Ashy matters

© Bronls

Ashes

You are still the woman

you always were

No need to change clothes

or dye your hair

Unlearn

Or find yourself

No need to find a way

You are the way

We are the way

Call forward your scars and stories

The loss and pain

Exclusion, frustration, denial

Breathe them forward

Hold them

In your mouth

Pour them on the fire

Let it burn

Let them burn

And then rise together

For when we rise

We know the ashes remain

But it’s what you do

with them

that matters.

Response-ability

I wrote this poem (or song, perhaps) yesterday after having my past come forward to be seen again, emotions as teachers, stories and scars and people coming back to haunt me. Or so I thought. Funny how so much of the ‘well-being’ works tells us (women especially) that we need to let go of the past and how we were wronged, to move forward. Funny too how we think we need to unlearn, or live in endless cycles of exponential growth. I was wondering, how much letting go does one woman need to do to become who she already is.

But life is not really like that. Learning with plants and grief and kin teaches me that life is a little like composting. Or mulch. Or maybe a burn pile.

As lyrics in a Rise Against song a long lost friend once shared with me implores, “I burned every picture of yours, is that not enough?”

I’m coming to learn that burying what you feel, giving it to the earth or letting it float away in the wind or down the river isn’t always enough.

Nor is it always enough to “put down what you are carrying” as one of my favourite Trevor Hall songs offers. The ashes remain.

I remembered a few moments over the last 10 or so years that felt connected to these ashes.

The first picture is of a card I wrote to put on my desk as a reminder, as I so often do. The drawing of a spiral is intentional. This is what healing, growth, learning feels like for me. An endless spiralling out and in. The reminder that life is like breathing.

The second photo is from my journal, marked 29/1/25. My plant art practice, this time mindfully painting blackberries I picked from a spot on our boundary fence.

Blackberries are a weed here. They take over if you don’t keep on top of them. A coloniser that out competes natives and basically all other plants. But the fruit is sweet, and we have to be careful to balance the sweetness with weed control. No herbicides on them because we live with bee-kin and many other beneficial insects. They remain unless you pull them out, chop them off, or regenerate the land with Indigenous species. A reminder that the memories remain woven into the land.

The third photo is some of the abundant fruit that was so sweet and juicy, a year after we watered the potash from our burn pile into the heavy clay soil in our citrus grove. A reminder of reciprocity as an experiment, learning with place. Speaking to the diversity of how we understand life. Caring for Country, the place where we live.

The last photo is the tattoo on my back. I have carried the weight of the fire chicken on my left shoulder for nearly ten years, feeling I don’t deserve her guidance. Today I feel her beauty and her pain in a different way. Embodying the Phoenix, we rise. Reminding me that sometimes we don’t know what we are doing until we are doing it, and that the teacher / teachings reveal themselves to us when we are ready.

More song connections, this time it’s “Rise up” by Andra Day. Feeling inspired, because who doesn’t love an anthem.

Thank you morning pages, friends and family and kin for the conversations that lead to gems like these.

Thank you for the reminders of who we are. We are the way.