Joyful Emergence: Newsletter August 13, 2023
Dear Friends Old and New,
I hope this finds you well, healthy, inspired and thriving!
I am so happy to be in touch again, and to finally be emerging from a long period of quiet and furling inwards… I find myself standing with newfound grace and clarity on beautiful, bold new ground, ecstatic to offer the pearls of sweet inspiration and wisdom that found me and began to blossom during this sacred time of incubation and recalibration. 2020 brought for many of us a time to pause; to appreciate the gift of health; to realize the radical tenderness of our bodies, souls, hearts, and lives; to awaken anew to our need for each other (including our forgotten ancestors); to duke it out with time and reprioritize what really matters within the ridiculous matrix of modern life; to breathe more deeply; to say ‘no’ more; to stand up for our equality and our Earth like never before; to give our presence to beauty with heightened awareness of the law of impermanence….
I am so grateful for my precious friends and family, as well as the flora and fauna, rain and cold water, sky and seasons, the blessed wild places in my life – that we held close and were able to cleave together through every wave of uncertainty – which are indeed inherent to life, even without a global pandemic. I especially appreciate the encouragement I have received to reclaim and renew my life and vows as an artist. It feels more important than ever to simply feed our awe, to wholly honor the beauty of our rapidly changing Earth, climate and waters... It also feels imperative that we each, as much as possible, take on our own personal healing with new courage and pure-hearted intention. Let us help each other shine light onto the oldest and darkest of our wounds; heal the myth of our unbelonging; come back to deeper embodiment and presence; offer our vulnerability to each other and back to the Earth once again. Life here depends upon this!
Door Opening
I closed my gallery doors in Carmel in 2020 and took it as a big opportunity to expand myself as an artist (while being grateful to earn a living through landscape architectural work). I am thrilled to finally open the door to a brand new website that is a very authentic reflection of my soul. JessicaDune.com will be my one and only website going forward, and it includes my artwork; writing; and visions for the niche healing/memorial/interpretive landscape work I will be pursuing exclusively. With two current residential projects nearing construction completion, I am no longer taking on any new traditional projects.
In the new shop, you will still find the timeless Anima collection of animal print silks, as well as archival prints of my fine art photography (my original and forever medium); some special new series of embossed greeting cards that speak in “fern language”; and my first fun forays into handmade textiles with natural dyes (including oak gall and redwood tannins) featuring California tree patterns. Your patronage of these heartfelt creations helps more than you realize! Please don’t hesitate as usual to make requests for custom pieces, and to share the site with like-minded spirits.
Homecomings Book and Writing
I will be making blog posts regularly as a way to feed the writing life I desire to deepen as a core offering, so stay tuned! By far the most challenging and rewarding endeavor I was able to engage in the last few years was the writing of a nature memoir. “Homecomings in the Anthropocene” describes all the ways I’ve eagerly sought to reclaim a sense of belonging to and raw intimacy with this Earth and continent… Each chapter describes one of many amazing places I have sought nurturance from on my journey to assuage lost mothering and grandmothering that arose from (maternal line) forced adoption, as well as to address my ever more deeply felt severance from ancestral homelands, culture and language. I am currently back in Sea Ranch, CA, where I wrote the first draft, to polish the final chapter, and finally share query letters with publishers.
New Name
I have adopted the pen name of Jessica Dune, which arose out of the memoir writing experience. I realized in my research that my last name (Neafsey) has been so butchered from its original Irish Gaelic spelling, sound and meaning. While I deeply appreciate and will always cherish it, I don’t want to carry what feels to me now like a broken name forward as an artist and author. I’m sure I could view it as a polished and seasoned name… In this moment, it is mostly a painful reminder of how much has been lost in ancient ties to land, language and culture, and the agony of trying to spell it only reinforces that every time! I want to embrace the belonging that I feel in my bones to the dunes of almost any shore in the world – including the Pacific Coast and the shores of Lake Michigan, where I grew up. I know this coastal sense of home comes from my (paternal) Irish and (maternal) Scottish roots, and the name Dune embodies this connection with a simplicity that resonates perfectly in my heart.
Creating community
If you are receiving this note, it is because you were a subscriber to my Anima California newsletter. Out of respect for everyone’s brimming inboxes, I promise to share letters no more than monthly, and with words and imagery that I hope nourishes your heart and spirit. On this new path, I wish to create community and helpful dialogue as we learn how to grieve our changing world. The recent catastrophic fire in Lahaina, Maui makes clear the dire need we have for new language and healing acts of creativity that can truly express the depths of our grief over the intricacies of such loss all woven together – homes and trees, community and livable climate…………….. Let us come together through pure, shared love of the beauty of our world to be in right view and right intention through every ebb, ending, and return.
With Affection,
Jessica