Instagram story viewer> @emcchill> Posts

Emily

@emcchill

676

followers

1964

following

refresh, reframe, renew...rejoice, relax
born anew each day
what do I choose?

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Good-bye for awhile, Vancouver 👋🌊

I've moved to a solo hermitage across the water for the next four months.

I'll be living in and caretaking the home of a Catholic hermit-priest, aka a Trappist monk, who bought this land, built a home, lived his study of spiritual ecology, and in his death, left the land and home for others to do the same.

I feel unutterable gratitude for this opportunity, and for life's unfolding leading to and from this moment.

It took a familiar push to get to here. I am ready to rest and reflect, one of my intents for this space and time.

So much to reflect on!

It's gobsmacking how much I have learned this past season alone about connection (inner and outer), community, reciprocity, trauma, mental illness, healing, mind and matter - love.

And these past years, of death, hospicing, injury (moral and physical), relating skills, a thousand professional skills, gardening, financial management, estate affairs, divorce, sexual health - untold numbers of other topics.

Now, some integration to come. Some writing to do. A life-that-was to compost and regrow. Make room for the life-to-be.

May I thank you publicly, the friends who put time, energy and care into helping me get through the colossal undertakings of this autumn, all helping me get to here - @jennyferleclair @_rec12_ @_hannastoltz @faye.wray @kristopherorr @jp.gonzalez.amaya @unbreelievable @pjpantsmorph @alex.negrita 🙌🫶 and all those who lifted me up in other ways, I thank you. I have so much generosity to pay forward 🙏 #hermitagestays by @emcchill

54

13

a year ago

Life, happening

A photo drop for my future self to recall this pivotal season

Moments...

God I love the textures of nasturtiums

I am so excited to finally be embodying the emergency-prep mesh network of many-years ideation in the making

The scariest thing at the Parade of Lost Souls this year was definitely the LNG protest

Smashing the relationship hierarchy remains one of my most curious side quests

It turns out the inside view of a jack o lantern is as or more compelling than the outside

Two days of rot looks good on a goofy pumpkin

A new mural on a familiar building strikes a chord - or is it the company? 💞

Fungi. Always fungi. The garden. Logs.

We are electric

I never knew daisies drop their bits like this at home. I'm touched. Daisies were my late friend's flower of choice, and they greeted me home for weeks. Their blossoming reflection persists in the image of 2 posts ago.

Moist marigolds 🥹

Oh my good lord the literal cock roach in the Alan Grey poster at Banyan bust my gut on my annual walk through with my sister by @emcchill

25

1

a year ago

Fall flowers, seeds, and fungi

Plus a postmortem photo of our first-ever grape harvest @cofoodyvr

The bee in the pink cosmo flower was resting til I began snapping photos like an eager media intern.

All photos taken on unceded Coast Salish territory. A stone's throw from the Native Edycation College @nec_vancouver where they have a program in Indigenous Land Stewardship.

#autumn by @emcchill

25

1

a year ago

Painting ceilings begets paint sprinkles

Amidst the arguably most pressing work period of the last always-the-most-pressing work seasons, I've landed in a considerable apartment reclamation process. Chaos on all fronts.

I. Could. Not. have managed to make a house a home (not a literal house, an apartment) were it not for friends who've helped me; cleaned with me, taught me about interior painting, loaned me drywall putty, repaired the broken electrical, bleached my blinds, carried a sofa, laughed with me, danced, listened, shared, and more.

That's not even touching all the ways I've been blessed with the help of others over the last few years of profound housing insecurity.

I welcome this stage of life where it's plain to see that I am so viscerally interdependent. "I" being we all. I think it's safe to generalize here.

Connection with others from a place of need used to be an almost uniformly scary, anxiety-ridden place for me. Asking for help? RECEIVING it? God. Spare me.

Things have changed. I humble. I learn (I unlearn). I ask. I get. I amaze. I cherish.

My back is sore. My heart is full. Thank you, friends🙏🫶

Postscript
I associate those anxious states now with symptoms of a toxically individualistic culture that emphasizes (AI helped me with this definition) "personal autonomy, self-reliance, and individual achievement over group cohesion. A culture that prioritizes individual needs, uniqueness, and personal goals, where people are more likely to identify themselves by personal traits rather than social roles."

Reflecting on, observing, understanding the fundamentally interdependent nature of my whole entire being is the most nourishing rivilet of my spiritual homecoming. It is the bedrock for so much other growth. Strongly recommend.

My teachers in this include local and global Indigenous cultures, the environmental movement, numerous authors, my dead, the trees, the moon, the soil.

So much more to say. Maybe someday 🤗 by @emcchill

26

13

a year ago

River times by @emcchill

16

0

a year ago

Striking sepia cityscape📍Jericho

Thanks to the assertive UV protection on my prescription sunglasses.

