The Messy In Between

and how we make room for it

For the last few weeks I have been obsessively and tirelessly focusing on the creation of my website. And in it’s creation, I’ve been forced to find a way to fully name what it is I am doing here. In my life. On this planet.

To tell the story of who I am. To find a way to clearly present my offerings to those who may find me. To define the underlying pulse of it all, my beliefs and influences. As well as its container—what’s it called, how much does it cost, what do you “get” (those oftentimes icky parts). I have been painstakingly avoiding all of this, for over a year now. While, at the same time, I am only now just ready.

In the weeks to come, I will be sharing with you bits and pieces of my website. Introducing you to each section. Giving context to what I’ve chosen to include and why. It’s a way of offering myself to you, through it’s gifting in layers. Piece by piece. Not all at once (although you can do it that way too).

Today I want to share with you a little bit about how I’ve gone about creating my website. This is one of the hardest parts for me to share.

I chose to use AI to help me. I’m embarrassed to say this. Loathe to mention it in public. Anthropic’s Claude helped guide me in the structure of the content, in the curation of my online presence. This was not an easy decision. It’s one that still fills me with shame and guilt.

It doesn’t neatly fit into parts of my carefully curated identity. One that (genuinely) believes in animism and honours Spirit through my connections with the living, natural world. Nor does it fit into the parts that care deeply about the decisions I make and the impacts they have on others.

As with everything that exists within our current paradigm, AI is a tool profoundly shaped by capitalism and its destructive, exploitative practices. I see myself as the type of person that would take an ethical stance against AI. That would choose not to use it, ever, in efforts to maintain my own sense of purity and goodness.

To be clear, I do have a well defined boundary. Although it would be misleading to believe that it couldn’t one day change. As of today, I do not use AI as a tool in any aspect of my creative work and offerings. But I did choose to use it to support the completion of my website, including it’s written content.

I was not working on my website on my own. I had no idea where to start. It felt immensely overwhelming. I did not have a clear sense of who I was becoming nor how I could clearly describe my offerings to others.

I could not afford to hire someone to support me in the step by step process. And I didn’t have large amounts of time that I could dedicate to website development. I’d rather be creating. So I turned to AI. The use of which comes at a cost, of course. As do all the tools we use in our lives. Our transportation and how we get around. Our homes and how we heat and cool them. Our food and how we sustain our bodies.

Every little aspect of our life is shaped by enormous systems. Systems which, for most of us, function in part, outside of our control and input. We all make choices every day, each one holding its own ethical dilemma. AI is the latest. While also seemingly most complex one.

I’ve listened to others talking about how much AI helped them. I was avoiding dipping my toes in. I was worried that once I started, if it really was as useful as others said, that I may become addicted. Dependent. Develop an unhealthy relationship with it.

But eventually, the practicalities of life forced my hand. I desperately wanted to build my website and I couldn’t figure out how to do it the way I wanted without support. I was introduced to it through my writing group. I wasn’t looking for it, I was actively avoiding it, but as it has with so many of us, it eventually found me. And I couldn’t deny the fact that it may just be the thing that I needed. So I caved. I gave in. I dove deep. I chose to work with AI to build the content for my website.

The biggest shift in my understanding came when I realized that, through the process of exploring what to include and why, the tool itself could show me the patterns I was missing. Pinpoint the connections across, what felt like to me, disparate and separate bits and pieces of my life. It helped give name to things that I was uncomfortable naming. It helped me see the shape of it all, buried deep in my own emotional blocks.

It was a steep learning curve. I’d never used it before. At all. I had to learn how to write prompts. How to use it efficiently and effectively. To consider when it is valuable to use and when I may be over using it. When it is actually aiding my objectives and when it may be hindering my progress. These are questions I am still sitting with, alongside the much stickier ones.

The creation and use of AI tools has real and deep environmental impacts. It causes real human harm. I do not believe that it has to be that way. But I am very aware that it is that way right now. Those in positions of power, wealth and leadership have made it that way. One of the many things they have made, predicated on greed, violence, war, extraction, theft and genocide.

However, this does not negate the ways that AI serves as a tool. The ways it makes things like building a website more accessible to those who could not afford it otherwise. As with all things, it is both/and. Not either/or. Spirit challenges me with this truth every day.

