The Year of Strength

Fear, resilience, and community.

When I lived in Los Angeles full-time I was terrified of The Big One. I hated the feeling of the earth trembling underneath me. I hated being reminded of my vulnerability; my status as a soft, fragile body whose only defence against the awesome forces of nature was a highly attuned flight response a la Fiver in Watership Down: “Something very bad! Some terrible thing—coming closer and closer … I don't know what it is … But it's coming—it's coming." 

Fear wasn’t my only defence, of course. Like rabbits, we also survive through sociality. Relationships are all we have. But often in Western countries, conversations around natural disaster and apocalyptic scenarios centre survivalism of the rugged individual as the only way forward, amid predictions of civil war and doomsday cults.

But in countries where apocalypse isn’t a fantasy, but a lived reality, collectivism is everywhere. Of course, there is violence too. Desperation is its daily bread. But for the average citizens of a place like Gaza, there is no choice but to help your neighbour. To dig through rubble, to carry bodies, to look for relatives of injured children, to consider everyone family. Because they are. Palestinians—and the millions of other communities subject to imperialism, devastation, and genocide—feel fear. Unimaginable fear. And yet they stay with each other. They help together, grieve together, and pray together.

Is it just cynicism that lead me to speculate the same wouldn’t be true of my neighbours during the Big One? Or is it the recognition that being spoiled, relative to many more people around the world, has taken away our survival skills, our level of resilience? And if so, how do we get it back? 

I have no inspiring answer for you. (Other than suggesting you watch the show Station 11, for a beautifully hopeful yet realist vision of apocalypse). I’d rather let the question itself echo into space.

How do we cultivate resilience, together? How do we do it before it’s too late?

I see the Strength card—the tarot card corresponding to 2024—as a card of resilience. But unlike its humanitarian numerological extension, The Star, Strength is concerned with the internal. Your relationship with you. And it’s my birth card! And as someone with a Scorpio sun in the 7th house, relationships—with both self and other—are my portion.

Strength is the first card of the second line in the Major Arcana, the realm of the subconscious. It’s a card of inner courage. Not the emotional bypassing tough-guy kind though. The kind required to return the gaze of our scariest qualities. To meet the repressed monster within, as it were. Where are we rejecting whole parts of ourselves? And how might honest self-acceptance allow us to integrate these parts? When shame fuels fear, we self isolate. But self-isolation is a death sentence, figuratively if not literally, in late-stage capitalism with all the disasters it promises.

When we can accept our desires and metabolise our shame, we don’t long to put it elsewhere anymore. To project our shame onto another group, hand it off to some imaginary other, or drown it out with substances, habits, or noise. It’s not about learning to tame the lion. It’s about seeing this wild thing, in all its untamed power and beauty, and petting it anyway. Not because it’s necessarily safe, but because what it might threaten, or destroy, is what was never ours to begin with. 

How can we trust another if we don’t trust ourselves first? How can we put our faith in another, if we don’t know how faith feels? Resilience requires something of a fearless moral inventory. Resilience wants you to know thyself. And resilience needs a why. 

One of the small slivers of silver lining in the ongoing tragedy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is the example of faith Palestinians set for the world. We see their unshakable resilience as a call to believe in something. As a question posed to the rest of us: do you have something worth dying for? Next minute, young people in the midwest are reading the Quran. Others are joining scripture study groups. The good things about AA are talked about more and more. And so on. In other words, people are using belief to inform, and shore up, their actions. And it’s loving, courageous, direct action that we need, more each day.

What kind of future, for yourself and the world, are you ~dreaming~ of? How can your beliefs lead you towards the next right action? And the next?

Where originally, my generation just threw religion in the bin wholesale, it seems like people are starting to see how it can be interpreted, made personal (aka spirituality), and how they can take the good stuff while identifying and rejecting the bad. I don’t care what people believe. But I do like to think that our beliefs, our values, our why—when accessed with honesty and integrity—give us the strength to finally meet, and befriend, the monster within.

I hope you get to spend some time with the Strength card in the liminal space between one calendar year and the next, and return to it often during 2024. And I hope that fruits of that internal work blossom out into your public life, inspiring truly relational and generative futures.

Standing on the edge of known and unknown

I’m not going to lie, I’ve had a hard year. One of the hardest. I was diagnosed, then re-diagnosed, with a couple of life-changing chronic pain conditions. It meant I’m seeing less of my friends than ever. It means no dancing, no hikes (yet) no days or hours when pain doesn’t pull my focus and keep me squarely in survival mode. This year challenged my workaholism in new and deeper ways. I’ve never felt less productive. Never had so many days reeling in bed. Yet I’ve still done way more (and varied) forms of work than I expected. Lessons are spirals.

I have no idea what 2024 will bring overall and I’m okay with that. Plus, I do have some things I can share!

☆ I’m halfway through reimagining my deck, Pleasure Oracle, in book form. Similar to Daily Oracle, it will be designed as a bibliomancy tool, but it’s all about LOVE. What else is there?

☆ I’ve just adjusted the price of my 1:1 creative facilitation/coaching program, Come Alive! I did this along with creating 3x new payment tiers (plus scholarships) to make working with me more accessible :D Because this year, I’ll be seeing a super slimmed-down list of private clients while I continue studying my arts therapy Masters, and I want to make sure I reach the all people who need my blend of therapeutic + practical coaching. Reach out soon if you want to Zoom about it and ask questions!

☆ Speaking of these Come Alive 80% off scholarships, I’ve had some people on the waitlist for a couple of years now, and I’m realising plenty have moved on. As such, I’m going to be cleaning out the waitlist early next year. If you’ve applied before, or would like to, please fill out this form with your updated details.

☆ Finally, I’m looking for some food for thought regarding The Dreamer and how I can dream more regularly, bigger, and deeper with you! I feel most of us are longing to be in a creative / therapeutic community together, so I’m putting the feelers out on how I might be able to facilitate that more directly. And I want to hear from YOU. If you have 1-2 minutes spare, please fill out this questionnaire to help give me an idea of what you’re looking for in 2024.

I’m acutely aware that I’m in limbo, in life and in my work. Some days I feel okay, others I’m incapacitated. I’m not just a coach anymore, but I’m not yet an arts therapist, or whatever hybrid thing I become. I’m more things at once than I’ve ever been. But I’m less concretely anything. And because I see that as symptomatic of a collection of whys, of values in action, I’m very proud of it.

See you on the other side. Happy birthday to everyone’s favourite anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, feminist, nonviolent revolutionary Palestinian Jew. And blessed new year <3 I’m going overseas now, bye!

Xo Jerico

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☆THE DREAMER☆ is a free newsletter and online space for those dreaming at the intersection of creativity, therapeutic arts, ecology, magic, and neurodiversity. If you enjoy The Dreamer, support me by sharing it with your friends and social networks. And you can work with me in the following ways:

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This email has been sent from stolen and unceded Bidjigal Country, part of the Eora nation, where I live and work. I also frequent neighbouring sovereign Birrabirragal, Gadigal, and Wangal land. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to true justice, reparations, and renewal of Country and culture with every right action. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.