Our Primal Nature
Blog by Valerie Right now it’s easy to feel survival fears, to observe deeply ingrained panic behaviours and to hear people talk about ‘these strange times.’ I understand the sentiment, but I think it’s strange that so many of us…
Valerie Ringland
Alienation & Judgment
Blog by Valerie I was perhaps one of Earth’s most alienated of beings, and by that I mean that I did not sense belonging here. My cultural context was such that I had no sense of relationship with my earthly…
Reciprocity & the Resentment-Denial Dance
Blog by Valerie This week I am moving through some grief. I had known that a friendship would end had been observing it fade away for a while, and I was hoping it would just fade and drift gracefully into…
Healing Whiteness Trauma
Blog by Valerie “The first step in liquidating a people…is to erase its memory…Before long a nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.”—Milan Kundera Whether you are…
Thanks-Giving at Solstice
Blog by Valerie A few months ago somewhere in the outback around Broken Hill, I experienced a spiritual lightning strike inside. Something in me died, an old dream (maybe it was always a lie), and its energy has been emerging…
Outliers
Most of us are familiar with outliers from mathematics, as illustrated by this image: I have always felt like an outlier. Outliers can be inspiring leaders, and can also be absolutely crazy. Most outliers, in my experience, embody a bit…
My Jewish experience
Blog by Valerie A few weeks ago I was watching a couple of rabbis and their wives driving around Australia looking for Jewish people. They said throughout history Jews have been hunted down by persecutors, so now they’re hunting down…
On Climate Change
Blog by Lukas Dear Greta, I admire your fire and passion, and your courage to take on so much of the world’s attention. Whether this attention be loving, ambivalent, or hostile, the sheer weight of it is no doubt burdensome,…
Earthly nourishment
Blog by Valerie All Law-breaking comes from that first evil thought, “I am greater-than,” that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people. Tyson Yunkaporta The above quote is the definition of “unsustainable” to me. I…
Earth Ethos child development
Blog by Valerie Some studies of newborns suggest that humans’ most fundamental need is to be part of a culture, to engage with their social environment and try to make sense of their surroundings. It can be helpful to conceptualise…