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Hello again, dear ones. Welcome back (or for the first time, for those who have recently joined) to the monthly Resourcing the Revolution newsletter.
As I write this month’s edition, we find ourselves still in the seasonal threshold. One day it feels like “fake summer” as my kiddo has taken to calling it, and the next we’re holding our breath as a cold snap threatens the blossoms on the fruit trees — and with them, the fall harvest they could have (and might yet) become.
The in-between is like that. Beautiful, but exposed. Vulnerable in the middle of becoming something. The middle can end up costing everything.
And not just in the orchard and gardens. This seasonal breath-holding isn’t the only place I’m feeling the dance of balance.
For anyone else who has (or had) a preschooler, you likely still vividly recall the tension of negotiating with a “fournado.” It’s hard enough to hold your center when you’re in conflict with another adult — but add in a feral human who is just learning emotional regulation, and suddenly holding your center feels like a contact sport.
If you’ve been following the astrology of this season, you’ll also remember that the sky has been on fire. Just last week, we saw seven planets (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, and Chiron) all in Aries. Lots of volatility, ignition, tempers flaring. Like a powder keg just waiting for someone to look at someone else sideways and set the whole thing off.
The good news is, as of this week, Taurus has entered the conversation. For the next month, we shift into the earthy, grounded energy of the Bull. And Venus (the planet that rules Taurus), brings us face to face with what happens when our values make contact with others, and of what we’re willing to stay present for.
If you’ve been reading these past couple of months, you may have noticed an arc emerging: The Death of Nuance in February named the cultural moment, The Both/And Body in March showed us where it all shows up in the body, and this month we dig into what happens when you take it all into a room with another person.
Shall we meet in the middle?
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Quote of the Month: Still Open
This month, I’m back with more words from Wizard’s Watchtower. This time, not just as astrology, but as an invitation toward what’s next.
He shares:
“The bones of the better world are not a future promise - they are already here and walking around in our neighbourhoods right now, quiet and unspectacular, while the news cycle screams about the collapse of everything else. The collapse is real - there’s a lot burning up in the fire - but what’s burning isn’t everything. We are living in two worlds at once - one dying, one being born - and most of us don’t notice the second because it doesn’t make the headlines. Nothing nourishing ever does.
In the days and weeks ahead, as we bear witness to the end of the Age of the Mind and see the Age of the Heart take its first tentative steps, we must remember that our minds are not fit to process what comes next - they are old world tech trying to absorb a new world signal. So may we hold our hearts open in the middle of a news cycle designed to close them, and keep our feet on ground that is moving, listening for what is underneath the surface noise of collapse, and trusting that the sky - which has been so patient, so precise, and so explicit about this corridor for months - is not finished yet.
For now - take a breath. Feet on grass. Hands in dirt. Face in the sun.”
He's one of the writers who helps me hold both hope and complexity, reminding me that it's messy in the middle, but something is being born there. Two things can be in contact without canceling each other out.
As we move through this month, keep looking to what’s growing through the cracks.
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Idea of the Month: Still in the Room
There’s a contradiction I’ve been sitting with recently around the lived embodiment of the middle.
In my experience (and observation), you can do all the inner work, regulate your nervous system, hold the sacred gray in your own mind and body, and then walk into a hard conversation…
And completely lose your shit.
This middle space isn’t just a personal practice. That’s where it starts, sure. But it also has to survive contact with others and the world.
It’s one thing to hold complexity in the space between your ears. Another to hold it gracefully in the body. And a whole different beast when you sit across the metaphorical table from someone whose reality feels threatening, wrong, or significantly different from yours.
On one end of the spectrum, we might dissolve into the other person's reality to keep the peace — avoiding friction by flattening. On the other end, we might become rigidly dismissive, contemptuous, or locked into the black-and-white "with me or against me."
Both are legitimate nervous system responses to relational threat. And? Both are ways of abandoning the middle.
This is also where the difference between hollow centrism and true relational meeting comes into play. The passive response erases differences to avoid discomfort. It smooths over the friction before anything real can happen.
True relational meeting does something different: it stays in the friction, on purpose. It doesn't require agreement as the price of entry. But it does require presence.
