I’m currently writing to you from what feels like the 87th day of July. Is time extra stretchy right now, or is it always? Is it age, is it CERN, is it trauma - take your pick! (D all of the above??)

Since waaaaay back in June I’ve moved out of my studio space, where I’ve painted for the last 5 years. It’s interesting that the knee jerk reaction when I tell people that has been to offer condolences. Which has me thinking a lot about the automatic assumption that letting go of a seemingly good thing must also come with grief. You know what was actually causing me grief about it?

Not listening to life.

It’s a beautiful space, that held me well for the time it needed to. And because of that I was in the prime NY real estate golden handcuffs - relatively cheap rent, solo space, and a great big window. I’m in a season where my practice is shifting, I’m still making art, but my art wants room to breathe. And so do I. I love that space and it’s also no longer on the same path of my big North Star desires.

How long do we hold on to “good” things past their expiration date because:

- what if nothing better comes along?

- what if I regret choosing the unknown?

- what if wanting things to be BETTER is just greed when things are already good?

How much time do we waste deafening ourselves to how life wants to move through us worrying about optics, or what we think certain choices may mean about us?

I suspect an awful lot.

My Mom taught me learning to hear to your intuition is only half the work - the other half and just as important is ACTING ON IT (with discernment of course). She taught me that action is what increases intuition, and what makes it grow louder and clearer. I hear the echo of her voice saying “No one likes to be ignored, when you speak and get no response, don’t you go quiet? Intuition is no different.”

Information only helps when we can metabolize it.

Perhaps that’s the difference between hearing something and listening to it.

Anyway, I passed it off to a sweetheart of a person who I trust will be an excellent steward of the space. And though I felt the nostalgia of the last 5 years flash before my eyes as I packed up and scraped acrylic off the floor - I ultimately didn’t feel the assumed sadness. I felt complete. And as someone who has historically been inclined to white knuckle grip against change until the wheels fall off - that felt like delightful growth.

In the interim between now and whatever’s next I’ll paint at my man’s studio, it’s a farther walk but I’ll also get to play with clay.

I spent a week in an artist’s residency at JTH Tucson

I applied with a dear friend, so it was the two of us rooming and co-dreaming in the Ocotillo suite, alongside 7 other artists filling the other casitas. There was no posturing or self-importance, just lovely people making stuff in the middle of the desert. Sharing mediums, teaching, eating, and talking about death (and life!) poolside. I actually didn’t go there to paint, I went there to plant seeds around a project that my Mom and I have been talking about collaborating on for years. And because of that I ended up sketching more, painting landscapes, making cyanotypes and an ocarina - and in general be a beginner and making just to make. Free to make bad art, and in general clear the pipes.

The desert was kind to me, I try to not take it for granted when new lands meet me with mercy and grace. When you grow up in the woods and live in the city, the desert may as well be Mars. I was on my cycle and kept getting the nudge to offer some blood to the land, not an uncommon practice, but it’s not my practice per se, so I talked myself out of it. But I did go out to the grounds and introduce myself, I knew I wasn’t venturing far and so I walked out back barefoot (cue all the desert people’s appropriately furrowed brows). I stood looking out amongst all the different cacti, spikes, and blossoms, dusty earth and wide open sky, had my moment and turned to walk back in, floating in thought. I didn’t yet know about the Jumping Cholla, the small and not so small rolling cactus that attaches itself to passersby.

I got stuck by a little baby the size of a quarter. Right in the bottom of my foot. Not too many barbs. Just enough to learn this particular lesson from the desert:
Pay attention. Be here. Be present. Which was something I needed to constantly remind myself of as I wrestled with how to enter into this new project, and new way of making. And all the emotions of creating something with and for my Mom without her earthside.

I saw that poke as grace, because I could have been given that same lesson in a MUCH MORE aggressive way. Sometimes (often) favor/protection isn’t that nothing “bad” happens, sometimes (often) favor/protection is getting hit lighter. Getting a small dose of “bad” to avoid the full poison of “worse”. Going completely untouched through life is easy to ignore, while close calls bring you to the crossroads. Don’t get me wrong I hope we all remain mostly untouched by the barbs, but every now and again life gives you a wider vision of what could be so that you appreciate and truly learn from what is. And I think that’s good medicine we all need now and again.

