The past two weeks contain enblazened views of outstanding lore, love, uncertainty, admiration, connection, and fear. We traversed gravel road potholes, twice we turned around after realizing we were unable to climb a mountain, hunkered down in areas not meant for humans, and watched the moon and the sun in the same morning sky. Most of our unsuccessful tries to camp due to filled up and overpopulated campgrounds, dispersed areas, and parking lots weighed heavy as boulders in our path. One night, this dear creature beside me was called my beloved for the first time as we watched the full moon light up the darkest night sky while we were surrounded, and spied on, by what seemed like a legion of wild felines. We were welcomed by the dearest of friends along the way and that fact has kept us steady as we go.

Clove and I moved from roadstops to parking lots, tree spots and loving dots, on the journey to our landing squats. These peoples and places have held my exhaustion and languishing thoughts. My journal writings stopped as my noticeable anxious insides have showed themselves to be tethered with a life long safety mechanism that I have used for decades. Run, Jen, run. We will be working on shifting that mindset from here on out.

Hopscotch Towards The Forests and The Sea

The next steps are already in motion, we leave out for our next journey later this week, to the area in which the sights have been set. Applications are being sent, interviews are scheduled, meetups on the calendar, our life and camping gear in the car. This continuation of roaming is about to slow down and center our movements around one area in particular. The priorities are to secure revenue streams, lock in a homespot to rest our heads, rebuild and expand from there.

The Return of Under The Root

In 2003, I began the blueprint and architecture of Under The Root from this well of desire to create intimate apparel from reclaimed, sustainable, and discontinued fabrics. It began as a way to learn, express, grow, rebel, and take back my agency from scarcity. It worked for such a long time… until it burned out and needed a major rest area some 20 years later. The studio is still purring and has grown to be populated with a different kind of rebellion, smoother edges, deeper core of belief. I have taken the years of dedication, with its skill and mastery, down a path towards mortality, death, dying, grief, psychedelics, and transitional thresholds.

The past 3 years of education, volunteer work, and community involvement have begun to overflow, with me creating community resources in the form of pdf downloads, recorded workshops, collections of care for support services, and handcrafted goods from my designs. At this point, I have been creating and making for such a dearly long time that it makes complete sense to keep growing in ways that listen, serve, help, and care.

The Listening Table

One of the most bubbling over actions for this next Under The Root chapter is underway. The outreach for The Listening Table began a handful of weeks ago. The Listening Table is a pilot program that branches from the larger vision behind The Listening Atlas. These workshops are inperson and carve out time for older adults and our elders to be offered creative conversations, artistic presence, expansive curiosity, and meaningful connections. This is the beginning, with or without The Listening House.

Thank You for Holding Space for Us to Grow

For all the donations, shares, purchases, the check ins, the offerings of places to rest, the open doors, and the kindness of reading these updates…
ooooo, we see you and thank you with every ounce of our essence. The original strategy has shifted a bit and the story continues to grow.

**7 Stages of Grief image credit:** **https://www.aunnamoriartyphoto.com/**

The decision happened in an instant. Was it brave?… that answer is unclear at this moment. What IS crystal is that holding on was wreaking havoc on our lives and those closest to us, stirring the pots of chaos, and not moving the mission forward.

This update is necessary and important because so many of you have leaned in to support with monetary donations that definitely are held closely to the hearth of this project, shared this fundraiser to spread the word and information of this journey, encouraged me with kindness and tenderness and heaps of wisdom sharing, plus not turned away from me and Clove over these past months…offering lots and lots of space. It seems to me that sincerity and honesty underpins each of us to one another. Or, at least I hold firmly to the notion that this is where the journey has been given our sailing winds.

This past week shifted the strategy completely on its head and what we are left with is the practice of integrity above every thing else.

When the Plan Changed

After leaving the property where the motorhome had been parked, Clove and I spent the next few weeks adapting to life on the road while searching for work and looking for a more sturdy path forward. We sought refuge wherever we safely were able to, took each day one step at a time, and we held firmly to the belief that the motorhome was working as a safe home. Clove has been a superstar through it all.

Then, one evening, while driving toward another place to spend the night, I heard a loud snap. The engine cut out. It just stopped while coolant boiled over and onto the ground. I managed to coast safely onto a larger inlet still on the interstate. I stopped for a moment, breathed, then popped open the hood. I quickly realized that something catastrophic had happened. Darnit.

After roughly 6 hours deep into the night, two pixie peoples stopped to ask if I needed help. They were kind and said that they were coming back in the daylight to be with me and check out what had happened. The light came into the sky and they returned just like they said they were going to. They were mechanically inclined and gave me some options as to what may have happened and then proceeded to move the motorhome to the safety spot we were headed to in the first place. The engine had suffered a major mechanical failure. We stayed at that safety spot for three days.

The Decision

Over those days while reaching out to referrals and tossing around ideas, plus asking an Incident Report person to drive me 20 miles for retrieval of our utility vehicle, I sat with the immensity of our situation. Yes, the motorhome had given me a glimpse of hope as it was able to represent safety and a future that I was willing to work towards for months. It now represented a growing financial burden that refused to hold. This far and no further.

