⊲ dana balicki ⊳

Dearest crybabies! Season 3 of #cryinginmyjacuzzi is here! 😭♨️ This season will be interview-rich with some of my favorite teachers & guides as we lean deeply into all of the shapes, sizes, colors and flavors of rebellion. First up, is the brilliant relational astrologer @ddamascenaa — we explore rebellion as an act of maturing aka radical adulting aka self-trusting in an era of systemic oppression, rising fascism, and huge planetary shifts. Listen & subscribe on apple, spotify, or wherever you pod. Your support means the world to us in the JACUZZIVERSE ✨ 😭 Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating and a written review, you’ll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free session with me. DM me the review title/your review name and I’ll make the winner announcement mid-month. ♨️ 🪐💫☄️Go see Diana in LA at @laastrofest 4/26-7! thank you (forever) to @mutable_cross for sound design geniussss @callmekatinsta for the 👂🪱 theme song & @nataleeraemiller for the pod cover illustration.

“I want to help people meet this moment and tend to the parts of themselves that are being crushed under the weight of intentionally-designed overwhelm and dehumanization. I want to create a container for aliveness, curiosity, compassion, complexity. These are the things that will need be in place for us to revolt, to create something wholly new. Let us tend to our inner workings so we can develop our capacities for the immense work ahead. This is the church of #plantfondling That’s from me talking to my gorgeous friends @millionpersonproject and @cherylderrricoottestudio this morning (heather of mpp wrote down what i was saying and shared w/ me). 🫳🌿🤏❤️‍🔥 📍 @mendocinocoastbotanicalgardens dahlia garden, 2024

pause. breathe. take these two in. their love, joy, dignity. a palestinian couple, farmers of the laymoon valley where their families have farmed for generations. when i met them earlier this year, they shared stories of their children, their resistance living under occupation, and heart break. and they also shared of their great love of each other, of their family, their people, their groves of fruit trees. when asked what can we do to support, their answer and the answers of so many palestinians i met were the same…”tell your people about us, our stories, our love of our land, our steadfastness.” i also so often heard, “we’ve (muslims, jews, christians) have been living together for hundreds of years — we didn’t all of a sudden forget how to live peacefully with each other. this is about land theft.” the world is witnessing the utter destruction and racist, unhinged violence of zionism. everyone suffers. and the palestinian people under decades of genocide occupation, have borne the brunt. in 2008, when i first got involved in this issue, i couldn’t imagine the hundreds of people protesting RIGHT NOW in the capitol rotunda. there’s a need for holding complexity, but not because what is happening is too complex for anyone besides an expert to understand. somethings are real clear, real straightforward. the complexity is needed for holding each other’s pain without denying each others’ realities. the complexity is for moving forward with broken hearts. the complexity is for the cycles of judgment and forgiveness. it’s for those of us who have no one around us who feel what we feel. it’s for accountability. it’s for the listening we have to do at levels we’ve never done. it’s for what we can’t even see from here. 💜 📸 @millionpersonproject

A tender feral guide to the end times! But not for prepping. For aliveness! For livers! For lovers! It’s an irreverently earnest manual, artist book, and treasure trove of collected knowledge gathered from the middle of apocalypse on how to survive absurd times. ✨It includes✨ 🌸 recipes for when food is scarce 🐠 gallows humor 🍯 mutual aid tactics 🌊 highly visual survival strategies 💅🏼 poetic interventions 🐝 spells 🐚 diagrams 🌿 family lore 🫀 grief 🪱 pleasure 🕸️ ways of staying human 🪼 TALISMANS 🪺 and more I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of this project! It’s the heartspiritbrain-child of my dearest sister @amaryllisrflowers a true Libra queen bringing love, justice, and the most effervescent ferocity to the world. And she designed, edited, riso-printed, and hand-bound each and every one! 🪸 My piece is about 🫳🌱 plantfondling (natch) and is a slowdown medicine morsel in this larger, shimmering breadcrumb trail guiding us home to ourselves and each other. There’s a very limited amount of these and they’re for sale on Amaryllis’s site >> sliding scale options, too! amaryllisrflowers.com thank you, amaryllis! love you! ✨the other contributors (who are on ig)✨ @amaryllisrflowers @_az__za_ @rosebsimpson @trevon_latin_art @danablix @su_heeeey @xareniconsulting @awapuhilah @brokenboxespodcast @cannupahanska @marcusrogersart blasianinvasian @kambuiolujimi @jesseharrod1 @kikioutrageous @felipebaeza chambersdominic @alex_dolores_ @kccrowmaddux @colleenasper @seandesireestudio @alisasikelianoscarter @chitraganeshbkny @alesbiangaze @uhlikeduh @_indiasky_ @guesswoerk @johnathanpaynestudio @dreamcremevision @kingstonjoseph @theoknox @shandakenprojects

this is @ryan_schneider_ and today’s his birthday. sometimes i think he’s the most aries aries who ever ariesed…and i love this about him. his fire, his spirit, his relentless movement. like water, always looking for the space to pour into. but um, like a river of 🔥 for so long, i thought i was teacher, he was student. hooboy, i got that wrong. he’s a beast and he’s good at so many things, especially at loving me and baby honey biscuits (not so great at resting but he’s learning). he loves the world deeply and his heart is bigger than his own body on some days. just so big. his first big activist effort resulted in a mega-corp high-tailing it out of town! who else does that?? this guy. this ryan. my ray ray. honey, lemon & pablo’s dad. we love you ♾️

“trans people make that revolutionary choice to keep showing up, which is the ultimate form of love and mercy” 💜 THIS WHOLE speech by @alokvmenon 💜 transness is holiness. i will never give an inch on this, i will die on this hill with y’all. and as the brilliant @mattxiv said today, “harry potter isn’t real, but you are,” dear gorgeous siblings! happy day of trans visibility! and may we create a world beyond visibility, one where there’s thriving and rest and unconditional support & love!

