Dragon š Letter #101: Depressive realism and Nihilism can be cheat codes towards relational rhythm. From that rhythm, Iāve learned to weave futures worth stepping intoā¦ even when the ground shakes.
Hola! Iām Ixchel Lunar (they/them), an Indigenous-Time Ecologist, ancestral medicine guide, and rhythm witch for creative rebels, decolonial dreamers, and neuroqueer visionaries. This Substack is dedicated to weaving business, body, and belonging into something no empire can replicate. Still punk as fuck. Still cozy in the chaos.
Ancestral Wayfinding Practice Circle begins next weekā¦
Beautiful Wildling!
Out my window, one of my favorite jungle birds, the Montezuma oropendola, spills its liquid callā¦ a wildly delightful cascade of chortling sounds that seems to bend gravity itself. Their song is not sweet or soothing; it is strange, startling, and wholly alive.
And as I hear it, I think of how our senses, our nervous systems, our very ways of being, can open us to realities that others might prefer not to notice.
@nononsensespirituality#nononsensespirituality #depression #matrix #nihilism #existentialcrisis
A TikTok video has been circling in my soma, by Brittney Lowe Hartley of No Nonsense Spirituality. She names something often hidden in plain sight: the depressive realism in living with Nihilist tendencies. The idea that those of us who live closer to despair, who cannot slip so easily into the optimism bias that cushions others, may actually see reality more clearly.
Psychological research dating back to Alloy and Abramson (1979) has pointed to this oddityā¦ that depressed individuals sometimes make more accurate judgments about control and prediction than their āneurotypicalā peers.
Optimism bias, that sunny belief that things will somehow work out, helps many people move forward. But for those of us without it, we are left with the cracks and shadows exposed.
Neurodivergent and neuroemergent folks often speak of this as both burden and gift. We notice the patterns. We recognize the fragility of systems. We see empireās scaffolding as impermanent, brittle, hollow, even haunted. And yes, sometimes this clarity drags us into dread, into the bone-deep hopelessness that feels impossible to shake.
Yet, in the same breath, our sensory attunement can draw us into profound joyā¦ into relation with the animate world, into awe at the smallest details: the way wind stirs the leaves, the glimmer of water, the sudden flash of an oropendolaās yellow tail.
I think of Joanna Macy, who has shaped so much of my own orientation to these precarious times. She taught that we must hold grief, wonder, and joy together in the face of collapseā¦ as companions, not contradictions.
To face what is dying without abandoning what is sacred and alive. She calls this āthe work that reconnects.ā I carry her wisdom as I oscillate between despair at what is unraveling and joy in what remains vibrantly alive around me.
@aljazeeraenglishA music teacher in Gaza has transformed the sound of Israeli drones into a powerful song honouring those killed in Israelās genocide. Ahmed Muin Abu Amsha uses music to help displaced and traumatised Palestinian children cope amid war and devastation. #news
And I think, too, of the voices rising in Gaza. Of a music teacher, Ahmed Muin Abu Amsha, who created whatās now being called the Gaza Drone Song, sung by children in the camps. Their voices carry both grief and defiance, both heartbreak and beauty, threaded together in a way that refuses erasure. Like Macyās teaching, their song is not an escape from grief, but a weaving of grief and joy into one current of survival, testimony, and belonging.
And itās the fuel for my creative fire for when Iād rather not send another Dragon Letter, but know that my words will land with someone who needs them.
For those of us who cannot āhigh vibeā all the time, or believe in illusions, āmanifestationā cannot be the vision-board-and-positive-thoughts machine itās sold as in dominator culture.
We donāt have the protective gloss of optimism bias. Instead, creation must come from another place. From clear eyes, from rhythm, from Anumis, the desired outcomes we weave with intention, not because we believe the world will bend to our will, but because we choose to participate in shaping futures worth inhabiting, futures that refuse to flatten the world into inanimate objects devoid of meaning and mystery.
Here, animism is not a metaphor. It is practice. The land listens. The ancestors lean close. The more-than-human world responds.
Scholars of creativity remind us that inspiration is not endless enthusiasm, but the capacity to gather and focus energetic currents (Csikszentmihalyiās Flow, Kaufmanās Wired to Create).
For neurodiverse creators, that current must often be coaxed through relation. We are inspired not by capitalist fantasies of abundance, but by the calls of birds outside our window, the textures of moss under our fingers, the ancestors who tug our dreams awake. Abundance for us is not accumulation. It is presence, reciprocity, the courage to create even when we know collapse is near.
So yes, I oscillate. Dread and joy. Collapse and radiance. Smoke and breath. But I do not take this as a weakness. I take it as a fierce rhythm. And from this rhythm I weave. I weave Anumisā¦ desired outcomes born of relation and clarity. Futures not promised, not guaranteed, but definitely worth stepping into, even when the ground shakes.
And as the oropendola calls again (or Monty as I call them), I remember: creation is not about drowning out despair. It is about letting grief and wonder sing in the same chorus, and trusting that somewhere in that polyphony, a future worth living is already forming.
When I began unmasking more than a decade ago, it felt like drowning in dread. Estrogen was waning in my body, and my AuDHD made everything sharp, raw, relentlessly loud. The world felt unbearable. I had no illusions to soften the blows.
And then the jungle of Nicaragua cracked me open. Living among the sloths, I began to feel another tempoā¦ slow medicine, a reminder that Time itself can stretch, that stillness can hold.
Day after day, the forest invited me to practice relation: listening to rain on leaves like a ball in a Rube Goldberg machine as the drops make their way down the jungle canopy, tracing the slow blink of a slothās eye, learning to lean into wonder without erasing the grief.
That oscillation between dread and joy became a rhythm. It became practice. A way to live inside collapse and still be moved by beauty, still be claimed by belonging. Animism taught me joy wasnāt something to chase, but a presence that waits to be noticed.
This is what I carry into the Ancestral Wayfinding Practice Circle. It is not about bypassing grief or forcing optimism. It is about learning to move with the oscillation, to cultivate a relational practice that lets grief and wonder sing together. A practice of weaving Anumis, so we can step into futures that are worth living, even when the ground shakes.
If your own rhythm has been swinging between dread and wonder (or longs for more relational awe), I invite you into the Ancestral Wayfinding Practice Circle, a place to practice listening with the land, weaving decolonial futures, and belonging together.
Stay wild, love fiercely. Your presence is golden.
Maltiox! xo Ixchel
P.S. Grief and wonder have always been companions. The forest knows this. Our Wayfinding Circle is a place to remember it in our own bodies.
P.P.S. Maltiox pronounced mall-tee-osh means with gratitude in Kāiche Mayan.
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I was raised and bore children on the traditional, unceded, and stolen lands of the Coast and Central Valley Miwok (colonized as Petaluma, CA) and Nisenan (colonized as Sacramento and Fair Oaks, CA), past, present, and future. I also write, work, and live in the highland forest of the traditional, unceded and stolen lands of the Totonac, Nahua, and Mexicah, past, present, and future, in what is known as Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
P.P.S. I do not live or consent to the colonial impositions regarding the construct of Time. I also practice honoring rhythms of work, play, and rest so that I can serve you with embodied presence and with loving care. This means I may take several days to respond to your requests and questions. (h/t Eva Glamaris)
P.P.S. A mention is not necessarily an endorsement of someone. Itās an acknowledgment, a citation, of the origin of information in my process of understanding. (h/t Kelly Diels)
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Copyright Ā© 2026, Cheyenne, WY, and Veracruz, Mexico, All rights reserved. Sharing your lineage of knowledge is decolonial. When iterating, please cite me. Not citing is epistemicide.