I spent the week practicing paying attention, and being present, trying to not pressure myself with compulsive productivity, and trying to not just hear, but also listen.
Not always easy, but thankfully, simple -

And so I got the teaching, and the desert got her blood.

With love,
Allison

The ocarina in action!

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I’m a transformational guide and intuitive artist, aiming to make it easier for sensitive and creative people navigate this mad, beautiful, and wild world
with grace, clarity, and delight.

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WELL, since you last heard from me I had a touch of (relative) virality here. If you’re new here, you likely found me from this:

The internet business gurus would say after a swell of new folks on my subscriber list to catch that wave and start sending weekly emails, know, like, trust, sell sell sell.

I did not do that, in fact, I did the opposite, and disappeared for two and a half months.

Since the inception of social media there has been a battle inside me between being an online person and a hag in the woods. As an artist, creative, and in general sensitive person I think of this as the sliding scale between rigor and receptivity.

Though the world pushes us mostly toward rigor, to do over be, we really need both. Rigor because we need to express, and connect (in the horizontal), and survive. Receptivity because we need to rest, and connect (in the vertical), and thrive. And look, it’s easy to see the traps of rigor because we live in them, duh - but receptivity has some sneaky traps too, while it may sound purely noble, it sometimes is just a mask for the fear around doing what is ours to do. And it takes radical honesty and deep listening to attune to what dose of each we actually need in the moment. Not to mention the skill, strategy, and resources to give it to ourselves.

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For a couple of reasons hag in the woods won out since March:

Some of it is because I share so intimately here I didn’t know how to be as naked as I like to be in front of so many fresh eyes all at once. It’s a lot to field energetically - both the positivity and the handful of trolls who feel confronted for whatever reason and feel compelled to take that out on strangers on the internet.

Some of it is because I’ve been in a season of deep study, honing practices that are genuinely taking my session work with people to the next level, restructuring my practices (art and 1:1), including separating out and building a new home for this chapter! I’ve been learning to enjoy and prioritize beauty again! Which is a long long way from 2024 when I was having to give myself a pep talk to brush my teeth. And in general - feeling alive and in the world again for the first time since my Mom died.

Actually, if I was to give you an incredibly brief introduction to me, that is an important place to start. I am not someone who has found THEE answers, I am someone deeply committed to finding MY answers. And that is what I share here, I believe in sharing my answers and showing my work (and that is the only math analogy you will EVER hear from me ever again). Sometimes life is the fucking trenches, and sometimes it’s pure ecstacy. I am interested in both, because just like rigor and receptivity - you can’t truly feel one without knowing the other.

People’s curiosity was understandably piqued about my shamanic mentorship - and I know those words make it easy to imagine all kinds of “exotic” experience but let me keep it real with you.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand which paths and practices are right for me. It was and is a relationship that changed my worldview tremendously and one I want to do you the favor of demystifying, because I know it’s easy to jump to conclusions about what this experience must have been like (which is what I did when I entered it, and probably a little of why!). One of the most profound insights from this time in my life is that when you are seeking spiritual pursuits you often start by looking for a magic wand and what you end up finding is a shovel.

Paths with heart require mundane work.

I know that’s not sexy, but if you can really hear it, it will save you a lot of time and turmoil.

I wanted to jump to learn involved ceremonies and dense rituals and practices, which wasn’t actually what I received with her. What I received in that time was a clearer way of seeing, and relating to life and discipline. I love all the rituals and practices that are available online now, we need them too - many of us feel spiritually orphaned and are starving for teachers, and lineage, and tradition. And I wrote that note because in the quest for all of that, it can be easy to skip over the simple aligned human 101 things. Like getting your mind, heart, mouth, and feet all going in the same direction.

Those are the building blocks that create power, I said power, not control - clock the difference - true personal power, that gets fortified by not going against your SELF.

And what you’ll find is that there IS magic there too.

