Year in Review
Reflections on 2024
As we mark nearly a year since we launched our Substack, we want to share a short reflection on 2024 from Loam Co-Editor Kate. Thank you again to everyone who has joined us in this journey! We’re very grateful to be here, with you.
I’m writing this from the radius of my family’s fireplace. This was the hottest and driest fall I can remember; it was too warm for a fire most nights, and we’re still in a drought so severe it sparked wildfires throughout the East Coast. As surreal as this is, it also feels true to the times we are in, when so many of our systems—political, social, ecological—are shape shifting.
In the face of such catastrophe, I sometimes am unsure what the role or even relevance of Loam is.
But then, there’s this: the morning of the election, I woke up to a letter from Loam Editor Kailea Loften on where we go from here. It was the medicine that I needed–and the medicine we thought that many of you might need, too. So the day after the election, Kailea and I worked together across time zones and countries to edit her missive on holding multitudes (since republished here). That evening, our Loam inbox was flooded with messages of thanks.
In the week since, I’ve been humbled by just how many of you have reached out to share that browsing through your home Loam “libraries” has provided grounding and guidance during this dark time. So often, publishing can feel like working in a void. Narrative change and culture work aren’t really “contact sports.” Although editing and writing is our passion, it’s rare that Kailea and I get to convene with readers in-person: most of the time, the response to our printed materials transpires independent of us.
So to know that Loam means something in this moment is not inconsequential. On its own, Loam is an offering: like a candle on the altar, maybe. It’s only when our work comes into conversation with your life that it becomes something beautiful, transformative. This is the gift—and the necessity—of working together. It’s also why tending to projects such as Loam, however scrappy and small, matters.
After our sabbatical in 2023, I wrestled with how to show up to Loam. Some of it was because of changes in my home life, and some of it was because I couldn’t figure out how much to give to a passion project I love deeply but can’t yet “make sense” financially. I know that every creative in our community understands the ebbs and flows of this process.
But I’m writing this from a different perspective. Something shifted over the past weeks. The election brought renewed clarity and focus—as well as a reminder that slow media such as Loam is, and will continue to be, orientating in our era of emergency. As Kailea writes in our latest print newsletter:
“Here at Loam, we call ourselves a ‘community publishing project’ because we have always measured our bottom line by the strength of the community in which we situate ourselves. We publish materials that we hope will serve those who read them. We deeply consider the role that publishing houses, however big or small, as is our case, can play in shaping culture. Often when considering a project, we are thinking of the utility of how it will live in someone’s life.”
Kailea’s letter is affirmation that print publishing is a relational practice. And as I search for where to go next, Loam has emerged as a strong signpost. Because when we consider what it will take to weather the current and emergent catastrophes we are facing, it is relationship that will steady us.
2024 was fruitful for Loam. At the start of the year, we printed a revised iteration of the beloved book “Nourishing the Nervous System” (NTNS) from somatic counselor and Weaving Earth facilitator tayla shanaye. Since its publication in 2020, NTNS has been a lifeline for thousands of readers.
This summer saw the release of “How Do We Come Together in a Changing World?” Created in collaboration with the Center for Humans in Nature (CHN), this publication is an anthology of essays on cancel culture, belonging, and kinship first curated during our 2023 Editorial Fellowship at CHN.
More recently, we launched our Loam x Weaving Earth print newsletter with the goal of exploring slow media away from our screens. Although this pilot project has been in the world for only a month, we have loved the feedback we’ve been receiving from our readers (and if you haven’t yet shared your thoughts with us—please do!)
Together, these three print projects are a reflection of our growing commitment to both reaffirm—and reimagine—our work in the world. As many of you know, Loam merged with the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education (WE) at the end of 2023. Since coming home to WE, we’ve been on a beautiful journey of figuring out what it means to be a publisher at the confluence of environmental, social and personal systems change. 2024 was a year of intentional experimentation.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share more with you on the future of Loam, and what kind of fundraising we will need to do to get there. For now, we want to celebrate this year, and thank you again for being a part of our circle of care.
More soon.
Kate
PS: Gift Loam to friends or grow your Loam library with the code READ20 for 20% off our online bookstore this week!