Summer Update, Birthday & NEDfest 2023

Notes from Oaxaca, Sending It on the River, and Celebrating My 38th. Every day is NEDfest!

Read on or enjoy the video version here : )

Paddle-boarding with my family on the Russian River in Sonoma County

My beloved community,

A happy summer to you!

It has been a pretty full season here. Anyone else feelin’ that way? ...Like the summer is kind of flying by in a whirlwind?

If so, may your tempest be a beautiful one!

I hope you are well. It has been a while since I’ve shared an update, and as we near my 38th birthday (on August 2nd!) — along with the two-year anniversary of the completion of my treatment for cancer and the beginning of a long recovery journey — I wanted to reach out with a few kind words and good tidings of what’s to come.

Birthday Healing Fund contributions can go here : )

Read on for more on my lessons with the powerful American River

Last time I checked in, I was celebrating my second No Evidence of Disease scan (the first of which came last November, more than a year into my post-treatment recovery). Many months before my clean scans came to fruition, I quipped about one day convening a “NEDfest” once I reached complete remission.

Now, that party is well underway. If you missed the news (and even if you did hear it) please join me in a Hallelujah!

We are all so inexpressibly blessed to be alive right now and to have whatever health we might enjoy. And while there is never a guarantee of how long these blessings will last, it is a singular privilege to inhabit these bodies, share this sacred planet, and walk this beautiful mystery we call life.

Living the top-rope dream at a Lucha Libre wrestling event in Oaxaca!

My recent service trip to Oaxaca — which I’ll share more about later in this message — strongly reinforced this comprehension that we have much to be grateful for, and that we possess an inexhaustible well of resilience as Earthlings.

Our brothers and sisters around the world are struggling in so many ways, and so are we. We’re all dealing with various forms and degrees of illness, stress, and injustice. Traumas and injuries beset us all.

And yet we’re still here.

Not only that; we are sometimes truly happy. And we often even somehow manage to find our daily nourishment. And through it all, we retain within us at all times the power and voice to make something beautiful, change the world, and create health and joy and goodness in ourselves and our communities.

The gathering space and ceremonial fire pit in our back yard awaits you

Without burying the lead too far here, I wanted to share that Satya and I are hosting a little gathering this Friday, July 28, at our home in Cotati. If you’re part of this community, live nearby, and see this in time, please hit me up for the details!

If you’re located elsewhere, or seeing this some time in the future, worry not! This community is pretty geographically diverse, and I intend to create fun and playful ways for us to gather for virtual iterations of the ongoing NEDfest in the coming months. Stay tuned!

In this dispatch, I’ll share some notes from the last several weeks — including my service trip to Oaxaca and recent river-rafting excursion with my Send It family — along with a preview of what’s in the works for the coming season.

First, though, a bit of news:

After two years of receiving many life-sustaining contributions, I will soon be closing the “Support Nils to Fully Heal” crowdfunding campaign that my friend launched during my treatment in 2021.

By all means, as I continue to deal with the financial fallout of ludicrous medical bills — compounded by this recent, unexpected spate of unemployment — I welcome and honor your ongoing contributions... But alas! It also appears that this fundraiser is reaching the end of its utility, and my plan to terminate it will also be clearing space for a new project in the coming season.

If you’re a previous donor or a member of my creative inner circle, I’ll reach out personally in the next few weeks about the pre-launch of my Patreon page, and I will take that campaign public shortly thereafter!

For now, though, with all that said, if you feel like declaring your solidarity by making a final donation to my Healing Fund to help me recover from the battering of medical bills I’ve recently gone through — or if you just want to make a “Happy Birthday” donation — now would be a great time to do so!

Big shout-out to all the ‘Cancer Bandits’ who helped me through tough times!

While I plan to deemphasize and ultimately deactivate the GoFundMe campaign to support my healing, I really can’t overstate how helpful all the contributions of all you Cancer Bandits out there have been — not only in helping me afford and endure the acute phases of treatment and recovery, but perhaps even more so now, in the drawn out months of dealing with the financial aftershocks of that experience.

(…It was a bumpy dance and we definitely knocked some things over and made a costly mess as we twirled around the party. Then, thankfully, she left — but I got stuck with the bill.)

Click here to make a final (or first!) donation to the Healing Fundraiser!

Even if you’ve been unable to give, I want to let you know that just by being there, receiving my emails, and sticking around as a part of this community, you are making a real difference for me.

As a matter of fact, the more I learn about what it will take to become a successful author and share my larger writing projects with the world, the more I’m finding about the importance of having a platform, which publishers measure with numbers like the size of your email list and YouTube subscribership.

