Welcome to the OtherWays, original essays and stories from the edges of modernity, written and curated by the otherWise team.
Featured Series
Rehearsing Our Return to an Earth-Bound World of Many Worlds
Rehearsing Our Return to an Earth-Bound World of Many Worlds is a four-part exploration of how we might practice village-dreaming, village-being, and village-doing in an unraveling world. Each part invites us into a different layer of the work: from reweaving community as so much of the familiar unravels, to remembering how land shapes us; from recovering vital skills and rhythms, to loosening our grasp on the modern story and turning toward the non-dual and plural. These arcing pieces arrange into a spiral, encouraging us to return differently, again and again.
I reVillaging: the Dreamwork and Doing of Unintentional Community
II reGrounding: Land as Site, Source, and Shaper
III reSkilling: Providential Pursuits Shape the Ethics & Energetics of Village Life
IV reTurning: Rearranged & Restoried
Climate Collapse and Indigenous Sovereignty
written by otherWise
At the root of Indigenous sovereignty lies the practice of kinship: the ongoing work of making and remaking the web of relationships that sustain life. This requires taking the time and emotional effort to intentionally connect with other beings. For Indigenous people, kinship is best maintained through conversation—visiting, eating together, remembering ancestors, attending ceremonies and gatherings, and being present with one another’s challenges, joys, fears, and longings.
How are you placed?
written by Nicole C.
In this personal essay, otherWise’s founding Weaver, Nicole Civita, reflects on her journey of belonging and making home. From being claimed by an Alaskan Muskeg to grounding her family in Vermont’s green hills, Nicole takes us on her journey that isn’t about of being from a place, or belonging in a place, but involves becoming of a place. For her, this is less about finding the perfect place than about learning how to be-long wherever you are, while being an active, caring participant in the enlivenment of that place. She names this placedness: an orientation that “asks for attention, intention, agency and devotion. For repair and reciprocity”, Nicole continues. “It asks us to remain both permeable and protective. Rooted and moving.”
Fed, Not Free
written by otherWise
In this essay, otherWise community member Andrea Pitio shares observations about pre-determined ways of interacting and arranging our relationships: within humans, other species, and between humans and the more-than-human world. The codified and outdated ways of arranging our interactions is unravelling, and the author asks: what’s next?
What Do We Do When the World is Cruel?
written by Kasi F
I keep returning to the truth that many of us are still here because of the care and creativity that never made headlines. Because of the insignificant decisions that are made every day: to share food, to warn another, to adapt, to move carefully, to hide, even to remember. We are here because of imaginative acts that made survival possible under conditions that were never meant to sustain us.
The Mirror Self
written by otherWise
If you’ve ever wondered why the world feels increasingly unreal, this piece invites you to explore how we got here. Blending reflections on creativity, agency, conspiracies, and the algorithms shaping our lives, we explore how modern systems bend our perceptions, narrow our futures, and lure us into mirror worlds that feel real but aren’t. Drawing on thinkers like Naomi Klein, Shoshana Zuboff, Jaron Lanier, and Jean Baudrillard, the essay traces how surveillance capitalism, conspiracy culture, and digital simulacra quietly erode our autonomy and distort our sense of reality.
Telling Beautiful Stories with Our Lives in Times of Collapse
written by Sympoeisis
Shaun Chamberlin is the founder of Dark Optimism and the facilitator for Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive, an annual shared exploration of the crises of our times and how we might respond. Now in its 7th iteration, this winter’s journey welcomes guests including Rachel Donald, Nate Hagens, Leah Manaema Avene, and Mark Boyle. In this interview, Shaun talks about how a 1999 email from his dad began a slow journey of reckoning with modernity and of supporting others in finding real community as we navigate a collapsing civilization.
Supernatural
written by otherWise
The closer we look at the world, the more we realize just how impressive, expansive, even uncanny our reality truly is. Our human senses tend to limit us to only a few ways of viewing the world, but the more we welcome in the supernatural, the more clearly we can appreciate the magic — at times wondrous, at times menacing — that surrounds us.
Beginning with Care: Why We Start Here
written by Kasi F
Within this blog, Nakasi reflects on the invisibility of care in our lives. It is noticed only when the absence of care emerges. By sharing her family’s intimate moments, Nakasi questions care not only as a personal virtue, but as a political, relational, and ecological aspect of life. Here, individual resilience is transcended by collective opening towards care-fullness towards each other.
Going Away
written by Nissa C.
Nissa explores what it means to grow up in a world that eschews all responsibility for what we consume and waste. After a summer of exploring the mythical world of Away, and discovering viscerally that there is no such place, she has decided to assume a new role of alternative living in our transitional ecosystem.
Matryoshka in Mythos
written by Nicole C.
Matryoshka in Mythos is a poethic, imagined origin story – one that might hold truths we need to re-member in order to re-animate. This tale of nested becomings brings mythic, matristic resonance to the acts of holding and being held. It was put to words by otherWise founder Nicole Civita, who was captivated by Russian nesting dolls as a child, has long pondered their symbolism, and has always felt there was more to their story.