Spring Equinox Sovereignty
I just remembered that leaving social media is an option
Welcome spring to those in the northern hemisphere!
If you didn’t have time yesterday, may you have a moment to touch your palm to the earth, gaze at the sky, whatever it is you do that remembers you to the land your feet are resting on today. May these small movements align you with the season you are in.
For me, the equinox is an opportunity to say yes to the land, to offer myself into relationship and stewardship of who and what I care for for the summer ahead. Beyond borders and screens, old belonging of bone and tree, water and saliva is easily renewed on the spring equinox.
Caring for a sick child, there was no big ritual celebration for me yesterday. Every fleeting plan I had to get out on the land for an hour to sing, to bury an old snakeskin, to acknowledge the day in one way or another melted with the last of the snow here in my southern Alberta hometown. And yet, I celebrated the equinox by turning my face to the sun, noticing the wind, and this morning sitting quietly in a circle with my ancestors, receiving their guidance as I rubbed my daughter’s back.
Spring is my favorite season. The infusion of hope it naturally brings to a sun loving being like me is so joyous. And sweet revelations always come out from the shadows when I welcome the sun. A week ago, it was this:
I CAN LEAVE FACEBOOK. I CAN ACTUALLY LEAVE.
The knowing dropped down like an anvil on my dining room table.
When did I start forgetting that every single engagement with the platform was a choice? When did it start feel like I couldn’t leave (again)?
I am fascinated by the ways in which sovereignty is lost. The ways choice is gradually eroded over time and a person becomes beholden to something or someone that is damaging, abusive, or in my case with Facebook - depleting.
Cult survivors who know sovereignty loss intimately don’t say, “I remember the exact moment when I lost my freedom and sense of self and suddenly felt I could no longer leave.” Instead, survivors say things like “I have no idea how I got from here to there.”
The boiling frog analogy often comes up: a frog won’t get into boiling water, but they will stay in cool water that gets gradually heated to a dangerous level - and so it goes with abuse.
One thing most social media platforms share with cults is the slippery manipulation to keep you engaged that compounds until you forget what life was like before and you forget that you can leave.
Once I remembered I had a choice and I decided to take another year away from FB and instagram, life rushed through me. I didn’t even know how much it was dammed up, until I felt the flow return. A sudden alignment moved from my crown to toes, like a massive chiropractic adjustment of my chi. Freedom, joy, hope, solidarity, and solace all the way through this body. The clouds parted.
These choices of where we commit or intentionally retract our attention and energy are spiritual. I see them like agreements with the divine, even if a specific agreement is not verbalized, when body and spirit fully embrace a direction, the clear choice resounds through the worlds. When a clear choice resounds, even fate can change. The pathways of what is available in our lives - guidance, luck, opportunity, grace.. all adjust.
Within a day of deciding to leave I felt more capacity for local community building (something social media always depletes in me), more bandwidth for political engagement, and increased capacity for reading the news.
These are all intentions I hold - to contribute meaningfully to my local community, to support creative and earth friendly solutions to social problems with the resources I have, to be well and of service during times of great collective need and distress (may the healers not burn out!) and to be an empath who can read at least some of the news without losing my center.
My life force moved where it could not when I was unconsciously committing to my depletion.
No matter how many great artists and activists are in my feed, instagram and Facebook ultimately erode my resilience and limit my capacity for being of service. Sometimes it takes a week for it to erode. Sometimes 8 months. Part of it is too much information. Another part is never knowing when horrifying information will come.
Seeing posts about genocide or the rise of fascism right after an ad for makeup or a friend’s event announcement is different from consciously opening the news and reading with a strong heart and soft eyes. The flash rapid feed of horror-pleasure-destruction-joy-hope-despair-shock-buy this in 1 second increments is not kind to the body-mind.
I knew this, but I forgot. Forgetting is the point of the attention economy, to stay on and forget we have choice in the matter. It feels very hard and counter culture to leave and even still a little taboo to talk about.
For my fellow self employed ones out there saying “but I have to! my business! I have no choice!” This is a topic I have explored for years with my marketing consultant husband. I asked him again last week, just for good measure, knowing I was going to deactivate my account anyway.
“People build multimillion dollar businesses with ads alone on social. You don’t need any personal presence.” was his answer.
Today as I turn my face to the sun again, I am honoring the direction of my chi. As the land here thaws, I remember the simple, everyday sacredness of how I show up, how I resource and de-resource myself. As much as I have fantasized that I could engage social media consciously and only at will over the years, that has rarely been my experience. It is too easy, cruel, seductive, and like a grit in my psychic arteries that builds slowly and quietly before my system finally says this is making me sick. Thank goddess that after every sickness there is renewal, reset, and reclaiming or time and power.
Contemplation
If you are curious where your sovereignty might be compromised, here are some questions you can drop into:
Where is your life force wanting to go this spring?
What is obstructing or hindering it?
What truly supports your intentions for how you want to show up at this time?
Appreciating
1. This gorgeous peace prayer by Heather Louise at
:May peace reign. May it find its balance in the heart of all beings. May it claim the warring mindhives, turning them away from wretched destruction, towards purpose and compassion. May the military might of the world be used to build homes and bridges, reconnecting families and saving lives, while the dated and putrid structures of puritanism, misogynism, colonialism, and nepotism are dismantled and transmuted such that they become forgotten concepts recorded only in the oldest of books that spoke of humanities ancient and forgotten horrors.
2. Tending the Writer’s Flame May 2-4 | Nanaimo BC: There are just 4 spots left in this weekend of writing and ritual led by me + Brooke Arnold Rochette.
3. A Straight Talking Introduction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework by Mary Boyle & Lucy Johnstone: THIS IS MY FAVORITE BOOK THIS SEASON. Have you ever wondered why one suicidal thought seems to land teens in hospitals? If our whole mental health system is really missing some fundamental point about being human? If the illness rhetoric around mental health is hyper individualistic and makes people sicker and more isolated? Then you might love this book as much I do. It is a well researched alternative to the DSM and medical model of pysch diagnosis. I highly recommend for therapists and people in helping professions.
4. The Treaty Land Sharing Network: Rural landholders welcome Indigenous people to gather plants and medicines, hunt, and practice ceremony on the land that they farm to affirm and implement Treaty relationships (Canada).
5. Need to move?
I will continue to show up here in your inbox/substack once a month, and perhaps occasionally on bluesky, which reminds me of the old fashioned internet.
So with you! Thank you for writing this!