Rot, Gods Behaving Badly, and a Retreat: July '25 Newsletter

Getting back in the saddle...or not?

Hello friends,

2025 has turned out to be a year of deep internal work, particularly on my health.  In January, I got thrown off a horse and fractured my spine—ouch!  A month of total bed rest followed by six months of rehab and I'm back to 'mostly' normal.   This injury upset all my routines and plans, from travel and event management to how I support my body for work and how much I can do any given day.   

I've had many years of dealing with chronic health issues to help me with the emotional upheaval of such a significant injury. I'm not "doing fine": I've had to refocus all my tools and trust in the support of others.  Injury and aging are powerful forces--I'm sad at the loss of access to a hobby that brought me such joy.   I'm also discovering how limits provide space to make different choices  and invest in other practices.  I'm focusing on smaller communities and more local networks, as you'll see below.

While I'm still providing online and limited in-person somatic coaching and counseling, I'm deeply invested in shifting that to group and educational spaces. I've also rejoined the Inclusive Therapists platform: I love their intersectional and decolonial approach to thinking about care-- stay tuned for ways I'm exploring making that more sustainable and accessible for everyone.  Everyone including myself!

Upcoming and Recent Appearances:

Rot Witch: the Body as a Decaying Ecosystem

19 August: Join me live online (or grab the recording) at Salem Witch Fest, 5 days of intersectional educators in all things witch-adjacent.  You can sign up for individual classes or get general admission tickets for the whole event.  All tickets come with access to archived recordings.  In this somatics-based class we explore getting comfortable with death, aging, and disability through an ecological and disability justice lens. Single class, day, and whole event tickets are available.

Why am I calling myself a Rot Witch? In today's world especially we need more disruptive power: accepting the title of witch is both an act of reclaiming a slur used against me when I was young as well as deepening back into activist, upstart, and queer femme spaces of identity and empowerment that have always been part of my communities and identities.  And Rot is beautiful: as my friend CSE Cooney so poetically writes about in Carrion Returns.

A rotting leaf in the background, white text in the foreground saying "Salem Witch Fest presents: Rot Witch: The Body as A Decaying Ecosystem" with Sam Savage. Tuesday, August 19th 10:00AM (EST) -online tickets available - Salemwitchfest.com

Summer's End

12-14 September, near State College, Pennsylvania:  join my design collaborator and instigator T. Rodriguez and me for a weekend retreat designed to help get your creative project across a milestone..   We love the Colerain Center --we hosted and performed in a delightfully queer production of Much Ado About Nothing at this location in May and are returning in September to open a supportive container and relaxed space to get all manner of creative projects completed.  Check out what makes us uniquely suited to support your project. https://www.mothspire.com/retreat-summers-end/))

This is a very small container with only 6 guest rooms available.  The latest you can apply is August 15th!

Performers on the porch at the May 2024 Shakespeare Residency in front of an audience on the lawn at the Colerain Center for Education, Preservation, and the Arts.

Effervescence and the Collective

In the last 6 months, I've engaged in some incubation and flourishment of our local game design community.  One significant milestone is the DESIGNED IN THE DMV collective, a supportive hyper-local community of table top game designers, game stores, and publishers based in a single geographic area: the DC, Maryland, Virginia area of the East Coast of the US.  In a time when building community is more important than ever (is there ever a time it is not?) we've built a lively online and in-person community designed to uplift, support, and enrich everyone: from shared table space at cons to a single catalogue for store owners to identify locally made (artisanal quality!) games to hosting game events at libraries and book stores, it invigorates me to see such great community support.  

Check us out:  https://www.designedinthedmv.org/

As a result of this collective, I've had the opportunity to panel with some incredible designers (including Elizabeth Hargrove, the creator of Wingspan, such a sweet and inclusive-minded designer)  check out our recent panel on why Games are for Everyone. ((https://www.mothspire.com/games-are-for-everyone/))

Thanks to our collective work, our games are in local libraries and on the shelves of a good number of local bookstores.  Let me know if you see our games around town!

And stay tuned...I'm thinking about an Effervescent Collective on discord: a project I hosted during 2020-22 and may bring back for wholesome peer support. Let me know if you are interested in chatting there.

Gods Behaving Badly: Gorgon's Garden

We've got a lot of game development cooking under the hood (mixed metaphors are fun).  I'm most excited about the playful card game we've playtested around town this winter.

 In Gorgon’s Garden, players take the role of the Hesperides. Sick of Zeus’ flagrant behavior towards mortals, they decide to do something about it. To fool Zeus in one of his many disguises, the players describe everyday (and not so everyday) objects in the most delectable, enticing language they can muster to redirect Zeus’ attention towards something that won’t cause further harm to the mortal world. But watch out! Don’t throw the mortals under the bus either, because Hera is watching and she wants Zeus out of the house!

Note that as a consent educator, this game uses innuendo and trickery to take on the serious issue of power dynamics and non-consent. Zeus is one of the Big Creeps in mythology, and this game takes that dynamic and turns it around.

We're aiming at an October launch on Kickstarter, in time for spooky season. You can see some sample art on our own site and/or sign up on our Kickstarter pre-launch page now.

And that's it for now: look forward to slightly more regular posting, about emotions, what I'm writing, and living with joy under late stage crapitalism both here and at my Patreon.

Warmly,

Sam

PS.

I've got a whole lot of writing to tell you about next time, along with some news from the foster care alumni/survivor community, and some other games in dev. If you want to just know about creative side work, join our newsletter at MothSpire. This one will largely remain somatics and education based.