Cameron Carrick — Writing

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

What else do we call when we call in love?

What invisible tails follow us around
lurking in the corner, trying not to be seen?
To act as a hero is to make the other a victim
To act the victim is to live searching for a hero.

We do ourselves a disservice when we
pretend our love isn’t shadowed by the
threat of losing it—
that our gentleness
hasn’t known hatred or violence.
That our tending has never known hopeless despair.

To each there is an opposite,
and they ring as bells struck together,
a subtle chord barely decipherable
to the untrained ear.

Mind the hidden ones.

When your life is consumed that
Big One, lean in closer—
and closer again until you see
the foot prints of
its unborn twin
dancing in the
tingling flesh
of its agéd arm.

The numb hand you were told to ignore.

What else do we call in when we call in love?

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Poem for Air Travel

The air up there will dry you out.
The noise will fatigue you.

Put on your seat belt.
Stand there—
no,
not here,
there—

And no,
the recycled air will not carry any
birdsong.

No,
the water will not quench your
thirst.

Some simple reminders, then,
to ward off despair:

This too shall pass.

The machinery of it,
like so many
sophisticated ants,
and that steel can fly!—
and how from up here
the highways
as they
turn to roads
turning to paths—
little purple veins
on the calf of her—
so many of us—
such a
bright scar—

But all
I've really found
that helps
is
to remember
the soul
can't travel
this fast.

So amidst the rush
and excitement,
if you do
anything,
lean on a tree—when you can—
and breathe
fresh air.

Thank the ancestors
who bless your
safe arrival.

Beg forgiveness
for your complaints.

Pray the burning
is worth it.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Meeting grandma at the beach

Grandma loved the beach.
We never came to this one,
where she played as a girl.
I imagine her discovering agates,
pocketing each tiny miracle.

Impish, greedy, grinning.

Walking the boardwalk,
my shoes don’t fit, feel clumsy and out of place.

But will glass cut me?
Is there too much trash?

Kneeling, I unlace,
shedding the petty armor.
Skin to sand, I realize she’s here with me when—an agate!

Small, luminous, imperfect.

I just know she’s here—
in the stone

in the breeze

in the rhythm of the tide.

I walk down to the water and cry.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Longing for land

Walking the hills of Ireland
today
that dull, achey longing
at long last
dulled—

“I am here!”

—

I was there,
and the part
of me still there
now implores:

“Your longing for that land?
“Bring it to this land,
“Wherever you are.
“Yell it as high as it cries,
“Whisper it when you can’t
any longer.”

And know the birds
and the moss
and the water…
And that is enough.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Dad is visiting next week.

My little boy wants us to play
like we used to,
toss the ball around.

He tells me he wants to help me around the house,
with that leak in my roof.

But if I could have anything at all
I'd tell him that it wasn't enough,
the way he loved me.

"It wasn't enough!" I'd scream,
at first.
"It wasn't enough, dad.
"It wasn't enough. And
I forgive you.
I forgive you, dad."

And we would soften—
him reaching out to me
and me to him,
and we would cry.

And he would old me and
he would stroke my hair
and tell me,
"I know, son.
"I know—
"I know."

And then the big tears would come,
the loud sobbing,
like engine brakes
or a lost donkey,
mad at being found.

And our heavy man-bodies would
heave together—
the sky caresses the earth—
mammals burrowed in their nests—
and then,
when it's time—

Only when it's time,
would we stand up.
And would we hug.
And would we old each other.
And time would
wrap us like
grandma's blankets.

If I could really have anything at all,
after all this,
then we would walk
back to the village
and take up our
stations of love
beside eachother,
two men
with so much to share...

But all that we share
stands between us
like sentries
on a castle wall

and trying to speak
these words
I'm adolescent,
stumbling and awkward
and
there is no village
and
he's one of the island men,
who's fathers
left him
lost at sea.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Anxiety

Waking up today into the land of razor wire,
how quickly I leapt from
my dreams!

Every spring I remember the sear of new life.

Electric heart,
dance me
like the tree tips are
danced
by the wind.

Make beauty my sail and my wake.

—Cameron Carrick

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

People sometimes ask me where or how we learn the songs we sing together.

The short answer is that I learn them by singing them, by being taught them, and doing it again and again.

And here's the longer answer:

Learning other peoples' songs

The singing we do is part of a modern oral tradition of folk songs. That means we learn the songs by listening to them, not by reading off of a musical staff.