Presence, in this context, means something specific: holding space for what's real on both sides of the table, long enough for genuine contact to happen.
And that presence requires deep listening. Not listening to respond or to find the flaw in their argument, but listening for the human behind the position. Because underneath most conflict, underneath the loudest disagreements and the most entrenched positions, there is usually a person trying to protect something they love.
That's where our shared humanity lives — not in agreement, but in recognition. This is the harder, braver space: choosing to remain when faced with genuine difference.
The question isn't whether we can eventually agree. It's whether we can stay in the room together even when we don't.
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Photo of the Month: Still Blooming
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Short Practice of the Month: Breathe and Be Still
This month’s practice is simple and somatic, perfect for moments of relational friction or political overwhelm. This breath practice can be especially useful before a hard conversation, mid-doomscroll, or any time the body needs to remember it has options.
How to do it:
- Start in a comfortable seated position.
- Bring your awareness to the breath, noticing whether it’s slow or fast, deep or shallow, or somewhere in the middle.
- Exhale fully to empty the lungs, without straining.
- Inhale to a count of four.
- Hold the breath in for a count of four.
- Allow the breath to release slowly and completely (no count needed here).
- Repeat a few more times.
The pause at the top is the practice: suspended, not collapsed. Over time, you can learn to stay there.
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Post of the Month: Still the Practice
Back in the day, I wrote a post about rejecting the binary and naming language itself as a place where we tend to flatten complexity. In “The Myth of Happy,” I touched on the embodied practice of the middle, just in different words.
From the post:
"Yoga and meditation both help you ride the waves of life. You don't struggle to avoid the lows. And you don't scratch and claw and bite to stay up in the highs. Instead, you do your best to go with the flow. To shake off the bad times, and to enjoy the good ones while they're here. You allow yourself to be totally in the moment, experiencing every bit of the emotional spectrum — but not allowing yourself to become attached to or defined by those emotions." The capacity to experience the full spectrum without being swallowed by either end: that's still the practice.
The language has gotten more somatic since then, but the instinct hasn't changed.
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Song of the Month: While We Still Smile |
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Sometimes a song does in five lines what an essay can't. This month, it's Fuck It, I'm a Flower by Crying Day Care Choir.
I'm tired of talking
Sick of watching people rush while they are walking
It's contagious, but for ages we have all just gotten by
Living in that same old lie
Let's break free while we're alive, while we still smile
That's the permission slip: to stop performing. The same old lie is the binary. The flower's answer isn't to fight or flee, just to grow in a different direction entirely.
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Mindset of the Month: Still Rooted
Flowers don’t force blooming. They simply can’t. They just activate, rooted and responsive to their growing conditions.
And they teach us a different quality of momentum, one that moves with integrity. In the body, that’s what sustainable activation feels like: measured, calm, on purpose.
Flowers grow at their own pace, without requiring anything to change outside. Not everything needs to bloom at once. Not every conversation needs resolution today.
When we bring that into relationship, we find the capacity to stay present without it costing everything. You don't have to merge with someone else's reality to prove you're listening, or wall them out to prove you have edges.
A regulated nervous system can do something neither of those extremes can: remain in contact without spinning out. That's where the middle shows up as a somatic practice, not just a philosophical position.
So when you're in friction with someone (or feeling the pull toward a side), these questions are worth sitting with:
What am I actually defending here?
What would it mean to stay, even if I don’t agree?
You don't have to choose the extreme to have integrity.
The middle isn't where you lose yourself; it might be where you find out what you're made of.
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We’re Still Here
We started this month in the orchard, holding our breath over blossoms that had opened before conditions were safe.
The middle is like that. It doesn't wait for permission. It blooms anyway — in the threshold, in the not-yet, in the place where two worlds are still deciding what they'll become together.
That's what we've been practicing. And you've been doing it longer than you probably realize.
Before I close, I want to invite you deeper into the conversation. There's an anonymous survey below with a few short questions to help me understand how to best show up for this community.
It won't take long, and your answers will genuinely shape what continues to grow here and what gets pruned.
Until next time: rest, then rise.
P.S. Whether you’ve been here since the Rebel Yogi days or you’re brand new, thank you for being here. I’d love to hear from you.
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