After a long conversation around inadequacy, Amy and Risa realize they never hit record. So join us in falling apart, and pulling it back together to repeat this message: Handle Me With Care. Call it Witch life or being an "empath" or just being alive but sometimes our enormous love for our world, our families, friends, pets, our kids, for all kids, for all that beats with life, makes us so gaspingly, gut-wrenchingly aware of how small, inadequate, accident-prone we are in the face of all that threatens. Sometimes, we suddenly feel the truth of how alone and under-resourced we ALL are. Sometimes the straw that breaks us is a tiny, forgotten backpack. We turn to Joy Oladokun, The Now Time Delegation and The Travelling Wilburys for reminders to keep the care coals glowing and the light on. We ask, do you still have some love to give? Then give it! Show everyone that you really care. Handle yourself with love and care. Handle the world with care. There are reasons we need you to dance under the full moon. www.missingwitches.com/rx-handle-with-care/
www.missingwitches.com/rx-handle-with-care/
Risa: I had a breakdown this morning, and I'm gonna tell you about it. But first I have to acknowledge the lost episode.
We're, it's so funny, we just recorded a really emotional whole episode about falling apart and the ways in which I am falling apart and the ways in which we all are. And Amy's prescription was so beautifully perfect for it and it was a really good one and then we noticed we weren't recording the whole time and it's Oh, could you be more on the nose?
Yeah,
Amy: we were like, it's talking about making mistakes and, giving yourself some space and then we finished and everything was beautiful. And then now my throat is in my stomach because I realized we weren't recording any fucking bit of it. Come on now.
Risa: Fans, friends, family. Thanks for being with us in this disaster moment.
I guess I'll tell you the story anyway, right?
I just, I had a total breakdown this morning. I,
It started before I realized it had started. But it reached this climax moment. I had dropped Mae off. She was on her way to school. And I looked down next to me, and her little backpack was there, and her one little mitten she had taken off so she could eat a little toast in the car, so she was gonna be so cold at school, and Mark was going in like an hour later to be like dad of the class for a sledding trip, he was gonna be able to bring everything, but for some reason seeing that mitten in her little bag with her lunch in it, I just lost it.
And I just felt so profoundly inadequate to being a parent in this moment, this world, alone in the woods. I'm not alone. I have an amazing partner, but it feels alone sometimes. It feels lonely. And I just felt totally Insufficient. I felt insufficient to the size of what I need to be to get all this shit done and take care of this tiny life that is the most important thing in the universe.
Objectively, to all, no, just to me. But all our kids are, every kid is. And I just started my day with a total fall apart feeling.
Amy: And then you came home, and the fire
Risa: Oh, yeah. Then I came home, and the power went out. And it just felt like all the more poignant, all the more relevant, everything was literally freezing, and collapsing, and crashing. It felt And I had to just focus on loading up the fire and keeping it going and try to keep the house warm. And then I sat down with my journal thing. I'm trying to do this daily journaling thing, practice from the artist's way, which I, I can't always do.
Do and I can't always do first thing in the morning, said to Amy recently I'm not in shame camp. I'm not going to give myself self shit if I can't do it every day. But so I got to it late today and I was writing about my day and this feeling and I realized like the feeling of collapse and insufficiency started so much earlier.
Like I woke up at 530, the kids been up like much of most nights being sick. So I guess I'm wired for it. I was up before her, I was on my phone and I saw, the indigenous woman who had been held captive in a hotel basement in Manitoba. I saw, the Inuit mom looking for answers to why her child's body was found on the streets in Montreal.
I saw this Iranian dad crying outside a prison as his, teenage son was executed for joining a protest so women could show their fucking hair. I saw 17 genocides this morning. Before my five year old woke up singing, you are my sunshine, of course I'm inadequate. We all are.
We are under resourced to this moment, we, because our resources have been stolen from us and unjustly distributed for hundreds of years. And we need to make reparations to the people who were brutalized in that. And we need to acknowledge how deeply under resourced the vast majority of us are to get through this fucking moment.
Amy: And I happen to bring what I hope will soothe feelings of inadequacy for all of us. But especially you, Risa, because, I think we all feel Under resourced. We all feel the weight of global terror, of famine, of violence, and we have the technology now that it's a 24 7 feed of all the atrocities that are happening.
