DISPATCH 011: Alchemizing Pain Into Principle
Everything hurts less when you remember you don’t have a monopoly on suffering.
“Since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since - since - since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness - I have to listen, more than ever I have to look around me at the world, my fellow creature, my brother…” — Jean-Luc Godard, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)
“Can we take a rest? Maybe die for a few months or years and wake up when the poem is complete…” — Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet.
If there ever was a chrysalis to emerge from I would say this is it. Dark and slimy and disgusting. And what happens when the should-be butterfly comes out deformed, maybe there are holes in its wing and maybe it’s missing legs. Maybe it can’t fly. It spins in circles, unable to find its way north. Unable to embody the ways of its mother and its mother’s mother. The Earth’s poles no longer call out. The magnetic forces that guide a butterfly’s intuition have long disappeared. Please call everyone who said it would be okay and tell them it’s not. What now? Now life goes on. And I’m 29. When people would turn 70, my 90 year old grandma would suck her teeth and say, “70? Oh, just a babe.” God willing, there will be more life to live. More heartbreak to endure, more grief to expand me, more hope to cobble together, more dreams to cling to, more friend’s couches to cry on and burrow in. More strangers rising from dust and repeating a long dead woman’s sweet words. Maybe another soft and porous cocoon to spin. Maybe another hard, sticky, iridescent chrysalis to break out of. Dread always comes. But it also always goes. To meet God, you have to die first.
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I swear I have received at least five newsletters this year from fellow writers who have shared that they’re going through a break-up or divorce, and heard from even more friends and peers who have as well. So at this point to say that I also did nine months ago...it just feels cliche. But it’s my truth. I wonder if people can tell. I, for one, have an extremely strong break-up radar, so wouldn’t be surprised if others did as well.
After years of growing up together, loving, trying, and caring, one of the most important relationships I’ve ever had in my life came to an end. I am now truly single for (what feels like) the first time as an adult. I’m not sure why the universe carved this path for me, but like most things I’m sure the reasoning will become evident in time. Some days it hurts to make eye contact with myself in the mirror. To have thought you had something so right, to fight for it, and then to end up being wrong... I try to remind myself that this is my first time doing life, and I won’t always get it right. But I can’t help but wonder how I will ever trust myself again. I shared with my therapist that it feels like I followed my internal GPS to a dead-end road. I told her that I really want to rebuild trust with this internal GPS so I can hear it clearly, so I can feel confident once again, and she said, “But you did, didn’t you? You didn’t try to stay, you left.” And, she is right. But it wasn’t easy. Maybe it’s my Capricorn Venus, or maybe it’s my perfectionism, or maybe it’s because I hate to fucking lose, but everything I release has claw marks in it.
Post-break-up, I entered a depressive yet busy fugue state, and everything was a bit of a blur. I was forced to balance and prioritize my emotions, my unstable housing situation, and all of the aspects of life and work and the world that persist regardless. After living with my ex for about three months until we could break our lease, I then stayed with various friends, moved back in with my mom for a month, took a couple spontaneous trips, and finally settled into my new apartment in mid-July. I make meals for one now, and give little scraps to my perpetually optimistic dog. I’m finally nesting. Finally processing. Currently moving through my fair share of spirals, painful reflections, and questionable decisions. My fair share of opening Instagram and seeing three engagement posts in a row and then quickly swiping out of the app (I swear I’m happy for you all). I couldn’t really make art about the moment. Just had to endure. Frankly, still enduring. But sometimes art is an endurance sport.
And enduring is not done in solitude. My pain is not sacred unto me. Enduring my personal hardships is not a part of my life that is separate from the world. All I face is alchemized to create the world around me: my perspectives, my principals, my understanding. The things we endure shape us. And the things I endure, no matter how real and big they are to me, are not mine alone. Grief and heartache. Loneliness and fear. When I allow them to draw me close to others, they do.
It’s most easy when you’re hurt to move selfishly, to claim your rightful throne as #1 Victim. It can be tempting too. You may think for an idiotic second that you’re the first person to experience hurt like this. I’ve thought “Why me?” more times this year than ever before. But I continue to rebuke that. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the tarot card I keep pulling is Eight of Swords, a card that represents limiting beliefs, victim mentality, and the need for us to remove our blindfolds to see how powerful we are and how simple an escape would be from wherever we may be bound. Reclaiming agency over my life also means being accountable to myself. In Cristy C. Road’s words, “The 8 of Swords asks you to unearth your truth and your personal accountability in order to begin crawling through the exit wound.”
