One of the gifts I often bestow on the eve of my birthday, are some reflections that I’ve gleaned from the previous year, and wisdom I can share as I grow into an elder. Boy howdy-I have a heaping basket of wisdom to share from this past year.

The good-my fashion sense has continued to evolve, so much so-that it has inspired me to live the life of an artist. (an 11 year old girl at a camp ground came up to me this summer and said “I love your style, are you an artist or something?” I think I may have never received a higher compliment, and still glow when I think about it). It turns out my fashion sense gives a deep nod to 11 year old me-who had no friends or self confidence to pull it off at the time, but had a weird little heart and a love for fashion very early on. Later, 16 year old me would spend hours watching ‘Fashion Television’  with Jeanne Beker-loving 90s supermodel glory, haute couture and in the closet nipple gazing.) So on top of getting to lean fully into self expression and explore the most creative and confident facets of who I am, I am living so expansively, passionately, and presently.

Some of my favourite outfits this year

An artist also revels in the decadence of eating delicious food, prepared by an expert hand. I have done much of that. Most often in my own kitchen, with my private chef Rad-who has spent the year painstakingly working on getting the perfect sourdough. Kale gave Rad a technical book on baking sourdough for Christmas one year, and part of his grieving process was to perfect this recipe-and keep him alive in the biomes of his bread. Bread is such an essential element to delicious meals in our house, and when he went through a period where it would somehow flop every time-there were real lessons about gratitude and perseverance and patience. What a gift it is to have food in abundance-where lessons live, and ancestry can be transcribed, and change is made, and stories dance in memory at their creation and in sharing them with others.

An artist lives a life of awe and wonder, with new experiences around every corner. This year, I got to travel. What a gift. A couple weeks in Mexico for the first time, full of the most incredible and harrowing experiences. A chance to try your favourite food from the source !! and explore the edges of your comfort zone in a really profound way.

We chose to stay at an art gallery/guest house without ac for the experience-which was so hot and so fucking wicked cool. I got to see Rad have his first tropical fruit, and we ate mangos till we barfed surrounded by some really weird, sad, magical, explicit, inspiring art at a private gallery in Guadalajara.

He saw giant tropical cockroaches for the first time (I am well acquainted). We ventured far and wide for vegan food in places we would have never otherwise found, and came across queer market sub culture by accident that was absolutely delightful.

AND WE ATE. We got very, very lost. I lost my phone in a non descript taxi, and it was returned by legit miracle. I had to trade some shitty gas station ear buds to get it back-but absolutely amazing. (It had all our vacation photos, many irreplaceable Kale pics, and our way to get back on the airplane, and also around town). We thought we were going to be kidnapped for real for real on one trip. But we ended up smoking joints and eating churros by the ocean at sunset instead of dying. We stayed at another place that was right near the ocean (but very, very, remote and hard to get anything for those grossly unprepared like we were.) We jumped and boarded (boogie because I’m scared and weak) in very big waves and felt alive in ways we hadn’t for months and maybe years previously. I got to take it all in, and turn it into inspiration and good memories to soften the shit ones.

This trip was all kinds of restorative, and helped us come alive again.