I appreciate you for hanging in there with me — and I really hope I'll be able to share something of great value to you!

My next message will include an overview of the main projects I’m working on, along with whatever early fruit I can share of them.

These projects include Go Back and Fetch It, my life memoir; Cancer Dancer, a book more specific to my heath crisis and healing journey; Wild Parenting, a playful manual for raising kids who are happy and healthy and free; Campaign Story, a limited podcast series about my two runs for US Congress, and a few other smaller projects.

Please make sure you are subscribed to my email newsletter and YouTube channel, and connected with me across other social media platforms, to receive updates as those projects mature!

And now, I submit for your consideration these notes from the summer so far. It has been a pretty busy one!

In over a week of work and play with our friends at Casa Emilie, we developed deep and lasting bonds of kinship and respect

Part 1. Algo Bonito de Oaxaca

After my all-clear MRI scan this May, as the school year drew to a close and Satya completed the 4th grade, I was honored to embark on a service trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, as a chaperone to a group of local high school students from my friend Dana’s advanced Spanish class.

Our main purpose in taking this journey, along with practicing our Spanish and seeing the world, was to share our hands and hearts with the denizens of Casa Emilie, a small grassroots community center that supports street children and their families in the town of Xoxocotlán, Oaxaca.

I enjoyed making bracelets with the children of Casa Emilie

Casa Emilie, a project of the larger Centro de Esperanza Infantile (or “Center of Hope for Children”), feeds hundreds of children a year, with countless children and parents streaming through every afternoon to eat, play, learn, get help with their schoolwork, build community, and enjoy a safe place to be.

In addition to helping with daily kitchen and household tasks, our students prepared and led a number of workshops for the children and parents of Casa Emilie, from English classes to tutorials on making bracelets and other handcrafts. We also played with the kids and led group games, planted a veggie garden, and (my pet project) installed shelving and provided some much-needed tools and physical labor for the inspirational women who run this project. We even painted a beautiful mural!

After spending over a week working with these kids and serving the community, we had some amazing opportunities to explore Oaxaca and some of the nearby sacred sites, including the ancient ruins of Monte Alban and Mitla, as well as El Tule, the widest tree in the world, and Hierve el Agua, a petrified waterfall where we swam in the natural spring water.

The region’s people, culture, and landscape were all awe-inspiring, and I celebrate the many connections I made on this trip, not only with my traveling companions, but with the children and families of Casa Emilie, with our host family at Terraza Cielito Lindo, and with other friends I made along the way.

One of our students led an amazing mural project at Casa Emilie

The people of Oaxaca have a lot to teach the privileged (but comparatively miserable) culture we live in here in the United States. Although Oaxaqueños live in one of the most economically impoverished regions in North America, they also know true connection and happiness. They spend time outside and eat fresh local food; they smile and greet neighbors and strangers in the street; their public spaces are filled with music and art and color. And whatever struggles they face, they seem to devote more energy to serving and celebrating life than to complaining or tuning out.

I returned home carrying this medicine with me, and I look forward to growing it and letting it permeate my life and my community.

I enjoyed leading daily check-ins and fostering a reflective experience for us all

An unexpected key takeaway from this trip was a reminder of how much I truly enjoy facilitating transformative group processes (that is to say, how much I enjoy teaching). It has been really nourishing taking this break from a demanding career in public education — and by all means I intend to continue leaning into my more authentic primary work as a writer — but circling up with my travel companions, hosting our daily check-ins, and cultivating a kind and helpful community of teammates reminded me that one of my core gifts is curating community experiences that support the growth of individuals.

Our kind and helpful community after making it back to SFO

I may be done giving the entirety of my life energy to the crisis-laden profession of school teaching and administration — but I also recognize that I am a natural (and probably lifelong) teacher. I'm now more consciously creating opportunities to continue teaching, leading smaller workshops, classes, retreats and other group experiences in the coming chapter of my life. This will probably include some short-term substitute teaching to help keep the bills paid; but it might also include things like teaching writing classes, leading parenting groups, supporting people going through major health crises, and more. I’m excited to see where this inspiration leads!

From this amazing journey to Mexico, a more thorough travelogue — “Algo Bonito De Oaxaca” — has begun to blossom, which I’ll share soon. For now, I just wanted to express what an honor it was to participate in this unique opportunity to explore and learn and be of service. Without this invitation, I might never have thought to visit this magical city — and now it feels like another home, a place I look forward to visiting again someday and sharing with my loved ones. The beauty of Oaxaca and its people have definitely made a lasting imprint on my heart.