These tooth gem baddies cordially invite you to come fondle plants in the desert this weekend. Come spend the day with @danablix and @crystalsofaltamira getting weird, in our feelings, and emboldened to be ever more ourselves in the midst of the collapse of the empire. Lots of love, Leah & Dana —————— Saturday 4/4 10-5:30pm PST Joshua Tree, CA $269, payment plans available! LINK IN BIO

the brilliant @cosmic.cousins teamed up with @lonelyplanet to create @travel.tarot a deck & guidebook for the journeys ahead — the imagery by @studiomuti is so special and the descriptions for each card feel both accessible (i’m tarot adjacent!) without sacrificing depth and realtime guidance. jeff did a 3 card reading for me at the top of the year and i’m still simmering in the relevance and unfolding meaning. 10/10! go get you a deck, friends! #traveltarot

Celebrating 20 years with my love @danablix lower east side babies to The Californians March 4, 2006, she pulled up to Avenue B and E. 2nd street in a cab, i jumped in and we started kissing. It was supposed to a fun weekend with hot LA girl and turned into a life i would not trade for anything. And finally, collaborating on creative projects together and trying to help our community. Thank you @danablix for these 20 years. It has been the most exciting ride of my life. @newearthmaterials

You are cordially invited to come and space out with @danablix and @crystalsofaltamira at A DAY IN THE DEZ 🌵 Dana and Leah are hosting a day-long retreat for you (and us) to interrupt the static of the machine world, and slow down for a day together. If you have been wondering about our retreat, Becoming More Ourselves (coming Fall 2026), this mini getaway is a great way to dip your toes in and get a taste of what we offer! April 4, 2026 10am-5:30pm at Dana’s home in Joshua Tree Register with link in bio or at danabalicki.com

11 years ago today we landed in the Mojave desert* for the next phase of our life, though we didn’t know it yet. We were NYers who couldn’t imagine a different way of living, though we knew we wanted it and needed it and might not make it unless we took our biggest risk. Our deepest desires for aliveness outweighed our lack of clear next steps and really any plan at all. Our deepest desires for each other outweighed our fear of leaving the only home we’d known together. Little by little, then all of a sudden we were here. Cactus, tumbleweeds, old rusty desert shit, neon pink skies, shrieking coyotes, desert roads, motherfucking tarantulas yessss, so much moisturizer, so thirsty all the time, cackling like wild children because OMFG DID YOU SEE THOSE STARS AND THAT SUNSET AND SUNRISE AND EVERYYYYTHIIIIIIING??!! We become more ourselves everyday we’re here. May it continue to be so. *We offer our deepest reverence to these traditional ancestral homelands of the Serrano (Maara’yam), Cahuilla (Kawiya), Chemehuevi (Nüwü), and Mojave (Aha Macave) peoples. It’s our great honor to steward the land and care for community here. photos by @elena.ray at about month 2 (of our 132 months here). photos taken in the rock house owned by Lori who said over email to me “maybe you’ll be my neighbors for the rest of my life”…now we live 3 houses down from her and she & her sister just came over with cookies and oranges and we worked on our ongoing strategy to get our mutual friend out of ICE detention.

oh, hi! just like you, dear darlings, i have a lot of rage about a lot of things (also hope, sadness, curiosity, grief…so many feels to work with!!). espesh today on the anniversary of the LA fires 💔 the unaliving of a 37 y/o in Minn courageously blocking an ICE raid 💔 announcement by gen0 side scholars that the US is in early stages of gen0 against our beautiful trans siblings 💔 ongoing ongoing ongoing g0 in pal…💔 so as a former media-worker (~8 years working pr for grassroots movements) and human who was radicalized by a media project at age 18 ✨ SHOUTOUT @projectcensored ✨ and who worked for antiwar org @codepinkalert 2004-2011, this blatant fuckery by the nyt is not new, but increasingly terrorizing. during occupy wall street, i interfaced with nyt journos all the time. there were some brilliant ppl really trying to do their work with integrity. more-so, there were bs editors and editorial boards trying to uphold empire. i know you know, the backbone of this paper has solidified itself as racist, anti-trans, gen0 supporting. may there be a revolt from the inside out 🙏 and in the meantime, cancel your subs if you haven’t already 💀 i turn to @theintercept @motherjonesmag @mondoweiss @dropsitenews @aljazeeraenglish @guardian @democracynow & others for news. no outlet is perfect, mind you. where do you do your newsing? and for those of you who may have the response of “i don’t look at the news”, i understand where that’s coming from…it’s important to honor nervous system/overwhelm* ANDANDANDANDAND having a practice of understanding what’s happening domestically and globally at a nuanced level is critical for interdependence. for belonging to each other. for subversion. doing inner work (a big part of what i teach) without an active, conscious, ever-evolving analysis of the world around you isn’t going to build the bridges we need to meet, uplift, accept, see, hear, and love each other through fash-ism🌈 it’s practice not perfection, bbs. ilysm. *go to #cryinginmyjacuzzi ep11 with my teacher @sarahpeytonauthor for our juicy convo on overwhelm and how when we’re in it, we’re primed pawns of empire! https://bit.ly/cry-sarah