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Sam Sevastra (MxMoon)'s avatar

It wasn't long ago where I would make requests starting with something like "if it's not a burden," or "I don't want to be a burden." Then I heard the Old Sally story and shifted my request making to come out of my mouth more honest and inviting "if that's something you're comfortable with or have the capacity for." The Old Sally story changed my words to match my thoughts. Thank you for sharing this story!

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Adam Wilson's avatar

Beautiful, Sam. Thank you.

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Adam Hicks's avatar

Love the recipe in beginning including the long view energy inputs from the wood chopping. A beautiful weaving of what was and what is to come again. Your words, focus, and artful telling bring to life many threads and dreads I’ve been mulling over less successfully for some time. I suspect it has similar ripples in many, or dare I say I wish it so. Much gratitude for your work and expressions in sharing. Another great start to the week ahead.

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Adam Wilson's avatar

Thank you for the kind reflections, Adam.

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Heather Blankenship's avatar

No words, just gratitude and a few tears.

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Adam Wilson's avatar

Thank you for the tear report, Heather. I mostly get the release second-hand.

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Marsha shenk's avatar

I'm hungry and grateful for your stories, Adam. This one very nourishing.

I still catch myself inclining to quickly decline 'help' that's offered - as though it's an insult rather than a gift.

So much re-wilding to do...

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Adam Wilson's avatar

Our most stingy moments might be our refusals to receive graciously. I've been at this full-time for years and that refusal still wells up in me. Receiving forgiveness is part of it, for sure.

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Peta's avatar

Dear Adam This brought tears to my eyes and warmth to my heart. Thank you.

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Adam Wilson's avatar

Bless you, Peta.

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Annie Wild's avatar

Beautiful essay. I want to gently challenge your reluctance to use the term gift economy though. Here’s a bit of a great essay by David Graeber writing about Marcel Mauss.

‘there is no reason to believe a society based on barter has ever existed. Instead, what anthropologists were discovering were societies where economic life was based on utterly different principles, and most objects moved back and forth as gifts – and almost everything we would call “economic” behavior was based on a pretense of pure generosity and a refusal to calculate exactly who had given what to whom

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/david-graeber-on-giving-it-away-an-introduction-to-the-gift-economy/2013/01/31?cn-reloaded=1

Which is Sally and her community and what you’re doing as well I think?

I don’t know who really gets to define what these terms mean - I’m not saying academics get the final word on any of this but but I always found anthropological writing on this really inspiring.

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Adam Wilson's avatar

Hi Annie,

I'm all in with you and Graeber here. His work has helped me immensely. I fear that the word 'economy' might throw us off the scent of how much unlearning there is to do to even begin sustaining one another in the spirit of the gift. I'll see if I can explain further in a future newsletter. Than you for the question.

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Annie Wild's avatar

Ok that makes more sense that you’d already be into Graeber’s work but just concerned about economy bit of the term ‘gift economy’.

I’ma still not sure if it’s the word that’s the problem though

get that it’s very hard for people to really believe in the gift economy unless they have experience of it. Is the

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Annie Wild's avatar

Sorry didn’t mean to post that in unfinished form! I meant I wonder if it’s the term economy that’s the problem or just lack of experience of alternatives. Anyway look forward to seeing where you go with this :)

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Corrie's avatar

Hey fellow green pickins soup maker!

I’ve been enraged the last 24 hours and the rage headache has reached burn out mode. I’ll be harvesting a lot of wild things today and tomorrow, always helps.

I just want to say, I’ve been around and tried to join a lot of “organizations” and “movements” but what I was really seeking were friends. People stronger and wiser than me, people who could be trusted to be brave enough to do the right thing, whatever that might be. People who saw me as an equal and wanted to collab on shared, mutual visions. People who valued my gifts and whose gifts I could in turn admire. You know what always happens though? I become another volunteer employee in a business hierarchy. Full of “nice” people who, under real duress (and that’s the story going forward- heavy duress) just sink to their conditioning, never rising to the occasion. And I think it’s impossible to be anything but our economic identities and American conditioning when we can’t even try to leave that ridiculous, transactional, hierarchical model. I’m really glad to read that you’re trying it, in an intentional and earth-centered way. (Another pep talk I guess but also for me!)

