Becoming Yuncle
A Mid-summer Newsletter
Photo credit: Dr.g wearing black baseball hat that reads in white I Wrote It from Broadway’s Proof (2026)
Dear Ones,
i know i am not alone in this but it has been a vulnerable period of time. typically, by this time, i am roaring with my Leo self busy doing things, directed, moving in urgency.
this year? it’s giving Leo in side repose, alert & checking the surrounds with a playful flick of the tail.
it’s a new season of life, Good People. & i am in (at times disgruntled) surrender.
i don’t know if i mentioned this story before, but as a youth i was a lover water who did not know how to swim. i would jump in & sit at the bottom of the pool, watching my friends swim around & above me. i enjoyed the activity of increasing my time underwater. i even practiced it in the bathtub. i was repeatedly told i just needed to learn to be a better swimmer, but what about being an adept diver?
the last 15 years have felt like a descent.
at first i thought it was dying (& it does feel like that sometimes with all the afflictions of body i have been blessed to touch & carry & release). but it was more of a deepening.
to do more with less. it’s Good News.
to balance the ascension & the descent. to strip the jargon & rest in the embodiment. B.E.
i feel a heightened sense of mortality, not because of the state of the country or in comparison to my Mom’s young passing, but because the cost of not fully allowing yourself to BE is a dying.
as i begin a new cycle of life, i am taking on fresh intention. it reminds me of my great aunt, the gardener, who, in Spring, would sit in the basement on an old school chair surrounded by plastic starter trays and small packages of seeds. she would separate each individual seed with the tip of her nail, giving each its own bit of dirt to flower in.
THAT kind of planting intention.
& i know, there were many things i thought i was going to offer, but they changed & deepened & i feel tremendously free in naming that when i do offer, it will be well-rooted & right timed.
i hope you feel the same of whatever of your gifts that are seeding. moving at the space of presence & rootedness pulls Us free of the system.
BUT
i will say i am open for those interest in spiritual companionship. for teaching. for conversation. for co-creating. for witnessing. just send a request.
LITTLE RAYS OF SUNSHINE
the many layers of suicide & the oft unspoken complicated grief continue to become an ongoing path. it “started” in 2022 with a conversation M Abeo of Faces of Fortitude in community of death care, then continued to a portrait session in March 2026 & has continued to co-lead Grief Care After Suicide Loss. there are stories that need be heard.
i will be kicking off August teaching a self-crafted course, Luminous Void: the Sacred Divinity of One-Pointed Attention, in Yangti Yoga’s Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program. y’all, i love learning in community & add spirit to that mix & i’m just giddy! although this is closed to CPE participants, more is coming on the practice of presence.
& the “last” joy note is on the Broadway production Proof with Ayo Edebiri & Don Cheadle. yes, it did premiere in 2000 & did well but this revival was with black leads. i cried the whole performance, for different reasons, but most for the deep witnessing of Black life. i also said to myself, this is why i continue to write. if it ever finds a way near you to experience, do.