Hello friends. Open Heart Surgery is a newsletter devoted to exploring metamorphosis, unravelling, questioning and healing. I write essays and poems in service to personal and collective liberation - the personal, political, social, cultural and spiritual realms are all present here. This is a space for divergent thinking and open hearts.
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The Song Of Yolande
Do you ever think of all the ones
who came before -
the dreams and fears you inherited,
before your first breath?
Your blood, a sea of ancestral wisdom.
Your pulse, a primal drumbeat,
a single note
in the song of humanity.
Sometimes I think about her,
how she would have been my age now,
had the heavens not taken her
for other purposes as a child.
We see her in the Tui
that prance and sing.
We point and whisper,
“That’s Yolande, she’s come to tell us something.” 
- 35mm film photo by moi of the west coast at Raglan, Aotearoa, winter 2024.
She would have been 31 on the 26th of June.
In June, I think of her.
June is often marked by an unconscious grief that comes from the bones rather than the mind.
This spoke to me so much. I’ve been journaling and thinking about the pain and unlived and loved lives my ancestors and grandparents and parents lived a lot the last few days and how much it feels like my burden to carry and how much I feel like I’m so far from “home” and want to make some steps back to it and them. Thanks for sharing - it really resonated with me 💛