Good morning!
This is Issue 72.3 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of things happening in the world.
Today’s news, fermented:
The headline, as always, is that things are falling apart.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to talk about crisis without just dragging everyone into a pit of despair. One tactic is to talk about problems in context of solutions that mirror them.
Here’s an example:
For Short-Staffed Employers, Prison Labor Is a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card. Good thing Worth Rises is running a campaign to end the exception clause in the 13th Amendment that allows incarcerated people to be treated like slaves.
It’s not always that neat, but here are a few more problem/solution pods for your week/end.
This completely delusional article about how Amazon workers will now “get” to work in Bezostowns across the country/world—but set it against the backdrop of wisdom from Eugene Debs, who reminds us that billionaires will never set us free.
Hurricane Ida pulled back the veil on how NYC’s housing crisis puts people’s lives in danger. But even as housing systems collapse, investing in libraries is a great way to address climate justice issues.
And I won’t even tell you the horrid statistics about tipping points and rain in the Arctic and mass extinction, because hopefully you’ve been paying attention, but I will share that LA county voted to phase out all oil and gas drilling and that the House Oversight Committee has expanded an investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s lies about its role in causing the climate crisis. As a result, oil and gas execs have been asked to testify in front of Congress—on my birthday, no less!
Hoping that whatever crisis you turn your attention to this weekend, there are some friendly giraffes at your cheek for support.
~Caro’s Tarot~
Good morning from a very gray and rainy Boston. It might be fair to say the weather matches my mood, but I think that’s only because I haven’t finished chugging my large cold brew with an extra shot of espresso (to really shock me awake, y’know?).
Ok so before we begin today’s reading, I wanted to share something really exciting and special with you. Remember how I told you I was on the heels of major change last week?....wellllll you could say that major change is here...and that change is that I am moving to my hometown of Medellin, Colombia for the next 6 months or so! I know, wild, shocking, exciting!
As some of you may or may not know, I moved to the US from Colombia when I was 9 back in 2002, meaning next year will mark 20 years since one of the biggest shifts in my young life. Is it a coincidence that 20 years later a global pandemic happens (which I can safely say is one of the other more shocking big events in my young life) and I once again find myself on the move, but this time back to Colombia?
Coincidence or not, I have been waiting and preparing for this moment without ever really realizing it. I may have been physically preparing for this trip for the past 9 months when planning started, but I have been mentally preparing for an extended return home for years. You see, I have entered my Saturn return (astrological speak for the time when you basically go through your quarter-life crisis), and this has prompted me to get serious about many things, spiritual growth being one of them. In the past 5 years alone, I have learned more about myself than in the prior 23 (don’t get me wrong, growth happened, I was just still and am still shedding societal constructs and expectations). And embarking on this self-discovery journey has been frustrating, painful, and exhausting-- but also healing, rewarding and humbling.
I share all of this with you, because today’s reading is special. Part of that spiritual growth I have been talking about, includes a very important and crucial piece of inner work-- and that is connecting with my inner child. I believe my inner child occupies a very specific place in my mind and heart, and this place also happens to be a real life physical space. I had the privilege of both growing up in a city like Medellin, while having access to green farmland where my family grew a small amount of crops, grazed a cow (my sweet Lala-- I had a very small vocabulary when I named her), and my horse Barney (like I said, I was young when I chose these names). I grew up climbing trees, getting dirty in the mud, riding horses, and swimming and bathing in rivers on the weekends. Villa Mayté is a space my soul occupies. So this really feels like my soul is returning home.
Ok now that we got the CHEESY stuff out of the way, today’s reading is dedicated to our inner child, to their needs, and to their return home. And remember, home is a state of mind and not a physical place. While I have the privilege to return to the physical home I believe my inner child occupies, I know that she is always home with me no matter where I am. So for my home practitioners, I found this really cool exercise for connecting and conversing with your inner child, you can check that out here.
For the purpose of our time today, we are going to simply pick out one or two questions from this spread to focus our intentions on together. The two questions we will be focusing on is “What would you like to tell me” and “How can I give you what you need”. So without further ado, let’s pick our card!
“There are deep secrets and many mysteries in life. The High Priestess knows the path toward them. She sits on her throne, with her laptop full of secret knowledge and wisdom, pensive but inviting. Behind her, a veil of pomegranates suggests the desire for answers is there, but we may not be ready to lift this veil of mysteries. The moon at her feet, seeks to awaken our unconscious and open us up to hidden things and the strangest parts of existing.
Be still. Sometimes the greatest power comes in knowing that you do not know anything. You’ve come up against the truth that more self-knowledge is needed, and it’s time to reflect in order to grow. Explore your subconscious, through meditation, through tarot itself, through study. It’s not time to make big decisions right now.”
Uhmmmmmm, I don’t know about y’all but I personally got chills reading that. Our inner child wants us to get to know them, wants us to continue uncovering the powerful knowledge they have about who we are. They are prompting us to delve into our subconscious, and to accept knowledge and information as it comes to us, to be reflective and introspective. In order for us to listen, they are also asking us to be still.
So be still my readers, and listen to that child that still sees through your eyes, but may not be present all the time. Care for them, nurture them, and shower them with the love they need. I’ll catch ya next time in Colombia!
With blessings,
Caro
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
Time magazine released their annual Time 100 (or Time's Most Influential People) list yesterday, along with multiple covers of some of the people included in this most coveted ranking. Some of them were really nice and well-done, like Billie Eilish's and Simone Biles' covers.
And then there were the Sussexes. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were not only included as one of Time's icons, but they also managed to score their own cover for the issue and, um, it was not very good?
Yeah.. yeah, I think that about sums it up. Or Harry looks like a child standing behind his mum while she makes their dinner orders at McDonald's? The psychotic tabloids in the UK have really taken this cover and used it as more kindling to the fire they've been burning against the couple. They've hired "body language experts" to analyze and dissect this photograph to within an inch of its life and concluding (of course) that Meghan's power pose is actually a sign of her dominance in the relationship, and that Harry really has no say in what they do at all. More evidence that she's behind the Sussexit and its ensuing fallout, obviously.
Anyway, I know it's anything to keep the narrative going but seriously, did William and Kate pay off the photo department at Time to sabotage this shoot or something? Because it really is a bad cover. Which is annoying because the photos of them in the actual spread are really nice -- you can take a look at those pictures on the Duke and Duchess' Instagram account. Olive green is such a great color on literally all people so I'm really loving their look in these other photos. But this cover? Not for me. And I say that as someone who has repeatedly defended the Sussexes in this column (lol).