Fuck the “nice” people. Where are the blood and bones people??? Who say what needs to be said and know it won’t please people and make them popular (and earn them $) and who’ve done the hard work to not gaf anyway??

Here’s to viriditas! 🌿

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Adam Wilson's avatar

I welcome the acknowledgement of rage. It would be impossible to look honestly at these broken relationships and not feel it. The following progression has helped me: grievance deepens into grief and then matures into service. The rage is a signpost on the path toward service, in my experience.

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Corrie's avatar

Ps- I also think the rage is incredibly helpful for codependents, and I kind of wonder (and this is a way oversimplification and overgeneralisation and misuse of clinical terms lol) if most “activists” these days are codependents rather than addicts/narcissists, but the damage done is much the same.

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Corrie's avatar

Thank you Adam for this wisdom. I’m going to chew on this. I wonder if rage can point to mature service of Life, as opposed to service of self. Seems pretty trendy now, immature activism and service. Seems like, if someone is hungry and thirsty for adoration, acceptance, control and certainty, then start a mission/movement! And project all those wounds and hungry ghosts onto the “things” they want to “change” or “save”!

Then add in a dose of urgency, which is the same as American dependence on coffee, basically, and you get a hyper-narrow, adrenaline-fueled, reductionist lens for helpful, “nice” tyrants! Really interesting though, about coffee, showing up during the Industrial Revolution. Plants and trees, they’re so much smarter than we are. They’re always manipulating and controlling the human story unbeknownst to us and I kinda think it’s with the long-game goal of getting rid of us, if we can’t get our shit together with their help/wisdom. I know these comments seem weird, but literally no one fucking cares about what’s actually important! Thanks for hosting these ideas, Adam. Hope the baby lambs are cavorting.

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Lisa J. Marshall's avatar

"...suffer the indignity of gratitude." I love it!

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Adam Wilson's avatar

That's fairly new language for me, and it works on me daily, which seems to suggest that the dignity/indignity question cuts to the heart of it.

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Laura Holmes's avatar

Thank you thank you thank you ❤️ Your work and your stories are doing so much heavy lifting in a world full of stories telling us about the ways in which we are moving in the other direction. Beyond grateful 💖

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Adam Wilson's avatar

The land refuses to give up on us. At least that's what I see again and again.

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drea.m.r.76's avatar

Since my heart attacks (caused by SCAD brought on by fibromuscular dysplasia [FMD] that I've had from birth), five from the evening of March 5 through the afternoon of March 7 this year, and the one I had in January where the ER doctor just sent me home, I've been told (after finally receiving good care) to strictly limit my intake of news. Before this, I was involved in different political groups and movements to try and make a difference. Needless to say, the heart attacks were, in many ways, a gift. Being on bed rest for almost two months now and possibly needing open heart surgery has given me plenty of time to think. Your essays help solidify what I'm probably taking too long to say: that I don't need to be doing any of those things to make a positive difference in the world. Focusing on empathy and care for those around me, human and non-human alike, is how I believe I am meant to give and try to learn how to better receive to be an example and purveyor of how my ancestors, both Swedish and Ojibwe, lived interdependently in our world. Even after living off a diet of news and decaf for far too long, I can honestly say don't miss it. 🕊️💚🤲

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Lindsey Fears's avatar

“It may not have been comfortable for Old Sally to receive hundreds of hours of help, but at least she could imagine herself as worthy of their care and concern.”

This made me stop and think. This is so true in today’s world… I love how you said she could imagine herself as worthy of their care. In today’s world I feel like we have become inward people… not thinking so much of others which in turn leads to a lack of “community” and “neighboring” sort of feeling. So that, in turn, we as a whole are disconnected from each other. Which perhaps has created this cycle of feeling like “no one cares about me.” How sad! This story (and I came across your Substack through the Campfire Stories on YouTube by the way… which was brilliant and captured my heart)… that you have shared gives hope to us all. I know it lit a fire within me. To do something. I’ve long had the idea of having land and doing good things with this said land. Creating a flower farm. Free flowers. Farm to table dinners. Beauty. Community. And now, after hearing about what you and others are so humbly doing, I would want to implement more things into this land… community garden and giving back to say the local food banks. Thank you for what you and the others with the same heart are doing… you’re inspiring more people than you know!

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