prioritizing my spirit in 2025
"As if spirit isn’t the deepest kind of seriousness there is."
last fall was really rough. a lot of my people were in crisis—for which i generally have high capacity—but it feels much less doable when the people are isolated, there is no decentralized care web and i’m the only/main support, especially in my limited role as a therapist-ish.
i wrote a bit about it here:
at the time, i had a few acquaintances share indirectly that they perceived me as burned out. this felt confusing, because until recently, i genuinely did not think i was capable of burning out (lol). in my curiosity, i asked a couple of close friends if they experienced me as burned out.
as mentioned last time, a crucial aspect of my feedback practices is for maintaining an accurate self-concept (inspired by Nathaniel Branden’s work on self-esteem) by seeing where the gaps may be between how i experience/perceive myself and how my close people experience/perceive me.
one dear friend then shared one of the hardest pieces of feedback that i’ve ever received. she said, “no, not burned out exactly. more like, spiritually exhausted.”
oof.
(and this was confirmed by literally ALL of my closest people lol AHH!)
as someone who had once prided themselves in embodying erotic body joy, the uses of the erotic as power, dream work as praxis, hope as a discipline, this was so hard to receive. i felt my heart ache. it put words to a wound that i had been ignoring. shined light on old griefs, entangled with my madness, relationship with life and death, and my sense of perpetual indebtedness.
because of this feedback, my priority for 2025 has been to reconnect with and re-enliven my spirit.
i started working with a disability justice-centered supervisor to cultivate a therapeutic practice that nourishes me as well as my people in the spirit of including myself in disability justice praxis (will write more on this a later time).
i started working with a grief worker who’s helping me digest my time of heightened madness, parts of myself that i had contained and put away for so many years.
i started orienting myself towards ritual, co-creating ones by listening to spirit instead of following what’s often prescribed.
i took my longest break from client work since i began my practice 5 years ago—two weeks in april— and learned that i struggle with rest because of an ableist, saviour narrative of “how dare i enjoy my abled-bodiedness while so many of my people are struggling” (even though my rest/joy activities do not perpetuate ableist harm).
i’ve been writing more! i’m back on writing lil feel dumps in my notes app & private tumblr (hehe).
and being more attuned to the condition of my spirit has reconnected me to my softer, weepier self. (through a digital decluttering project of culling through photos since 2016, i recently sobbed about my history with my mother for the first time in 6 years?!). i didn’t realize how dissociated i’ve had to be in order to do the type of work i do, to the intensity that i do it, while emotionally constipated in my grief of being alive.
all that to say, my dear one’s few simple words broke me wide open. and while it has come with so much goddamn grief, so much intense processing, her offering was the portal to life’s invitation to embrace aliveness, spirit and all. oh, to be seen, witnessed and known. to have a dear one know and speak what your spirit needs, even and especially when it’s hard to confront. such love.
Practicing Feedback as a Love Language
join me on sat. june 7th for a virtual offering on integrating feedback in our day to day, proactively with our loved ones, be it friends, family, lovers, comrades.
we’ll be orienting to feedback as an invitation when there is desire and opportunity to increase connection (and tend to disconnection, distance & rupture) in our relationships, including navigating the issues of political integrity and accountability. what are the necessary building blocks and skills to do feedback with love? what are the specific challenges in giving feedback? receiving feedback? and what do we need to process, unlearn, and practice in order to give and receive feedback well? i’m hoping to offer a glimpse of what the june 7th workshop will look like early next week so keep an eye out on your inbox!
at this time, you can learn more and register at itsjiyounkim.com/feedback. tickets are sliding scale at 70 CAD (~50 USD), 40 CAD, and 20 CAD. the session will be recorded for folks who can’t attend live. hope to see you there!
recent reads on spirit, faith, and joy
Joy Is a Strategy: The White Leftist Struggle with Spirit by Jamila Bradley
But many refuse to go there—because spirituality, to them, signals a lack of seriousness. As if spirit isn’t the deepest kind of seriousness there is.
Ritual and Repetition by Jane Shi
I would not doubt if I did not have faith; I would not have faith if I did not doubt. I believe we will win, and I also know that we will lose much along the way. Maybe I do not believe that victory is tomorrow-near, but I do know that droplets of water can carve holes in a boulder over time. I believe, I know, that someone is using the eSIMs we’re sending. Sending and topping up eSIMs every day has become a ritual, a repetition of ethic and spirit that keeps hope alive – one that is stunningly easy to do. I can know and believe at the same time. I don’t believe or know alone.
Faith, or The Stories We Tell by Salar Mohandesi
Second, we would do well to accept that our commitment to this goal is based not on scientific proof but a decision. When it comes down to it, the founding question of all politics is this: do you believe it is possible to create a new egalitarian world that is free from all domination, oppression, and exploitation? Is universal emancipation possible?
One’s answer to this question can only ever be subjective. If you answer “yes,” then your response is grounded in faith, since there is no evidence that such a world can ever come to be. And if you say “no,” then you are also relying on faith. You can rightly argue that all hitherto history has been one of domination, and that every attempt to change this state of affairs has failed, but this itself would not prove the impossibility of a new world.
But if we accept that our politics was always about faith, then no amount of defeat can logically convince us to abandon our views.
habits of happiness by ismatu gwendolyn [subscribers only]
However, I know what it is like to experience, in addition to material security or safety, an emotional, a spiritual, a metaphysical abundance of self. Feeling like a fountain. I know what that feels like because everything becomes easeful, not necessarily easy, like I'm not challenged or my tasks aren't difficult, but that I have a sense of ease around me that is unshakable, that my peace feels unshakable.
other shares!
de-google
i started de-googling during my 2 weeks off, and turns out, i have quite a few people in my life who have been doing the same in the past year!
part 1 and part 2 by linus tech tips have been helpful and i have been telling everyone about grayjay. of course, there’s also Digital Security Checklists for Activists, yk hong’s resources, and cyberlixir.
i’m switching over mostly to proton but don’t be like me and try to make the switch all at once. moving away from google has felt more difficult than moving homes so take your time and start small.
emergency preparedness
i read the parables in 2022-2023 and knew there was so much we had to build. last year, i started brainstorming with friends about pod mapping for crisis as earthseed day arrived. then when i had to evacuate during the LA fires in january, i was so grateful that nico and i had previously talked about go bags and doing check-ins and feedback during crisis. my metamour, nico and i handled that time pretty well, because we were thinking ahead, somewhat prepared with varying skills and access to resources (like already having masks & air purifiers & clean air knowledge iykyk), and supported one another through our feelings and tasks and chaos.
now back in vancouver, i’ve started taking prepping more seriously (while resisting the individualistic and classed approach to it). given who is most impacted by mass debilitation and displacement (such as by the ongoing pandemic and climate catastrophe), some of us are less susceptible to the delusion of normalcy that capitalism tries to feed us.
if you have any interest in prepping and are curious about getting proactive, check out Jessica Wildfire’s substack (group subscriptions for discounts!) and at the very least, i highly recommend taking Daniela Guerrero-Rodriguez’s offerings (I started with her workshop on Beyond the 72hr Emergency Kit last year).
to close,
i know this is supposed to be a “newsletter” but fuck it! i’ve been writing! grief things. rage things. tender soft heart things. so you will (likely) soon get random pieces of writing and poetry in your inbox too, in my practice of writing as existing as ji-youn vs. writing to teach/offer as a practitioner. messy messy ji.
in solidarity & with care.