How to Have a Fun, Anti-Capitalist Summer
Ever miss being a kid at summer camp? What if joy was your most powerful rebellion?
Recently, I gathered with a small coven of Glitter Joyriders to trade spells of economic rebellion, laughter, and lightness in a world heavy with capitalism.
Together, we practiced turning toward the internalized narratives about money and capitalism, feeling their weight, and then lifting our hearts toward freedom and lightness.
I keep noticing that the people I love most in the US are struggling right now.
And many of them believe, deep down, that they’re somehow to blame for their unhappiness.
I don’t buy it.
I’m not buying much these days—neither the grim stories of despair around me, nor the stuff on Amazon that I used to try and fill a hole inside me.
Instead, I’m practicing lightheartedness in the face of oppression, as countless ancestors and forebears have done before me.
How do I stay alive, keep my flame burning bright, when horror surrounds me?
I’ve started doing spiritual practice in unusual spaces: the dump, the crematorium, the mall.
Can I find freedom here? And here? What about here?
The most radical way I can think of to live with a light heart inside of capitalism is to radically orient my days around what delights me most.
Like Poetry. Magick & Ritual. Perfume. Play. Somatics. WATER!
Out of this conversation with readers, a spark lit in me—what if we gathered again, more intentionally, to practice joy as resistance?
What if I made a summer camp for adults?
Welcome to Camp LightHeart!
No lie—it’s heavy out there. And that’s exactly why we need more levity.
Camp Lightheart is a five-week joyful rebellion against burnout and boredom—join for one week or all, pay what you can, and spritz rosewater on our revolution.
Think crafts, games, potions, silly songs.
But also reverence, depth and care.
Camp Lightheart is my answer (or maybe question?) as to how we can thrive in atypical times that require the best of us: our hearts, our creative minds, and our capacity for evolution.
Camp is an experiment for grown-ups tired of the heaviness of being we experience in late capitalism.
Camp LightHeart is uplifting, but with teeth: playful, potent, and made for these times.
The throughline is joy.
Each week, we’ll explore a new theme — from sacred clowning to perfume as a portal — designed to reignite your silliness, playfulness, and aliveness.
This isn’t toxic positivity or spiritual bypass.
This is actual lightheartedness: like a phoenix rising from the depths of grief, bathing in glitter, and then spritzing itself with rosewater before reemerging to fight like hell!
We’ll meet twice a week on Zoom with a joyful, friendly crew.
Cuz community and friends are one of the most necessary ingredients for revolution.
Mondays for playful practices, Saturdays for embodied integration.
In between, I'll send simple invitations for solo exploration: scent experiments, clown rituals, creative prompts, and subversively silly field trips into your real life.
Weekly Camp Themes
Week 1: How to Be Like Water
Week of May 19
How can water help you release and be freer, in body and heart?
The theme of this week is Dissolving, Flowing, & Sparkling.
Can water teach us how to soften, dissolve, and move again?
This week, we hydrate like mystics.
We make potions. We put our bodies in water. We play like dolphins and manatees.
A soft return to feeling good.
Especially for those who feel too heavy to float right now.
Vibe for this week: Let me be like water by Lo Wolf
Week 2: Smell This Poem
Week of June 2
How can a living a poetic life nourish you, for now and forever?
The theme of this week is perfume as prayer, and poems as scent!
We perfume prayers and breathe poems.
We write scent-memoirs. We remember ourselves through smell and syllable.
This week, scent and language become altars.
Perfect for writers and non-writers alike—anyone seeking to live more poetically.
Vibe for this week: Slip Away by Perfume Genius
Week 3: School of the Holy Fool
Week of June 16
How can play reset your nervous system, loosen rigidity, and give you deeper access to creativity and fun?
For adults who have forgotten how to play.
The theme of this week is remembering how to be ridiculous.
Clowns have always been holy disruptors.
This week is pure silliness.
We loosen nervous systems and give our inner jokesters airtime.
No red nose required—just a willingness to laugh yourself alive.
Vibe for this week: Freedom by Jon Batiste
Week 4: Practicing Joy as Activism
Week of July 14
How can delight be a consistent element of your world-shaping work?
Joy can be a discipline. Delight can be a weapon.
This week, we make joy a daily ritual—for ourselves, and the world we long to build. We’ll build practices and routines that center our purpose, and create embodied pleasure rituals we use to anchor our activism.
For people who crave a daily practice (spiritual or otherwise) but struggle to make it stick.
Vibe for this week: Where is the love? by Black Eyed Peas
Week 5: Rosy Delight
Week of July 28
How can relating to roses soothe, uplift, and inspire you?
The theme this week is Roses.
The rose is sultry, silly, ancient, ablaze.
We meet her through rituals of beauty, scent, and bloom.
She becomes our guide to sensuality, softness, and sacred pleasure.
For scent geeks, beauty lovers, and anyone craving more magick.
Vibe for this week: Glorious by Ma Muse
About the Financial Exchange for Camp LightHeart
I'm continually exploring anti-capitalist practices—how can we help each other meet all our collective needs?
I practice trusting that when I share my gifts generously in service of our shared joy and healing, my own needs will be met.
Not only that, but if you come and play with me, your needs will also be met.
This is a FUN-raiser: I'm taking my daughter to her ancestral roots in Bulgaria to celebrate her birthday. We will attend the Rose Festival in Kazanlak! 🌹
All camps are by donation. There are no barriers to access.
The financial model is GAYBAGS: Give as you are able, but always give something.
If you cannot spare any cash, let me know what you’ve got to trade!
Logistics
Live gatherings on Zoom: Mondays 7 PM ET & Saturdays 12 PM ET.
Meetings will not be recorded.
Is Camp Lightheart for you?
You’re welcome if you’re feeling too heavy, tired, or serious even to imagine joy.
You’re welcome if you long to feel good, on purpose, without apology.
You’re welcome if you want to wear a ridiculous hat, sip rose tea from a chipped cup, and remember what it feels like to be a real, live person again.
Camp LightHeart is made for the tender-hearted and the wild ones—queer folks, artists, healers, weirdos.
You know who you are: the too-much ones, too sparkly, too strange.
All genders, all bodies, all backgrounds: come as you are.
Biodegradable glitter encouraged. Capitalist despair not required.
Camp LightHeart Overall Vibe: JOY (Unspeakable) Voices of Fire.
Ready to come to camp?
Make payment via Venmo:
@pavini-morayYou'll receive a welcome packet, supply list, and instructions.
Let’s play like our healing depends on it.
Because maybe it does.
In glitter, in grief, in giggles,
Pavini
Questions? Reach out by messaging me on Substack or hit reply to this email.