Dear Becoming Ones: I am writing from a horse farm in the middle of no where in the American South. It is lovely here and the animals are majestic. I’ll be cooking dinner tonight for a group of strangers and then asking my research question: How do we turn to(3rd) one another right now?
The work of Our Collective Becoming continues to focus on 1:1 engagements and small circles of gathering together. We have embraced degrowth and the wisdom that small is all.
Teaching using the socratic method has always been helpful for me. I’ve had scholars train me in the European method of going deep with one subject. So, I am doing that these days with Baldwin, and the sobering history of this country that hold open wide the woundings that have been perpetuated by the very same systems we try to reform!
One of the things I’m sad about missing is The Wild Way Retreat with my teacher, Michael McRay. He’s one of my closest friends and a person I have entrusted my life to. I’ve asked him to do my funeral when the time comes. I think he’ll have good stories to tell about me from Palestine to Belfast and everywhere in between! The weekend he is doing his retreat, I’m taking temporary vows with my monastic community. I want to be there, but cannot. So, do one of you want to attend and then tell me all about it?
Those of you who’ve followed my becoming know this: I spent years living from the shoulders up. A story-alienated academic, disconnected from my own body, mistaking exhaustion for devotion. What returned me to myself wasn’t another argument. It was breath, and movement, and the pain awareness of my own complex traumatized story. The slow, tender work of coming home to the body, and the struggle I’ve had to come alive.
I want to tell you about a place where that work happens.
My friend Michael McRay—whose orbit I’ve been in since 2018, whose witness to story and repair I trust completely—is gathering a small circle this fall. It’s called The Wild Way Retreat: two nights in the woods outside Nashville, October 9–11, held by Michael and the therapist and somatic guide Lauren Russell. Story on one side, the body on the other. Firelight, movement, dance, old tales told aloud, deep rest, and the kind of belonging that reminds you you were never meant to carry it all alone.
So many of us who tend the world’s repair forget to tend ourselves. We give and give from a self we’ve stopped nourishing. This is an invitation to stop — to set down an old story, to let your body lead, to remember your own aliveness. To become.
The circle is small—only 10 to 12—and registration closes September 4. If it calls to you, I’d love for my people to be in that room. I desperately want to go, but I have another commitment.
You can see everything at thewildwayretreat.com. And because you’re part of this community, Michael made a gift for you: the code WILDWAY15 takes 15% off.
Rest is not a reward. It’s repair.
With tenderness, RCE+