Who are my friends?

and what are friends for?

Teresa Zimmermann is my friend, at least in my mind as we have never met in person, one of My European Friends. But it would feel wrong to not call her a friend just because we have not met IRL, a phrase I dislike. And now after a long pause, she has shown up again in my Inbox with a question, WTF is awake here?

This is a sense making piece on awakening The Feminine in all of us, using Ken Wilber’s five transcendental paths. Because, obviously, we can awaken our Inner Feminine five-fold. Okay. Stuff to do. And also its a bit radical. Wide open. But I’ve been told to own my sh** so here we go.

Her article leaves me with longing for more, much more.

Gabrielle Feather is potentially a friend and I don’t even remember how I found her Substack, Holding Both. She has just posted Post-growth in practice - part 2: nervous system literacy. I like her content.

This brings me to the focus of this piece: the importance of tending to the nervous system, even, and especially, when we can't directly change our circumstances. This is not necessarily scientific or evidence-based. The science around the nervous system, and the adjacent polyvagal theory, remains hazy and ever-evolving. But anecdotally, reframing my own struggles through a lens of nervous system depletion has shifted more for me than years of pathologising ever could.

But more than her content, I like Gabrielle’s style, her vibe, her context. She speaks from her lived experience which feels very authentic. I feel that I am getting to know her as a person and sharing a bit of her life, a feeling of closeness although we are thousands of miles apart and unlikely to ever meet.

Jasen Robillard is a friend who I do hope to meet in person next year in Calgary. Currently we see lots of each other as members of an online group, Wisdom Exchange. A couple of days ago he posted his latest article, It's not flat, unless it's flat.

One of the great things about living in Calgary was having the Rocky Mountains in our back yard. So Jason’s beautiful pictures bring back pleasant memories. And I also appreciated his wise approach to the coming Canadian election.

Jason, have you ever been to the world-class Ice Magic Festival in Lake Louise?

Jessica Böhme could be a friend, a rare friend, someone whose mind seems to work much like mine, philosophically oriented. Everything she writes makes sense to me. A week ago she explained Why You Can’t ‘You-Do-You’ Your Philosophy to a Better World.

…when we try to find a philosophy - at least in the way I talk about it -we aren’t just attempting to create our best self. We’re also attempting to create—and enact—a better world.

A relational approach to agency tries to reconcile the differences by refusing the binary of “self vs. system” altogether. Through a relational lens, the self is neither sovereign nor passive, but a relational process—a dynamic entanglement of biology, culture, ancestors, ecosystems, and choices. We are not self-made, but world-made. Our becoming is co-authored by the air we breathe, the stories we inherit, the microbes in our gut, and the economic systems that shape our opportunities. To “become anyone” is not an act of willpower, but an act of intra-acting reciprocity. For example, a seed holds potential, but its growth depends on soil, rain, and sunlight—all of these are beyond its control. Similarly, our agency flourishes only when nested within relationships of care: to land, community, and the more-than-human world.

Yes, she gets it, the Self as a process, a complex system, always emerging anew, a self creating a self, not in isolation but embedded in relationships.

David Bryen was my best friend for a few years and I cannot write this article without mentioning him. I miss him. As other friendships fade, he is still with me in my head and in my heart, forever a part of who I have become.

Claudia Dommaschk is a friend but this needs an adjective, dear friend. As I am writing, I see that she has just posted about Men Gone Wild. Her articles always go to the top of my reading list.

The pandemic changed me in one wonderful way. In quarantine, Zoom soon emerged as a thing. Of course, I still value in person friendships which remain special. But unlike some people, I have not given up my online friends. For me, online has something that local cannot deliver, friends all over the world from Europe to New Zealand to Canada and, important at this time, friends in the USA.

So today I say THANK YOU to my online friends. You are real friends. And you help make me what I am today.