The Polycrisis is not new: Remembering our Entangled Multitudes
+ Samhain Grief Studio next week
Dear Shapeshifter,
I wish we could be in a room singing together and remembering our humanity and what's possible together, feeling it land in our bodies the way it did for me in choir yesterday, the first one many of us were able to attend since the storm.
And I feel the ways that song and dance and embodied community moments like these connect us all to one another, and to an entanglement of care and resistance that stretches forward and backward in time, across landscapes.
It is from this entangled place of poly-possibility and poly-connection that I want to meet what many are calling the polycrisis. So maybe if you can, sink in here. Remember a moment when you felt held. Place your hand on the miracle of your chest, imagining your own entangled web of support, that branches out like the trees of your lungs.
I'm sending deep love to you, whatever heartbreak and whatever joy you are holding.
The Polycrisis is Not New
Many are using the term polycrisis to describe the co-occurrence of ongoing genocides, ecological collapse, and climate chaos as late capitalism continues doubling down on extraction and militarization. Polycrisis is defined as "the causal entanglement of crises in multiple global systems in ways that significantly degrade humanity's prospects" (Lawrence M, 2024).
There is something about the use of polycrisis that seems to gesture to a distinction about this moment. And while this moment is certainly distinct in various ways, the polycrisis is not new.
Ecocide and genocide have always been linked, have always "significantly degrade(d) humanity's prospects". Massive, unbearable violence towards land and people at the hands of empire are how we arrived here. And our entanglement is not new. In The Undercommons, Fred Moten writes:
“The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?”
So now things are catching up, and more of us are realizing that this shit has always been killing us too. So, the polycrisis is not new, but for many of us, our awareness and experience of it is. What now?
Remembering our Entangled Multitudes in Polycrisis
Even within the word polycrisis, there exists a doorway, or actually, a multitude of doorways. One of the definitions of crisis is ""a time when a difficult or important decision must be made" (Oxford Dictionary). And the definition of poly is many.
So we are in a time of many difficult and important decisions. Which implies that we have a capacity for response, for agency in troubling times.
So the polycrisis can redirect us to our agency as well as our entangled multitudes. Being with death, catastrophe, and the polycrisis can invite us back into the question of how we really want to live, and how we want to feed life for others.
In the ongoing polycrisis, there have always existed a multitude of responses and ways of doing things differently. There are so many ways to love the world. So many ways to resist. So many ways to grieve. So many ways to cultivate joy. So many ways to take care of one another. So many ways to feed life as we come undone.
Samhain Studio next week: Making Life in the Ruins
Our next Grief Studio will be our Samhain Studio on Wednesday, October 23rd, from 6-7:30pm eastern time.
Grief studios are a virtual space to dialogue with, make, and share your own art and writing alongside other grievers, and each one centers around a different theme as it connects with grief. 🕸️
At our Samhain Studio, we will be exploring the Death tarot card and making life in decay and the ruins of capitalism. For more context on this particular theme, you can read my latest substack post, or listen to a conversation I had with Cecily Sailer about the Death tarot card on her podcast: Death: How do we want to live?
The session is free for those directly impacted by any of the hurricanes this season (see details at the bottom of this email).
Grief Studio Structure*:
Welcome & Grounding
Small group discussion around a particular theme, tarot card, plant, or text related to grief (this time the Death tarot card and making life in decay and the ruins of capitalism)
Intention Setting for your creative practice
Creative Exploration/Studio time: Undirected, parallel play/creative exploration using whatever mediums/materials you feel called to, with the understanding that all of life can be lived as art, and that our artmaking gets to be a practice of attunement to ourselves and the world around us. Studio time can include anything from painting, collaging, dusting off your apothecary shelves, making tea, making music, rearranging your room, casting a spell, cooking a meal, or simply laying down and allowing yourself to rest as a creative practice…
Reflection: Set aside time to free-write/reflect on your creative process, and witness and dialogue with your own art/creative process as if it were animate and speaking to you.
Witnessing one another: Time to share our art and reflections with one another, without critique or comment. The intention for this space are not to workshop or heap criticism or praise on one another's pieces but to simply receive and witness them, which has its own magic.
*This structure is adapted from the lineage of the Jewish Studio Process, whose two year Creative Facilitator Training Fellowship I am currently in and deeply grateful for!
Sessions (not including break out rooms!) will be recorded for those unable to make them live ✨
Join us!
There are two ways to join us:
If you are already (or would like to be!) on substack, you can become a paid subscriber to my Grief Spells substack.
If you are NOT on substack and don't want to be, you can subscribe without going through substack.
Free for those impacted by hurricane season
If you are directly impacted by Hurricane Helene (or any of the hurricanes this season) and seeking a free spot in our upcoming Grief Studio, RSVP here to be added to our email list and I'll send out details and a zoom link for our studio as it gets closer!
With fierce care,
Mara June
Thank you for this reframing of polycrisis Mara 🖤 It reminds me of the words of Michael Meade:
'An old idea states that each person is born into the river of time and there's truth in that but another old idea suggests that sometimes we are born into the seas of radical change and to be alive at this time means living through a series of extreme changes that include enormous storms in nature, shocking events, and contemporary politics. We are in the midst of a cascade of crises that's seem impossible to solve yet at the same time, in mythological terms, we are in what the ancients called a Kairos moment.
An opening in time that calls for a transformation of life on Earth. In such extraordinary times, things become both impossible and more possible at the same time as life itself seeks to transform on many levels. When everything seems about to just fall apart or come to a tragic end what we need is not the sense of evolution over time, but a felt connection to the potentials for transformation and renewal at this particular time. In times of change it becomes important to know that transformation is the way of the world from the beginning. Kairos time involves opportune moments that allow a shifting of the archetypes and a return to the origins and a renewal of all the potentials of life. And without this sense of a renewal of imagination, the battles between lies and genuine knowledge will grow just as the divisions between humanity and nature will expand. Kairos is awakened time, it involves moments of transformation in which we awaken to a greater sense of the world but also come to know more precisely who we are and what we have to contribute to this time of radical change and possible renewal.'