So as I return to my regularly unscheduled Maquettes - here’s where I’m aiming:

I can’t promise you quantity but I will promise you, to the best of my ability, care.

I YEARN for deep space, not wide space. And that’s also the soil I ask of you to help me till here. I share from the heart. Not just here, but in all I do - I share what has taken me time and effort to cultivate. I share about life, and death, and the numinous, and grief, and art, I try every day to make the human holy, because I want ALL OF US to delight in the mystical and profound joy of being alive for the time we get to be here.

I believe my real presence and your real presence put together can create a field of energy, a resting place, where the inner world gets some loving attention, where we strengthen our ability to live life as a spiritual practice (my favorite teacher!) away from the noise of the outer world for just a moment, together. Let’s do this.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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I always love hearing from you - feel free to reply directly to this email too x.

Back in December I caught the last day of the Agnes Martin show: Innocent Love - the night before the Winter Solstice. The darkest night of the year.

I can only describe it as a very New York day. The kind of day where the city you live in plays a sort of caricature of itself… lest you forget the true flavor of where you are. Starting with the man, walking up the train stairs behind me so close he stepped on my heel. Multiple times. I get when things are tight, but we cannot occupy the same exact spot, at the same exact time sir! When I (calmly) asked for space he accused me of kicking him. I asked how he thinks I’m kicking him when he’s walking behind me and my back is turned, so one could gather that I shouldn’t know he’s there.

No resolution. We grumbled and parted ways.

It was cold, do I even have to say that anymore? When is it not cold? (aside from the two days of fake spring we mercifully had this past week). A vaguely blind woman with a walker asked if I could help her across the street, and just in case you think I’m a full monk you should know … I really didn’t wan’t to. Of course I did it, I’m not a monster - but it was so cold and she moved so slow that we kept missing the light to cross, and buddy from the train on his way back to NYU or wherever, had already worked my patience. She turned to me while we waited for the light to turn green (again) and asked “are you an artist?”. I told her I was and asked what made her say so. “oh I can just tell.” On the long leisurely walk across 10th Ave amidst intermittent car horns and her yelling at people to shut up she told me about life in the arts scene when she was young in the 80s. She’s a singer, kinda bluesy - I looked her up and she has an album on spotify mysteriously under the same profile as what appears to be a young evangelical blonde with the same name which I can’t remember now. And I can’t for the life of me find it in my search history and that is exactly why I have to start writing sooner. One of the songs was kind of a banger…but I guess you’ll just have to take my word on that.

By the time we got to the other side of the street we realized we were heading in opposite directions. After we’d spent so much quality time together I was a little sorry to say goodbye. We wished each other well.

I finally roll up to Pace Gallery to see the iconic works Agnes created in her elder years, including this poetic little sketch that was her last, found on a table at the time of her death in 2004. She was 92.

The magic in her work is that from afar you see these perfect and ethereal lines and grids, in soft palettes that seem like sublimely mixed pastel colors, except the documentary in the back shows you that she actually only used extremely thinned primary colors in the most delicate of washes. And when you get up close you see the jagged lines of the pencil bouncing across the weave of the canvas.

It’s all very ultimate truth/relative truth - The understanding you get about something from pulling way back, and the unavoidable humanity visible only through intimate proximity.

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I don’t know how, in a city of 8 million people, you can run into the same ones over and over again. But as I sat on the bench at the back corner of the gallery, I found myself looking at a man that I recognized for some reason but couldn’t quite place. As I flipped through the rolodex in my brain I remembered Derek DelGuadio’s brilliant one man show (still on Hulu, and still HIGHLY recommend) called In & Of Itself. It aired in 2020, a genuinely moving combination of mythic storytelling, magic show, and contemplation of identity. It’s one of the first (only?) filmed live shows I’ve seen that manages to capture real theatre magic (and magic magic), gasps and all. I found and followed him immediately and a couple of years later once lockdown was lifted, he shared a post about a friend his, Enrique, calling HIM the most magical person that he had ever encountered. Well, after seeing that show that’s really saying something, so I was off to do your average internet sleuthing of this magician’s magician: Enrique. Among both of these men, there is some sort of blurred line between magic trick and magic practice. In other words, I have no clue what I’m actually dealing with here. Enrique is a long time practitioner of the tarot, and (I believe) a longer time magician, and he can so precisely mimic birds they stop to chat with him.

