hi friend,
I took last week off from sending this newsletter — celebrating my thirty-fifth birthday and the third anniversary of this self employed solo consulting experiment.
I spent the day quietly puttering, nesting in my home and tending to my brain and body after a week of travel.
Tending is one of my favorite words these days — attending to, giving attention to, caring for.
It’s one of those verbs that gives us unfinished work — a practice, not a project. There is always laundry to be washed; there are always dishes to be put away. There are always worn shirts and relationships to mend; there are always atrocities to witness. There is always the self to nourish and return home to.
Tending is a circular labor — like relational labor, like domestic labor, like gendered labor, like intimate labor, like revolutionary labor. These labors are almost always invisible, hidden from societal view.
Last week, I led a conflict facilitation for an organization and shared with them my take on making that labor visible.
When I’m not facilitating or writing, I’m knitting or stitching. (Lately, I’ve been dreaming in quilted protest banners.)
In conflict work, as in mending, we can make the repair seamless — the stitches so tiny they are practically invisible, a patch so perfectly color-matched we hope no one notices it.
But I’m interested in a practice of visible mending, of playing with color and fabric, of patches that tell stories, of embroidery that contrasts brightly.
In conflict work, as in mending, we have the chance to make something anew, something beautiful. We have the chance to make the labor of tending to each other visible.
Speaking of tending — I’ve updated the archives on my site for you to peruse, nearly 100 (!) pieces over nearly a decade of writing. Today I threw open the windows after a dusty winter, welcomed the lonesome doves flocking to the sill, scribbled pages towards a workbook for equitable conflict. And I refreshed the why behind this weekly study practice — an ongoing research project on transitioning, thresholding, and, of course, tending.
Tell me, on this first warm Sunday of false spring here in New York — what are you tending to?
