hurt part #1: introducing the wound

if you're new here, if you arrived in my long period of silence - welcome! if you've been here & stuck around during my sabbatical, thank you for your continued interest, presence & support. this essay is part #1 in a series that i'll be sharing over the next months. the series is a story, the story of coming into a more conscious relationship with patriarchy (aka the entity that has been hijacking the bodies & minds of men for generation upon generation, more on that later). i wrote it for me. i'm sharing it because i know that we (men) need better stories about what patriarchy actually is, how we are connected to it & what we can do to change the way it shapes our lives. this (part #1) is an introduction to myself as the teller. a warning: i've given myself permission to let my stranger sides come through here. if you enjoy it, stick around for what's coming - it'll probably get weirder. if you don't. please feel free to bounce, i won't take it personally. my name is elden vala. its a name i chose & was given (both / and) 6 years ago. it means several different things but the one i cherish most & strive to live up to is 'protector of the oracle.' i was born in San Francisco, CA & raised on the coast south of that city on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Ramaytush Ohlone People. i acknowledge these people by name out of respect for them & what they have gone through, what they go through on these sacred lands where i continue to live, play & pray. also (& maybe more importantly) i name them because there is a standing request by living Ramaytush to be named & acknowledged. they deserve that & more. i love this place. the rocks. the trees. the coastal waters & mountain streams. the fog & sun. the wind. the rain. the dirt & all that rise up from & burrow within it. this place & the beings that reside here are dear to me in a way i'll never be able to describe with words. in a literal sense my body & mind have been shaped through relationship to those that dwell here. for this i am grateful. my known blood ancestors arrived on Turtle Island (aka North America) from what today are known as Wales, Scotland, Ireland, England, Denmark & Germany across the course of several centuries. i love my people. but this love is not a blind love. it's the type of love that chooses not to look the other way but instead to stay present, step in, speak up & remain accountable. the type of love spoken about by& others doing the work to choose love over fear. i recognize that we (my people) have been hurting for a long, long time. we're still hurting. hurting from things that happened 100s, even thousands of years ago. hurting from things that continue today. hurting in ways we often can't name, remember or comprehend. hurting from wounds that've been hidden for so long we forgot they exist. for a long time i felt that pain without having any context for it. felt it as a sense of disconnection & isolation. felt it in the ways i looked at my reflection. in the ways i held my body. in the ways i allowed myself to be loved & neglected. the ways i abused myself. my experience of inner pain led me to invest years developing the ability to 'see' the roots of my own suffering, a suffering i came to realize began long before i was born. with time & support i became aware of how ancient pain & unmetabolized grief have shaped me, how they continue to. (thanks here to thefolks at Ancestral Medicine,the folks at the Remember Institute,Dr Oscar C. Perez, & others who are supporting us in becoming aware of the intergenerational nature of our present state & challenges.) once i saw it in myself i began to see it everywhere. to see how it shaped us, how it continues to. i've learned to see how my wounds have been used as leverage to propel me into harming others. how the untended, unhealed wounds (passed down to me as inheritance) led me & my people into patriarchy, into empire, into whiteness. (part of my work has been creating capacity to sit with each of theses loaded, often triggering words without getting defensive. i'll be expanding on what i have found in relationship to each over the course of this series.) with time & disciplined practice i learned to notice how i have been used to spread & perpetuate the wound. to become aware of how easy it is to be used to do so, even now, by unconscious choice. again. as i found these threads in myself i could not help but to see them in others around me. i have desecrated. i have stolen. i have maimed & slain. i have silenced & looked the other way. so have my people. we're connected to land theft, enslavement, genocide, cultural suppression, forced assimilation, resource extraction, control & domination through fear, more. i know what i am connected to, i know it viscerally. i know it & choose to love myself & my people anyway. i've learned to be able to do this without bypassing what i & we have done, because i've done the work to perceive myself (& us) beyond the domination & betrayals. not disconnected. beyond. as in more than. as in not confined by the small reality & smaller imaginations of the beings that benefit by me staying in a box. beyond (& within) what we've gone through (& what we've become) there are truths of who we really are waiting to be remembered, truths that hold keys to unlocking what love actually is. not the tame new agey blind & toothless kind of love. a love that is untameable, wild & fierce just as much as it is caring, committed, discerning, boundaried, available & accountable. i've found the truths of myself rooted in the sensory reality of my bones, muscle, skin. felt it whispering on the the wind, floating in the sea. i've found truth by listening. participating. creating. feeling. the inner turmoil & self-hatred of my youth faded away as i came in contact with what & who i truly am. by peeling away layer upon layer of other peoples shit that i had taken on & identified with i found (& am finding) my capacity to love & be loved on all levels. i don't claim to know 'the truth' in some absolute sense. that is way beyond my pay grade. but i have found myself & am learning that this