Equinox blessings
Invitations to celebrate - the equinox and Enchantable's second birthday! - with me
Dear beloved readers,
Thank you for being here! Today, on the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere, a day of balance, of equal light and dark, we celebrate Enchantable’s second trip around the sun. Enchantable was intentionally initiated in the energies of the spring equinox, a seed of public pedagogy and a public writing home.
Today is a great day to initiate something - a new project, a habit, a way of being in the world. What do you want to initiate today? What do you want to call in?
For more equinox prompts and inspiration, check out last year’s post on making March magic or join us for Saturday’s equinox ritual-celebration!
Today, I am reconnecting with the roots of where this seed started and what it has become. I am returning to my description:
Enchantable is a publication, a resource, and public pedagogy in the form of essays, love letters, meditations, spells, blessings, & lesson plans on the interbeing and entanglement of enchantment and disturbance, joy and suffering, reimagining education, peace, magic, dreams, mindfulness, and beyond; incantations and field notes for an enchantable life.
That’s still it! And I am returning to my first post:
I invite you to return to it, too. Looking back, I smile with delight at having stayed close to this initial seed and felt it grow. I am proud of the body of work I have shared here (please visit Enchantable’s Sustack page to see how I have organized it around spells, guides, meditations, and more). There are a wealth of resources there, including lesson plans, spells, and guided meditations and visualizations. Enchantable has been a portal of creativity for me, and I hope it has been a portal of inspiration and creativity for you, too.
I hesitate to try to quantify it because it is beyond numbers and metrics, but I was astounded to see, when I looked at the statistics, that I’ve had over 25,000 views over these two years. I have published 142 posts, well over the one per week I had aimed for and committed to. Two of my most widely read posts were about birth stories and the wisdom of doulas, which signals to me that these are topics I should continue writing about in in the context of birthing new worlds. I would love to hear from you about what you would like to see more of!
When I think about what this has been to me over these past two years, the word that comes to mind is fulfillment. It has been so creatively fulfilling (I have written about this a lot, but has felt like a regenerative cycle of creativity), but even more than that, it has been relationally fulfilling, and I love to hear from you and how these words move you and move through you in so many different ways. We are weaving something together here, and it feels alive and potent and I am excited to see what we continue to weave together in the coming trip around the sun.
The name Enchantable was inspired by a question I asked in an article I wrote about re-enchanting education: is the academy enchantable1? At this point, I feel like I can say with absolute certainty that it is, as I make magic, lean into emergence, uncertainty, play, creativity, and weirdness with my students in our three-week learning journey of contemporary topics in peace education. It is not always easy, and often requires bumping up against the confines of institutional structures, but it is possible, and once you make way for it, it definitely grows, takes root, spreads, reaches others.
We are enchantable, and I believe the world needs our enchantment now more than ever - not in a bypassing, head-in-the-clouds kind of way, but more in a “the world is so damn beautiful we must do everything we can to love it and each other as hard as we can” kind of way. In the “we believe in ourselves and we actually all deserve better” kind of way. In the “other worlds are possible, and we have to see to it” kind of way.
Celebrate with me!
As I’ve written about before, my mom always told me to seize every opportunity in life for celebration. I have a couple of invitations for you to celebrate with me, dear reader!
Share with a friend
In honor of Enchantable’s second birthday, you might consider sharing with a friend (or two or ten) who would enjoy this writing that I share here. Sharing is caring, and I know friends of friends are already like-minded and -hearted. Many of you already do this and it means so much!
Recommend Enchantable on your Substack
If you have a Substack of your own, a great way to support my work is to recommend Enchantable on your Substack page. This is just another way to share the publication (though only relevant if you are on the Substack app). I have noticed this feature is a great way to bring new readers who resonate with what I write about here. Again, friends of friends are already friends! You can do this by clicking on the Recommendations tab on your Substack dashboard. I am happy to reciprocate! (And thanks to those of you who have already done this, like
, , , and - I recommend all of them, too!).Upgrade your subscription
You might consider upgrading your subscription to paid if you are able as a way of valuing this work in the world. You could also see it as subsidizing my babysitter time required to do this writing - consider buying me an hour, which is roughly the cost of a one-month subscription. It takes a village to make this writing happen! And if you’re reading this and not already a subscriber, I hope you’ll subscribe and perhaps check out the library of past posts on the home page. For those who already do this, THANK YOU!
Share what Enchantable means to you
I would love to hear from you about what this publication has meant to you in these past two years! Consider sharing your favorite post, a way it has touched or impacted you, or a way it has moved in your life. You can leave a comment or reach out directly.
Join us for the equinox ritual-celebration!
Join us on Saturday for a live Zoom gathering to plant new seeds and celebrate the equinox and Enchantable’s birthday! We’ll be doing a ritual for the spring equinox, building on the December magic we made (but you don’t need to have engaged in that process to join - no previous experience required!). You can register here and I hope to see you there!
In my first post, I talked about a dream of writing a book, which is still a dream I hold. I hope to continue watering that seed for birthing books on peace education, interbeing, re-imagining education, enchantment, and beyond.
I want to close with last year’s equinox blessing:
May we put down what we don’t wish to carry forward.
May this moment of balance inspire reflection to help us move towards balance in our minds, bodies, hearts, and lives.
May the energy of the seasonal shift support forward momentum in planting seeds and realizing our dreams of liberation for all.
May we dwell in gratitude for the chance to see the turning of the season.
Here’s to continuing to weave our relational webs through this portal and beyond it!
With infinite love and care,
Stephanie
P.S. Did you know you can join me this summer on campus for an educator’s retreat? I would love to see you there - please reach out if you are interested or have any questions!
Shout-out to KD - I will be forever grateful for the message you sent me after reading the article; “I think Enchantable would make a great name for your Substack!” And so it was :)
Thank you for the shoutout, and it's so wonderful to see your journey starting from the Re-Enchantment magazine! So many seeds are sprouting all the time, I am honored to be part of this publication's journey, what an inspiration!
<3 <3 <3: "Shout-out to KD - I will be forever grateful for the message you sent me after reading the article"