Our Why
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Because life is abundant, intricately connected, beautiful and awesome, and in the same moment vulnerable, unravelling and collapsing. Now, more than ever, we need spaces to come home and learn and (un) learn together.
Our Why
We are all being asked to shift our orientation and evolve, so that embracing and entering a new chapter can happen with flow. Coming to Life opens – and holds open – a window for you to experience something other so that we can tend to the environmental and systemic challenges we face.
We give people a chance to comprehend the world as it is; the majesty of existence and what our modern ways of being, knowing and doing thwart – to engage with the wonderful possibilities to be “other-wise.”
There’s a story of colonising and decolonising, and understanding our world in a different way.
There’s a story of ecological unravelling and the ever-present pounding pulse of phenomenal diverse life.
There’s a story of more of the same (power over, speed, rational, separation, growth to no end) and of everything else that is present and possible through shedding the patterns that have created our crises and feeling joy, abundance and connection.
There’s a story of separation and supremacy and there’s returning home to our interdependency and to our rightful place.
These are the 4 rivers that feed into why Coming to Life was created and the riverbed is,
We are all being asked to shift our orientation and evolve in some way. There is groundwork that we can all do so that how we respond meets what our time asks of us.
We do this work because we deeply care about the planet that we are a part of, our shared home, and all communities within it, human and beyond.
Across this continent and islands for the last few hundred years, damaging stories of separation and supremacy have caused deep devastation, unravelling and destruction. Beyond these shores this has taken place even longer.
Like brave and wise people who have come before us have done, let’s peel away from the gravitational pull of more of the same. Taking care of what we love in the times we’re in requires us to move beyond the habitual to seeing our role as living ancestors.
“An awakening to the realisation of the flow of life is constantly within us…A moment of quiet, still awareness, which creates a non-judgemental space for the relational and agential sharing of stories that identifies, (re)connects…becoming with Country and community” Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann et al.
Make it stand out.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
“Nature and the planet are including us, it's not just that we need to include the planet, or we need to include Earth in our decision making – it's the other way around”.
— The Abuelas (grandmothers) from Guatemala and Peru