I hold onto this vision and the hope that lies within it close because I know that now, more than ever before, it is vital that we nourish the spaces that feed us joy and hope in a time when we are starving for it. We know that in this time when floods rise and fires burn we need spaces of respite. Of care. Of collaboration. Where we can do the critical work of processing what has been. Where we can imagine better worlds.
Nelle and I do the work to steward this space year after year, adapting within our shifted lives, our full time work outside of SotA, the shifting needs of our community and of the world. This isn’t the first year I’ve said that now more than ever we need spaces like this.
And year after year there are more and more reasons to stop doing this work. To quit volunteering so much time and energy towards a short session each spring. But then each year we do the work, we use our precious energy and our free labor to facilitate a session where folks feel cared for from the moment they apply to the moment that they leave. We then go to the session, as full participants, and leave nourished, cared for, emotional and open and present and changed, yet again. This organization sustaining for this long is radical. In spite of our absence the last few months, we are committed to stewarding this space. We are here.
I’m writing this from my home in Asheville, in a place that has been forever changed. I still feel tender every day driving through Helene’s aftermath. I’m still devastated. We know that so much of the SotA community is far from Western North Carolina, but that you carry that pain too, alongside us. That you all also consider this place a home.
I also still feel hope every day seeing the way our community has taken care of each other. We must hold onto both right now. We must alongside our heartbreak and weariness we must also carry that hope. Our survival, within and beyond this crisis depends on it.
Helene destabilized SotA. It took months from our planning season. We lost access this year to our beloved Blue Ridge Assembly, because of their extensive damage from the floods. We spent the last few months stabilizing, as best as we can, and finding another place for SotA to land this year.
This land is forever changed, but it and we are resilient, and this tragedy has illustrated above all else that there is nothing more powerful than community.
We hope to invite you back to here in May. To this resilient, beautiful, ancient, scarred and sacred land. We are doing everything in our power to figure out a way to make this year happen. Thank you for waiting this long, we’ll update more in the coming week 🖤. - Heidi