We’re up to 2023 I’ve searched what I could about his work, and found out he lives in the city - I told myself, for some reason, if somehow I ever saw him in person, I would introduce myself out of sheer curiosity. 3 days later I see him walking toward me, I thought “wow, that was fast” whoever I made this unspoken agreement with clearly wanted me to cash in. He got closer, hot pink socks flashing against his pant legs as he strolled - I stopped him and said “excuse me, you don’t know me but a few days ago I came across your work and told myself that if I ever saw you on the street I’d introduce myself, and here you are.” A mysterious glint in his eyes behind his glasses, specs with one square lens and one circle lens. We chatted for a moment and he told me that he’d soon be sharing an offering about divining with birds. Well, yes of course he is, I’m in. We had some email correspondence that fizzled on my part and I saw him on the street at least two more times. I didn’t say anything those times because I was worried I was going to look like a stalker at this point. Then life kept life-ing, and then totally imploded (for me).

Now, I’m back in this stark white gallery sitting on a hard white bench. Watching a projection of Agnes Martin mix her paints and trying to place this man from the corner of my eye, and though there’s a bit more grey on him now, it hits me.

“Excuse me, do you talk to birds.” ”Yes, I do.”

He answered, with zero hesitance and just as casually as if I’d asked the time. And that’s New York for you.

We exchanged pleasantries, but with some people it feels insulting to your own body to engage in small talk for too long. Finally, I told him - listen, what I’m really skirting around is that my Mom died. He didn’t shy away, and I really appreciate that. Death makes you very aware of two subtle qualities in people: those that can really be with it, and those that can’t. That’s not a moral judgement, just a distinction I never had the eyes to see before. Though brief, we talked about life, and art making, and making a dollar, and Agnes, and our mutual love of New York and the magic you can only find here. I tell him New York get’s a bad wrap, and though it asks a lot of you, I feel a deep kinship with this place. For inexplicable reasons it feels like home and did almost immediately since I got here 11 years ago. We talk about how, especially in spiritual spaces people love to shit on this city with a never ending list of: too this, too that, too much everything essentially. But I told him something that has been with me since a realization from the jungle of Colombia (Colombia heart of the world, not Columbia University):

New York IS Nature.

Collectively we have a habit of separating city from country as if the country belongs to the earth and the city does not. Man made material feels energetically different, of course… but where the country gives you an abundance of wildlife, the city gives you an abundance of human life. I had a mentor tell me: the country is where you go to cultivate wisdom, the city is where you go to cultivate compassion.

And that’s always summed it up for me. Millions of emanations of God’s image swirling around every day. Sometimes the costume is so thick and believable you can’t see through it, like someone on your ass the entire stair climb up to the street. And sometimes you see God dressed as a blindish woman, with a runny nose, who’s so present, she pulls you into real presence too, despite yourself, and you both drop your costumes for a beat.

He new exactly what I meant and laughed in agreement. “Exactly,” he said… “the city is like the desert. Some people can handle the intensity of the desert, and some can’t.” and more than that he said “It’s so full it becomes empty again, you don’t have to go to New Guinea to hear some exotic bird to find nature, there are sparrows here.”

The conversation hit that silence where you remember that you’re talking to a stranger. He gave me his card, and he was gone.

A cream card with a sparrow in dark green ink.

I stood there alone among Agnes’ stripes. Looking at paintings titled “Happiness” “I Love Love” “Beautiful Life” and I heard:

Don’t be afraid to open your heart. Let it all in. That’s what the city helps you do.

