For the last twenty‑two months I have been searching for words to meet what is happening in Palestine — trying to weave rage, grief, and sorrow with my own life, to connect the personal to the collective. This essay reflects on images, dignity, and dehumanization, on Steven Donziger’s devastating figures, on the hunger strikes and gestures of solidarity that ripple outward. Written during a 48‑hour fast in answer to a call from Gaza, it is both a witness and a plea — that we remember every life is a universe, and that how we respond matters.

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Soft Landing — a tender offering

A space where I share the unfolding of my new offering, Soft Landing — and everything that’s led me here. I write about change, grief, tenderness, and becoming. About trying to live and work in a way that feels more human, more spacious, more aligned. This is a place for the quiet process, for somatics, sweetness, slowness, and the soft courage of staying with what’s real. For anyone in a moment of transition, navigating the in-between, or simply longing to soften and explore what else might be possible.

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The Throat Chakra of the World is a personal, political, and poetic exploration of voice, resistance, and myth in a time of collapse. In this space, I reflect on identity, activism, collective grief, and ancestral memory through the lens of Palestine and far beyond. This podcast is part of that unfolding. I hope that, together, through this piece, we’ll trace the power of expression as a portal into truth, embodiment, and the possibility of new worlds.

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In this episode, I open a door I’ve circled around for years. I’ve written about the loss of my father, the grief, the absence — but not often about who he really was, beyond the fact that he was my dad. Here, I try to bring him into the light a little more. I speak about memory, music, and the invisible threads that continue to tie us together. I reflect on how sound has been a bridge — how it holds what words cannot, how it continues a conversation even when someone is no longer here. This is a story about what remains, what’s passed down without explanation, and how music became the place where I remember him most clearly.

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In this tender and reflective episode, I mark five years since the start of the pandemic—an unacknowledged threshold that continues to shape our inner and outer worlds. I explore the quiet griefs we’ve carried, the social and spiritual dissonance we’ve lived through, and the parts of ourselves we may have lost along the way. From personal shifts to global ruptures, from leaving the city that once held me to navigating transitions in work, identity, and joy—I reflect on what it means to live in the after when the before no longer exists.

We speak about nervous system overwhelm, the loneliness of disconnection, and the ache of living in contradiction under capitalism. There’s grief, yes, but also flickers of aliveness returning. I share thoughts on the power of ritual, on making space for what still matters, and on the possibility of choosing joy as an act of devotion, even amidst collapse.

This is an invitation to pause. To remember. To feel. To ask: Where were you five years ago—and who are you now?

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We are living through a time of profound unknowing—an unraveling of the world as we knew it. How do we sit with the uncertainty, the grief, and the transformation it calls us into? In this episode, I explore the deep reckonings that have shaped me and how they have led to my new offerings in the world.

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For years, I lived with a secret—a shame rooted in feeling like I wasn’t enough. While the world saw someone “put together,” inside I struggled with basic tasks, overwhelming sensitivity, and a crushing sense of inadequacy. This year, everything shifted when I began to understand myself through the lens of neurodivergence and was diagnosed with ADHD.

In this episode, I share my journey of unmasking: from years of self-doubt to discovering the empowering idea of “the many faces of the mind.” I explore how sensitivity, often dismissed as a weakness, can be a superpower—propelling us to imagine new ways forward, especially in challenging times. Drawing inspiration from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and the concept of Earthseed, we’ll delve into the unique gifts of neurodivergent individuals as visionaries and connectors in a fractured world.

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Today's offering is born from being caught in a terrifying storm last week—literally and metaphorically. As I sat in the chaos, watching the Earth cry, I found myself questioning what true power really looks like—not the kind that dominates, but the kind that nurtures and connects.

In many Indigenous traditions, life is guided by two sacred obligations: serving the planet and all species yet to come. Western colonial culture, in contrast, centres on rights—on what we are owed. We are seeing this destructive mindset in real-time.  But obligations remind us that survival isn’t about ‘me’ but about ‘we.’ The Earth is crying—our Great Mother is crying—and how can we not cry with her? Yet even in the cracks of despair, there is space for something new to take root: a way of living that honours life, care, and community.

With the Age of Aquarius upon us for the next twenty years, this shift feels especially resonant—asking us to move from individualism to collective care, from isolation to interconnection. This isn’t a time for despair but for remembering our shared responsibilities and building the resilient communities that will hold us through the storms. Together, we can plant something new rooted in care and connection.

