Whatever gave you the idea that you need to be perfect?
Whoever told you that if you do not say it or do it PERFECTLY, you are bad or have failed?
Somehow somewhere this message became imprinted in your cells, there are very few of us free of this imprint. AND because our culture has a perfection shadow, understanding this drive in ourselves and outside of ourselves is such a confusing underlayment– especially because it is clear to anyone with eyes that we are in impossibly imperfect times.

SO, what to do you ask?

I’m supposed to be writing a book review, not giving my opinion on this incredibly important inquiry but I must say, this may be one of the keys to our future to our potential and to our evolution as a species—allowing our minds to ever-wander to what we do not have, to what we wish we had and to what we want—feeds our collective sickness around consumption.

Today I had my friend killed…and soon I will eat him.
This is the madness of mythology, fairytales…and farm life.
We take life here at Prayer Farm all the time. Killing the plants and fruits we harvest, a chicken, even the lambs, was different than “harvesting” our beloved pig Lucky. Lucky would run to greet me whenever I passed. I dearly loved giving him a scratch on the head and trying to understand his lively pig rants. Today it’s hard to comfort myself in believing that Lucky had a good life.

What kind of a friend acts this way?

Together we are in a time when what is real and true is hard to discern from what is not. Developing our ability to pay attention to what matters most and our willingness to be with what is, exactly as it is, seems like our only choice. Finally. Today, riding on thousands of years of human lineage marking the moment we call Winter Solstice—the shortest day of the year, the longest, darkest, night—there’s never been

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies By Resmaa Menakem This is a compassionate, practical and step-by-step guide to recognizing and moving stored trauma out of our bodies. Specifically the trauma that almost all people carry in regard to internalized and systemic racism/ oppression. Menakem believes that the stored trauma imprint of white-on-white brutality—what colonists were trying to escape (and which has been prevalent sine Medieval times)— is the