How do we find ways to live through the contradictions of our times. This place in the in between. Between worlds. Between paradigms. Between the old, grotesque ways of being, doing and thinking that are dying. The ones many of us were taught to believe are inevitable. And the newly re-emerging, constantly shifting, ways of living in reciprocal relationship. Ways that are rooted in something ancient, rendered obsolete. Practices that still exist, maintained by peoples all around the world, in spite of it all. Ready to take on a new shape. To birth a new form.

We are not all greedy, manipulative, hierarchical, war mongering liars. Most of us are caring, kind, loving, mistake making, humans trying to re-learn how to tend to life. I believe that most of us genuinely want to care for one another, for the earth and all its creatures. And I believe that is what we are building. A world where that is possible. A world predicated on care, not the denial of it.

Photo by Bui Bao on Unsplash

We are at the threshold. The death before the birth. The decay before the growth.

This is my disclaimer on AI, yes. And it’s also a window into how I see the world. How I try to approach the hard, tangy and complex parts of being a living, breathing human on the planet at this time.

I do what I can to sit with the complexity of it all. Every day. Not shying away from the ways I am implicated in the harms caused to others. But instead, facing it, without shrivelling up in the stagnation that shame and guilt can become. Constantly searching for ways to live as me, as my own type of rebellion. All with the intention of making room for the birthing of something different. For the new shoots that are sprouting from ancient roots. Present and thirsty, below all that is now crumbling.

Transition is both/and. Its the space where we are called to hold the lessons of what was, while grieving our attachments to it. Its the space where we turn towards whats coming, reaching for a future of possibility and change, even though we can’t see it yet. It’s an extremely delicate balance. It requires trust and surrender. Both a letting go and a moving towards, often at the same time.

I believe this is the place we are all at. Individually. And as collectives. And I now clearly know that this is the core of my work in this world. To tend to those in the threshold, myself included. To be one of many way-finders, weaving pathways to a future that we can feel, but don’t yet fully know.

It takes each and every one of us. To do this within and for ourselves. Our families. Our communities. Our spiritual lineages. Our ancestors past and future. To go within to excavate what was, so that we may find our way towards what is. Because it’s already here. It’s already begun. Can we find the lessons in our past and shed what no longer serves us? Can we clear the fog that is dampening our own becoming?

This is what I have been doing in the process of telling my story, of putting words to who I am and what I do. I have been excavating past versions of myself. And in the excavation, finding the threads that weave a clearer image of who I am becoming. It is a challenging, beautiful, nauseating, fun, painful and messy experience. One that will never end.

What I have lived and walked through has purpose now. I can see the lessons and the growth. It’s all made me who I am. This has allowed me to be more fully present in the now, on the threshold of who I am becoming. This presence and clarity is turning me more fully towards my future.

A future that feels open, scary, expansive and unknown. An echo chamber full of the possibilities still latent in my wildest dreams. Even the ones I have yet to dream. A future that is gently taking shape before my eyes. In this telling of me to you.

I will release my website into the world next week. A soft launch into the web of finders and seekers. I say this in part, to provide a container for myself. An idea, a person, a thing, to hold myself accountable to, in both its release and the ways I chose to build it.

Today, I share below the short third person bio that AI helped me write. Maybe I could have gotten here on my own. But I didn’t. And I don’t regret that, even though I feel the weight of the real, tangible impacts my choices have on others and the world. I make sure to practice feeling it regularly. To hold that feeling with integrity, so that it can inform everything I do moving forward. So that it shapes my contributions to the creation of the world(s) to come.

Note: while AI was used to help shape the content of my website, it was not used to support any of my other writings (here or elsewhere). Above the line, AI free. Below the line, AI supported.

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My short third person intro bio:

I’m Emma Yellowaga — an intuitive artist working with materials from the natural world: feather, bone, shell, stone, quill, wood, wing. I make custom pieces for people moving through the significant transitions of a life: a death, a loss, a diagnosis, a becoming.

Each piece is made specifically for you. It begins with a conversation, moves through an intuitive making process guided by what the materials carry and what your story holds, and ends with something handmade and alive — accompanied by a story written for you, about where you are and where you might be going.

I live and work on Michi Saagiig Anishnaabeg territory in Ontario, Canada, beside the water and the cedar trees.

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Stay tuned each week for more content from my website—including my full story, my practices and influences, examples of what I create and why, and ways to work with me.