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*a soft and gentle reminder that liking + sharing this post is one way of supporting this newsletter*

These days, I mark the start and end of my day the same way, by taking a front seat at the window of my temporary apartment by the sea to watch the many swallows have their playtime. Every sunrise and sunset, the horizon becomes a dance floor of more of them than I can count, their joyous cacophony in front of the backdrop of the changing colours of the sky. They take turns chasing each other, sweeping high and low; their little bodies beam with a lightness, moving and flying like they don’t have a care in the world that could possibly weigh them down. Pure euphoric sweetness. At moments, I have envied these little swallows while gazing up at them. Even though I know that honouring the everyday grief that surrounds us impacts our very capacity for joy and vice versa. That feeling of pure joy has been so hard for me to access this year. 

The powerful combination of the recent summer solstice and the full moon in Capricorn has brought to light my own behaviours and patterns that have kept me small, revealing how I have internalised dominant, binary, and supremacist thinking due to living and being conditioned under these insidious interconnecting structures. Leading me to adopt the very same harmful myths and illusions of separation, weaponizing them towards others, including the people I truly love who love me. The stars are telling me it’s time to grow up and end this cycle of these ways of being so that I can commit to a new way and vision.

Audre Lorde taught us that “the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house”, but she also expanded on this by reminding us that “they may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change”. I myself have been using my shadow tool of choice: judgement. Mainly towards how other people are ‘showing or not showing up’ now. Even though, as people of conscience who are concerned for a better and more just future here for all of us - we must be asking ourselves - how did we get here - and what needs to happen in order to disrupt the culture that enables this dehumanisation and supremacy to continue - is extremely pivotal and important, I can see how my own judgement towards others has often tended to be a projection of the judgement that in reality I have towards myself, for not feeling like I am doing ‘enough’. At its root, that is just trying to mask the sheer helplessness and powerlessness I have been drowning in. By absorbing so much terror alone on this tiny screen of my phone, without having proper rituals around holding the sheer grief and pain of all these apocalypses colliding at once with others, my body and mind have started to shut down. I’ve been sick more than I ever have in my entire adulthood, and my mental health has been on edge, to say the least - and I know I’m not alone here. 

I want to be clear; I am not shaming myself or my body for not wanting to participate in any form of business as usual right now when everything in the world is telling us to stop. (Our survival as a world and species tells us we must stop everything we are doing!!!!) I know that I’ve been this down merely signals that I am still alive and have a soul! But I don’t want to shut down completely for good. I want to honour these moments of collapse, but I also want to be able to get back up again. These years ahead will only bring more disruption, and I want to participate in imperfectly dreaming of an alternative whether it comes to some fruition or not. To do nothing and quit now is just too unbearable of an option.

Despite ‘just tryna stay soft in a hard world’ being my mantra for so many years now, as an already highly sensitive person acutely aware of the presence of loss in every moment of life, these months of such utterly disgusting horror and unspeakable abhorrent levels of violence have tipped me over the edge, undeniably hardening my shell. Some days, my body has felt like an anvil, stopping me from showing up in ways I want to. I have been struggling to hold my own complexities as I navigate the many paradoxes of being alive at this time; so many things that used to bring me happiness instead have been bringing me so much guilt and shame. Despite yearning to find another way to live for so long, I try to fight the disillusionment by how the webs of extractivist violent systems of capitalism feel almost impossible to untether from completely. I know I need to find another way to live than to beat myself with this unhelpful rigid stick that is unable to hold my very own complexity. I am trying to continue my own journey of healing, to have the courage to face my own pain so I can move away from constantly being caught in ego, disconnection and reactivity. Allow me to exist in this grey space of not knowing and cultivate more self-compassion for the complex paradoxes. 

In a bid to come back into my body, to transmute and alchemise the anvil, I have committed to spending the next few months learning about somatic embodied leadership. In the training I’m in, they view somatics as a way to grow and lead better by connecting mind, body, and spirit through mindful movement and self-awareness and by aligning actions with our core values, often asking us to reflect on how collective transformation serves our personal transformation and vice versa. In class this week, we’ve started to explore what is called ‘conditioned tendencies’. In somatics, conditioned tendencies are our automatic responses and patterns that happen under pressure that impact our thinking/feelings/mood, actions or non-actions, beliefs, muscular contractions, and ways of relating. These are most often learned in our early life as survival mechanisms. They become embodied because we don’t even think of them as they happen instantly. This reactivity is our adaptation to all human safety, belonging, and dignity needs. Often, many of us are making choices to trade one for two or two for one, for example, opting for safety and sacrificing our belonging and dignity. By working with our conditioned tendencies, we want to offer ourselves more space and choices to respond differently.

Our conditioned tendencies often show up in the following ways:

* Moving towards others: moving towards the pressure, getting close to it for safety or appeasement. It can make one seem overly nice as one tries to stay near the pressure source.

