For the past couple of years I— in shared practice with a handful of amazing women— have been tending to a creative vision behind the scenes.
In such an externally oriented culture, exponentiated by platforms designed to keep us seeking validation, it has been an interesting practice to incubate in the darkness. Yet it makes all the sense. Life is incubated in the soil, and in the womb. It takes time to gestate, and that process cannot rushed.
We’ve been in a deep inquiry about what it means to cultivate ecosystems of collective care. And particularly around how we might create the conditions necessary for life-affirming visions and visionaries to thrive.
In times of increasing polarization, the most revolutionary work of our times might be to build bridges of solidarity and coherence across difference. When violence seems to be the norm, finding ways to support and care for each other is perhaps the greatest act of resistance. To anchor down on our humanness and actively practice inter-being is tending to the soil of the futures we want to inhabit.
We know the divide and conquer playbook all too well. The story that has us thinking we have to figure it out alone and carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. That tells us we cannot trust or rely on each other. Yet, centering the individual only benefits the patriarchal—capitalist system, leaving us feeling isolated and much less powerful than we actually are.
If we are to succeed in the mission of restoring ecological balance and shifting our cultural paradigm, we must learn to have each other’s back. We must nurture complicity with those who are also envisioning and fostering kinship and reciprocity with the human and more-than-human world. Not only because our survival depends on it, but because it is also much more energizing to be surrounded by mischievous co-conspirators that get both the joys and the sorrows of choosing a path of devotion to seeding possibilities and courting life-affirming futures.
Damiana is an organization building care infrastructure for women leading ecological and cultural regeneration. Through a Digital Garden (our members platform), we connect, nourish and resource those who are at the forefront of birthing new worlds, so they can sustain transformative action. Our approach bridges practical tools with somatic and emotional support to deepen inner and relational resilience. Thus, creating the conditions for longterm, individual, and collective impact.
For the past six months, with a phenomenal council and our first 30 members, we have been exploring care, rooting deeper in solidarity, and cross-pollinating across cultures, borders, generations and disciplines. From Sri Lanka, to Nigeria, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, we have been weaving systems of mutual support. We have shared, learned, grieved, breathed, moved, inspired, nourished and amplified each other.
As we continue to cultivate Damiana, something that we are reflecting on is the intimacy of being created by what we are creating. This last cycle has taught us so much about what it means to un-do generations of conditioning that want to keep us separate. Whether that be through competition or through being the martyr that carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, silently and alone. The mirror of this ecosystem is potent medicine. Showing us exactly where the work lies, and what we must continue to practice and embody on this mission to build care infrastructure, rooted in reciprocity, and in service of collective liberation.
In an increasingly manicured, plasticized, mechanized, and automated world, obsessed with the goal, we are choosing to be in close relationship with the textures of the journey. Trusting that the subtlety and depth of the process is what will show us the way.
All this to say that this is a space where we will continue to share musings about the inquires we are holding, what are learning, and ways to get involved.
Explore more at www.damiana.io
Collectively nurturing necessary transformation. I can't wait to watch this (ecosystem) space.
It’s so inspiring what you’re doing. Wowowow.