Grace Edquist, closed her review of this show with “the modesty of her paintings — just some bands of color, with ever-so-wobbly lines of graphite — belies the intense reactions they produce. That is her genius. What happens to you when you look at her art is the art.”1

I couldn’t agree more.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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Hear me read this essay:

Happy New Year! This time of year feels like a freshly bought journal to me. It starts off pristine, a little precious, filled only with possibility. And it becomes more and more alive as you fill it. By now you’ve likely seen about a bazillion lists, and predictions, forecasts, and hacks both practical and energetic on how to make this the best year yet. But, do you know what I love most about this time? It’s that we really don’t know what’s in store for us in 2026.

What a relief. How exciting!

A friend asked me last night what I thought this year might hold. But if this wildcard of the last couple (several) years has taught me anything, it’s that trying to determine what’s coming from the outside in is mostly futile. A pacifier for uncertainty. Don’t get me wrong, I love certainty as much as the next guy. But I also think much of the beauty and delight of life rests on the mystery of it.

I believe our truest power lies in determination from the inside out.

So how does this fit with someone who loves giving and receiving intuitive readings? Well, I was given this gift by my family reader, and I’m going to pass it on to you. I met her when I was about 12. My Mom took me to a psychic fair, it was some kind of auditorium with different tables set up filled with all kinds of crystals and instruments and things I’d never seen before. Strange and wonderful objects, and strange and wonderful people. My Mom suggested we make the rounds before we chose anything or any one. She taught me to notice who and what I was naturally repelled by and who or what I was naturally drawn toward. And that when I found the right person for me, my body would know it. We made almost the full loop and there she was. A woman tucked back at a small table, dressed in black, with piercing eyes, a silver nose ring and a stark white streak at the front of her dyed black hair falling long at her sides. I looked at my Mom and said “I think I want to go to her” she said that’s who caught her eye too.

It was my first reading, she was holding hand drawn black and white cards she made herself. And she told me this:

“Nothing I’m going to tell you is set in stone, I am going to talk to you about probabilities. Things that, if you keep going down the path as you are - will likely happen. But if you change what you do, it sets you off on a different path. And if you meet anyone in the future who talks to you in absolutes or as if they are all knowing, RUN.” You can see why we hit it off.

And I’ve seen her point confirmed time and again, in my life, in my friend’s lives, and in the lives of people who come to me for guidance. In my sense of things, it touches on the Observer Effect in quantum physics - essentially, that the act of looking at a thing changes the thing. Simply because we are now interacting with it. Which most definitely isn’t to say don’t look, but I find it most helpful, useful, and frankly, accurate to only look a few steps ahead. And that the WHAT that may happen will always be secondary to (and in part, dependant on) WHO we are being in any given moment.

We are always ACTIVE contributors. Co-creators. My own observations in all these years since, has grown to include that I do think we have some pivotal and unavoidable life-moment happenings. Like a quality of a thing our soul is here to experience. Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Basically that. Many roads leading to a few destinations.

If you’re unfamiliar with those, the best way I can describe how I perceive it, is something like - you are approaching the color blue and based on your choices and how you meet it, it could show up as sky blue, cobalt blue, or navy blue. You are going to experience blue, but the shade of it is based on you.

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For adventurers I think intuition is best used as a compass, we don’t actually want the plot spoiled, not really. We want signs that we’re on the path of our true calling, and enough guidance to help us walk it. But an adventurer must stay on their toes.

If we’re not diligent, too much foresight will lead us astray, because it makes us too comfortable. It will have us take our destination as a given, when not all promise is fulfilled. Take an acorn for instance - inside of it is the promise of an oak tree. That promise is only part of the equation, the other vital parts are: conditions, growth, development, and maturation.

Not every acorn becomes an oak tree.

Does that make you a little uncomfortable? It does me. And good - that will keep us in the game. Too much information is indigestible, as is evidenced by our current age of mass media - it’s a dopamine hit at best, and yes, a pacifier for uncertainty at worse.

And that’s actually the rot you feel inside of you.

Because on some level, every adventurer knows, without the discomfort of uncertainty, there is no adventure.

It’s why oracles speak in riddles. Because riddles require your participation.
And participation is the key to the fulfilment of your true promise.

An oracle seeks only to empower you in your own becoming.

