my name is elden vala.

its a name i chose & was given (both / and), it means several different things but the one i cherish most & strive to live up to is “protector of the oracle.”

i was born in San Francisco, CA & raised on the coast south of that city on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Ramaytush Ohlone People.

i acknowledge these people by name out of respect for them & because there is a standing request by living Ramaytush to be named & acknowledged. they deserve that & more.

i love this place.

the rocks. the trees. the coastal waters & mountain streams. the fog & sun. the wind. the rain. the dirt & all that rise up from & burrow within it. in a literal sense my body & mind have been shaped through relationship to those that dwell here.

my known blood ancestors arrived on Turtle Island (aka North America) from what today are known as Wales, Scotland, Ireland, England, Denmark & Germany across the course of several centuries.

i love my people. but this love is not a blind love.

i recognize that we (my people) have been hurting for a long, long time. we’re still hurting.

hurting from things that happened 100s, even thousands of years ago. hurting from things that continue today. hurting in ways we often can’t name, remember or comprehend from wounds that’ve been hidden for so long we forgot they exist.

for a long time i felt that pain without having any context for it. felt it as a sense of disconnection & isolation. felt it in the ways i looked at my reflection. in the ways i held my body. in the ways i allowed myself to be loved & neglected. the ways i abused myself. the ways i related with others.

my experience led me to invest years developing the ability to “see” the roots of my own suffering, a suffering i came to realize began long before i was born.

with practice, support & time i became aware of how ancient pain & unmetabolized grief have shaped me, how they continue to. (thanks here to the folks at Ancestral Medicine, the folks at the Remember Institute, Dr Oscar C. Perez, & others.)

my people & i are connected to land theft, enslavement, genocide, cultural suppression, forced assimilation, resource extraction, control & domination through fear, more.

we were wounded. we weren’t able to heal. we wounded others. the cycle continues to this day.

i know what i am connected to, i know it viscerally. i know it & choose to love myself & my people anyway.

this love i work with is not the tame new agey blind & toothless kind of love. it’s a love that is untameable, wild & fierce just as much as it is caring, committed, discerning, boundaried, available & accountable.

i’ve learned to be able to love without bypassing whats been done, because i’ve done the work to perceive myself (& us) beyond the domination & betrayals. not disconnected. beyond. as in more than. as in not confined by the small reality & smaller imaginations of the beings that benefit by us staying in a box.

i’ve found the truths of myself rooted in the sensory reality of my bones, muscle, skin. felt it whispering on the the wind, floating in the sea. i’ve found truth by listening. participating. creating. feeling.

inner turmoil & self-hatred faded as i made contact with what & who i truly am. by peeling away layer upon layer of other peoples shit that i’d taken on & identified with i developed the capacity & skill to locate & stay with myself.

i am commited to listening to & speaking the uncomfortable truths that are too often hidden from &/or ignored.

my journey to this point has been windy & at times rambling. i’ve walked through the confused paths of the new age, learned from the ancient teachings of multiple lands & lineages, received mentorship in more conventional relationship counseling + psychology & more.

i’ve developed the skill of locating myself by losing myself in too many moments to count or share. as far out as i’ve gone, as far in as i’ve returned there are two things that i have continuously come to. i cannot deny them (i have tried😂).

1. it’s all connected.

2. it’s all animant (meaning that it is all conscious).

i’ve listened to plants, talked to rocks, sung with water, felt mountains laugh, watched the sun split & the moon dance. i’ve been guided by the dead. i’ve felt the future reaching, the past pulling & the present speaking.

there is nothing here that i’ve experienced on Earth that feels devoid of awareness or lacking spirit. nothing.

i live & share from this perspective.