saying goodbye to Buster

our dear, sweet cat Buster sighed out his final exhale Monday morning. it was one of the most beautiful, poignant and heartbreaking experiences of my life - right in there with the passing of some of my dearest humans. it brings to mind the phrase which came to me earlier this year - glorious sorrow.

personal musings, poetryayreÁnna RossDecember 11, 2022Buster, cats, loved ones, Death, loveComment

on supporting queer friends and family… leaning into inconvenience

i’ve been thinking a lot about how i see people respond to friends and family who are making the shift from default binary gender labels, language and expression to less “easily-defined” ones. i have several friends and family members who are on this journey, and it’s not necessarily easy to shift out of a really sticky, cement-like binary paradigm.

personal musings, RE:pairingayreÁnna RossOctober 26, 2022queer, outside the box, rethinking, stretching, honoring, questionComment

for David, who died on a Thursday

last year, on Thursday July 21st, my uncle David left his earthly body.

personal musings, poetryayreÁnna RossSeptember 19, 2022forgiveness, healing, family, ancestors, deathComment

reclaim wonder, embody joyful action… seriously

sitting in meditation this morning, i had what felt like a profound realization. it seemed pretty obvious immediately afterward, but i think it felt profound in the moment because i was experiencing it in my body.

RE;generating, RE:memberingayreÁnna RossSeptember 7, 2022wonder, responsibility, taking action, embodied actionComment

late bloomer

this poem is part of a self-inspiring 40 days of poems to help prime my writing pump. (my version of Julia Cameron’s “morning pages“, but more in line with my psyche than 3 pages of writing whatever falls out of the pen.)

poetryayreÁnna RossAugust 18, 2022Comment

the Ides of March

i’ll never forget the day she left. “Beware the Ides of March,” they say.

poetryayreÁnna RossAugust 15, 2022Comment

on returning to The Refuge

many of you know that, as 2020 came to a close, i was clear i needed to leave The Refuge. after a year of pandemic and other changes, i could no longer live within the form into which it had morphed. i wrote fairly extensively about our process of leaving The Refuge early last year, but I haven’t really written much about it since then. not publicly at least.