Which path you walk is ultimately less important than choosing to walk it consciously and full of your Self. Committing to a path with all it’s blessings and all it’s consequences, until you meet the next fork in the road. And yes, sometimes you will hit a dead end and have to turn around. Sometimes you will take the slow scenic route, sometimes you take the treacherous way, sometimes you find a shortcut. You will only find which path you’ve taken by walking it, so you may as well get started.

So what contents do I think this year will hold? I don’t know.

But the good news - in a world that feels increasingly unpredictable, is that the task of the adventurer stays the same.

Which is to participate in your life, actively. Notice what you are naturally repelled by or naturally drawn toward. Your body will tell you what’s right for you. Listen to it. Feel into what really feels like true, inspired action for you, and actually do it.

You will live your life or your life will live you.

That will be true this year and every one after.

Wishing you a happy 2026 … It will be what it is and what we make of it.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

Want to go deeper?

If you want support hearing what this moment is asking of you, read more about my 1:1 sessions The Opening or go straight to my calendar here.

This week, I’ll be opening one spot for The Opening - 3 month, a container to deepen your trust and connection to your own Source knowing. Make sure you’re subscribed, or reply directly to this email to learn more.

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This video is a brief check in - it felt important to say hello beyond the written word! Especially for those of you who’ve only encountered me from here on substack. I also share more about each of the three new limited edition (30) hand-embellished prints I am releasing TODAY to create more Prosperity, Creative Power, and Magnetism in your life.

What is intentional art:

The ancients knew what modern science is now proving: our objects and environments shape us on psychological, emotional, and spiritual levels. You’ve experienced this, we’ve all walked into space and felt an immediate shift both positive (relaxed, inspired, nourished etc) and negative (spaces that make us feel clenched, unable to settle, or an all around “get me out of here”). Because everything contains energy. EVERYTHING. And we’re constantly relating to this energy, whether we’re conscious of it or not. So why not be intentional about what you put in your space and watch how your inner and outer worlds change.

Meditation Paintings:

These small works on paper are all created with a blessing in mind.
Each dash represents an intention, or mantra repeated.

This series was born in the early days of 2020 (though the very first was made in 2018 after my first silent retreat!), as an attempt to invite lightness, hope, and solace. What began as a personal practice quickly evolved into talismanic objects to serve others. They were helping people ground, deepen the connection to their own intuition, creating movement where there was once stagnation, igniting inspiration and ultimately, change. People were finding love, new work, greater ease and confidence. An anchor in the storms of life.

The three areas of focus for this print release have been the core of my personal contemplations as of late, and I’m certain I’m not alone. So let me introduce them to you:

Prosperity: Support and resources are out there. Spiritually and Materially. You are not alone. Change your mind, change your life.

Creative Power: You are a creator of your life. Create what is really yours to create. Allowing the Divine creative spark flow through you, as you.

Magnetism: You don’t need to call in everything, you need to call in the correct things. Anchor your desired frequency so the world around you reflect that.

BECOME A COLLECTOR

Thank you for being here. I’ll be back soon with essays (and more) as I continue to regain my capacity. Right now it’s all been going toward my personal practices, my work, and you know regular schmegular never ending duties like cleaning and eating well. And that’s all been very good, even when it’s not.

If you enjoy my work, or are just inexplicably fond of me please consider liking and sharing this post or the prints with someone you think might benefit. It actually, genuinely, supports me. Thank you for being in this deliciously messy, mycelium, mutuality with me, and for taking your precious time to be here (I really freakin’ mean that!).

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Your Fellow Wanderer,
Allison

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“…Allison’s work sits at the intersection of intuition, artistry, and healing. Her presence offers both structure and surrender- a rare combination that lets you relax fully into the experience. If you’re holding a lot, navigating transition, or craving reconnection with your inner compass, clarity, and connection, I can’t recommend this process enough.” — N.E.

Learn more at allisonstrickland.co

Do we actually live in a noisier world now or is the world wide web just like standing next to the speakers at a concert? The musicians playing at their usual volume but technology boosting the signal? Or, are we actually spinning into chaos as the entropic universe does her thing? I’m not sure, but it’s probably a bit of both. Either way - claiming it’s harder to human now seems pretty relative, but I do think we are being asked to hold (and definitely witness) more than ever before.

