Dearest HeARTs,

Thank you for being this safe space for me–for years now some of you–to share my inner thoughts and works of heART. Your presence and sacred (and more often silent) witness have made me a more courageous thinker and writer. Thank you.

💗 thinking…. feeling… deciding again to share with you.

While I do not know the names and lineages of my ancestors beyond 5 generations past, I have a keen awareness of my progeny: Not necessarily because I have children myself, but because I feel our interconnection.

progeny ~ descendants, children. (Merriam-Webster)

We don’t often think about them–those future humans–at least I’ve never heard mention in common media, but we are are as connected to our progeny as much as to our ancestors. Perhaps we come from our ancestors, and we lead to our progeny–if we believe in linear time I guess.

What I do know is that the progeny need our love, prayers, awareness and –a new word i’ve been playing with — our formembrance as much as do our ancestors.

formembrance ~ the state of considering, celebrating, thinking about
something or someone in advance (me)

Our progeny needs us–the humans of now–to consider and care about them that we might consider radically change our ways, our relationship with things, as well as our relationship with and to each other so the future might be different than it seems it might be.

I’ve been thinking about the formembrance of my pregnancies. In formembrance, I honored my future children in choices I made about what I ate, listened to, and how I cared for my own body–their first experience of the world. I thought about the space of our home, what was safer, fewer chemicals, what was soft… what was true. I knew that what I did and how I treated myself and created their environment would matter to their own emergent experience of themselves.

Going without certain things and changing some of my less-healthy indulgencies was a way of sending love into the future, to support who they were to become.

I wonder what my life might look like if I thought more about our progeny each day, if I cultivated my love of progeny similar fashion? What would happen if I expressed my own longing for progeniphilia?

progeniphilia ~ love of future humans (me)

I am a work in progress. I can always do more and better. I can go with less and make different choices perchance the future humans might suffer less.

Today I’m going to set a timer to shorten my shower in formembrance. I commit to consciously choose one intentional act a day to honor my own progeniphilia. I love of us and our future humans, and I care about the future of our giving, turning, ever-loving planet. This is what I can personally do to send my love into the future, for humans I will never meet.

(My attempt to plant trees under whose shade I will never sit.)

💗 Intentional change = LOVE 💗
becky

p.s. Please do tell me what YOU think and post in the comments. I’d LOVE to know.