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Natasha Anwar

@notnatashaanwar

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✶ building @roomformyth
✶ drawing feelings @anaardraws

🍄 guide • 🌕 4/6 Reflector • 🪐Astrologer

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❣️ My best pieces of writing either live in my heart or in my drafts so this one making it out of the thought purgatory feels special.

Over the last few months, I kept trying to explain a feeling I didn’t have words for. The fatigue of knowing I was cared about, and yet feeling like an island. Of someone being present but not meeting me where I needed to be met. I didn’t know what to call it until I started pulling the thread of an ache that seems to go deeper the more I pulled.

Attunement. And the absence of it.

It’s a long read, referential almost.

It covers what attunement actually is, why love alone isn’t enough, what gets in the way, and why building a relationship with yourself might be the most generous thing you can do for the people around you.

Longest thing I’ve published, and the most personal thing I’ve written.

You know me, it’s always all or nothing here. Leave me a comment if you feel it too 💌

📜 Full article on substack. Link is in my bio. taken in Toronto, Ontario by @notnatashaanwar

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4 months ago

We’ve found that this week [month? year?] has been a little extra… a lot. In honour of feeling our feelings to make room for our myth, we started a dumpster fire from some big heavy moments from our week and we’re making it communal.

Perhaps you could add some fuel to this glorious, raging fire by sharing your own emotional dumpster moment from this week in the comments below.

We’ve got 99 problems and we might just feel better watching one of them burn 😤

🔥 Go ahead. What emotional moment are you chucking in the communal dumpster fire this week? taken in Toronto, Ontario by @notnatashaanwar

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8 months ago

Last Thursday, Room for Myth hosted The Void at FOOT34 held at The University of Toronto.

We’d like to say thank you to the people who entered the space with openness, honesty, and self-trust. This experience only works when you are willing to slow down and stay present with what’s real while trusting that you’ve got what you need in this moment to hold it.

🙏🏽 Deep gratitude to @d.itto, and @sophiawhicher for holding this work with me at its pivotal moments, and to @foot_conference with their phenomenal organizing committee for creating a space where this kind of work can exist in tandem with other potent performances and presentations.

***

🔑 Room for Myth is slow by design. Gatherings don’t happen often, and space is intentionally limited.

📫 If you’d like to stay connected as future spaces unfold, they’ll be shared here and you’ll see them coming first on our substack newsletter. The link to subscribe is in our bio. taken in Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse by @notnatashaanwar

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8 months ago

Today, Room for Myth is hosting The VOiD at the Festival of Original Theatre 34 at University of Toronto.

The VOiD is a structured, participatory experience designed for a time when we’re collectively experiencing pressure to become rather than be. The experience facilitates the discovery of personal language to express the pressure to decide, act, or move towards something to either escape or resolve the discomfort of staying with what is true right now.

This experience combines elements of somatic thresholds, and relational embodiment.

Lights, sound, pacing, and a card-based structure create a contained space where people speak from the middle of change and are met without interruption or interpretation.

Our capacity is 20 people, and doors close sharply at 2:15pm. If you’re a FOOT34 attendee, please sign up at the Performance Room to attend! We really hope to see you there!

We’re proud to be bringing our creative processing into a theatre context 🔑 taken in Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse by @notnatashaanwar

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8 months ago

When we’re in between versions of ourselves, things shift, break and change so often it’s hard to know if we’re holding anything real or tangible about ourselves.

Memories, identities, hopes and griefs float heavily past us in daily life, sometimes sticking to our skin like wet sugar.

Room for Myth designs experiences that help language and express our internal experience of this sort of identity transformation so that we can hold ourselves with others, even if briefly, before we inevitably return back to our everyday lives.

Leave a comment below to share a piece of what you’re holding today 🫀 taken in Downtown, Toronto by @notnatashaanwar

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8 months ago

Room for Myth hosts guided experiences to slow down, feel, think, and talk about things that are usually hard to name.

Stuck somewhere? Tell us where and we might have a gathering coming up to help you with that. taken in Toronto, Canada by @notnatashaanwar

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9 months ago

I went through and said yes to the knowing.

And as I sailed deeper into the mist, I found myself trying to make sense of the what ifs and the what thens, whispering my questions to the dead.

They weren’t shy.

Perfection comes only in death because every moment is now the same.

Surely there was more to know that this.

