New Moon Waves

The rolling tides of grief

Summer 2025 Update: I am very grateful to everyone who reads Sramana and as a token of appreciation I will shortly be posting more poetry, new and older pieces, alongside future Diarytribes. As these will predominantly be of a more personal and WIP nature than regular posts, they will be reserved for committed subscribers. Diarytribe 1 is available to all subscribers and can be found here.

If you would like to demonstrate your commitment and are able to exchange tender for a subscription in support of me and my work, I would be very grateful. However, if you are currently unable to afford a subscription but would like full access to all Sramana posts, do get in touch and I will send you a complimentary subscription, no questions asked, no explanations needed.

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Hello my lovelies, it’s been a while. Life here, in Sramana World, has been tortoise-calm slow and anxious-bunny hectic, teetering roller-coaster high and desperately depressing low, waves of steady progress and painstaking delays.

I trust that you are keeping as well as you are able, making the most of every daily glimmer, nourishing the tiny and not so tiny flames of hope and perseverance whilst simultaneously allowing space for your personal and our collective grief to flow freely and abundantly.

I wonder if you, like me, are learning that our culture’s obsessive desire to keep all the difficult and challenging feelings packed tightly inside, rammed into our poor overwhelmed bodies, rapidly filling up over and over until we are forced to spend our days in almost constant distraction from the inevitable choking, is neither healthy nor necessary.

That oh so British stiff upper lip is so last century. Is it not time to let go of our perpetual pretence, ‘I’m fine’, ‘You’re fine’, ‘We’re fine’? Despite the deluge of perfectly posed and poised, perfectly lit and Lit Instagram moments, those filtered perfections quickly fade like a Polaroid in sunlight and we are left with a dull patina of painful reality - we are not fine and how could we be?

And here’s the thing. It is okay, and not only okay, but vital and necessary in this fragile and glorious human experience to feel absolutely not okay. It is essential that we sink into shadow, not just to greater appreciate the light of plateaus and highs, but to really get acquainted with the natural darkness of existence.

It is under the water’s surface that we discover our true inner strength to encounter combative and unexpected forces yet continue to swim or stay afloat, perhaps even make our way to shore.

Beneath layers of hibernative soil we learn how to surrender to Life’s natural and transformative processes, our habitual leaves decay into compost perfectly composed to nurture new life, to shed our protective casings and send potent shoots out into the world.

If you feel as though you are precariously treading water or wanting to bury yourself away from the madness, make like Rip Van Winkle and sleep until a better future arrives, I hear you. I feel your pain and will hold your hand throughout this maelstrom. Together we can dream a kinder, fairer, loving world into existence. Rest, dream, listen.. the tides are turning..

With love and active hope, Rache xx