Ruslana Remennikova

Beginning a new chapter always comes with a soup of emotions. Some have more familiar sentiments than others. Excitement, fear, curiosity, uncertainty, angst are shared tastes. But to make a soup, there are original flavors and additions of ingredients that one wouldn’t be able to detect when the soup is presented as its final form. These are the constituents that make it wholesome, and to me, they matter the most.

While I began to offer sound healing classes at The Art of Us (TAOU) studio in early November, my desire for artisanry elevated. My fingers and heart were itching to explore new skills. To begin a voracious path in cuisine, textiles, singing, writing, and gardening, I started to knit with a group of women that met at a local library in December. We would sit in a circle, and while I didn’t have the slightest clue with what to do and where to begin, each person wanted so eagerly to show me how to knit. Such a foreign environment and hobby began to feel like home.

One of the women who took me under her wing, Jessie, was as vibrant and sharp as a spiny pincushion cactus at the age of 97. She would sit next to me for hours at one time and poke my elbows if they found their way on the table while I started to become used to the rhythm of knitting. After learning how to do a few rows, I found myself putting together socks, hats, blankets, and loopy scarfs. It became a meditative hobby that I can transmit some of my emotional creativity and find myself wondering about other artistic forms.

In February, I was honored to share a talk on composting grief at the Young Widows or Widowers organization. When my friend Stephen introduced and scouted me for the group, I started to develop a sweet admiration towards the nuance that we all shared. It was the unity, on a cellular level, in feeling the energetic lesion in our surrounding world that made it meaningful and blissful. It doesn’t matter who or what it is. A spouse, partner, parent, sibling, friend, animal, plant, or anything that has been a contributing air in a person’s life not being there anymore, I believe is the greatest pain and heartache of life. Next to regret.

There comes a time when each person experiences such a void and suffering. But even in this type of darkness, there is a beauty in feeling. In appreciating and cherishing. In remembering and longing. It evolves into a drive. Similar to compost, grief must penetrate, decompose, and digest to fertilize the circle of life. Hence, continue reproducing, metabolize and breathing. The process can feel hopeless existentially. It did for me. But, there is hope and a subtle grasp of empathy in receiving this form of nature in an attempt to develop from it. The death of my father brought a cellular death to my own numerously. In this kind of reset, perhaps for him and for me in two separate realms, it continually cultivates a new variety of feelings, outlooks, and way of breathing through the dream and waking realms. This refining process makes me the person I am and my connection to him and all of life sacred. Grief mirrors a level of grit, humility, and a reverence to time. Captured by Homer’s Iliad, we have a right to mourn and grief. It can be our right and responsibility.

With this perspective, I found empathizing with nature, with all of its shapes, colors and forms, to be an ally.

Also in February, Dave and I began to develop year two of our backyard homesteading and gardens. Since beginning a part time role at a plant nursery in Richmond the same month, I became fond of its community, knowledge, and focus in floriculture, gardening, and landscaping. February was the time when the plants and vegetation were just beginning to awake from their extended hibernated winter season.

We added a small rabbit colony to our land. Our dancing, happy rabbits make the best fertilizer for our vegetables, herbs, and flowers. It has been a joy to experience being a collaborator with nature, co-creating natural beauty for the birds, butterflies, pollinators, and our neighbors. We enjoy sharing our flowers with our neighbors to see them happy. Gardening is simply magical.

In my next post, I’ll post about March and April.