Morning walks have become a thing for me again. (Thank you, @rachael_ashe ). On sunny sunny days, I enjoy the sepia finish bleeding the colour from the landscape, bringing me an adjacent but alternate view on reality.

...

I'd like to so easily adjust my view on the intersecting stressors life presents. Change the shade, reduce the contrast, add some blur.

Top-line, I'm wrestling with the general chaos of a wild, ambitious, highly relational life in the decaying throes of modernity, and a high conflict divorce.

What shifts my viewpoint:

Going on walks. Talking to friends. Deep breaths. Going step-by-step. Greeting the ocean. Meeting a tree. Listening for what the crow means (I can only guess). Dancing, especially with friends.

Music; oh, music, what a blessing.

Books: Hospicing Modernity. Meditations for Mortals. Uncommon Measure. Entangled Life. Sandtalk.

What shifts you? 🤓 by @emcchill

37

1

a year ago

When a friend selects all your favourites from your bowl of stickers, you know they're a keeper.

Even more so when they've - yes, your eyes see correctly - transformed their white freezer into a glittery black surface @chelseyisme

PS these stickers are by another epic friend @disobedientga @altheais

All caps on the DON'T FORGET YOU'RE ALIVE
Gets me every time by @emcchill

20

4

a year ago

When it all comes together. by @emcchill

15

2

a year ago

Virtual, collaborative fridge poetry? 🤔 I'm in.

https://fridgepoem.com/#x=2036&y=7136 by @emcchill

11

3

2 years ago

What an autumn.

I am a creative writer, and Instagram is one of my only present outlets.

I post sporadically, usually when something that feels like a milestone happens to me, personally.

In the case of today, that's receiving the diagnosis of "loose bodies" in my chronically uncomfortable knee joint, which has slid in and out of place since an unfortunate air castle incident at age 12 (see #7 xray image for context).

Did you know that joint dislocations have a chance of knocking off a fragment of cartilage or bone, which then interferes with the joint's functioning? #thingsilearnedtoday

This impetus to post led me to a scroll down the memory lane of my photo gallery, as I saw image after image which harmonizes with my newly rediscovered attunement to my body's (every body's) ultimate fragility.

In case you are curious:

1 - a 30 min. hourglass, a reliable, analog timekeeping companion
2 - variegated bark, not itself "living," but it encases and protects that which is
3 - fungi atop a trail post in Lighthouse Park
4 - community-carved pumpkins @cofoodyvr
5 - the same pumpkins in our compost mere days later (food scrap vs. waste and decoration is an ongoing consideration)
6 - splendiferous fungi consuming a log in our garden
7 - the aforementioned knee x-ray displaying in exacting clarity the presence of a bony "loose body" in the joint
8 - the view off Pender Island facing southwest on a poignant eve among friends
9 - Earth's moon, pixelated but impactful in eerie detail for a phone camera in daylight, AI-augmented
10 - a pepper in our greenhouse whose branch I broke early in the season; my duct tape repair proved irrelevant, as it grew, blossomed, and fruited regardless
11 - the final days of a dahlia bloom; in some ways, its most exquisite
12 - a striking sky off the ledge of Garrow Bay
13 - spiky horse chestnuts have such a presence to them
14 - I will never tire of bees sleeping in flowers, in this case a Hollyhock, again @cofoodyvr

I reflect on impermanence, breakdown, degradation.

I at first resist, then relish reminders of it.

It's a balm in a dischordant culture, which is in pursuit of immortality.

#autumnepiphanies
#kneepain by @emcchill

39

8

2 years ago

Lil guy on my walk today.

Loose thoughts:
Life really feels hard sometimes.

There's the polycrisis, the metacrises, the interpersonal crises, the intrapersonal crises. Sigh.

You feelin' it? I'm feelin' it. #hermitseason

I'm grateful for symbols like the mushroom. Zooming in, to zoom out. Mushrooms remind me that the fruit of my present experience is just one offering of the web of existence it sprouts from. That the mycelium of my life story extends beyond this moment, these moments.

That decay breeds life.

#fungalinsights by @emcchill

26

4

2 years ago

A bee sleeping in hollyhock @cofoodyvr

Today was not an easy day. Grief, work, packing, cleaning, moving (again! 😝 I'm a temporary nomad. It comes with the territory.)

Parting ways with temporary stays is still a parting of ways.

I'm grateful for the shadow part that shows me how bad things can get inside my mind. It makes me appreciate the good, the patience, the quiet moment, all the more.

So many learnings. So much to share. Still digesting.

#griefwork #flowers #bees #quiet #inquiry by @emcchill

30

2

2 years ago