This keeps the songs alive. It forces us to listen well and use our full voices--our bodies, hearts, and minds in unison...

I digress.

One "hack" for learning songs this way is to use the voice recording feature on your phone. Most song circles and leaders are comfortable and even encourage participants to record the songs for themselves. That way you can go back to listen to them alone or at home and get them down in your body.

So, go out and sing.

"Catching" songs

We are all song-beings. Song lives in us as an ancient medicine. Song is one of the primary birthrights of the human species—alongside crafting, storytelling, and dance.

Anyone can catch a song. Maybe you hear one in the waterfall roaring at you or you find a little jig as you sing back to the frogs.

These little blippetts are songs. Sing them. Share them. Anyone can do it.

A few pointers

Here are some of the folks' whose songs I carry. Some (most) of them have very generous websites with audio tracks of theirs and others' songs.

My only demands are these:

If you learn a song, share it.
If you share a song, name it's sources.

Some song leaders:

Start your own private catalog.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Some of My Favorite Songs

Let the Way Be Open
I Will Carry You Always in My Heart
When You Arrive
I am Seeing You
To Listen is to Lean In Softly
May I Be Open
Humbly
Sing Through My Voice
"Welcome In" - Heidi Wilson
Trees they whisper whisper...

Songs for Grief Ceremony

Oh, Ancestor's Hear Us. Help us to be here. Help us to feel here. Help us to heal, for all our relations; for all our relations.
Beautifully Broken
- "May our hearts be open" -
- "Beautifully broken" -
- "That's how we let in" -
- "All the love" -

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

I learned this song back in 2019 at Open Hub Singing Club, lead by my brother Ian Carrick.

Originally it comes from Abigail Spinner McBride, who has a recording of it on her Bandcamp. This recording contains a bit of a story of how she caught the song, but is not how I sing it.

Beautiful Chorus has a recording of it, which is like how I sing it.

For me, the words express one of the most basic and essential forms of prayer:

Sing through my voice
Play through my hands
Let the way be open

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

One of my primary song circle’s favorite tunes is “Bele Mama.” It’s a simple song, easy to teach, with a groovy rhythm and satisfying melody. We love it. In our diverse group, though, we hear various meanings and possible origins of the words and melody. After much discussion, I set out to trace its origins.

“Bele Mama” illustrates how songs migrate, transform, and become embedded in new meanings depending on the communities that hold them. It is precisely this fluidity that gives oral tradition its power and resilience.

Starting from our own group’s story with the song, we learned it from one of our members, whose mother had adapted the melody into a custom tune for their wedding. As we sing it, like “bella mama” or “belleh mama”, I hear two interpretations. The first is in Spanish or Italian, “belle mama,” which translates to “beautiful mother.” Our group has a lot of young mothers, and we’ve often sung this tune during their pregnancies, so many of us also hear “belly mama” in playful phonetic English.

After searching the internet, I found the closest version to how my group usually sings it on Mama Lisa’s blog, which is dedicated to world music. Their recording is a bit coarse; the group starts listening to each other more at about the 2-minute mark. According to her post, the song is in the Oroko language of Cameroon, and it means “call mother.” They’re singing it in the Torres Islands north of Australia.

The Cameroonian origin has taken firm hold online and is repeated on several other oral-tradition blogs and websites.

However, I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that, and to leave it at one story, I believe, minimizes some of the power of oral tradition singing.

Specifically, in my experience living in rural Senegal and learning an indigenous West-African language (Pular-futaa Djallon), the colonial borders of the African continent mean little to the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic reality of peoples’ lives. The Congo and Cameroon share a significant border--also with Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

The most popular recording of Mbele Mama on YouTube is sung by a Belgian vocal trio called Keruna. They are singing an adaptation of an arrangement by Anita Dualne, a singer, composer, and polyphony expert known for blending traditional African vocal techniques with contemporary Western styles. I’d never heard of Anita Dualne, but was drawn in by her opus and her work bridging the musical traditions of the Congo and Belgium.

While many sources cite Cameroon as the song’s origin, Anita Daulne’s adaptation and background suggest a Congolese lineage as well. Given the fluidity of culture and language across colonial-era borders, it’s likely that the song has roots across a broader Bantu-speaking region.