In the world, at all times, and of course, you and I, Risa, and probably most of our listeners are, exist in a very privileged position, either economic privilege, or white privilege, or something that makes us feel like we should be. Can't complain because other people's struggles are so much worse than ours, so much more horrific than ours.
But I just wanted to bring a couple songs to remind us that everyone is struggling, everyone is scared, that everyone is under resourced. So I brought a couple songs One is called Handle With Care, and the other is called Handle Me With Care. And, I'll start with the Travelling Wilburys one. I've always loved this song.
Even when it was not cool to, hehehehe love the Travelling Wilburys, because they were a super group. So Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and George Harrison, who was of course one of the Beatles, and One of his verses in Handle With Care is like, Been stuck in airports, terrorized, Sent to meetings, hypnotized, Overexposed, commercialized, Handle me with care.
And then Roy Orbison sings, I'm so tired of being lonely, I still have some love to give. Won't you show me that you really care? And I love this song especially because it's it's a Beatle. You would think to yourself this is one of the most rich and famous people in the world. Surely he doesn't have any problems.
But then when you read these lyrics And you think about how George Harrison was the youngest Beatle, he was basically a teenager when all of this crazy stuff started to happen, and how do you even process this kind of fame, this kind of expectation, even, like a whole industry that's been built around you as a teenager who Plays the guitar.
It must have been impossible for him to process. And then, of course a crazed stalker fan stabbed him. Broke into his house and stabbed him. There's nobody out there, even a beetle. There's nobody out there who hasn't had some kind of struggle or isn't currently struggling with. Something. And again, this is one of the richest, most famous people in the world.
Surely he doesn't have any problems, but here we have this desperate plea to be handled with care. And I also brought Handle Me With Care by the Now Time delegation, which was like a 2000s group who brought the sound and the aesthetic of 60s soul music into the 21st century. It's very retro sounding and so this one is more dedicated to a lover, or a friend, or your family.
And I will bring Lisa Kakela, the the lead singer of Nowtime Delegation, back next week, because I want to talk about some of her other projects, because she is a religious icon for me. But she sings, I've given you my life to share. Please handle it with care. I'm depending on you. And, the way it's like the her voice handle me with care.
And it was so evocative, and she keeps singing over and over in the song that's all I'm asking. Handle me with care. Handle this life that we're trying to build together with care. And I feel like we all need that. We're all struggling. We're all under resourced. We're all fucking pretending that we're fine when we're not, to save face.
We're all doing all of these kinds of things. My prescription, number one, Handle Me With Care, Nowtime Delegation, if you have a lover, or a family member, or a child, or a pet, I want you to pull them in for a slow dance to this song. And if you are alone, you are not alone I want you to pull yourself in to wrap your arms around yourself and slow dance with yourself to this song.
And remember to handle yourself. Care. And when you go out into the world, see if you can extend that notion of care to everyone you encounter. Assume that the person who cut you off on the highway is going through something, because they are. And see if you can handle that situation with care. See if you can also talk to yourself.
Handle your own struggle with care. We've been brainwashed into, Be tough, and stiff upper lip, and don't let anyone see you sweat, and don't let anyone see you cry. And I feel like, the more that we can be honest about our inadequacies, about, our time at shame camp. As Risa puts it, shame camp is I'm keeping that turn of phrase forever.
And see if we can handle that with care, see what we can handle with care, whether it's someone you don't know that you assume has it all together, or your own struggle that's all I'm asking, handle me with care, that's all I'm asking, is to see if we can handle each other with care in this situation.
Bye. Bye.
Risa: And this is such profound magic, right? Tending to each other. Take lessons from the fire. This has been a recurring theme for me this week. I, as I said, we're up late nights. Mae was out from school all week. The kids are sick, man. I don't know. We're in the Northeast. You've seen the numbers in New York and up the Northeast for this strain of COVID and RSV.
Kids are fucking sick. We pick them up at the end of the day. They don't look good. They're tired. Their little body is so tired from coughing and we're so tired from worrying and being up with them. And so this one morning I'm like, I'm making the fire this morning. Mark's weirded out.