* Moving away from others: involves pulling back and fading into the background for safety and avoiding conflict. One might want connection but pull away, avoid eye contact, not talk to others, not engage at all, or feel the need to disappear.

* Moving against others: When faced with pressure, this tendency manifests as fighting for safety or dignity. It manifests as defensiveness, responding to challenges, and putting up walls. When someone approaches, one feels the pressure and responds by reinforcing their defences.

By becoming more aware and working with our embodied responses, we can expand and hold more to move towards the things we want and yearn for. I can recognise that I’ve mostly been responding and reacting by turning away from others (both in person and online) and shutting down when I ultimately wanted a sense of deep connection. 

Have you ever wondered why we don’t actually have to do anything to fall into the depths of despair, but to stay positive and have faith takes a form of action? How often does our failure to take action also connect to this impossible need for something to be done perfectly? How much does this stop us from even trying? The now 95-year-old lifelong iconic activist,  Buddhist and deep ecologist Joanna Macy says, “Of all the dangers we face from climate chaos to nuclear warfare, none is so great as the deadening of our response”. Her antidote to shutting down is The Work That Reconnects. The Work That Reconnects is a transformative journey through four stages: 

* Coming from Gratitude

* Honouring our Pain for the World

* Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes

* Going Forth

This open spiral process begins with reflecting on gratitude, grounding us emotionally and mentally. It then moves to honour our collective pain, fostering deep compassion and connecting us to a larger inter-existence. Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes reveals our interconnectedness with all life, highlighting the link between social and environmental justice. Finally, Going Forth encourages actionable steps based on individual capacities and situations, emphasising learning and growth from each attempt. Repeatedly engaging with this spiral strengthens resilience, insight, and commitment to life-affirming actions.

In the book that teaches us how to put WTR into practice: ‘Active Hope: How To Face The Mess We’re In With Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power’ co-authors Joanna Macey and therapist Chris Johnstone explain that to them, hope is not passive nor hopeful. It is not a blind hope. They acknowledge that if we wait until we feel hopeful, we will never do anything. Their idea of hope is connected to what we love and what we desire, and we use these things as our motivators for doing it anyway, despite the outcome. Our world is experiencing so many colliding catastrophes that it’s so easy to overcome the overwhelming feeling of it all. I find Molly Brown's (another close collaborator and teacher of the WTR) mantra helpful, "I can’t do everything, but I can do my part," to underscore the importance of identifying our roles. To be able to ask ourselves, "What’s mine to do? What’s yours to do? What’s ours to do?". 

After having this book for so long and meaning to read, my deep despair this week finally caused me to reach for it. It was as if the book was whispering to me, “It’s time to read me”. I’m a few chapters in, and I can really say it feels like the medicine I need right now. I started thinking about how it might also be the much-needed medicine for many of us who feel similarly. I wondered what it could be like to do this work together. I want to make an offer and an invitation here to start thinking/dreaming about how to co-create a (un)learning space of grief, love and action. A place beyond the confines of the polarising trauma/shame/isolation/ spirals of our current social media model.

The cultivation of a new way and world cannot be perfect. We are in unknown territory. So many things could still happen for the pendulum to swing towards creating a more loving and just world, but it requires us to partake and do something. Let’s learn how to hold each other in our suffering, joy and empathy instead of turning on each other in ways that don’t actually support our collective liberation. Let's alchemise this despair and channel loss into gratitude to be able to expand our capacity to contribute to the world we believe in together. TRUE healing and liberation require us to unlearn and remember who we are at our essence. We need to honour our own transmutation process so we can still be the energy of love in the storm and the microcosm of the macro because the birth of an alternative world has to happen through us. 

We need imagination to create new worlds, and to do so, we must be able to feel into something that lies beyond dehumanisation, destruction and decimation. If words weave worlds, let us use them bi-focally, in a way that names the violence of the present but also uses them to dream other expansive possible realities. As I get into bed, I think of Palestine. I focus on the nourishing soil, running my hands through it while I watch in delight as thousands of baby olive saplings grow into big trees. I see children's faces laughing, playing, and hugging. I see Palestinians at the beach. I see big family feasts, I see dancing - I see love. I think of our non-human friends, the blue sunbirds, swallowtail butterflies and the Arabian gazelle, who are also fighting against their own extinction right now, multiplying in their thousands. I drop into my heart and expand it to all those oppressed in the struggle right now the world over, from Sudan to the Congo, from the River, the Sea and beyond; you are not alone. I pray for nothing short of an absolute miracle to alter the course of our history where this intolerable cruelty brings in a new paradigm centred in love, care and justice.

