I’ve just returned from a Zen bearing witness retreat at Auschwitz with the Zen Peacemakers. https://zenpeacemakers.org For a little context, anything to do with the holocaust has plagued me since childhood. It was time to bear witness to my own fear and this was the perfect situations for this. People from different parts of the world gathering to practice not knowing, bearing witness and compassionate action. This was not holocaust tourism but a mission to strengthen our ability to keep our eyes open when facing the suffering of ourselves and others-a great asset for any activist.

There are all sorts of friendships. There are the neighbors you wave to and sometimes stop to talk with, there are the people you work with, relatives you feel close to and people who share your interests. But the friendships that make you REAL are the ones that endure through fights, break ups, reconciliations, and deep seeing into one another’s hearts. Real friendships take time. We all have our broken places, vulnerabilities and aspects we’d rather no one ever see. A real friend stays around long enough to see those broken places and still love us. They may not like the effects of our shadow but they love us.

From our culture’s viewpoint, homemaking has been deemed a waste of time and a prison where dreams go to die by many on the left and turned into a gilded cage, a “should” with limited options for women by many on the right. Are the only choices to either feel like we’ve wasted our life and talents cooking and cleaning, living in a prison where our true self is dropped at the gate, or spending our lives based on someone else’s idea of what a good life, a good woman, is supposed to be, slaves in our home? They are both constructs. One creates free labor, or a form of slavery, while demeaning the domestic women who love to nurture. The other demeans the feminine aspect elevating the male paradigm of work outside the home being more important than work within the home. To hell with both of these limiting beliefs! Thankfully there are more than just these two paths.

When I went to sleep last night the room was warm from the day’s sun, but by the morning there was a chill. I pulled the comforter that had been resting all summer at the end of the bed, up over me and felt that uniquely autumn coziness that signals the turning of the season. Shortly afterwards it was time to leave the warm nest, throw on some jeans and a tee shirt, and take Max out on our morning walk. My friends have a 5 acre property that they’ve converted into an art farm. Richard is a horticulturist and has used the land as his art canvas. Everywhere there are cacti, ferns, bulbs- like naked ladies and irises-trees from Australia, Africa and local, and many other odds and ends he has picked up on his travels. As an artist I’ve always appreciated walking through his environmental installation. Since I’ve began practicing botanical illustration it’s become even more of a wonderland for me.

I started to write this newsletter about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the rest of the 2025 gang who truly believe they are better than the teeming masses and therefore should have the power to decide which groups are worthy and which groups are cogs. It was going to be about how easy it is to enter into a state of entitlement and how difficult it is to awaken from this sense of deep separation. I know this because I too suffered from this disease. I didn’t have it as bad as some but even my less virulent state of entitlement was difficult to admit to and a devil to unwind. So instead of writing about the problem of deeply engrained entitlement I’d like to share a poem I wrote a few years ago about my process out of that delusion.

There is more written for mothers these days and the tent is much bigger than it was in the 70’s. The writing is generally about how to use mindfulness to cope with everyday challenges. This is useful, yet not much thought has gone into depth regarding the many other aspects of this important subject that affects a large portion of the population. Western Buddhism has a ways to go to truly include families, not just now and then for a family retreat or for people living in unique Zen communities, but for the rest of us at home and in the world. Disregard of mothers is an active hidden effect of patriarchy in many cultures, including Buddhism. There is a lot of work to do to make up for centuries of neglect and we are just at the very beginning. If Buddhism is to thrive in our Western climate this is something that needs much more attention, thought and love.