I like the Keruna recording for its upbeat tempo, which, to me, suits the song better than a slow, free-flowing tempo like Kate Sutherland’s recording. For a similarly “sparse” recording, there’s a version on The Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts website that plays it to a slow 4:4 tempo. This has obvious application in their context, of teaching kids wide-ranging musical skills in a broadly “western” tradition. Later in their recording, it picks up a bit.

Trying to trace the tune as far back as I could, I found a recording dated 1962 archived by Smithsonian Folkways (you can see the whole song on YouTube). It’s a compilation album produced by Monitor Records featuring music from different regions--they have Bele Mama listed as “Music of Cameroon.” This version expresses that “west-african” rhythmic feel: 3:2 polyrythms, cross-rhythmic texture, cyclical groove, syncopation, call-and-response. In my view, the song should be sung with as many of these elements as possible, in respect to its origins as a distinctly West-African tune.

In terms of the song, what’s clear is that:

It has a strong Cameroonian/Congolese origin. Perhaps better phrased as having roots in the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family, a term that spans colonial boundaries and might better capture the geographic, cultural, and linguistic heritage of the song.
Bele Mama is a very influential and vital song in modern singing that’s been sung and embraced the world over--Canada, Belgium, Australia, Papua New Guinea, South India, and more, I’m sure.

My research also confirms some of the core tenets of modern oral tradition singing:

That songs have a life of their own. They live in and through communities as they’re sung.
The good songs morph and adapt to the needs of specific communities.
That learning and embracing the full and varied stories of the songs we sing--as we receive them--is essential. You can’t ever be perfect; it’s the telling of the individual story that matters.

Sing on, my friends.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

A perennial favourite song of mine is one I call "we are the ones."

It's come up a few times in our local community song circle. Some members have asked about the song's origins or shared their own sense of the connections in, within, and weaving through this song.

Listening to these stories, I realized my connection to the song was incomplete. This is my attempt to get down how the song came into my life, where from, what its lineage is (loosely), and so on.

One thing in the song's history is clear: for decades the phrase "we are the ones we've been waiting for" has been used to motivate action towards, in particular, Black and Women's liberation. Its roots run from anti-apartheid action in South Africa through to the Black American freedom-song tradition.

Like so much good music, this song, too, comes out of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Let's get into it.

Learning the song

I can't remember where I learned the song for the first time, but am quite confident it was from my brother, Ian Carrick, to whom I am forever grateful for bringing me into the community singing scene.

Ian tells me he learned from his friend and mentor Liz Rog, who adapted it from the first track on the 1998 album "twenty five" by the famous, Grammy-winning group Sweet Honey In the Rock.

As our first aside in case you're not familiar with Sweet Honey In the Rock. Sweet Honey In the Rock is a Sweet Honey In the Rock is an all-woman, African American a cappella ensemble founded in Washington, D.C. in 1973 by Bernice Johnson Reagon, named after a gospel song about a land so rich that honey flows when you break open the rocks. Over the decades, the group has written, arranged, and recorded songs that probe the social issues of their time. Their discography runs over 40 years and well over a dozen albums.

You can hear their version of "We Are the Ones (We Been Waitin' For)" on Spotify and YouTube.

Where the song comes from

The group’s founder, the late Bernice Johnson Reagon, is credited with writing the tune. Long before Sweet Honey, Reagon was a song leader in the civil rights movement and a founding member of the SNCC Freedom Singers, who came out of the Albany Movement in Georgia. Over the years she set several of June Jordan’s poems to music, and “We Are the Ones” is one of them.

Which brings us to our second aside: the poem.

The poem (and black peoples' liberation)

June Jordan (1936–2002) was a poet, essayist, teacher, and activist, born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrants. The words of our song are the last line of her “Poem for South African Women”, which she presented at the United Nations on August 9, 1978.

I reprint the poem here, as it is very much worth reading:

The poem commemorates the Women’s March of August 9, 1956. That day some 20,000 women of all races marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa, to protest the extension of apartheid’s "pass laws" to Black women (Jordan’s dedication honours 40,000 women and children). Pass laws forced Black South Africans to carry a passbook, the hated dompas, which controlled where they could live, work, and travel. For decades they applied only to men; in the early 1950s, the government moved to extend them to women. The August 9 march was in protest to this extension of government control and surveillance.

Arriving at the Union Buildings, the marchers delivered their petitions (signed by more than 100,000 women) stood in silence for thirty minutes, and then they sang. One song, which march leader Sophia Williams-De Bruyn remembered as spontaneous and unrehearsed, became an anthem: Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo, “you strike the women, you strike a rock.”