Other things worth sharing since my last trip around the sun, is that I met God. I won’t preach at you, but let me explain-this is about taking mushrooms. I need to preface this in case there might be impressionable young minds reading that taking psychedelics is not something to take lightly. I didn’t try them for the first time until I was in my 40s, after years of reading about, watching every movie I could find on, and wanted to experience for the therapeutics effects of. So, this is a LONG story, and for the sake of brevity I’ll do an abridged version. Last fall, very shortly after my birthday, I unintentionally went on the second mushroom trip of my life. By unintentional I mean-the first time was supervised by a professional, with very deliberate rituals and safety precautions and planning. I had a lifelong fear of death after a really scary plane trip in the Himalayas as a 12 year old, and then the rest of my life with anxiety around my death and the death of those I love that would keep me up at night. I was hoping to move through that with a different perspective, as psylocibin is often used to help folks ease end of life anxiety in cases of terminal illness.  The second time, my friend made some tasty chocolates and instead of a “casual hang out with friends” dose, I overdid it and took what you call “a hero’s dose”. In this case, it involved slinking home and the second our eyes closed we experienced our own deaths. We both met God, and had very similar and interconnected trips. (Keep in mind before this point we were non religious, Rad even stronger so with years of religious trauma. I was quite skeptical of an afterlife but very curious about magic and ghosts, and he was a definite unbeliever). In mine, I layed all of my questions about the mysteries of the Universe at God’s feet(omnipresent being in a not-belonging-to-anybody kind of way) that I had spent a lifetime trying to answer with religion.  And, it felt like I was given the answers all at once. Thinking back now, it feels like all of the answers we seek are so large and vast and unbelievable that our human brains just can’t hold it all. And so we have to live in the magic of the mystery of it instead. The very abridged version is reincarnation! That’s the answer baby! God whispered to me “you’ve lived a thousand lives and you’ll live a thousand more.” I saw good and evil co-existing and weaving the threads that keep the Universe together. I saw, for a moment, the intense vastness of it all, the cogs that are our lives all working together and (this is very curious for me) it’s math that holds it all together. This is mostly how I know that this didn’t come from my own brain, is that there were so many numbers and equations and mathematical symbols that made perfect sense. God explained to me the deal with religions- it’s all humanity’s experience trying to explain the unexplainable. And that everyone has some things a little bit right and a lot bit wrong-because human brains just can’t hold the whole thing. And that humans have always been able to talk directly to God, but the trouble happens when there’s a middle man wanting money and control.(Did you know psychedelics were the original sacrament?!) The whole experience was also so beautiful that I almost broke my face from crying and wide mouth wonder the whole time. I came to peace with another world that we cannot see, that ties us all together, and my place in it. What a gift. And it would come to be an even greater gift afterwords, when I never lost that magic that I had found. Rad’s grandma died soon after the experience, and made her presence known to us in ways Rad could no longer deny. The veil that we had gotten to peak behind stayed very thin somehow. It’s hard to keep clinging to fear of dying, when you are getting such clear signs from the other side that death isn’t the end.

 And then, unbelievably. Just one month after that we had to live through one of the darkest chapters of our life, with the passing of our beloved 15 year old Kale. To think that I have to leave him behind with the version of myself that was 43 remains unbelievable. But my boy Kale. He blew a hole through the veil for me. He is present for me now in ways a human 15 year old could never be in life. Any time I think of him, there he is. I feel him in the wind, I see him in the clouds, he sends me music many times a day undeniably from him-he is just so wildly present. And I can’t explain it further, except if you’ve lost someone really close to you, you probably already know what I’m talking about it. And what is that? Nothing short of magic is real, and death can’t possibly be the end.

When Kale left behind on his earthly body, in his wake was a heartbreak I had never known, so many feelings that were bigger than I felt like I could hold, and so much love still in me to give that I felt like exploding. I’ve been told many times that “you don’t have to feel like this happened for a reason. It can just suck”. And it does. But I can’t help but aspire to be the kind of person who can use their life experiences to help others, to soften, to be more vulnerable, and more giving, more (much more) rebellious, and more fearless, and as loving  a human as I can possibly be, to be as grateful and awe filled as possible, to put down my phone and take in the moment as much as I can, and for God sake use the shitty parts in your life to be more funny.

Use it to help you master forgiveness, or be bold enough to burn down the bridges that deserve it, or rebuild ones you tore down that don’t. Use it to embolden you to live the exact life of purpose you are destined for, with the time left that you get to have.

Here are some ways that I’ve turned that into a lifestyle:

Saying yes to offers of friendship. How many offers do we get to “check out this amazing place to camp”, or “have coffee”, or “come see my really cool place”, or “check out this amazing festival”, or “visit this awesome place”. So I did. As much as I could pack in (arguably much more than I should have, a classic Christina move).  I found myself eating amazing vegan baked goods, tacos and decadent soft serve sundaes in Sudbury with our pal and fellow foodie Caitlin Newey who grew up there, and swore the vegan food scene was worth the drive.

At a folk music festival called Blue Skies, that has left me forever changed with it’s magic and whimsy. We have stayed overnight in a bunkie on a pristine private lake, and got in trouble skinny dipping in a river during a meteor shower at a Pagan retreat. We’ve had incredible impromptu dinner parties, and hangs and time in nature.

