coming to our

Senses

Previous Issues Coming To Our Senses Zine

Coming To Our Senses is our community zine. It’s infused with the Haven’s spirit and offers a platform to explore the rich intersections of high sensitivity, creativity, and the world around us.

Each issue begins life with a “Phrase Maze” conversation — a broad, playful prompt that we build on together throughout the month. Every volume becomes a snapshot in time, capturing what feels most alive in and around us during that season.

The zine is a creative playground. It reflects a messy and often surprising process. A space to experiment, reflect, and share without the pressure to polish. There’s no need to get it perfect (there’s always next month), which makes it a gentle antidote to the demands of performance culture.

I also create an immersive audio/video version. It’s a kind of sound anchor — not just something to consume, but something to sink into. The music and narration is recorded to help you slow down, rest, and reflect.

We gather in the Kota to experience each new issue together. These sessions offer a rare opportunity to give our full attention to something. Many members say the experience feels deeper, richer, and more resonant when shared in community.

You can view the latest issue below.

What is a Zine?

Zines (short for magazines or fanzines) are handmade, self-published collections of writing, art, photography, and other media. They are created outside mainstream or traditional publishing systems. Rooted in DIY culture, zines have long been used to share perspectives that don’t often find space elsewhere.

They’ve flourished in countercultures, liberation movements, and communities on the margins because anyone with paper and a pen can make one. You don’t need permission or polish. Just a desire to explore, express, and connect.

For us, our community zine, Coming To Our Senses is a living artefact. It captures our shared ideas through messy, poetic, curious, and playful means - as much process as it is product. It gives fleeting form to fragments of thoughts, hunches, and feelings. As well as providing information and reflections on familiar and novel ideas. It’s something to be with, not just read or understood, but experienced and explored.

Why Do We Create a Zine?

I was drawn to the zine format because it reflects so much of what matters in The Haven. I come from a background steeped in DIY and indie approaches to music, where expression doesn’t need to be sanitised, packaged, or tied up with a neat takeaway.

There’s something powerful about creative work that doesn’t tell you exactly what to think, but invites you to bring your own meaning to it. That’s what Coming To Our Senses is. It’s not designed to teach or perform. It’s a space for honest, collaborative creative curiosity.

Each issue begins in the unknown. We start with a Phrase Maze, then follow threads of resonance as they emerge. By the time we gather to experience the final zine, I often don’t know which parts will land — and that’s part of the magic. It’s a shared exploration, full of unexpected moments of insight and recognition.

This is what sensitivity means to me. Not just a trait to talk about, but a way of being. A way of noticing. A nudge to create.

Coming To Our Senses emerges from foundation of sensory sensitivity. It offers a space to notice and respond the world as it is, in its beauty, pain, and contradictory confusion.

It’s a gentle rebellion against productivity and perfectionism. A place to play and process, without rushing toward outcomes or objectives. Each issue is a quiet reminder that there are other ways to be alive together.

A quick note: We explore deeply, and sometimes that means giving space to difficult topics. One story in this issue, Justice (De)Served (11:12–24:09), covers Lisa Montgomery and includes mention of child sexual abuse, trafficking, familial violence, a brutal homicide, and the events surrounding her death sentence. There’s a heads-up in the video with instructions for skipping ahead if this feels like too much to hold right now.