Here's a version of that tune reinterpreted by the Ndebele musician Nothembi Mkwebane. You can see photos of that day and more history in this online exhibit.

South Africa still marks August 9 as National Women’s Day.

So, June Jordan's poem, the context within which and for which it was written, informed Bernice Johnson Reagon's adaptation of the final line of the poem into an arrangement for Sweet Honey In the Rock. Liz Rog adapted and, in many ways, simplified that song for community singing spaces, where we sing it still.

That is, as best I can tell, the most direct line of the song we sing.

Other places the poem has found roots

Alice Walker

However, the phrase has also travelled well beyond the song. Alice Walker, the novelist best known for The Color Purple, used it as the title of her 2006 collection of essays and meditations, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (also available on the internet archive.) She credits Jordan for the words and Sweet Honey for the song, and she writes about watching thousands of people rise to their feet when they hear it.

21st Century American Improvement

Barack Obama used the line to roaring applause in his Super Tuesday speech in Chicago on February 5, 2008 (transcript), pairing it with “we are the change that we seek. This speech and the milieux of American improvement of the 'aughts inspired the will.i.am tune of the same name, "We Are the Ones."

Hopi connection

A member of our local group mentioned recently that the line is related to a “Hopi Elders’ Prophecy". I've done a bit of digging to find out more about this and the best I can find credits this to a 2000 gathering of Hopi elders in Oraibi, Arizona or to New Age writing that began circulating online around 1999.

Given that both of these sources come nearly 20 years after June Jordan's poem, I'm doubtful it originates there.

The Hopi are one of hundreds of sovereign Native nations on Turtle Island threatened by Western expansion and European colonisation. As with so much indigenous history, it is a rich, complex, and nuance history here that I don't know too much about. Even saying "the Hopi tribe" is, in a way, a misnomer, as there are many different groups among the Hopi and they are often opposed.

Nonetheless, Hopi people have carried their own message to the world stage. In 1948, traditional Hopi elders chose four messengers to share their prophecies with the outside world, and one of them, Thomas Banyacya, spent decades trying to address the United Nations. On December 10, 1992, at the ceremony opening the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People, he finally did.

This was a moment of Hopi people speaking for themselves, in their own terms, to the world. Banyacya's obituary provides an excellent overview of some of the nuances of the Hopi deciding how to bring their culture's "prophecies" into the modern world.

I watched a recording of his address, and there's no line about "we are the ones we've been waiting for". He also died on February 6, 1999, more than a year before the “prophecy” is dated.

Closer to home, in 1976, Banyacya spoke at the UN Habitat Forum in Vancouver, after Hopi people had been denied a hearing at the General Assembly in New York.

The Hopi people and their leaders have their own reasons to assert and defend their sovereignty in the modern era—a project only necessary because of colonial presence and a need that has grown out of more than a century of outsiders recording and publishing Hopi ceremonial knowledge without their consent.

Concluding thoughts

For me—and my group of mostly white, mostly immigrant / settler singers on Vancouver Island—there's some complexity here. I understand the impulse to trace our song to a “prophecy” by “Hopi elders”: it lends the song depth and the weight of elder wisdom.

At the same time, crediting words to Indigenous elders who may never have said them is a way of speaking for Indigenous people instead of listening to them, and that habit has long helped erode Indigenous sovereignty. I'm not a Hopi person and it isn't my place to speak about their prophecies.

What's more, crediting the line to Hopi elders does a sneaky move of writing June Jordan and the women of Pretoria out of their own story.

On top of all of this, I just don't see the need to bring in the Hopi angle. The song already carries plenty of anti-colonial weight through its direct line to the women who stood up to apartheid.

So for me, I'll choose to leave out the Hopi connection when I introduce the song, choosing instead to lean into the story of June Jordan and the women of Pretoria.

By no means, however, does any of this diminish the central message of the song: of people seeing themselves as their own saviours and salvation; that no one from outside will come to embetter our situation; that we are the very ones we need.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Tiered pricing

The world is unfair, unstable, and unpredictable. Some of us have more money than others for reasons earned, unearned, and in-between.

As The Beatles famously sang, "we all get by with a little help from our friends."

Below I've listed the standard rates for two styles of events: those close to half-day and those close to a full weekend. Consider them a ball-park estimate; precise pricing varies and will be posted on the registration page.

