what will you carry with you?
January 2025 Newsletter
This month’s newsletter contains:
“what will you carry with you?”
project updates as I return from a long break (thanks to battling Lyme disease and being in a car accident - reflections for another time)
Friends,
As we approach and enter a new year, there is always some level of emphasis on what we must discard from ourselves - belongings, relationships, habits, weight, personality traits - and even more emphasis on what we must obtain. We prepare our goals for the year in terms of who we have not yet become and who we no longer want to be.
I have to confess that I love the process of it - I spend the last two weeks of the year seizing the moment alongside everyone else as we find the motivation to pivot.
But for 2025, during such a period of turmoil and darkness and coordinated attacks on freedom and equity and human rights, I would like to pose an additional question:
What shall we bring with us?
We do not wipe the slate entirely clean every 12 months and either succeed or fail to become a brand new person. So what comes with us, when the clock strikes midnight and we transform?
(Even Cinderella still had one shoe and some rags on as she ran for the exit, I presume.)
This year, I bring with me the collective grief of my community. Grief at the chains of capitalism, oligarchy, how uncomplicated it should be yet how difficult it seems for a nation to condemn genocide, and the crony clown show of no-longer-thinly-veiled American Empire that shall continue to come to pass, just in a much more frightening way, in just a few short days.
Whether or not that grief rests in you the same way it rests in me, are you carrying the most vulnerable with you into the new year?
Self improvement. Self improvement. Self improvement. So very concerned with “getting our bag” and “manifesting” abundance… I ask you plainly, if it is so easy to manifest your new job or new clients or new car or new relationship, why are you not manifesting peace for children being blown limb from limb?
If your manifestations are so powerful that you can realign the next twelve months to fit any desire you have, why don’t you desire an end to suffering? A solution to climate change, and people taking actual action towards it?
And if you tell me you are too tired or “protecting your energy” from the horrors impacting so many people then I hope you take a very long time to reflect on the privilege afforded to you.
And I hope you remember that it will come for you, too, eventually.
“But what good is this grief and anger to carry with us?”
It is to remember that we can forget for our own peace and wellbeing if we choose to. Those of us in the U.S. can close our laptops and our phones when the screams from at or across borders become too much. Some within this country can even tell others, like myself, who are part of marginalized and threatened groups, that the incoming regime is no biggie and we will all be okay and to stop over-reacting, likely because they have no reason to believe that THEY will not be okay. Perhaps they even know that they might benefit in some way from the coming agendas.
…So will you carry the most vulnerable with you into the new year? Will you carry grief and remembrance and a commitment to uplifting those around you?
When you think about what you will discard, how much power and comfort are you willing to release and share with your community?
When you think about what you will grow in yourself, is it bravery and courage and determination and empathy?
Don’t get me wrong, it is worth it to plan a new exercise habit or to try and save more money or to commit to planning more social events. You and your life should grow in all the directions you wish to grow, but are you growing in the directions that are truly important to you? Are you growing in ways that positively contribute to the world around you, in which you MUST live as woven into the existence of all others and all that contextualizes the conditions we are collectively subjected to?
There is such privilege in realigning your new year with your life’s purpose when so many cannot. even. breathe.
Cannot see the light of the sun choked out behind ash and smoke and fumes and flames.
Cannot drink clean water.
Cannot steward their ancestral lands without fear of poison and destruction at the hand of a government more concerned with oil profits than the wellbeing of its people or preservation of Indigenous cultures and autonomy.
Cannot exist without fear of police violence and bigotry and prejudice systematically dissecting their communities, extracting from them, and leaving them to bleed to death in the car while their children cry in fear.
Cannot have a final say in the medical options available for their own bodies without fear of murder or assault.
Cannot love who they love or express their gender the way they feel for fear of backlash from the fascist theocracy surrounding them.
I will not carry the bleakness of it all with me as we pass the threshold into January, but I will carry an unwavering and relentless call to acknowledgement, action, and community care. I will be so bold as to tell you you SHOULD too.
It’s such a bummer and such a drag and so preachy and so overwhelming - I know. You might not even find it to be technically technically technically correct based on this article you read or conspiracy theory you subscribe to… but what do you see in the eyes of the people around you? What do you hear in their voices? And what about the eyes of faces you’re afraid to look at? The voices of those you’re afraid to listen to?
When you allow yourself to feel the wholeness of what others are feeling, what is really there?
And will you carry it carefully and lovingly and fiercely into the new year with you?
Imagine what you could manifest if you did.
xoxo,
Lashonda
Project Updates
Coming Soon
Extraplanar Radio Show will return! The first six episodes of season 1 have been remastered under Pulsing Prism Productions and the final episodes are in production, with season 2 also actively underway. Season 1 airs weekly beginning… soon?
Far Future
If you were worried about it, Tales From Niveen is currently being finished quietly in the background and sections will be posted in their entirety once final edits are made. This likely won’t see the light of day until the end of 2025, but updates will come as notable milestones are achieved or more concrete information is available. (Basically, I am working on it. It’s hefty work. And I can’t give a good release date, but please trust that it is happening.)
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This work schedule has been greatly affected by life events over the last year, and especially now since I have decided to apply for an Master’s program to continue my artistic education and practice. I am committed to returning to sharing so much of my work publicly, but I just ask for your continued patience and understanding. These projects are near and dear to my heart, so I am working diligently on creating the best final product I possibly can at all times in between school applications and my full time job. :)
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