A note from Erin Oct. 2, 2025
In the midst of so much that is heartbreaking and exhausting, I want to share some beautiful opportunities and resources with you. Some are classes you can sign up for with me and Carl and with dear, wise friends of ours, and some are inspiring links you can drop into for a dose of heartening and encouraging perspective.
For locals, tonight, Oct.2, my brilliant, beloved Carl is teaching “Musical by Nature” at Lindsey Gardens Park in the Avenues (SLC) from 5-7 pm. All levels of musicality are welcome. Carl is so skilled at bringing people together in musical playfulness and these gatherings are so much fun! Carl writes: This starving world needs our singing, our beauty-making, and our being together in rhythm and harmony. Please know that these gatherings are not about any kind of performance or perfection, but rather offer a context for play, learning, and connection, and the deep satisfaction of making music together as we reclaim our natural rhythmic and vocal intelligence and inhabit the one unique voice that is our own. Your presence and voice would be most welcome. Sign up here. He’ll be joining our dear friend Francis Weller at the Minnesota Men’s Conference next week to share this same enlivening work. I’m so proud.
Our dear heart-friend, collaborator, and soul sister, Leilani Navar, is offering a 28-day Stress Reset. She’s a lovely, gentle, and wise human being and she is deeply skilled as a healer and teacher. She’s distilled potent perspectives on how to destress in the midst of modern life and is sharing the most important things to know and the most impactful things you can do in this 28-day online course. Stress has a huge impact on our health and wellbeing, and hooo baby, these are stressful times. Learning how to destress without checking out is essential. You can read more and sign up here. The class starts on Monday. We wholeheartedly recommend Leilani and her healing wisdom, and we hope for you to be as well as possible as we all navigate these exhausting times.
Our beloved heart friends and collaborators, Alexandre Jodun and Alyona Kobevka of A Healing Bridge, are offering a beautiful online course called Remembering the Roots. They will share teachings on how to access the ancestral wisdom and original inheritance that lives in our very bone marrow. As apprentices of various mystical traditions and trained therapists in integrative paradigms, they share from both direct experiences and the core teachings entrusted to them by elders and wisdom keepers from around the world. They offer a space for enlivening learning, including practices that allow you to drink deeply from these teachings and explore creative ways to bring them alive in your own life and in your path of service. This class starts on October 18th. We wholeheartedly recommend Alexandre and Alyona and their healing wisdom offerings.
Carl and I are excited to offer a daylong retreat before the holiday season begins. On November 22nd, join us for Grounded & Spacious, a live online retreat in movement and stillness, two embodied gateways to the calm, vital, and spacious presence that is always present beneath the choppy waters at the surface of our busy lives. Recordings are provided if you’d like to attend asynchronously. Read more and register here.
I loved watching this 3-minute reminder from Parker Palmer on inhabiting the distance between what is and what we know to be possible.
As someone who encouraged my mom to loosen her tongue on the occasion of her 70th birthday a few years ago (she’s doing a great job, btw) and as someone who inhabits soulful and spiritual communities yet totally relishes the skillful use of foul language, I loved this article to no end. I needed that laugh.
This Glossary for the Unspoken is such a gorgeous piece of writing by someone I adore.
My beloved friend and gifted artist, Wrenna Rose, made a beautiful new piece inspired by a line from one of my writings. You can see it here. Praise the chorus of unpaid singers!
I love both the writings and the apparel that come from The Bitter Southerner. Their new drop of t-shirts and sweatshirts is great, and I learned a new word that clearly needs to be in my vocabulary, because I totally love Tsundoku. I was so happy a few years ago to get my kiddo a Good Trouble t-shirt (and me the hat) and of course, I made him watch a film about the late, great John Lewis so he knew what it was all about. Cheers to good trouble.
This film was so beautiful. And there’s about to be a new release and a live online event with indigenous elders very soon. Can’t wait.
My obsession with this show runs deep. I was late to the party, but then I binge-watched it this summer, not only by myself, but then again because I had to share it with my beloved, and then again because I had to share it with our kiddo, and then again when dear friends were visiting – and I could totally watch it again. (What are you watching that’s hitting the spot?)
I loved rereading this reminder to remember what you love.
As I shared in a newsletter a few weeks ago, I was talking to my dear friend Leilani, and she reminded me of something that touched me deeply. She not only offered a reminder to look for the helpers, she added this important caveat: “When you see helpers, help the helpers!” Here’s an opportunity to do just that. Leilani is collaborating with her friend Jules Mongane in Uganda to fund Goat Farming for Families in Nakivale Refugee Settlement. Leilani told me, “ Let folks know that every donation of any amount really makes a difference – not only because the fundraising goal is not so very high and we can get there with a lot of small contributions – but also because Jules and his community see the fundraiser, and every person who donates is evidence of how many people are thinking about them and care.” Your donation of any amount helps this community with:
Food Security
Income for Children’s School and Medical Needs
Dignity and Hope
Let’s help these folks with their starter goats and support a community where our dollars can truly make a difference.
Thanks for helping the helpers however you do.
This is a beautiful course I’ve so appreciated dropping into to remind me that, as Gandhi said, The means we use must embody the end we seek. So many inspiring voices and important, reality-tested perspectives on non-violent social change.
A Council for Grief Tenders with me, Carl, Alexandre, and Alyona is coming up on 10/16. After receiving questions and requests for support from many people who are holding space for grief or called to do so in the future, we decided to create an opportunity for all of us to gather and learn from one another’s questions, insights, and struggles. Join us around the virtual fire for two hours of council and conversation about holding space for grief. Recordings will be provided, so if you’re unable to attend live, feel free to participate via recordings. This gatheirng is for any adult who currently holds space for grief, especially in communal or ritual ways; who would like to deepen their skills at holding space for grief; who would like to begin holding space for grief rituals in their own communities; who would like to share struggles, questions, insights, and experiences in holding grief rituals; and who would like to learn from and with kindred grief tenders.
And lastly, a reminder that there is so much wisdom and inspiration to be found in the many podcast episodes we’ve recorded with wonderful guests. Drop in for some soul nourishment.
I hope you found something heartening in this missive today. Feel free to pass it along to any others you think may benefit.
Thanks, as always, for making the world a more kind and beautiful place for all.
I’m so grateful that we’re in it together.
With love, fall flowers, and the exquisite light of October,
Erin
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