No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.No one will be turned away from grief ceremony due to lack of funds.
I'm very open to your creative offerings and solutions.

exchange of services

payment plans

support roles

"pay-what-you can"

Just reach out.

I set aside a percentage of seats in each event for a community-supported tier.

How I approach pricing for grief ceremony

For grief work I offer three default options for pricing.

The fist is an "at-cost" tier and is exactly what it sounds like, which is about the hard costs of one person at the event.

It covers things like venue rentals, meals for the weekend, materials for ceremony, a co-facilitator, and a modest facilitation wage for me.

At this tier, no one is subsidizing your attendance and you aren't subsidizing anyone else's. It's what it costs to keep the lights on, so to speak. However, if everyone paid "at-cost" these events would become untenable.

"At-cost" tier payments keep a single gathering alive; they don't sustain the work between gatherings, like funding outreach/marketing, cover the unpaid hours of preparation, or give us margin to book future venues/facilitators.

The "standard" tiers cover everything in the "at-cost" tier while also paying facilitators a fair market rate for skilled, specialized work. At the "standard" tier there is more "meat on the bone," so-to-speak. This cushion gives us more flexibility, better support, and contributes to an enduring community of grief-tending.

The "patron" tiers do everything the standard tier does, but provide more surplus that flows forward to the next event, the next participant, and so on.

Sample Pricing - 2026

These are sample prices.Exact pricing is as listed on the event page for a given event.

Tiered pricing for half-day events for 2026:

Tier 1 - "At-cost" - $95
This is how much it costs to run the event, covering venue, materials, insurance, and my time at a modest rate. It does not fund the planning, development, or continuation of future events. Choose this tier if paying more would be a stretch.

Tier 2 - "Standard" - $125
This is what it actually costs to sustain my work, covering this event and seeding the next one. Choose this tier if you have some financial flexibility (e.g., expendable income, access to savings, vacation flexibility).

Tier 3 - "Patron" - $175
Choose this tier if you hold significant financial privilege (e.g., steady or high income, wealth beyond your immediate needs, etc.). Contributing at this level helps make it possible for those with fewer resources to attend.

Tiered pricing for weekend-length events for 2026:

Tier 1 - "At-cost" - $550
Choose this tier if you regularly struggle to meet your basic needs, carry significant debt, or lack financial security. If $350 is still out of reach, please reach out—we will find a way.

This tier exists because grief doesn't check your bank balance, and ceremony shouldn't either.

Tier 2 - "Standard" - $800
This is the baseline cost of the retreat. Choose this tier if you can consistently meet your basic needs and paying at this level feels manageable. Your contribution sustains the event.

Tier 3 - "Patron" - $1200+
Choose this tier if you have financial flexibility, like expendable income, access to savings, a job that offers paid time off. Contributing at or above this level covers your seat and support community-supported access so that others may grieve alongside you.

A note on wealth inequality

We live in a time of extraordinary wealth concentration. The gap between those who have more than enough and those who cannot meet basic needs is wider than at any point in living memory.

This shows up in many ways, including in influencing who gets to heal and who doesn't.

Grief doesn't discriminate by income, but access to grief ceremony absolutely does.

Tiered pricing is one small way to push against that current by asking those who have more financial privileges to take on an increased cost.

If you're interested in supporting this work through donation or other funding, please reach out.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

My approach to money

Let's get one thing out of the way:

No one will be turned away from grief ceremony due to lack of funds.I'm very open to your creative offerings and solutions.

Some alternative means of reciprocity include:

exchange of services

payment plans

support roles

"pay-what-you can"

In addition, I offer grief ceremony according to a tiered pricing structure that incentivizes wealth distribution.

I also offer a robust referral scheme you can read more about and get involved with here.

Many people are exploring how we may one day go without money^[1] Alas, I don't yet live in that world.

I've made facilitation and organizing my life's work, which means it needs to feed me in material ways, in addition to the non-monetary ways that it nourishes me.

All of that said, some further comments on money:

What is money?

Money is creative potential. It's a form of energy, like fuel or electricity. A charged battery sitting your basement does no one any good, but in the right hands can be used to enhance the unfurling of beauty. It can power a weed-trimmer to beautify your lawn or an e-bike, taking you and your child on a marvellous adventure to school.

In healing my own money wounds, I make every effort to treat money reverently as this form of potential beauty and abundance.

Which helps explain my anti-capitalistic approach.

