HOME 4 The Holy Days pt. 1

To those I didn't say Happy Thanksgiving to, I'm inviting you on something more wholesome than settler colonial genocide paraded as the one day Americans remember to give thanks– some of you already know but gratitude as a daily practice (not just 1x a year) is life changing.

This Holiday Season, I'm grateful to be sharing a taste of my life's work with you. I might not be fully polished but I am capable and worthy of serving my community, the way I know how. with a b r e a t h e.

I'm committed to offering a family-friendly service built right here on my website. Not only do you get an exclusive first-go at the OTWay HOME (at home) experience, I'll be around once a week-ish to respond to questions or feedback.

For us to come together, we need to know what's been getting in between us. Let's Get Lit(erate) doesn't just apply to media literacy, cultural literacy, and the (Paulo) Freirian notion of "reading words/images to read the world around us." Emotional literacy is just as important in this Home 4 the Holidays toolkit and while $24.44 doesn't come with an actor's emotional range, it offers very simple tools to Notice, Acknowledge, Release, Recenter & Meditate.

It was best broken down (for me) in the book How To Talk to Kids So Will Listen, we have to release negative emotions if we want to make space for new ones to come in. So how do we let it out?

N A R R M is one simple way to offer folks the language to express and release what's bugging them.

Allow me to demonstrate: I notice this inner tension between enjoying time with those I love and co-existing with different versions of the truth (especially when we gather to celebrate a myth about pilgrims and Indians breaking bread that ignores the violent history that takes place in the decades & centuries after the Pilgrims 1st Harvest). I acknowledge this tension makes me feel anxious and insecure about being my whole self around people that "just want to have a good time–damn Josué, stop making everything political." I release the power this angst has over me and recenter on the way that love and hope manifest amongst my family and friends– my home. I meditate on the feelings of home I want to nourish; if I get distracted, I start from the top –NAARM– until i find my way back home.

HOME – "is here, in the moment" and whoever you choose to share this divine presence with 4 – for; 4 seasons; 4 elements; 4 directions The Holy Days – days fixed by law or custom on which daily work is suspended in commemoration of some event.

Protect The Sacred: we are not alone in the fight to protect the future #StopLine3

BTS screenshot: This is what erasure looks like

What do we deem Holy in our society? At the end of November we came together on a federal holiday to collectively look-the-other-way from the Indigenous genocide this country was built on. Before the word genocide was a word we could look up in the dictionary, the United States was providing historical examples. The mythologies/stories of imperialism have us celebrating gratitude once a year while the Wamponaog Tribe (as well as many others) consider Thanksgiving a day of mourning. The path forward might feel a bit uncomfortable but to Make America Great we all need truth & reconciliation. The contradictions in how we remember history is rooted in an unchecked White Supremacist culture and how it miseducates the masses simply because some want the freedom to impose their truth onto others. Let's untangle the lies and ease into a shared present. It's gonna be okay...

b r e a t h e .

Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins

It's time to collectively unlearn bigotry, the rotten & shallow kumbaya, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and all the other dehumanizing lies that embolden fear. The dominant culture is losing power in the United States... and we can defeat fear by fortifying our relationships with love. we have to be ready to face our own shadows or risk tech and media companies feeding us fears about change to maintain law & order– I mean, the status quo! We accept our shadows so we learn to recognize when a storyteller is manipulating us with our own insecurities.

STUDYING CULTURE 101: Who is Telling our Story?

We are surrounded by media productions (books, billboards, movies, music, TV, graphic tees, everything you scroll past your newsfeed, and more) and recognizing the multicultural world we belong to gives us the upper hand. Multiculturalism decentralizes the story and humbles us; we cannot keep hyper-focusing on our point of view as if it were the only truth on Earth.

Every piece of media was made by someone(s), it represents, challenges, or upholds a culture through storytelling (most likely shaped by the stakeholders/corporations with the most $$$ to invest in shaping culture). One of the big media literacy questions that helps here is, "whom does this text advantage and/or disadvantage?" Some might cry, "but it's a children's movie, don't take it so seriously." Well, corporations are not just shaping the imagination of our youth but how they seriously see the world. Let's expand our view of the world... read the whole spectrum of experiences and learn to accept ☯️ and co-exist – so we can co-cre8 our future.

I know you like to hide but we don't have to worry 'bout what we'll find inside: it's either not yours or it's God.

The future isn't clear cut and I don't have the map laid out for you but I'm offering a simple package to make sure you that even if you get lost, you can find your way home.

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