The other way I’ve been living the life of an artist is by actually creating art. In the before times, I got my creativity out in internet posts or in creating food, and through crafting with my kids. In the after times, I went much deeper. Time, big emotions, and having your bills paid is a very helpful thing in making art happen. What started it all was that I found one of Rad’s grandma’s journals from a train trip in Europe in boxes of her old things. It was so fascinating, and little did she know that her random musings would be so delightful for someone outside of her blood line to discover-many, many decades later. When Kale died, his theater group gave us a book filled with photos from his productions and very sweet notes from his comrades. It was a priceless treasure, but this beautiful art book filled with crisp, heavy white pages begging for creation was only 1/3 filled (which felt very symbolic for a life cut so short). I felt compelled to keep it going, and after an initial piece on grief, I began documenting my life in pictures and stories.

Figuring this year would be a blur as I moved through it in the heavy fog of grief, said yes to all the things, went many new places, and had many “you only live once” kind of experiences. Also, in a very real way Queer history is actively being erased from the collective and stories from my life *are* Queer history. So I’ve been writing, and drawing-it started out as crappy little doodles and through practice has turned into something I’m very proud to share. I hope to do more, with lofty dreams of sharing it with the world.

And the other thing has been *so much music*. I just want to pour it into my skull. I’m writing this fresh off a trip to experience Hozier in Toronto with Kale’s best friend Sienna, who was with him when he passed. When the accident happened, she shared with me the playlist of collective music they had-which Kale had titled “ I think I’m alive”🫠 . The first song that started playing after it was shared with me was “Work Song” which croons:  

“When my time comes around, lay me gently in the cold, dark earth.

No grave can hold my body down, I’ll crawl home to her.”

It felt like a direct message from the other side, and we have gotten much healing from his beautiful music. Serendipitously, we were having a visit right after Kale’s 16^th birthday and thinking ahead to hers (which is right near mine). And Hozier just happened to be coming to our area smack dab in the middle! The opener was Gigi Perez, who’s song “Sailor Song” which was one of Kale’s faves- often playing it for us on the Ukulele. It was later played at his Celebration of life. It felt very symbolic and meaningful to go to this together. During the first song, which was in Gaelic but translated to English (De Selby if you’re curious) talked about metamorphosis, and as the lyrics passed and gave us all the feels:

“You’re all bright ease,

But you come on like night

Tangled;

Together, transformed

You’re all bright ease

But you come on like night

Art is transformation

It is a dark art”

Right then, moth flies directly in front us all “Did you just see that?!” Magic! The last song of the *incredible* show was (of course) that very same song he had spoke to us through months before, and it finished with rainbow fireworks (and I’m usually Buzz Killing-ton when it comes to fireworks, so it takes a lot to get me on board-but I will say on record that I was moved to my core).

When we rolled back into town at 4 am, we stopped at the spot where Kale died (where we have previously been unable to emotionally take ourselves back to, and also couldn’t find- the night it happened was so full of trauma that it really skews your memory). She showed us where it happened. Man, this kid is strong y’all. I got down and kissed the ground. Witnessed where his energy was returned back to the earth from which he came. We hugged and agreed this should have never happened and held each other in the sadness and in the beauty. Everything, all at once.

Music has also shaped me in other ways. We had the opportunity to finally attend Blue Skies music festival, which feels like a secret that I don’t know if I’m even allowed to publicly talk about. Everyone we are close to goes to this event, has for many years, and can’t believe we have never been. “You just have to experience it”. “It will change you forever”. We’ve just always had to work. Folks, the amount of whimsy was off the charts. The amount of community you felt camping and learning and creating and singing and dancing with all of these folks was off the charts. The life changing moments. But you can’t just “buy tickets” and so getting them was an adventure of it’s own. I wept more there than almost anywhere else. The music and the magic was all together just dancing about. One time Wilder and I were going to the washrooms and we started to hear a marching band-it was that, but it was also a small parade singing “Do you know the muffin man?” with a chef in full garb, bowls of freshly made muffins, which, when you accept one is followed by another person with hands full of homemade jam to accessorize.

It was a utopia to inspire a more weird and wonderfully hopeful future.

I have a million more stories to tell-being 43 was just so many things. It was dark as a void. It was blessed. It was tragic. It was metamorphosis. It was being held and learning to say yes. It was alchemy. It was a lesson in submission. It was a lesson in love. It was a (much too big in my humble opinion) lesson in going with the flow of your life. Learning to dance in the rain if you will.

So that’s where I’ll leave you.

With all my love, from the newest member of the 44 club,

Christina Marie Daranee Avery