My name is Aurora Levins Morales.
I'm a writer, an artist, a historian. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary. I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how we think about ourselves, each other and the world.
I am a woman with chronic illness and disability, because my body is unable to handle the toxic load of 21st century capitalism. I can't crank out books, go on speaking tours, teach at a university, attend conferences, go to meetings and marches, or work an eight hour day. I've had to invent other ways to engage with the world.
I'm a writer, an artist, a historian. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary. I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how we think about ourselves, each other and the world.
I am a woman with chronic illness and disability, because my body is unable to handle the toxic load of 21st century capitalism. I can't crank out books, go on speaking tours, teach at a university, attend conferences, go to meetings and marches, or work an eight hour day. I've had to invent other ways to engage with the world.
I call what I do homeopathic activism. Homeopathy uses minute amounts of true substance to trigger powerful self-healing responses in our bodies. Homeopathic medicines are made by diluting and shaking, diluting and shaking. The more diluted a remedy is, the more powerful its effects. Homeopaths believe that as the remedy is potentized, the original substance leaves its energy imprint, the essential pattern of its nature, the idea of itself, in the diluting water and that this is what has the power to awaken our bodies' own inherent defenses and create health.
Because I have very little physical energy and a lot to contribute, I look for the one or two most potent molecules of what I'm thinking about, the particles that could help wake up our individual and collective immune systems. Then I potentize them through art, through metaphor, through storytelling, through posing questions and suggesting possibilities.
Some of what I do is writing. Some of it is visual art. Some of it is conversation. Some of it is mentoring. Some of it is ritual. Whether they're lectures or embroidered and beaded photographs printed on silk, I like to call the things I create talismans. Objects meant to spark unexpected transformation. I can call myself a writer, or an artist, or a historian. The title of the moment doesn't matter. What matters is whether I'm effectively opening up new possibilities, making and revealing connections, building relationships.
What matters is that the world is in great danger from runaway greed. The only thing that can stop it is large numbers of people becoming able to imagine and then create something better. When Harriet Tubman was praised for freeing hundreds of slaves, she said "I could have freed thousands, if I could have made them believe they were slaves." The stories we tell about our lives shape what we're able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do. My job is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives. Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible.
In October, 2011 I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to live with my father after the death of my mother. I am designing the next stage of my life to support my continuing my work, sustain my body, nourish and be nourished by community and have enough shared resources to thrive beyond the time when my father is able to back me financially. As part of this project, I am raising funds to build a specially designed, healthy, sustainable house on wheels to be my home and studio, from which I can continue to write, make art and speak about the connections between what is happening with my body and with the planet, about ecology and healing and that world that I imagine with every breath.
Because I have very little physical energy and a lot to contribute, I look for the one or two most potent molecules of what I'm thinking about, the particles that could help wake up our individual and collective immune systems. Then I potentize them through art, through metaphor, through storytelling, through posing questions and suggesting possibilities.
Some of what I do is writing. Some of it is visual art. Some of it is conversation. Some of it is mentoring. Some of it is ritual. Whether they're lectures or embroidered and beaded photographs printed on silk, I like to call the things I create talismans. Objects meant to spark unexpected transformation. I can call myself a writer, or an artist, or a historian. The title of the moment doesn't matter. What matters is whether I'm effectively opening up new possibilities, making and revealing connections, building relationships.
What matters is that the world is in great danger from runaway greed. The only thing that can stop it is large numbers of people becoming able to imagine and then create something better. When Harriet Tubman was praised for freeing hundreds of slaves, she said "I could have freed thousands, if I could have made them believe they were slaves." The stories we tell about our lives shape what we're able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do. My job is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives. Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible.
In October, 2011 I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to live with my father after the death of my mother. I am designing the next stage of my life to support my continuing my work, sustain my body, nourish and be nourished by community and have enough shared resources to thrive beyond the time when my father is able to back me financially. As part of this project, I am raising funds to build a specially designed, healthy, sustainable house on wheels to be my home and studio, from which I can continue to write, make art and speak about the connections between what is happening with my body and with the planet, about ecology and healing and that world that I imagine with every breath.
Filling the Basket
We are all part of one ecosystem, whether we consciously hold that awareness or not. All the work I do is meant to cultivate that deep sense of connection. It's only when that web is torn, when the principles of ecological respect are violated that exploitation and violence become possible. We live in a country where that web is full of gaping holes, through which many of us fall. As I do the work of mending it, bringing all my heart and intelligence and skill to the task, I am bringing richness to the common soil we cultivate, pouring my unique combination of nutrients into the ground of our future wellbeing. And because that better world is not yet here, I need nutrients to flow to me from other portions of the web. I need to be sustained in my work. I need food, shelter, medicine and the tools of my trade. What I bring to the table is not well-compensated under capitalism. I need my resources to flow from the rim of the future, from people who are nourished by what I bring and want to nourish me back. So I have a new section of my web site where you'll find a variety of ways you can put some of your substance into my basket.