That's usually his thing. For some reason I've decided I'm taking care of everybody this morning. I make coffee and I'm making the fire. And he pauses behind me. And in my head, I know. That he is preparing to criticize and tell me all the shit I am doing wrong, making our fire because he is someone who's constantly optimizing shit in life and I snapped at him.
Like I said something shitty. It was a quick moment, but, and I, I was tired, but still, it wasn't fucking cool. And we go through the day, maids around, we never really talk about it. End of the day, he comes to talk to me, and he's talking about how he carries a lot of fear from the time that we had a chimney fire, and he's put a lot of work and research into trying to figure out, you how to do good fires, but actually in that moment, he was just like thrown off his rhythm and was like a record scratching for a sec.
And he wasn't honestly gonna say anything. And anyway, and I thought, maybe like we could have a better system for warnings or something. He's often his solution to problems is better systems, which like in 99 percent of cases is correct. But this time I was like, All, yeah all of that, thank you, but mostly I just can't fucking talk to you like that I shouldn't talk to anybody like that I have to handle you with care, I have to be so kind and gentle with you you're my partner in life, why am I being a snappy, sweaty house witch and and he, his whole face crumpled and he cried and thanked me and gave me a huge hug, like just to hear for once that it wasn't his fault.
I think he goes into a lot of conversations carrying a white man guilt, like really feeling like shit, women have been treated like shit. And I really need to not be like that. And so analyzing my actions and trying to see how I can be like an equitable partner. And sometimes I just gotta tell him like, it's not you, it's I oh, I'm just a flawed, crummy person sometimes, and I'm really sorry.
But we got so much more repair out of that, I think. Then other times when maybe I would have been like more, more looking at like other, drawing in other imbalances in the family or other systems we could be working on or whatever. I was like, no, I was under resourced and I was a dick and I'm sorry.
But also the idea of tending to the fire. It's really dear to me right now, in part because that's what we're doing, right? That's so much of what our days are. It is really cold, and we haul wood, and we keep the fire going. And also, that's my prescription for this week. I, after my nerves were just shot this morning.
I was looking at some of the different songs that I had thought about bringing to the prescription this week. But none of them really felt like they were the right energy for how raw I was. And I needed something that would be like honey a little bit on my system today. And I ended up spending the morning listening to Joy Oladokun and I prescribe her, I prescribe all of her.
To all of you. There's so many really lovely songs. She's born in Texas, grew up Nashville. She's the child of two Nigerian immigrants. She describes seeing Tracy Chapman playing guitar one day and her whole world opening up. And so many of her songs and her videos are so moving. There's one called Sunday that she says was just what she needed to see when she was A little queer kid in the Bible belt.
It's just happy gay families. Just healthy, loving their kids, playing on the beach. Just just queer joy, I recommend that one too, but the prescription for me at least. For this week is her song, keeping the light on and really because it is about how hard that can be and how hard that has been throughout history, just trying to keep this little green planet alive, trying to keep our kids alive, trying to have hope under monstrous inequality.
She says, Keeping the light on ain't easy. Keeping the fight on for so long is hard to do. For all the times you feel the weight, there might just be a better way. Don't deny that it feels so hard. When the night gets so dark, keep keeping the light on. Try to give a little, try to be a little, try to see a light in the dark.
Amy: It can be so hard to see a light in the dark when you are in a very dark place. And sometimes it can be easier to be the light in the dark than to see the light in the dark. We're talking about fire and keeping the fire going and this is again, like Risa said it's minus 20, and there's six feet of snow on top of everything and I would love for us to be able to collectively agree as the human species that, the month of January is we reduce everything to what you need to do to survive.
If we could just I got, get a, everyone gets a government grant and has their freezers filled with food, and so you don't have to think about anything other than keeping the fire going, which literally, outside the metaphor, is like a full time job to keep a fire going all day.
It's it doesn't sound like it, but it requires more time and energy than you would think. But if you don't, have a fireplace, then let's extend the metaphor to like just keep the light on if we could agree for one month of the year that we can just do what we have to do and not keep piling more and more like the falling snow until we break under its weight.
Like I would love for January to be like, keep the fire going, make soup, shovel the snow. Everything that you have to do to survive, and then if we could really see everything else that we pile on top of ourselves as to the side. Can we even do that? Are we even capable of resting, but not to the point where we are You know, screwing ourselves I don't know how else to put that.