I read somewhere recently that the magic of birdsong is that it calms our nervous system because for the birds to sing this way, it means there are no predators around. I suddenly realised that instead of showing me what I can’t access, they are here to show me what I can. They are my reminder to soften when life tries to harden me. I am drawn to this work of softening, to embrace my own complexity and perfect imperfection, not because I am already an expert but because it’s what I am here to learn and share in this lifetime. As I sat at the window again this morning to watch them do their ritual, I let my chest open up to feel it all: the love, the awe, the grief, the joy, the gratitude and the alive-ness of this exact moment. That everything I yearn for is already here, in me. 

May we all feel safe.

May we all feel belonging.

May we all feel dignity. 

Liberation for all. 

Much love,

Naomi

PS - Here is a sign-up sheet for the Imperfect Active Hope group. I’m just trying to gauge interest and will take it from there. If reading isn’t your thing, they also have a free interactive video-led program that takes us on a 5-week learning journey led by co-author and Joanna’s 30-year-long collaborator resilience therapist Chris Johnstone. I think I will probably cap at 15 people so we can keep it intimate while we figure out the co-creation process, but yes, let’s see how we go! 

Also, before you go:

This week, I’m uplifting three campaigns.

One Million Sustainable Pads Campaign - the current devastating conflict in Sudan has disrupted millions of lives, creating a distressing reality for women and girls—menstruation. Each reusable pad symbolizes support and a chance for these women and girls to reclaim their lives and dignity.

Baitumaal - provide life-saving, life-sustaining and life-enriching humanitarian aid in the form of food packages, healthcare and clean water to people in Gaza right now.

Congo Goma Actif - are directly supporting refugees affected by the war in North Kivu with food and shelter.

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that I want to have a child.

When I close my eyes, I can often feel the essence of my child around me. They feel familiar yet new, grounded yet ethereal, playful yet wise—like love. 

Maybe it’s a combination of being 36, that it’s spring, the season associated with fertility, or maybe written in the stars, but I currently know a colossal number of women (cis and mostly in heteronormative partnerships) who have either just given birth, are currently pregnant, or trying to have a baby. That line I’ve heard over the years, “You hit a certain age, and suddenly everyone around you is having a baby”, well, I am at that age, and that is exactly what is happening. Some of these expectant mothers are my nearest and dearest friends and I am so excited to welcome these new babies, but I cannot deny the ache of longing my body feels to be on that journey myself. As it stands, that is currently not my path. Instead, I have recently left a relationship, am in my fifth month of being without my own home, and am currently staying with my mother. I have come back to her because I am in a moment in my life where I need her again. I am currently in my own process of gestation and feel an intrinsic bodily yearning to be near her womb to recalibrate. 

I am hearing the call of this monumental time in the world, a time when we are collectively starting to confront all these interwebs of harm and oppression, as well as the true cost of the myth of progress we have been indoctrinated with. The collapse of empires is always violent and ugly, as people with power will never give it up freely. We are being asked to either birth a new paradigm by radically transforming ourselves, to go back into the womb of creation to understand how we can constructively support ourselves and each other through this disruption, or to stay within our current one, along a path powered by greed, destruction and, most of all, fear. We are at the crossroads of our existence, and the pendulum can still swing either way.

When reflecting on the choices I’ve made in my life that were powered by fear, there are many. The things I have done (or not done) because I was afraid, afraid I was not enough, afraid of not being loved, afraid of being alone, afraid of what others thought of me, afraid of losing, the list goes on. There is something so freeing about this moment in time where I am living out so many of my greatest fears, and yet here I am still alive! I am learning that if we are not able to face our fears and inadequacies head-on, we cannot heal them, that our unwillingness as a world to sit with our fears is ultimately what continues to fuel them, and we end up building our world from fear instead of love.

Like the humble caterpillar, I know that for me to move forward, my life as I know it has to be disintegrated into soup. I’m still in the process of coming apart, I am still here in the sticky darkness of the cocoon. I don’t know how long I’ll be in here for, as this darkness transcends time, but even in the darkness, I feel the beauty and potentiality of the butterfly permeating all around me. My disintegration has been undoubtedly painful but it has also come with moments of such an acute sense of aliveness and humbling beauty. I must now care for myself as I am a baby in my own womb, to live as if I am already pregnant. I must nourish myself with all the things that are good for me from the food I eat, to the amount of rest I get, as well as be mindful of how I process my feelings and how I honour my capacity for dreaming and imagination. That means intentionally withdrawing from places, things and people that aren’t energetically conducive to this moment of growth. Like a tender tendril, I must protect myself at all costs. 

