SPARKNOTES: what is sustaining me
🎶 2026 song circles begin! 🎶 Just in time to join the Singing Resistance <3
✨ little notes about the things currently lighting me up ✨
Each month I send a digest of things I’m reading, listening to, watching or practicing as an offering of ways to deepen your own embodiment and ritual practice.
📚 Book
Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crises, Ed. Kelly Hayes
This collection of letters has been a daily dose of reality and solidarity through the page. Hearing from so many organizers who have lived wisdom to share with so many of us in the intensity of this moment has been a point of connection and ground for me this month.
🎨 Creative Practice
30-day challenge at DrawTogether with Wendy MacNaughton
This is the second year I’ve done Wendy’s challenge. What I am appreciating this year is that it’s really helped me to slow down and look. Drawing is looking, seeing. I feel so clear that it is vital we slow down and see and feel and discern together — even as we meet the urgency of this moment. This practice has helped me to do that in my body in a low stakes way! What helps you to slow down, look, see?
🎧 Podcasts
When We All Get To Heaven by Eureka Street Productions
Holy shit y’all. This podcast has given me so much life this month. It has felt so hard to practice hope in the day to day when the waves of grief and fear are so tall and wide. But this storytelling is so beautiful and powerful. It’s a documentary project that tells the story of one of the first gay-positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, and how it faced the personal, social, and political trials of the AIDS epidemic, including the deaths of 500 of its members. It’s reminding me how beautiful and liberating our courage and grief and caring for each other truly is.
Connect, practice, sing with me
NOMI Song Circles: Tess and I are really excited to kick off another year of singing at the Bahle Warming Hut this Saturday, Jan 31st. We'll start with a potluck at 5pm and then gather for song circle at 6:30pm. If you've never been to the Bahle Warming Hut, it's located at the end of West St. in Suttons Bay. There's a sledding hill just outside - so bring your sled if you'd like! We'll likely be there by 4pm to sled a bit. Inside there's a cozy fireplace and small kitchen where we'll set up for dinner and singing later.
Have you seen the singing actions in Minneapolis?! Neighbors have been gathering in a huge church, in the streets, in action - bringing their song to each other and gathering their courage. Feeling their collective grief and courage and vision through song has been so incredibly powerful. You can check them out here and here.
This month, when we gather we will sing songs in solidarity with Minneapolis. We’ll sing songs for grief and joy and the land. Most importantly - we’ll be singing together. Bring your friends who could use a little connection and lift <3 These are heavy days.
Have you ever said yes when you actually meant no? Having access to and feeling for our authentic yes’, no’s and maybe’s is one pathway to living with more consent in all of relationships. The practice of consent also supports building a culture that honors everyone’s dignity and safety.
As Grace Lee Boggs said, “In order to transform the world, they must transform themselves.” The way we feel for systems that dignify all life is to start by feeling for our own dignified consent, and then feel for one more person’s, and the next.
Come feel what the body has to say + build a culture of consent with us.
Turning to the Body: consent & relationships
Where: Kindred Waters Collective — 891 Michigan Ave, Benzonia
When: Sun, Feb 15 from 12-3pm
Cost: Low cost - $40 | True Cost - $60 | Sustainer Cost - $80