Not to the point where, we let the fire go out. Back to the metaphor if we could rest to make sure that our coals are still glowing, what can we do to keep our fire going? And can we just do that? Can we just do that for a minute? When we have these little devices that have a 24 7 run of atrocities, that we can either go to shame camp for ignoring or go to shame camp for witnessing and feeling helpless.
Inadequate, yeah. Inadequate and helpless in the face of these atrocities. It feels like a choice every day. Do I expose myself to Every atrocity that's going on in the world, so that I feel informed and adequate despite the toll that it might be taking on me. Because again, the other side of that coin ignore, is like equally as malevolent, I think, to our systems to, to pretend that there's not a lot of work to be done out there.
Because there is, there's a lot of reparation work to be done. So how do we decide what is key for our survival and what can be put to the side for a moment? Because if we let our, if our fire goes out, then we have to start again. If we can keep some coals warm, then we can get that fire going from those, right?
I'm extending the metaphor to the point where I'm not even sure if it makes sense anymore. Bye. What I'm saying is let's handle ourselves with care so that we don't put out our own fires,
Risa: and I'm going to add a weird witch prescription. It's not weird if you're a witch, but if you're just witch curious and you're here with us today, welcome.
I, last night I got up in the night because that's what we've been doing and I came upstairs and instead of it being like all pitch black out the windows, you could see the lake and you could see the forest and the mountains and stuff in that weird blue light. And I remembered it was like the first day of the full moon series or whatever.
And I was groggy and I lay back down and as soon as I lay down I regretted it like I should have rushed outside into the snow in the night to be with the moon, and I heard in my sort of imagination dream space something like the idea of this is why we want you to dance under the moon.
And I've been thinking about dance and revelatory moments of expression and finding each other, finding people who will like howl and cackle and let you sob and tell the truth and coming together and letting our bodies be like exposed to the light of the nighttime, like all the ways in which that can really fuel us, can resource us, in these weird sideways ways.
So this is my other piece of the prescription. It's not a song, but
Amy: let me first just say the way you articulated this to me earlier today was there are reasons we need you to dance under the full moon. And I wrote it down and I wrote it. Down, because I love this idea of there being reasons, whether we are fully aware of them or not, there are reasons why we, whatever spirit was talking to you in that moment, we need you to dance under the full moon.
Let's make this a requirement, even if we don't understand what that reasoning is. Fuck
Risa: yes. Me from a couple hours ago is right. So this is the piece I have this piece of art that hangs next to where I record and write that Amy gave me for my wedding. It's a piece of art by Monica Cho and it has the words written by Doreen Valiente on it.
It says, listen to the words of the Great Mother. She says, whenever you have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, then ye shall assemble in some secret place. To these I will teach things that are yet unknown. And ye shall be free from slavery. Keep pure your highest ideals.
Strive ever toward it. Let not stop you, nor turn you aside. Mine is the cup of life and the cauldron of keridwin. I am the mother of all living, and my love is poured out upon the earth. I am the beauty of the green earth, and the white moon among the stars, and the mystery of the waters, and the desire in the heart of woman.
Before my face, let thine innermost self be unfolded in the raptures of the infinite. Know the mystery. That if that which thou seekest, thou findest not within thee, thou will never find it without thee. For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning, and I await thee
Amy: now. Blessed fucking be Doreen Valiente.
We await thee. We await thee now, and keep the light on, please, and handle me with care, and handle you with care, and take that ethic of care, and see if you can force yourself to bring it into the world that seems uncaring. See if you can bring care to a world that seems uncaring. Handle yourself with care.
Handle me with care. I fucked up. I wasn't even recording when we tried to do this before. Handle me with care, everybody. I cried six times
Risa: telling this story. Handle me with care, too. I'm just a sweaty old lady witch.
Amy: But we let's turn to each other to keep the light on. Turn to each other to keep the light on.
Risa: Blessed we can be, maybe.
Amy: There are reasons we need you to dance under the full moon. There are reasons. There are
Risa: reasons.
Amy: And blessed fucking be.
Amy: to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven. Find out how at missingwitches. com
​