So often in life, we find ourselves in environments that cannot support our growth process. It’s so hard to leave behind something, someone, somewhere or a way of being that once worked, but seasons change, life changes and proverbial spaces that once felt so safe can start to feel like cells when we have outgrown them. Now, more than ever, I understand that to move forward, all the different aspects of my life from where I live/how I live/my relationships/my work etc. cannot be thought of as separate, they must all expand together to come into the deepest alignment. 

Living under our current system has given birth to new complexities around having children. The emergence of our planet's recurrent exploitation and extraction will undoubtedly continue to impact our survival. The persistent rising living costs (food, healthcare, childcare and housing), as well as the lack of systemic support for mothers, have created an almost impossible and inhospitable environment for raising children. The morality around having a child knowing what we know now about where our planet is headed is something I continue to wrestle with all the time. Is ignorance really bliss? Or is there power and purpose in accepting reality? What learning is there for us in creating a supportive and nourishing environment in such a time of destruction? Maybe this is what it means to decide still to have a child when the collapse of life is seemingly on the horizon, especially for those of us who currently have the luxury of living in relative safety as beneficiaries of the system in place. Despite the fear all around us, our children are our teachers, seeds of hope and intention for something better. Not only do they bring joy in a time of such immense grief but they are an act of ultimate dedication to a future, to communal transformation and a panacea for the dangerously alluring cynicism, nihilism and fatalism that seems to be ever-growing in our current society. I’ve been deeply moved by the many recent interventions and movements led by young people and parents worldwide who have been coming together to work as protectors and truth-tellers for the liberation of Palestine and the Earth itself. They are the ones who have been awakened and radicalised through their children's eyes, who know that fighting for our collective futures gives our lives the deepest purpose and meaning. That leading through ‘mothering’ is the ultimate political work. 

My beautiful, brilliant friend (and eternal teacher!) Aditi Jaganathan left me a timely voice note this week that speaks to this:

“Without wanting to essentialise and flatten the complexity of womanhood: we have wombs and our wombs are portals, we carry life. There's so much knowledge woven into our bodies. There is so much power that we can share with others, power that’s not rooted in the Self but in the collective and the community. Most of us have been conditioned out of that collective way of being, but it’s so umbilically connected to what it is to care for and to mother. It has a simplicity, but, as we navigate the current capitalist colonial matrix, it's hard to sustain these innately radical practices.” 

Understandably, it’s so easy to feel a complete sense of loss and paralysis when we think about the state of our world. It’s so easy to feel like we have no power. When I think about this collective umbilical connection that Aditi mentions, it raises more questions and curiosities in me: how do we birth new leaders, men, women and those across the gender expansive spectrum to ‘mother’ and shepherd our Earth? How do we bring those who do not have children or are consciously choosing not to go into new forms of kinship, support, and family structures? How do we see the children who are already here today, whether they are in Gaza, London or anywhere else in the world, as our shared responsibility? How can we support each other and feel connected enough to step into our collective power? How can we transmute our fear of the future into action powered by love? How can we hold the grief and fury of the moment alongside the vision for a new world being birthed from under the rubble of our current apocalypse? 

I keep going back to this metaphor of the womb as it allows me to honour where I am right now as well as where it feels like the world is and reminds me that just because it feels so dark, it doesn’t mean there isn’t growth happening. Right now, I’ve withdrawn, but there will be a moment when it’s time to breathe, push hard through the discomfort and come out. May this be true for all of us. As the saying goes, “The night is always darkest before the dawn”. I see visions of another world waiting to be born from our cells that collectively and intuitively know there is another way. It is time for us to face our fears, to soften them, and to find our values so that we can nurture the Earth, ourselves and each other. We are now here to practise being good ancestors who think collectively instead of solely prioritising our own individual glory.

One of the big reasons it felt so hard to leave my last relationship was my deep fear of possibly missing out on the chance to experience having a child. The procreation girl math doesn’t math very well anymore on paper. There are of course, biological risks and implications that come with my choices but ultimately, something deep within me told me that honouring the truth of who I am becoming and the journey I feel called to go on right now takes precedence; it’s just not my time yet; that there are so many ways to mother, to care for, fight for, sustain and nourish, which are needed in this time; that before I (God willing) birth new life from my body and get to meet this spirit I have felt so many times before, I must rebirth myself; and that by trusting in this process, a more aligned life, built from a foundation of love awaits. In due time, all will be revealed.

today’s portraits of me as a baby were taken by my mama Nel who always sweetly reminds me that having me was the best thing she ever did. thank you mommy <3

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