How the World Survives: Little Myths and Small Magic
+ Waitlist open for Grief Magic 2025-2026
Dear Shapeshifters,
In this great unraveling, we might feel in touch with our smallness. We might feel an unshakable sense of the fleetingness of our lives, even our species.
Being in touch with our smallness and fleetingness can be frightening.
Being in touch with our smallness and fleetingness can also be empowering.
These are our little lives. These are our small and brilliant bodies, homes, hopes, loves. We get to be free anytime we decide to be free.
What we do may not matter 40 billion years from now, but it matters to us, right now. It matters to our children and our children’s children.
In times of dissolution and great change, we are called to change, too.
But we are also called to look to the areas in our lives where we already feel at home, grounded, nourished. Maybe for those of us who have been feeling collective grief, rising political violence, and encroaching ecological collapse for sometime now, our work is what it has always been: to be here together, to cultivate joy.
Joy as in “the capacity for response”, an increase in our “capacity to do and feel more” (Bergman & Montgomery, Joyful Militancy).
In times of dissolution, creating spaces for our grief is as important as ever.
Creating space for our joy is as important as ever.
Our love of this earth is as important as ever.
The crocus blooming is as glorious as ever.
The care with which we treat ourselves is as important as ever.
How fiercely we love and tenderly we care for one another is as important as ever.
We still get to choose how we want to be together.
Little Myths, Loose Ends, Small Magic, and Scraps
Our collective psyche has endless stories of how the world will come to an end, and a lot of material to work with. We are often haunted by these grand finales.
And yet, that is not all that is happening in our world.
As Gabi Abrao said, "every day I am rescued each day by some random little thing"
Even in these times, despair or delusion are not our only options.
In the face of such momentous loss, we need stories that remind us of this, of our capacity for "being startled out of old modes of thinking", of our capacity for response (David Abram).
We need stories that enchant us to our lives, to living; stories that remind us of the power of the small, even in the face of great change, even in the face of death.
Maybe we are working with scraps and loose ends of ancestral stories and myths and rituals, but this invites us to get a little smaller, a little closer to the ground, and remember our ecosystems and our communities are the roots of these stories, putting the "open secrets" of how to live another day right in front of us.
Michael Meade shares in Why the World Doesn't End: Tales of Renewal in Times of Loss:
"Sometimes the only place to begin is the end... Whereas the grand myths and epic sagas of civilization tend towards dramatic conclusions and apocalyptic endings, more humble folk myths and folktales tend to escape the grand finales in order to live another day… The folk of folklore tend to have little myths of how the world survives rather than grand dramas of how it all comes to an end…When the great civilizations lose their civility and collapse upon the historical heap, the folk continue along intuitively, instinctively making do with the remnants, loose ends, and leftovers that remain when everything else falls apart…Folktales are a part of the open secrets of life, part of an earthly wisdom that avoids the dizzying heights of culture by keeping close to the ground of being.”
When all seems lost, may we find endless ways to recognize and tell the small stories of how we will survive.
There are all kinds of small magic in this world.
Often when we are overwhelmed by the seeming grand finales, we forget to orient our bodies to the webs of magic that we are immersed in and a part of, a universe teeming with countless beings finding ways to survive and create life anew. We find ourselves hungry for grand and “high” magic, and then we miss the ways the universe gives us a massive chorus of small magic.
But it is often the small magic, the low-to-the-ground, unfinished, always becoming magic, not the grand resolution, that saves us.
“The spider that is delicately weaving a silken masterpiece has had every single thread broken before” (Nikita Gill, A Reminder from Smaller Beings)
One space I am finding to be with these little myths and small magics is our Grief Magic course, which began last year and is coming to a close this Spring, just as a new cohort begins. I teach this course because I also need this space in my life.
Joining us this upcoming year will be teachers like
, , dori midnight, Damiana Calvario, Peia Luzzi, Naila Francis, and more ✨ The course opens soon and I’ve started a waitlist here for those interested in joining us!I’m so grateful and excited for this journey. 💗💗💗💗
With love,
Mara June
For more explorations of small magic… our Grief Magic 2025 Cohort opens soon!
This yearlong creative cohort explores themes around grief, magic, and shapeshifting in tune with the seasons and our bodies. Participants will explore their own processes of shapeshifting, magic, and story-telling, creating and sharing creative writing and art inspired by the themes we explore together.
Some of the themes we’ll be exploring:
Ancestral Stories, Myths, and Timekeeping: Myths, Magic, and Folklore connected to the seasons and grief*
Tarot’s Major Arcana as guides for grief and creative process
Imagination Spells: Envisioning and Practicing Living Futures
Art, imagination, and grief as collaborators and ecological processes
Grief as Time Travel: Exploring constructions and experiences of space and time
Grief, Shapeshifting, De/Constructions of the self: becoming multitudes
The Politics of Enchantment: Mundane Magic, Care, and Enchantment in the Everyday
Entanglement + Collapse: staying with the trouble of love amidst collective + ecological loss
Subscribe to Grief Spells
Your subscriptions help support my work and help us skirt the whims of the algorithm! As of right now, all subscription tiers (including free) will receive access to seasonal grief spells.
You can also support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter for $16-20/month 💖 Your paid subscriptions help me so that I don't have to spend as much time marketing, and can instead focus on creating and doing what I love. THANK YOU!
Paid subscribers will also get access to live community events each season. These Grief Studios will be spaces to dialogue with, make, and share your own art and writing alongside other grievers. 🕸️
the Michael Meade quote is gold ... thanks.