2022 Fall Newsletter: Healing ourselves, healing the earth

Dear Friends,

We’ve been thinking about healing lately. Healing our bodies and hearts, healing our communities, healing the earth. Maybe it’s a sixth sense of what will be needed soon—U.S. midterm elections are right around the corner, after all, as is COP27. The divisiveness and stagnation that might often seem part-and-parcel with these events can feel heavy and disheartening.

It’s in moments like these that caring for ourselves and one another are more important than ever. The good news is that, in this deep and heart-centered care work, the earth is our greatest ally and teacher—and healing is in fact all around us, all the time.

At WEA, healing is the mixing of herbs and waters, as shared during our 2022 Ripple Week session on Healing with Herbal Medicine, reminding us that every being has an important part to play in this work.

Healing is Indigenous land and body defenders recalling seeing cattails growing wild on the shores of ponds to help remediate water that's been polluted by extractive industry. This reminds us that it is never too late to heal what might seem beyond repair.

And healing is in seeing WEA Leaders and colleagues recognized for their vision, dedication and love for our communities, our earth and future generations, reminding us that we already have everything we need to meet this moment on this planet.

We hope you are taking good care these days, and taking action to heal yourself and your communities. Check in with yourself, your family, your neighbors. Check in with the plants, animals and waters around you. And remember, as WEA Leader, Indigenous advocate and Ponca grandmother Casey Camp-Horinek shared with us recently: “We are not protecting nature—we are nature. We are nature protecting itself.”

With care and healing,

Amira, Melinda, and Kahea
WEA Co-Directors