Capitalism has long ago shown its hand as a blunt tool, capable of immense efficiency at the cost of human demoralization and the destruction of our home planet.

One of the ways it does this is by stealing our energy.

This happens literally in the way so many of us work, yet it also happens energitcaly through the ways we manage our money.

As an example, take credit cards and payment processors like Stripe or Square. They charge a small fee on every transaction, usually about 3%.

What this means is that $100 circulating a local economy via credit cards will exponentially evaporate towards $0. After 77 transactions, nearly all of those one hundred dollars will have left the community.^[1:1]

"Class" is too often colloquially used to describe people who make different amounts of money, when it is more accurate to define class by who has the means to control the development and deployment of technology and labour at scale.

As of Spring 2026, we're seeing this play out in a very real way with the scope of speculative investment massively sucking the life out of our economies and funnelling it toward so-called "AI". The leaders in charge of these decisions should get familiar with shame. Shame on them.

There's a reason you won't find anything written my AI in my public-facing work.

I am not a capitalist. I do not have the means to control the distribution of technology. Were I do, that technology would be the technologies we use in grief ceremony.

If you have the means, please support my work. In doing so, you're putting your eggs in the basket of an ancient and, in my belief, more valuable technology: human connection.

Standard processing fees are something like 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction, not including additional potential fees like foreign transactions, additional payors, etc. You can see a full explication of the math behind this here ↩︎ ↩︎

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Last night at group, it came up that it’d be helpful for folks to have some guidance about what makes “holding the container” successful.

Note that these are my observations, teachings, and learnings, not rules. Take what you wish from them.

Containers are intangible yet real spaces in which the potential and possibility of a group can unfold. They have boundaries that are physical and psychological. They are often best characterized by a feel, but they are nevertheless real aspects of deep dialogic practice.^[1]

It helps to have, near the beginning of the circle, an opportunity to check in with our bodies and their subtle sensations. There are many ways to do this.
Firm boundaries create safety. It helps if the “space holder” tends to timeliness, so we move the evening, covering what needs to be covered before time is up.
A bit of “ritual” helps. To me, this means simply acknowledging and asking for support and guidance from unseen forces. Our ancestors, the future children, the spirits/gods/creatures, all the known and unknown parts of ourselves. In acknowledging them, we feed them.

From Corrigan, C. (2024). Hosting and Holding Containers. In D. L. Anderson (Ed.), Organization development: The process of leading organizational change (6th edition). Sage Publishing. ↩︎

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Advisory Offers

One of my basic philosophies as a facilitator is not to give advice.

So I've built my business around doing things other than advice-giving, like consulting, coaching, and facilitating grief ceremonies, where I'm able to offer my skills as a space-holder and guide that taps into the latent talents, wisdom, and insights of what and who is already there.

This style of work is my biggest gift to the world and where I bring the most unique skill and talent.

However, in the course of my work I have also developed a strong intuition and usually have an opinion that sounds like, "well, here's what I think you should do."

My coaching and consulting creates emergent possibility for unprecedented transformation and taps into communal knowledge at scale, so it produces more signifiacnt outcomes than giving advice.

In other words, advice is cheap; authentic connection is

There are two ways of getting my advice outlined here.

Not sure which you need?

Ask yourself: Do I know the question I need to be asking?
If yes, and you want help doing it, pick a Consult
If you're not sure yet, pick a Clarity Engagement

Consult

$180
You have a specific question. You need a thinking partner who will be honest with you.

This is a focused 60-minute phone call where you bring the question and I give you my take.

This is for:

A decision you're circling but can't land
A conversation you need to have but aren't sure how to frame
A pricing, hiring, or structural question that needs outside eyes
Anything where you already know the question—you just want a sharp read

Examples:

"Should I let this person go?"
"How should I structure this difficult conversation with my board?"
"Is this the right price for our new program?"
"Can I do this?"

Book a Consult

Clarity Engagements

$450
You're stuck on something, but you're not sure what the question is yet.

There are multiple variables and competing priorities.

A knot you can't untangle alone.

This is a deeper engagement: up to 90 minutes of live conversation across 1–2 video calls, with real thinking time in between. Usually this takes about a week.

It ends with a written recommendation—my honest assessment of what's going on and what I think you should do about it.