My last newsletter, nearly a year ago, focused on the genocide in Palestine perpetrated by Israel with full support from the United States government. It has now been over a year and Israel’s reign of terror continues to massacre Palestinians while also extending violence into Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen with continued financial backing from the useless Democratic Party, currently still in office. It has been a year since we have lost Dr. Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian a poet, writer, youth mentor, and professor who was killed by a targeted Israeli strike. We’re simultaneously witnessing climate disasters disappear lineages and destroy cities in even extremely inland areas like Asheville, NC where months after Hurricane Helene, hundreds are still without power. We watched a seasoned weather forecaster burst into tears as he witnessed Hurricane Milton grow to a Category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico, and create unprecedented tornadoes throughout south Florida. Right now Sudan is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, where at least 150,000 have been killed and 10 million displaced, due to years of coups, corruption, and power struggles. Have you heard the names Candi Miller and Amber Thurman? They are two Black women and mothers who both died preventable deaths this summer due to Georgia’s fatal and unjust abortion ban. Another Trump presidency is looming. I could go on, and yes it’s all connected.
In October, I attended a retreat with the gender justice community organization I sit on the Steering Committee of. Yes, we talked strategy, tactics, statistics, reports, and campaigns. But just as importantly, I was reminded that in the process of getting organized and getting free, there is a lot of work we must commit to doing in our interpersonal relationships, our immediate communities, and especially within ourselves if we actually want to win. Building our base and turning out more bodies at protests is incredible and necessary, and at the same time I do not believe we can tear down these current structures and rebuild anew if we haven’t done that exact work in our personal lives. This is a journey we’re all on, but many people don’t even attempt to connect their macro-political values to their interpersonal interactions (see: Ramses in Love is Blind Season 7… cause what do you mean you’re an anti-military leftist who quotes James Baldwin but you require the women you’re intimate with to forgo their chosen form of contraception?).
We cannot be unprincipled, abusive, unaccountable, and most importantly, unchecked in our personal relationships and think that our public images as organizers, artists, workers, or community members will thrive untarnished.
This is simply why so many organizing spaces and social justice nonprofits are sites of exploitation, abuse of all kinds, traumatization, and harm. It is also why you always have grifters and clout chasers who attempt to show solidarity with revolutionary movements then sell out and choose to profit off genocide and death at the first given chance. The clout chasers are actually demonic monsters, deradicalizing movements and defanging language for a little bit of sponsored content. You may have followers, but you will never take people to a place you have never been.
It should go without saying that while my newsletters are a genuine offering to all of you, they are also a conversation with my many selves. I say all of this as a directive to myself, to remember that even in the midst of my lowest moments, the thoughts I have will harden into decisions and values that will impact the world around me. I am not immune from causing harm, just as I am not immune from receiving harm. I look back on what 2024 has laid out until this moment, and my personal timeline is not separate from the world’s timeline… it’s of it.
As I uncover a winding path of rotting and rebirth in my personal life, I uncover a path of rotting and rebirth in the world around me. As I pinpoint the moments I ignored my suffering, I pinpoint moments I ignored the world’s suffering. As I realize the trespasses I allowed onto me, I realize all of the trespasses I have allowed onto the world. As I hold fast to hope that one day my life will again feel full and bright, I hold fast to hope that life will feel full and bright for my siblings across the world waking up to pain and emptiness. In the wake of heartbreak and grief, as I struggle to bridge the gap between my beliefs and actions within the microcosm of my personal life, I also do this within the macrocosm of the world. Pay attention to your palms. The lines and grooves. Look outside the window and see all it reminds you of.
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On July 24, 2020 I was living with one of my best friends through the onset of the pandemic. Anxiety was at an all-time high, and to counter it, so was my weed consumption. I guess on this specific day I had gotten too high, pulled out my favorite journal, and began writing an affirmation to flatten whatever mental spiral I was in so I could get grounded again. I wrote:
“I am not alone. I am small. And in this small place, I have love. The universe doesn’t revolve around me. The universe is vast and large, I am one piece, integral and needed, but small compared to all that has ever been created.”
I return to it often, not just when I’ve smoked too much, but whenever I need to be reminded of my unique role in concert with trillions of others through time and space.
This year I witnessed many writers put their pens down (or keyboards away) and share that it felt superfluous, useless, and unproductive to write when we are witnessing genocide, death, and pain. I felt this way myself, and continue to. The world is on fire, and we are in that late-stage of capitalism where glimpses of hope come in the form of United Healthcare CEO’s getting un-alived. Making art in isolation is not solely a revolutionary act, and writing is often an extra isolating task (yet not always, stay tuned for my upcoming journaling workshops in early 2025). But writing can also be a method of identifying and beginning to close the gap between our beliefs and actions. We must continue to thread our personal lives with our politics and with our art, and begin embodying within ourselves the world we wish to organize towards. Or else we will be doomed on arrival.
This newsletter was a unique struggle to write, but I’m glad I did.
