MELODY VAUGHAN
ABOUT ME
I am a human who finds it impossible to distill themselves down into a tidy paragraph for a website.
I could offer you a snappy bio or a longer cv to persuade you of my professional credentials, when I’d rather talk to you about all the books I’ve been reading or the learning I’ve been doing recently.
Maybe you’d like to know more about my past experiences in archaeology and museum education, and how they’ve informed the work I’ve done in the craft sector.
Would it help you to know that I love walking in the countryside (now with added greyhound), sewing/repairing my own clothes, watching YouTube videos about music theory/composing/singing, making playlists for every emotion and reading (always reading). I am fascinated by stories of people’s lives, forever entranced by the gift of our sense of smell, love the feeling of my body in water and am constantly dreaming about what’s next to eat.
What I’d like to share with you is this piece of writing from November 2023 which still encapsulates how I feel about being alive in these times and tells you a lot of what you need to know about me as a person:
I have written this post multiple times, trying to find a way to start. How I wish we were having a real conversation, where the failure of words, the imperfect beginning is not so visible. We’d quickly have stumbled through some sentences that try to convey the enormity of our feelings and experiences of living in this moment, that would in no way come close to the truth. But it wouldn’t matter, we’d carry on and somehow together we’d find ourselves talking about the heart of the matter.
And that’s what I’d like to do today. Tend to our hearts.
The world is demanding so much of us right now. We are bearing witness to unspeakable violence and war crimes against the people of Palestine, while the international community stands around and does nothing to try to stop it, or actively supports it. News of other genocides in Sudan and the Congo reaches us, and our ignorance about the lives of others and the impact we have now/have had historically is highlighted even more.
Mainstream media seeks to stoke the fires of hatred and intolerance in this country and our government seems hell bent on being in opposition to the best interests of humanity and the planet. Over a decade of austerity, the insane cost of living, public services in crisis and our politicians say there is nothing they can do; they vilify people who go on strike, dehumanise people seeking refuge, while allowing the richest in our society to have unlimited bonuses and avoid paying tax.
We are living through climate breakdown; this summer saw the three hottest months on record, and I have lost count of how many countries have suffered this year due to unprecedented flooding and storms. And again, this government shrugs off its responsibility, deprioritising our climate targets, giving the go-ahead to further oil extraction, continuing to subsidise the fossil fuel industry, arresting and imprisoning those willing to speak up and protest in defence of our future.
It is overwhelming, and almost unbearable. I feel myself giving up, resigned to the awfulness of this moment and close to shutting off from everything to protect my mental health. So tempting, the cosy fog of wilful forgetting and pretence. But I have these Indigo Girls song lyrics swirling in my mind that always seem to arrive just when I need them, like old friends:
“Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable,
and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear.
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket,
I sailed my ship of safety til I sank it.
I’m crawling on your shores.”
And I’m reminded that when things are darkest, and I’m struggling to hear the call of the light, my fears often lead me to isolate, to search wildly for some kind of safety out there alone, but the reality is that I find my safety inside my heart, inside the hearts of others. No matter how terrible it is, how exhausted I am, I can always reach out, to crawl onto the shores of others for support.
How is your heart today?
What words of care do you need spoken to you in this moment?
What can you do to support yourself and your tender heart today?
I would like to advocate for those with tender hearts, that we stay soft to the hardness of the world. That we keep seeing the humanity in people, even those who do not see it in others. That we remain open to seeing the reality that is here, no matter how painful. That we accept the truths of the world, even if it means letting go of things that were comforting. That we love each other and the planet fiercely.
There is intense grief in living this way. When we live with love, grief is the sister emotion that walks with us when the things we love are gone. And we are collectively losing so much. But rather than shy away from the grief, what if we learn to exist with it, to let it lead us towards the futures we want to see emerge from all this destruction?
This month I have been letting my grief lead me back to inner work I started in 2020, and a re-commitment to dismantling systems of oppression. In the same way that I think of sustainability work as having two sides – inner sustainability (for you) and outer sustainability (for others/the planet) – I recognise that working towards creating better conditions for all humans has a similar inner/outer component.
There is the inner work I do to understand how my mind and body function, how they have historically adapted to survive, and how that shows up in my life today. By learning about my nervous system, polyvagal theory and trauma, I am able to support myself, to be resourced and as regulated as I can. Without this underpinning, I can’t possibly hope to show up in the present for the things happening now.
Then, there is the work that looks outside of myself to imagine new ways of being. As someone naturally melancholy and a bit pessimistic, this is something I find easiest to do in collaboration with others. Left to my own devices I tend to assume the worst, and find it hard to hold onto possibility. But with other people around me, through books or podcasts, online or in person, it is somehow easier to believe that things can and will improve. It has taken me years to find my own opinions around what the alternative to the systems we currently live with/under could be. I’ve known instinctively what I do not want for the future, what we are opposing, but it’s been so much harder to know what could exist, how to set free our imaginations, what we stand for.
Some people who have a profound effect on my understanding about myself and the world:
This, I think, is my approach for staying connected to myself, to others and to the planet, cobbled together piecemeal from healing strategies and collective organising. It insists that I keep my heart open to the world, hold onto my (and your) humanity, allow grief to move me into action. It asks that I am brave enough to take responsibility for my own healing, and to understand how my mind/body exists in the world, so that I can show up for what is necessary now without being consumed by my own pain. It longs for community, people to share the task of imagining how different our world could be and how we might get there. It is a work in progress.
Articulating all this to you, I realise how it might sound like I’ve got this all figured out. But I really don’t. I struggle each day to know how we will all get through this, but I also know that I can’t give up. So much of the future can still be shaped by our hands if we persist. I believe the world needs radical change and I believe we are the ones to do it.
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copyright 2025 MELODY VAUGHAN