This is for:

Systemic issues that keep resurfacing
Strategic confusion about direction or priorities
Leadership dynamics that aren't working but you can't name why
Situations where you need someone to help you find the question before answering it

Examples:

"Why does my leadership team keep spinning out?"
"Something's broken in how we make decisions—I don't know what."
"How should I be thinking about the next three years?"

Book a Clarity Engagement

Contact me if you want my advice. I'll help you book a Clarity Session.

If ever you're ready to raise a white flag and bring someone in to help you carry out some complex holding, reach about about a facilitation agreement.

A note on complexity

Sometimes what looks like a Consult turns out to be a Clarity. If we get on a call and I realize your question is actually a knot, I'll tell you. We can upgrade to a Clarity Engagement, and your $495 applies toward the $1,195.

I'd rather you start with the smaller commitment and discover you need more than overpay for something simple.

Advisory Offers — FAQ

What does your written deliverable look like?

It depends on what you need.

Sometimes my recommendation is very specific and immediate:

"You need to tell Sarah that her role is changing before the board meeting."
"You need to let this person go. Here's how I'd sequence the conversation."
"You need to define what 'success' means for this initiative before you spend another dollar on it."

Sometimes it's more general or long-viewed:

"The crux of the problem is this specific flaw in your business model—and everything else is downstream of it."
"What you need to be focused on through 2030 is X. The rest is noise."

The written recommendation is typically 1–2 pages. It's not a report. It's a clear, direct articulation of what I think is going on and what I think you should do about it.

What currency do you bill in?

I bill in your local currency with local tax applied on top of the base fee.

How do you bill?

My preference is for non-processor payments like e-transfer, direct deposit, cheque because payment processors extract wealth from local economies. You can read more about why this matters to me here.

That said, credit and debit are available for convenience for an additional processing fee.

Do you use AI?

I record Clarity sessions so I can revisit them during my thinking time. Everything I deliver to you—every word of the written recommendation—is entirely hand-written by me.

You're paying for my insight and opinion, not a summary generated by software.

A Consult session is all me, baby.

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Accessing what's already there

One of my mentors says, "Giving advice is a neo-colonialism."^[1]

My experience facilitating for over 10 years affirms this.

When giving advice, the hidden message is, "you don't have the skills or capacity to do this yourself." It is, ultimately, belittling.

What's more often true is that people have everything they need, it's just stuck behind shame, fear, systemic barriers, or similar.

What we all need, more than advice, is to be seen for what we've experienced, listened to with deep curiosity, and held in our own processes of resourcing. I aim to this standard in everything I do, from coaching and consulting to grief tending and community singing.

This was Peter Block, at the ODN Conference in Spokane, WA, in October of 2025. ↩︎

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

77 transactions to $0

Given variable rate and flat fee structure enforced by payment processing providers like Stripe, how many transactions does it take for $100 to disappear from a local communities economy?

This calculation is part of my broader approach to money.

Solving the math

Recurrence (per transaction)

Let:

p = percentage fee (decimal)
f = fixed fee (dollars)
x0 = starting amount (dollars)

Update rule:
$$
x_{n+1} = (1-p)x_n - f
$$

Closed form (after n transactions)

$$
x_n = (1-p)^n\left(x_0+\frac{f}{p}\right) - \frac{f}{p}
$$

Solve for when the balance drops below a threshold T

We want the smallest integer n such that:
$$
x_n < T
$$

Algebra gives:
$$
n > \frac{\ln!\left(\frac{T+\frac{f}{p}}{x_0+\frac{f}{p}}\right)}{\ln(1-p)}
$$

So:
$$
n_{\min} = \left\lceil \frac{\ln!\left(\frac{T+\frac{f}{p}}{x_0+\frac{f}{p}}\right)}{\ln(1-p)} \right\rceil
$$

Example (Stripe standard: 2.9% + $0.30)

Use:

p = 0.029
f = 0.30
x0 = 100
threshold T = 1

Compute:
$$
n_{\min}=\left\lceil \frac{\ln!\left(\frac{1+\frac{0.30}{0.029}}{100+\frac{0.30}{0.029}}\right)}{\ln(1-0.029)} \right\rceil
= \left\lceil \frac{\ln!\left(\frac{1+10.3448276}{100+10.3448276}\right)}{\ln(0.971)} \right\rceil
= \left\lceil \frac{\ln(0.102823)}{\ln(0.971)} \right\rceil
= \left\lceil 77.2 \right\rceil
= 78
$$

Result: after 78 transactions, the remaining amount is < $1.