So, with only $46 left to our name, I did not flinch and asked myself a seemingly serious question:
was I diligently working towards saving the motorhome, or was I working towards our future? The answer was like those stars in the night sky… let the motorhome go and with it the control of holding on. Then, there was a brief moment of shame and failure, not for me, for my inability to add safety for this beloved creature that seemed to be coming closer to me each day. She did not shift away her tenderness with me and when I looked at her on the second day, she said, I go wherever you go.

And so, we let go together.

An Unexpected Gift

Once that decision was made and we began the transition back into our utility car, a bluebird sat on the hood a few hours later. We exchanged a quiet nod, mine for awe and theirs for sturdy. I continued on, moving our things, and they trotted around for a few then glided away. As plain as the sunset time of day, I recognized they had taken with them this overwhelming weight from our path. Interesting.

I reached out to a dear friend in a different county, far away from where we were then, and asked if Clove and I might have a safe place to park while we figured out our next plan of action. Their answer was yes and guided me where to go. Upon our landing to them, completely prepared to sleep in the car, they came out, “a bed was made and we did not have to sleep in the car, grab what we need, come inside”.

I was not prepared for that care as the last people we trusted had turned us out, brushed us away, pointing fingers of shame for being who we are. Here was practical help with a hug and deeper understanding; a reminder of kindness and confidence and human connection. Someday soon, it will be important to write an update on each hand that was held out to help while we stepped across these vast riverbeds.

We Are Here Now

This update is not the end of the story. This update is the choice made while at the pomba gira along the winding journey. The motorhome was a strategy, an expression, and a possibility for our over arching project vision of The Listening Atlas. The project did not disappear with that loud snap and ultimate release of the motorhome. The Listening Atlas gained another foundation story with learning and growth and quite a few tears.

The Listening Atlas is an archive of presence dedicated to the documentation of how people, communities, and cultures accompany one another through mortality. It explores the variations of ways we humans create and embody meaning through death care, grief, ritual, remembrance, presence, and relational care across the United States.

While that particular motorhome was given the title of The Listening House, it does not have to be… the vision remains the same. The Listening House will have its becoming and show itself over time to us. It is a traveling space of place. Where stories can be shared, conversations allowed to unfold, and people welcomed in to speak unapologetically about death, grief, memory, and belonging. Whether that house eventually takes the form of a restored motorhome, a box truck, a conversion van, a short bus, a tiny home, a studio, or another kind of mobile space is less important than what it makes possible: a place dedicated to listening.

Through The Looking Glass

How do we care for one another when life becomes most fragile?

What wisdom lives in communities that rarely finds its way into books or institutions?

What traditions and rituals are evolving right before our very eyes, and what stories are being remembered?

As merely a Listening Cartographer, I have begun writing questions down on paper and will continue to do so. My hope is to embody someone who travels with cultural humility steering the ship. A person guided by deep and active listening skills to those that dare to bare and share their innermost thoughts. My artistic tools aplenty but basically consist of a pen and paper or handheld recorder to map places, relationships, practices, and the multitude of ways sentient beings define tenderness.

So, change abounds, purpose remains unchanged. This fundraiser will continue, not to recreate or raise the mobile death that just happened, but to continue building a road towards the possibility of The Listening Atlas.

Clove and I have pointed our sights out of this immediate area and soon will be moving North together. With the time we have been offered here, we have begun outreach to a community that feels more aligned with the rebuild. It values nature, creativity, artistic endeavors, communal resonance, and the exchange of our resources and skills. This bridge will now be built slowly and intentionally, with hard work and soft goods. The focus is on finding work exchange for housing, rebuilding financial stability, and continuing to develop and share the ideas and projects that have been at the heart of this journey from the beginning.

Blues to Bluebirds

The generosity of those that are standing in support of this project have not be pushed aside, nor thrown out at as a waste. You have given air to the sails, lifted my chin towards opportunity, and are being closely carried as a daily reminder of foundation. The plans, people, and roads change. The purpose has not quivered one bit.

We are rebuilding a foundation that was knocked down to rubble. And we are already underway, because of you. We are setting out to listen to communities and traditions, to caregivers and spaces of places, to silence and memory, and to the sounds of release from the flight of bluebirds.

From My Field Notes

(an additional segment with writings and stories from the road)

CATASTROPHIC MECHANICAL FAILURE

A halflife shed from my being last night,
lifted right outside the window and then blew away all fright.

It took with it countless hours of speech,
buried writings from the deep,
invisible parts with no time to sleep.

Corners filled with cobwebs,
I have refused to sweep.
Misty morning dewdrops,
gathered together on the cheap.

We unload straight back to the earth,
delighted with our finds.
Turned over the soil from dry to moist,
talking with the sprites saying never you minds.

A very peculiar feeling,
being held by the hand of night.
Like a shell of a being,
walking back to the fight.