capitalism and patriarchy.”

I highly recommend y'all read How We Show Up for yourselves, but here are a few of my main takeaways from the book:

Our healing and growth is entwined with the healing and growth of others

We can build our own families, beyond biology and legal ties, based on shared experiences and values

Our culture encourages us to rely only on romantic partners for help and support, but there is no reason friends can't fill this role for each other

When we reject American Dreamism, we realize that we can prioritize and honor our friendships the same way we might a romantic relationship

When we expand our definition of family, we create support networks that make it easier to overcome life's challenges

With these lessons in mind, I created the following spell for strengthening your community, whatever it may look like.

A Spell for Your Community

For this, you will need to create an artistic representation of your community. You can do this with any medium you want. Here are a few ideas to get you started on your brainstorming:

Weave a web of community using an embroidery hoop plus thread or embroidery floss in different colors. Using a spider's web as inspiration, weave together the threads that make up your support network. You could use different colors of thread to represent different types of relationships, like blood red for your legal/biological family (your “blood”) or pink for romantic partnerships. From here, weave in more colors to represent the identities, feelings, and qualities that hold your community together, like green for a shared love of nature/gardening or rainbow colored thread for shared queer identity. If you'd like, you can place a jewelry charm in the center of the web to represent your place in your community.

Map out a relationship garden inspired by permaculture. In How We Show Up, Mia Birdsong writes about the work of Lawrence Barriner II, a communications strategist who “applied to his friendships a system of zones inspired by permaculture, a system of design that helps farmers and gardeners be efficient with their resources and energy. Zone 1 holds those he is closest to… Zone 5 is people he doesn't know exist.” You could create your zones on a blank sheet of paper by creating five nested circles, with each ring filled in with a different colored pencil or crayon. In each zone, write the names of the people who fall into that zone for you. For example, Zone 1 might include your core chosen family, your partner(s) and roommates, and your best friends, Zone 2 might include extended family and friends you see or talk to regularly, Zone 3 might include acquaintances and old friends you've lost touch with, and so on.

Create a community collage. For this, you'll need access to either a printer or a stack of old magazines, plus scissors, glue, and plenty of space to work in. Start with a blank sheet of paper, either white or another color that resonates with you. If using a printer, search online for images that remind you of different aspects of your community (like a bubbling cauldron for your witchy friends, a playground for your kids, etc.) and print them out. If using magazines, flip through the magazines and cut out any pictures that remind you of your community. Once you've gathered your cut-out pictures, arrange them on your blank paper in a way that reflects the rich diversity of the people in your life. Once you're happy with the placement of all the pictures, glue them down.

Write a love poem celebrating all your relationships. If you're more comfortable with words than with images, try writing a poem about your community. Any poetic structure works – rhyming couplets, limericks, haikus, free verse, whatever speaks to you. Make sure your poem mentions specific people and groups and what they bring to your community. Don't be afraid to go through several drafts!

You will also need a candle. (If you can't use an open flame, a LED candle is fine!) You might also want to have a notebook or journal onhand, but this is optional.

Try to create a ritual mood as you create your art. This might mean meditating beforehand, burning incense, listening to a playlist of songs about family and community while you work, or anything else you need to do to set the mood.

Once you've finished your art, choose a special place to display it. If you have a designated altar, that would be a perfect place for it. If you don't have an altar or don't have room for the art on your altar, choose a place where you'll see it often and where it won't be damaged. This could be in a picture frame on your desk, stuck to the fridge with magnets, or taped to the mirror where you get ready in the mornings.

Place your candle near your representation of your community.

At least once a week, light your candle and sit near it. Look at your art and focus your thoughts and energy on your community. What's going on in your community right now? What wins are they celebrating? What problems are they facing? What do they need from you? What do you need from them?

After several moments, turn your attention to what you can do to strengthen your community. This could be anything from checking in on a friend who is having a hard time, to watching a loved one’s kids for a weekend, to setting up a mutual aid network. Remember that community is something we build by choosing to give our time and energy to the people we care about.

Sometimes, you might find that you need to receive support from your community instead of giving it. This is totally okay! Healthy relationships are reciprocal, which means both people give as they can for mutual benefit. Reciprocity looks different for each of us based on our abilities and resources. It's normal to go through periods of being able to give more and periods of needing to receive more.

So I was thinking about unicorns a lot a while back and now I've got at least 4 subspecies inhabiting the headworld and now you're going to get to learn about them!

Most common and what most centaurs think of when you say unicorn is the above, the Common or Dwarf unicorn! They were made almost entirely from goats and they remain essentially goats with a single horn, usually fairly straight and curving backwards, but there are many different varieties as they are treasured as fine pets and decent livestock, kept for their company, milk, and meat just like goats. Thankfully their attitudes are closer to mini horses than goats, adding to their favor as pets, but they're still quite mischievous as opposed to their more capricious goat cousins.

Next most common, but still fairly rare, is the "True" unicorn! These ethereal beasts are known bastards! Long, fine boned, strong and tough as nails despite their delicate looks these war mounts are visually the closest to a traditional unicorn other than the sparse mane and tail - thought to be owed to the clear base of the breed being Akhal Teke horses. Unfortunately their attitudes do not match their beauty as they are through and through war horses. Used almost exclusively in the eastern kingdom as nobles and knights mounts in their neverending skirmish wars these beasts bond to exactly ONE person at a time and everyone else is liable to be bitten at best, run through with that horn at worst. An absolute nightmare to stablehands throughout their range, they are finicky and aggressive to horses and humans alike making them difficult to keep. They are shockingly intelligent and KNOW how to use that horn to its greatest effect, leading to the nickname of 'Fencers' Even in their native range they're not super common due to the aformentioned difficulties in keeping them and the fact that they frequently prefer to fight one another than breed.

Most rare and least understood is the 'Heraldic' unicorn, these stately but wild creatures are as beloved as they are dangerous. They tend to just appear out of the wilds to those they choose as riders, and are well known for their loyalty and gentle dispositions in times of peace and as deadly war mounts in battle, leading to an enormous amount of legends around them. They are the mounts of kings and explorers, nobles and common adventurers, most who wind up with one of these creatures live extraordinary lives. They also require a significant amount of protein in their diets, and if it is not provided they will acquire it.

the gnomes of the community gather around where i sit, all looking at me and exchanging glances with each other, none of them speaking the obvious. i can no longer stay here, now that i am not their size. but i was part of their community. i became one of them, indistinguishable from these people only from my past. how am i supposed to return to the world of the humans now? there is no life left for me there. that is not a life where i may fish for minnows in a babbling brook and feast off a bounty of raspberries. i am distraught. i cry.

my community comforts me. friends, all minuscule to me now, pat me wherever they can reach, nimbly dodging the tears that fall from my face. one of them offers me water. they don't have any containers that are big enough for me, they apologize, so just this acorn cap filled with morning dew will have to suffice.

i take the acorn cap and look at it in my hands. it is so small now. with a sniff, i put it atop my head.

Red-eyed vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

This guy doesn't even go here! Recent high winds blew him over to Iceland from his typical American homeland. Awww, kinda like me!

you pet your dog and the atoms that are you brush up against the atoms that are him, and the electrons that are you press into the electrons that are him, and both of them change their movement.

electrons of course are not really particles and do not really move.

being really bad at something: whatever i guess i can't do this