is enough. finding me, being with myself, has led me to commit to speaking the uncomfortable truths that i've hidden from, that we hide from, that are too often ignored. (for an example of someone i perceive to be doing this well here on Substack i highly recommend checking out) the most challenging & gratifying work i've encountered is learning to speak truth from love, with love.i'm not perfect at it. it is a practice i'll be practicing for the rest of my life. for as long as i can remember i've been a 'spiritual seeker'. i've walked through the confused paths of the new age, learned from the ancient teachings of multiple lands & lineages. i've found myself by losing myself in too many moments to count or share. as far out as i've gone, as far in as i've returned there are two things that i have continuously come to. i cannot deny them (i have tried😂). it's all connected. it's all animant (meaning that it is all conscious). i've listened to plants, talked to rocks, sung with water, felt mountains laugh, watched the sun split & the moon dance. i've been guided by the dead. i've felt the future reaching, the past pulling & the present waiting to be acknowledged. there is nothing here that i've experienced on Earth that feels devoid of awareness or lacking spirit. nothing. i live & write from this perspective. of all that i am sharing here in this introduction this is the bit that feels most relevant & important for you to know. i named patriarchy, empire & whiteness earlier in this piece. when i refer to these energies i am not referring to them only (or mainly) as institutional policies or human-generated constructs. to me, these are modern faces of what i perceive to be an ancient, many faced entity. i don't need you to believe this as a fact. that said. if you choose to read & ponder what i share in this series. i encourage you to try it on. what happens when you look at these interconnected systems as an animate force with many faces & more names? how does it shift your perspective of them? does it change your capacity to see yourself in relationship to them? what choices become available when you look at them this way? i have been exploring these questions & more like them for many years. they have changed my life in foundational & deeply generative ways. in the essays to follow this introduction i will be sharing the story of how that entity found a home in me as a child, how i let it use me for decades & what i am choosing to do about it now. i don't claim that my way of seeing is unique or original. it isn't, it's been influenced & shaped by many. that said the words i share flow from my direct experience (without the assistance of ai, in case you care about that 🤟🏻). it is an active practice to make sure that what's shared here at Body Dweller is not conceptual & not theoretical. i am committed to offering stories, insights & questions that come from what i have personally lived. i'll hope to have you along for the rest of this telling & look forward to connecting with those that stick around. other things about me that you may find interest in: father to a 10 year old (who identifies as a girl) i call her Cheeld. partner to an amazing woman who has opened my eyes as well as my heart & to whom i am eternally grateful. i call her Hunin. cat dad to two amazing siblings whose presence i adore & cherish. some of my most generative connections are with beings that i cannot name or describe but who dwell along the coasts & in the mountains here in the land, in the waters, in the sky. for them, for you, i am grateful. in my professional practice i offer relational counsel to men & couples on zoom & in person. i also host open to the public men's groups & periodically long-term private group containers for all those-that-identify-as-men & are ready to de-condition their own patriarchal programming with a body centered, animistic, playful & practice based approach. all of my containers welcome a full spectrum of the width, breadth & depths of men including queerness, gayness, transness, cisness & whatever lives within us.you can find out more here. i serve as the Director of Education at theAcademy of Attunementwhere i support teachers in bringing their unique offerings to life. i identify as a student & am in long term study of relationship-in-all-forms, story weaving, nature connection, the-spirits-in-all-things (aka animism), the human nervous system, psychology, tracking life, breathing, rock stacking, creative movement, strength, capacity, play & humaning better. ☀️♒ 🌙♓ ⬆️♈ HD = 6/2 mani geni what i share here at Body Dweller grows out of an unwavering commitment to the work of pulling out & composting the roots of patriarchy, in public. i do my best to communicate directly from my living experience as a human, a man, a father, a son, a partner, a brother, a practitioner & mentor. i do this work because i have to, because my essence needs me to. because me essence is worth tending to. i share it because i believe that yours is too. weeding out patriarchy is not a solo project. asDr Resmaa Menakemreminds us, you cannot heal a collective wound individually. patriarchy affects us all, composting it is a collective task. so please: engage here. if you love something, tell me about it. if i make a mistake or something lands weird for you, i want to know. most of all please share it with men. send the men. please send the men. elden vala Subscribe now Leave a comment Share ps - as you may have noticed i capitalize selectively & ignore many grammatical rules. both are a reverent nod to the folks who are disrupting through small (& large) acts of stepping beyond the rules, structures & norms enforced by imperialist white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero-patriarchy. thanks tobell hooks&adrienne maree brownfor showing a different path. i like how it feels to write this way. it helps me notice & side-step my own supremacist, extractive, rule following conditioning & find a more loving, more conversational tone. if it bugs you, feel free to not read - i won't take it personally. also & lastly - i do not use AI at all in my writing process. in case you care.