Part 2. Idaho Interlude and Sending It On the River

Satya and a friend at Goat Rock Beach in Sonoma County the day after our Pomo Canyon camping trip

Since returning from Mexico, I’ve enjoyed some sweet summer moments with Satya and Phoenix, including paddle-boarding on the Russian River and camping in nearby Pomo Canyon with some dear friends. My daughter took a short summer trip to her mother’s native Ohio to visit family, and she also had a couple of weeks of day camp here in Sonoma County, which allowed me some weekdays to make some major progress on my writing projects and begin the process of returning to service as a part-time substitute teacher this fall.

As the summer progressed, I also fit in a couple of very meaningful short trips, and have had some other major personal developments begin to take shape here — some of which I’ll share now, and some of which will have to be a teaser for later.

Lonnie by my side at the community meeting in Clearlake that led to the formation of Transition Lake County

One of these recent short trips was to Boise, Idaho, where I visited my dear brother Lonnie, who was recently put on hospice after many exhausting years of dancing with cancer. I’ve known "Lonniewan" since our days back in Lake County, where we met during some of the grassroots community organizing I was doing with Transition Lake County.

We played a lot of music and did a lot of ceremony together, and I came to love him dearly and admire him greatly. He is a pretty epic musician, and could often be found on my porch, mandolin in hand, sweet voice singing “Wagon Wheel” or calling us to “Be Here Now.” (If you watch the video of this post, you can hear him sing.) He was also kind of like a father to me, sharing his considerable wisdom with this young seeker and sharpening my vision as a warrior.

Sacred musical memories on the old porch at Pine Grove

I was only able to stay with Lonnie for a couple of days, but I was able to play him some music on his guitar and support him in moving to an assisted living facility. Ever since then, he’s been bouncing back, and he reported feeling much better last time we spoke on the phone.

I honestly admire this man now more than ever. (Lonnie, if you're seeing this, I love you, brother. You're a great teacher and a magnificent KING!)

Rafting on the American River with the Send It alumni community was so rad!

After returning from Idaho and spending some time at the homestead with Satya, I was able to enjoy a long weekend on the South Fork of the American River, whitewater rafting and camping with the Send It alumni community.

If you were following my journey last winter, or if you read my last annual letter (linked in the description below), you may recall that the Send It Foundation is a nonprofit that supports healing by facilitating adventure experiences in community for young adult cancer survivors. In January, I went snowboarding for my first time, on a retreat in Tahoe with a Send It group, and it was amazing. (If you’re looking for an awesome project to support, I encourage you to visit Send It’s website and donate to my fundraiser page for Send It's upcoming SENDtember campaign!)

The alumni rafting trip earlier this month was also pretty awesome. I spent a few days camping along the riverbank with other young adults who have gone through major health crises, and we enjoyed each other’s fellowship as well as some powerful lessons from the river, where we spent two days navigating class 3 rapids. It was my first time on a river with this level of power, with thousands of cubic feet per second of snowmelt rushing between jagged crags.

Humility, perspective and flow are among the river’s many valuable life lessons

When you’re out there, you feel the power of the river — and your comparative smallness. There are major dopamine hits as you approach and navigate powerful rapids, hanging on for dear life as your boat is inundated with water.

The river teaches us about the delicate balance of life — having an intention of where we want to go and the power and skill to get there, but also cooperating with the flow of what is present before you — working with the current and not against it.

One night around the campfire, a comrade on this trip remarked that the only problem with being a part of this community of cancer dancers is that some people don’t make it. I nodded solemnly, but I also hadn’t experienced any deaths among my community of survivors yet.

Blessings to Megan’s family and her beautiful soul

Then just a couple of days ago, while paddling down the comparatively mellow Russian River near my home, I got a text that my friend Megan, who I met on my snowboarding trip with Send It back in January, had passed away after a three year tango with breast cancer. She was only 40 — such a bright light and a loving mother — and our little community has been pretty devastated by the news. I uplift a prayer that Megan’s family be comforted, and that Megan’s spirit be free.

And again, the Angel of Death rides by, singing its song of the preciousness of life.

Under the shade of this oak tree, my mom and Satya and I recently scattered the ashes of my old dog, Spirit, who died two years ago.

As philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset reminds us, “We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, ‘here and now’ without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.”

Wherever you may be, I hope you are doing what you love, here and now, and getting ever closer to your truest bliss — without any postponement.

In that spirit, I look forward to checking in with you again soon and sharing more of my heart song. I feel very excited to share with you some of the gifts I have been birthing — and I feel honored as always to be in community with you.

I remain your dedicated friend, brother and fellow student on the path, bewildered by this whole beautiful experience of aliveness.

Yes to it all!

Yours in gratitude and kinship,

Nils