The Rainbow Connection
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?
I sing the Kermit the Frog Rainbow Connection song to my kids every night before bed and sometimes if they don’t fall asleep immediately, my son Silas will put his little face next to the crack below the door and say: “Dada, Rainbows are Visions! Rainbow are Visions!” to try to entice me to come back and sing some more.
I think it’s really important to have a healthy relationship to dreams and visions. As someone who got diagnosed and hospitalized multiple times with bipolar disorder when I was a young man, I could have shut my dreams down a depressive hole, or gotten lost in a manic spiral, but instead I figured out a way to make my dreams real with a bunch of other people. All these years later I’ve been following that long term Rainbow Connection, and doing my best to remember the power of collective visioning and practice.
This is my first Underground Transmissions post of the year, I hope it find you well in these complicated times. There are three links below:
The Icarus Project Archive Survey, Jacks’ Raising Rebels Class for parents of young children, and the new badass IDHA series: Topographies of (Dis)connection.
MOST IMPORTANTLY PLEASE FILL OUT AND SHARE THE ICARUS SURVEY!! BE IN TOUCH! SEE YOU IN 2024! MAD LOVE!
The Icarus Project saved thousands of lives. From 2002-2020 it created a network of peer support groups that provided a home for folks who experience mental health struggles and feel alienated by society. It normalized discussion of altered states, intense emotional distress, and suicideality. It fostered solidarity among people with experiences that were often diagnosed as serious mental illness.
The Icarus Project’s mission/vision statement was a rallying cry to reimagine the way we think about mental differences. The online discussion boards hosted thousands of creative weirdos and visionary social justice activists. It provided a framework for dozens of mutual aid peer support groups in cities across North America and around the world.
Now we are working to create a living archive of The Icarus Project. We are also developing an online space to build a creative and visionary network of peer support. We would love your help. Your answers will help us determine the direction of this emerging project (click below!):
Jacks McNamara and I founded the Icarus Project together in 2002. We’ve been best friends ever since and are now both the parents of young children. Jacks is a very skilled somatic coach, trained in the lineage of generative somatics. If you are a parent of a young child, or you know someone who is, I highly recommend this upcoming class:
Join a group where you can meet other parents who are working on becoming more embodied and building their capacity to handle the stress and magic of parenting. We will learn a variety of somatic practices derived from generative somatics and the resilience toolkit that can support us in caring for ourselves as we care for others. We’ll work on how we navigate triggers and big emotions while parenting. Sessions will include time for discussion and connection with fellow participants. We’ll look at the ways parenting is impacted by the identities we hold and the oppressions we face, and explore how those of us with sensitive nervous systems and histories of trauma can find balance while parenting. All levels of experience with somatics are welcome.
When: While the kids are in school! Five 90 minute sessions on Thursdays, January 25-February 22, 2024. 9am PST/10am MST/11am CST/12pm EST.
Where: On Zoom
Cost: Sliding scale $200-$400 ($40-$80 per session)
How to register: Venmo your tuition to Jacks McNamara and fill out this form. Payment plans are also available, email redrootshealingarts AT gmail.com if you would like to set up a payment plan.
Sign up by January 18 to reserve your spot!
I literally had nothing to do with developing this amazing looking class series, but I’m grateful to be connected to and affiliated with the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), who are continuing to push the boundaries of social justice activism and mental health training. Check it out:
How do we find our way home to ourselves, our bodies, and our communities while colonialism continues to sever us from our lands, lineages, and ways of healing? Climate crises, ongoing pandemics, apartheid, genocide, war, and destabilization thrust more people into diaspora and disability, while services criminalize and pathologize any person or practice that visibilizes or resists the capitalist status quo of disconnection, displacement, and disaster. The very context for our fragmented minds, spirits, and communities has been as obscured by oppressive smoke as the horizon. The maps we’ve been given to traverse the territory of healing are riddled with imperial lines of division, separating us from histories and futures that would help us make meaning of our lived experiences. Our imaginations and intuitions have endured the same weathering the land has, reshaped by extraction and exploitation…
IDHA’s 2024 training series, Topographies of (Dis)Connection, seeks to repair and deepen connection within and between each other, our communities, and the Earth – uplifting healing approaches that align us on the path to liberation and the rematriation of community care. Over the course of 8 classes, we will re-member and recenter care that resists separation and displacement. We will resource care providers and community members with tangible skills to center agency, interconnectedness, and deep listening to those most impacted – unlearning practices embedded within our harmful systems and ourselves. Drawing on lessons from across many movements, spiritualities, and disciplines, we will slow down and attune to our instruments of discernment: practicing connection, aliveness, and inner resourcing.
Learn more about my public/private practice:
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Love the idea of “having a healthy relationship to dreams and visions!’ And the ‘rainbow connection.’
Say more. Beautiful piece of writing ✍️