Meet Aurora

Meet Aurora.

I'm a writer, an artist, a historian, a teacher and mentor. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a farmer, 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. 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.

Only people who understand and practice interdependence are capable of making good ecological decisions, therefore, anything that threatens human interdependence is also an ecological threat...We have the creativity and intelligence to solve the problems we face, but the vast majority of human ingenuity is tied up in fighting to survive oppression. That creativity is the single most essential natural resource on earth. The work of social justice is to free it.
from Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals

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.

Some of what I do is writing. Some of it is visual art. Some of it is conversation. Some of it is tending the land and farming. Whether they're lectures, gardens 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, an artist, a historian or a farmer. 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.