📓 Journal Prompts As I Alchemize My Pain Into Principle
Click here or see below prompts for a newly curated playlist I made you can journal to 🎧
Alchemize means, “to transform the nature of something by a seemingly magical process.” Think of a time where you were an alchemist. What did you begin with? What did you end up with? And how?
What do you see in the mirror?
Imagine your intuition as your internal GPS system. How clearly do you hear its directions? Has it ever led you to a dead-end? Has it ever led you to somewhere unexpectedly beautiful?
There may be a gap between your beliefs and your actions. Most of us have one. How wide is yours, and what would it take to close it?
Look at your palms. Trace the lines and grooves. Look out your window. Describe any parallels you see.
What comes up when you reflect on your profound smallness in the vastness of the universe?
Think about one thing you’re struggling with right now — what advice can you learn from the world?
Think about all humanity is struggling with — as you reflect on lessons you’ve learned in your personal life, what advice would you share with humanity right now?
If you’re able to do the journal prompts, please let me know how it goes and do share any responses or feedback! You can email me at pfdadlani@gmail.com or DM me on Instagram at @priya.florence.
🦋 An Exciting Personal Update
After countless rejections to various artist residencies & fellowships over the years i’m excited, affirmed, and a tiny bit shocked to be a recipient of the 2024-2025 Bandung Residency through Asian American Arts Alliance and The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts alongside 10 other inspiring individuals. Meet them all here.
Over the next year, I will be conducting research through a gender justice lens on a revolutionary period of time in Guyana’s post-independence history during which cross-racial socialist political parties and organizations (Working People’s Alliance, Red Thread, etc.) took root and galvanized many, ushering in a new political consciousness that for a short time replaced ethnic politics with revolutionary class solidarity that threatened not just their opposition but Western imperialism as a whole.
That research will inform a series of workshops I’ll organize for Indo-, Afro-, and Indigenous-Caribbean survivors of sexual assault to place their stories in a political context that takes into account colonialism, forced labor, capitalism, patriarchy, genocide, queerphobia, silence/shame, and other violent systems of oppression. Together we will slowly build sanctuary and trust, cultivate solidarity that acknowledges our unique experiences and privileges, heal in ways that interrupt generational trauma, and use art to strategize plans for further educating/agitating/organizing our communities towards eradicating gender-based violence for good. The programming will culminate in a zine filled with stories, poetry, art, manifestos and more that will lay the foundation for further knowledge sharing and coalition building.
It’s our responsibility now and always to commit ourselves, in whatever spaces we may be in, to revolutionary solidarity and unwavering opposition to oppression and fascism wherever it may be. My work would (on principle) NOT be enhanced by institutional support that would require the forfeiting of my morals and politics... I’m grateful both of these can exist at their max volume in this residency.
If this topic interests you, or if you have stories to share about this specific time period in Guyana’s history, please email me at pfdadlani@gmail.com and I would love nothing more than to speak/build/collaborate with you.
🫵🏽 Tap, Tap, Tap In
Study AI with S.A. Chavarría, an anti-disciplinary artist and researcher from Costa Rica! Your financial contribution will not only allow you to take this incredible class, but the funds raised will go to Abed and Bara, to help their family survive and escape genocide in Gaza.
Help Abu Omar distribute winter clothes to his community members in Deir Al-Balah camp in Gaza. The organizer of this fundraiser only needs to raise $286 more to meet their goal and send sweaters out, please boost and give what you can!
NYC Migrant Solidarity Toy Drive is collecting toys for unaccompanied minors and recently arrived families in New York City from December 2nd to the 21st. You can learn more about what to bring and where to drop toys off here.
I’m super excited about Workshops 4 Gaza’s upcoming workshop titled Hard Femme Poetics in a Time of Genocide & Yet Survival hosted by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha happening on December 22nd on Zoom.
I have never plugged a museum in my newsletter, but if you happen to be around Washington D.C. in the next month, I encourage you to visit the National Museum of Women in the Arts to see an amazing exhibition from Guyanese artist Suchitra Mattai titled Myth from Matter.
Anthology Film Archives is currently hosting screenings of filmmaker Jocelyne Saab’s work until this Thursday, December 12. She was born in Lebanon and trained as a war reporter for French television, becoming one of the few women producing politically-committed documentaries across the Middle East and North Africa.
Mark your calendars for We Fight Back, a nationwide mobilization opposing Trump’s ultra-right, billionaire agenda on Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2025, in Washington Square Park.
On the first and third Wednesday every month, you can attend Jahajee’s Survivor Support Group. These groups are open to all women and gender-expansive individuals of Indo-Caribbean heritage who have experienced domestic violence, dating violence, or sexual assault. These spaces are a soft landing space for processing emotions, sharing experiences, and receiving both peer and professional support.
“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
— My favorite excerpt from one of my favorite books, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
I love you Priya! 🩷
Beautifully Written as always. Thank you 💐