History Lesson

Tomorrow night I go to the 20th year anniversary celebration of Rainforest Action Network, the organization that my ex-husband was director of thru the late 1990’s. Kelly was one of those instrumental in the environmental community in linking forest issues to globalization and RAN played a big role in the magic in Seattle at the mass mobilization against the WTO. Up until he was unceremoniously let go of as director, we had both considered RAN a locus of cherished community. Victories, such as Home Depot stopping using old growth, were beginning, and a strong network of friendships was being built.

In our years together, I became close to many of his colleagues and cohorts who worked at RAN, Greenpeace, and other environmental groups. I taught workshops to longtime activists on using magic, coining the term “magical activism” and incorporated using magic in the teaching of civil disobedience tactics. After Seattle, Starhawk took this on as well, and I eventually turned my attention to other work. I had introduced my ex to Reclaiming when we were in our twenties, and he returned that favor in our thirties by introducing me to this particular sector of the environmental activist community, a community that as it turns out, is one which I feel more valued in than in local Reclaiming. Ilyse, a campaign director at RAN, just bought into my building and has become chosen family. Over the years, my priestessing skills have been well utilized in helping people of this community marry, do rituals for their children, and deal with grieving the dead.

Kelly was ousted from RAN at the same time as our twenty year marriage was coming to an end. Like with so many things that come to a close, there is no one clear cut reason for the ending of his directorship, or our marriage. In both, a variety of factors mounted up, an assortment of straws accumulated, and eventually a break occurred. In the lead up to this anniversary celebration, I’ve puzzled over the curiosity of my ex having more resentment, hard feelings, and heart break over his fracture with RAN than with our break-up. I’ve been a mirror of this in my estrangement from local Reclaiming. Strangely, we both have struggled with disillusionment with communities we once were in the thick of, that we once believed we would be part of forever, while more easily making peace with letting go of our commitment to a future together. Perhaps all those years of couples counseling were effective! If not in keeping us together, than in allowing us with some grace to let go. It’s so much harder to let go of something which matters to you deeply when you are treated as if you don’t matter!

Although I still can’t see myself attending the Spiral Dance, I’ve found myself badgering him to take his place at the anniversary dinner, feeling he‘s played an essential part in RAN‘s history. Inspired by the Reya Letters, I wrote him the letters he would wish to receive from those he still feels injured by. They were incredibly healing for me to write, in ways I still don’t quite understand, and I hope they’ve been healing for him to receive. Reya gifted me in a similar way with a letter from the Spiral Dance cell, something I’ve reworked until achieving utter perfection, until each word is now a gem giving off light and eliciting laughter.

As I prepare to go to this celebration, I’m thinking once again on the topic of community. True community is made up of the people you actually spend time with, who you commune with, and who you both create and then share history with. It’s not necessary that you like everyone, in fact, creating real human community means working together even when you actively dislike each other. There’s something powerful about accepting that even those we can’t stand do matter, do serve some purpose. I’m thinking of all the stories, not all of them pleasant, which will be in the room tomorrow night. Good and bad, I’m thankful for them all. They are my history.