After Hope

From heartbreak to the pleasure portals that sustain us

The past few years brought deep waves of pain. Personal and collective griefwaves have dissolved much resolve and unity toward systems change. A foundation of hope I’d been standing on, carved and cherished in community, crumbled. To name a few reasons why:

• seeing a country / US empire destroying a population and place with impunity

• watching older white Christian nationalist relatives and Zionist neighbors defend a genocide while unfriending and demonizing those speaking out

• waking up to the disillusion that our global environmental efforts to stop the deaths of billions of species, entire ecosystems, and of course the humans dependent on them aren’t enough

• witnessing intersecting plays of pain, privilege and trauma having community hurt, blame, disassociate, or isolate while systematic oppression dissolves the coalitions we need, we grew, we lost through interpersonal drama

• parenting whilst not seeing a certain future for my child’s generation

So then…what?

If my path was laid by a linear belief in something better, how would I now orient? After denial and depression, what fuels movement when hope is lost?

Sarita on a mountain in the middle of Ohlone grasslands, 2026

Without a big veil of optimism, I found shelter in mini moments of pleasure. If the timeline makes no moral sense; has no clear trajectory toward a living future for all; I had to be accountable to what’s within my realms of influence, release what’s not, keep working on my own integrity, and sink into the pockets of relief and joy still so prevalent in our multidimensional reality.

The next three posts I’ll share will chronicle three pleasure portals that keep me afloat. It’s love and ecosensual delight that nourish springs of motivation outside of rational progression. There’s knowledge and practices still present in blood and body and land that orient me through empire’s patriarchal stranglehold on a collective future.

1. First will be a natural pigment painting tutorial; the nonverbal space of witnessing the color, presence and patterns of spirit. When a place brings grounding and relief I want to meld my being with its colors and become sanctuary. When I paint I open to multi-species communication. Bliss dazzles my cells, dancing ecstasy throughout my spirit. This is therapy and channeling the divine. This is being imprinted by and imprinting Earth medicine.

2. Second will be sharing the practice of mountain medicine - a daily or weekly pilgrimage up the local watershed to my favorite apu, or mountain spirit. Apu receives me after a climb; there I cry, I pray, I sing, I invoke. Nothing has to make sense; mortal time is long. Vultures circle, hawks coast, and the human supremacies dissolve. Mountain medicine shrinks our dramas and elongates my soul for eons past and future. It could be a tree, or ocean, or city walk for others. We can access it through guided meditation. The same energy birthed us and mountain ranges, alike. We can return to Earth and become reborn.

3. The third will follow the torrent of ecosensuality. It’s a lush waterfall of eco-erotic and eco-sexual desire. It is primal and free. This spectrum of pleasure is available to us beyond genders, beyond ego, without self-consciousness or bounds. In ecosensuality our elements of touch and elements, breath and body become a balm for all we’re sensing. There is universal love and connection in being Earth. We are the planet and the garden and the orgasm; a cosmic burst of life. Consensually our cells rearrange in vibrant ecstasy for pulse and presence.

The first and last will be for subscribers; I am so grateful to those able to sustain my practice while I embark on a year of travel, residencies, and fieldwork. The mountain medicine essay will be gifted as the free medicine of Earth should

As I move and work in the field your patronage quite literally will feed and shelter my daughter and I. Hopefully even this taste of earth painting and ecosensuality can spark something for all subscribers.

What is it for you? What’s the pleasure portal that sustains your daily movement and life practice? I’m so glad we’re still here caring, feeling, breathing.

Love,

Sarita