The curiosities of my mind followed trails of glass from a shattered mirror, never quite satisfying the desire to know.

I grew restless, unheeding the soft whispers asking me to still myself.

I paced my Hallway for weeks, fear nipping at my ankles, believing that one day a fountain of answers would erupt from the floor, pouring a stream of relief onto my open wounds.
But instead came the fire.
It didn’t answer my questions.

It burned my edges, growing to my core, threatening to eat alive the curiosity that brought me this far.

It was all too loud.

I looked to the ground for answers but saw only the ruby glass in the soles of my bare, bloodied feet.

So I summoned Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

I forged a crown from the shards, wrapped them in wire, and placed it upon my head.

If nobody was going to save me, I would do it myself.

📸: @__ashsherwood & @justaskjenny 💞a by @notnatashaanwar

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a year ago

A year ago, as I watched parts of my life slowly dissipate into unpredictability, I locked myself into a Hallway inside my mind. Here, things didn’t usually change. Here, there was safety. If I never left, I would never know.

But if I never left, then I would never know…

So when the call came, I answered. I opened a door. I stepped into the darkness. To know.

I am here to know, I told myself.

But when I stepped through the black wrought iron gates glistening under the light of the Full Sturgeon Moon, I didn’t know.

I walked through curtains of my illusion, surrounded by my limits, engulfed by my mistrust in my ability to protect my vision. My loneliness my closest friend as I fed her the fruit of unparalleled faith that we will get through this.

I don’t know much but I know that the only way ever… is through.

📸: @__ashsherwood and @innakrochek ❣️ by @notnatashaanwar

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a year ago

Turns out I’m the last one to figure out that I have been an unexpressed queer theatre kid my entire life? 🥴

I’ve spent about four and a half years to overcome my fear of ‘am I queer enough to say it out loud?’ for a knowing I’ve had since I was 6 years old.

I’m grateful for my community: full of kindness and acceptance to show me they love me in my chaos, my shatteredness, in my confusion, AND in my groundedness.

They taught me that showing up is enough. That worthiness is a social construct. That my inconsistency is my consistency. That nature works in fluidity. I must learn to forgive myself for the mistakes I believe I’ve made on my way to this moment. That I am welcome in all the versions I become, and all the versions in between the becoming.

I wouldn’t be nearly courageous enough to accept myself as I am right now without you to show me I queerly can 💗

happy fkn pride 🏳️‍🌈 taken in Toronto, Ontario by @notnatashaanwar

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a year ago

Reacquainting with joy is one of the easiest ways to live an abundant life 🌷

When we become familiar with the feeling of joy, we discover what lights us up in life. We allow pleasure to seep into our day-to-day experiences, giving us hope and a reason to wake up each morning.

Joy can bring us a sense of soft whimsy—a little romantic whisper in an otherwise mundane day🌬️

When we’re friends with that feeling of goodness, we are better able to spot contrast more clearly. Anything that doesn’t evoke that feeling immediately stands out.
This is how I decide whether or not I want to engage with something: an opportunity, a project, a dynamic, a partner, or even my own behaviors.

By creating a life full of joy, I am saying yes to receiving (and learning to receive) pleasure. I’m creating space for my human self to live a life rich with whimsy and what I believe is my personal alignment 🔮

Joy is a compass. We’re here to observe where it can lead us and to follow it.

💭 What is the place of joy and ease in your body? What or who in your life brings you there? taken in Toronto, Ontario by @notnatashaanwar

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2 years ago

A Soupy September 🍜 taken in Toronto, Ontario by @notnatashaanwar

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2 years ago

life lately 🍃

1. me being me

2. Arabic Jazz at the Music Garden with @ahmedmoneka

3. the outfit 😏

4. Obsessively watching @anikazulfikar in Barzakh! ❣️

5. Legally Blonde at Corktown Commons. It was packed and @ramseykilani and I luckily found a squishy spot for 2. 💞

6. Candi for a VELD I didn’t attend.

7. My happy witchy heart & 3 of the best toothy smiles @nicolledoublel @whereisshefrom 🧙🏼‍♀️🧙🏻🧙🏼

8. soul → soul hugs

9. Some very important conversations with trees happened here 👁️

10. 😚

I skipped my birthday post from last month and now it’s too late so we’re just going to move along this year I guess… taken in Toronto, Ontario by @notnatashaanwar

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2 years ago