What this means

What this means is that $100 circulating a local economy via credit cards will exponentially evaporate towards $0.

How quickly? The math above shows that After 78 transactions, 99% of the original one hundred dollars will have left the community, being vacuumed up into the coffers of extractive corporations like Paypal, Stripe, Square, and so on.[^1]

What to do about it

As a business
As a business, there's only so much we can do about it.

Customers are accustomed to and expect the ease of using their credit card.

The best thing to do to educate your customers.

Some businesses decide to pass the processing fees on to their customers. Some will simply let them know what's happening and suggest better alternatives.

I do both at different times.

As a consumer
Use cash for local businesses.

Save your desire to earn credit card points from any spending you have to do through corporations like Walmart, Homedepot, or any of these ones (all under boycott by Ethical Consumer as of January 2026).

2026-11-05T01:34:49Z

Most of us, at some point, have felt a heaviness about the state of the world; about ecological loss, inequality, the pace of things unraveling.

And we do what people do: push it down, change the subject, just keep on going.

It's not that we don't care, but caring hurts, and there's only so much we can do.

It's not obvious where to put heavy feelings.

The Work That Reconnects is a set of group practices developed by Joanna Macy, starting in the late 1970s, built around a simple and radical premise: that pain for the world is healthy.

Our hurt is not a sign of weakness or pathology.

No, it's a sign of our very connectedness with life and what we discover when we're able to share our pain with others is that it becomes a source of energy rather than paralysis.

Joanna Macy's work affirms that living in a time of ecological and social crisis does something to people, and that something deserves the best of our attention, painful as it may be.

A brief overview of Macy's "Sprial"

Joanna Macy talks about a "Spiral" that moves through four stages.

Note that every session is different and will have different focuses. In some organizational or workplace settings, we might linger a bit more in stages three and four; in more personal "grief-focused" settings, we may linger in stages one or two.

Nonetheless, a review of all four helps give you a picture of what an event might look like:

Step 1: "Coming from Gratitude." Coming from gratitude, we start with paying attention to and naming our love for life, however that may look. Grief and love are two sides of the same coin, and love opens us to our hurts.
Step 2: "Honoring Our Pain for the World. " Honouring our pain for the world, we create space for people to bring voice to what pains they carry. There are many ways we can do this in a group and there are many griefs we carry. What's important about the "honoring" part of this work is that we do not try to fix, reframe, or soothe this pain nor the sometimes wild expressions of the pain. We witness it. For many people, this is the first time that's happened. This can be both transformative and intense.
Step 3: "Seeing with New Eyes." When we're allowed to sit in, sob about, and somehow express our pain for the world—and when we're seen by others in this experience—we are able to see the out with new eyes. Ultimately, our "seeing with new eyes" opens us, both individually and collectively, to new modes of being in our lives that serve a greater vision of collective, planetary well-being.
Step 4: Going Forth. The spiral closes with intention-setting — what you'll actually do, and who will support you.

As a spiral, these four steps are not, properly called, "steps"; they are like vistas enjoyed on a garden path. You can revisit them, return to any at any point, and yet somehow, through the journeying, they each inform and are informed by the others and weave together to create a transformative experience.

Cameron Carrick — Writing

What else do we call when we call in love?

Poem for Air Travel

Meeting grandma at the beach

Longing for land

Dad is visiting next week.

Anxiety

Learning other peoples' songs

"Catching" songs

A few pointers

Some of My Favorite Songs

Songs for Grief Ceremony

Learning the song

Where the song comes from

The poem (and black peoples' liberation)

Other places the poem has found roots

Alice Walker

21st Century American Improvement

Hopi connection

Concluding thoughts

Tiered pricing

How I approach pricing for grief ceremony

Sample Pricing - 2026

Tiered pricing for half-day events for 2026:

Tiered pricing for weekend-length events for 2026:

A note on wealth inequality

My approach to money

What is money?

Advisory Offers

Not sure which you need?

Consult

Clarity Engagements

A note on complexity

Advisory Offers — FAQ

What does your written deliverable look like?

What currency do you bill in?

How do you bill?

Do you use AI?

Accessing what's already there

77 transactions to $0

Solving the math

Recurrence (per transaction)

Closed form (after n transactions)

Solve for when the balance drops below a threshold T

Example (Stripe standard: 2.9% + $0.30)

What this means

What to do about it

A brief overview of Macy's "Sprial"

Going further