To face atrocities, injustice, and crazy-making the world over, while needing to do another load of laundry. Noticing how it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell what’s real or illusion, with Ai spreading throughout our lives whether we like it or not, while figuring out what to make for dinner. Maybe you put that question into Chat while wondering how many gallons of water it took to tell you to make a fajita with the 5 ingredients you need to use in your fridge. Am I rebuilding my business, or preparing for the apocalypse? I’m not sure but it’s probably a bit of both.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what is mine to do, at this chapter in my life, at this chapter in history. I would bet you’re in some version of that contemplation too. I do want to relieve you of some guilt around what “doing enough” might look like in a landscape that often puts the failings of the world on the shoulders of the individual. Yes, the Divine system we are a part of includes us, and we are not the entirety of the system. I think listening for the true personal call of the moment and doing what is ours to do, will always serve the whole. It’s subtle, it takes skill, discernment, the ability to both notice your own bullshit and avoidance, and give yourself grace for inevitable blindspots and genuine limitations. It takes real listening. It takes faith in a greater harmony at play.

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I brought Maquette over to Substack thinking I was creating a space akin to an online studio visit. Talking art practice, spiritual practice… in that order. If you’ve been here for a while you know that for me each of those things informs the other. For most of my life I’ve walked these paths in tandem. Since childhood they’ve been inextricably linked because they are the only things I’ve never been able put down (I periodically try to put the art down, one time seriously… “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back IN”1). These two seemingly separate, but compatible paths, started to converge in 2018 when I created the very first meditation painting after my first silent retreat.

My art practice started to birth itself directly from, and as a result of, my spiritual practices.

No one taught me how to do this, I was a direct apprentice of this body of work - I’ve been shown breadcrumb by breadcrumb what it wants to be. Which is largely why I didn’t start out talking about it as straight up intuitive work - because at first, I didn’t know that’s what it was. I have been taught since childhood how to honor, listen to, and hone my intuition, but was also told to keep it private because (before the internet’s slight mainstreaming of esoteric and metaphysical spirituality) people were probably just going to think I was crazy. However, like most things that the more straightlaced among us consider “new age”, it turns out what I’m doing isn’t something new at all, it’s something very very old.

So why am I telling you all of this?

Well, it’s because the wheels of change keep on turning and the next few breadcrumbs have been laid down.

I obviously didn’t or couldn’t have known that the bulk of my shares here would be about the deeply life changing transformation that was walking my Mom to the end of her life and the subsequent grief or mourning of that time. But I keep thinking about a friend joking that my practices must have gone out the window - but it was actually quite the opposite - they rooted deeper. My practices, my connection to myself, my connection to God/Source/Spirit were the only reason I made it through, am making it through.

And not just making it through.

I can honestly say I like who I am more now, than ever.

I know who I am more now, than ever. And I am that, more now, than ever.

And this is what these current challenging times are offering us ALL if we can see it for the opportunity that it is. We may not like our circumstances but that doesn’t mean there isn’t gold in them if you know how to mine for it.

Skillful intuitive, and spiritual work, does not eradicate uncertainty or simply pacify the pain of the unknown (though it certainly soothes it). It is to support and fortify you so you can FACE uncertainty with greater clarity, ease, and yes… grace. It teaches you how to see in the dark and how to relish in the pleasures and privilege of being here.

People have often asked me if I would teach how to make meditation paintings - which I get why people ask - but I honestly think it would be boring to teach and boring to learn. Because at the end of the day I’ve only taught you how to paint a meditation painting when I could actually guide you into something so much more fruitful.

How to be an instrument for what is yours to do.

How to listen to, trust, and stay in connection to your OWN Source knowing. So that you can continue to walk towards and through uncertainty instead of constantly seeking some fleeting momentary relief from it.

To create your life and the experiences and things you want in it.

And that doesn’t have to look like art making, though it might include it. It can look like, spaciousness, devotion, inspiration, purpose, passion, groundedness, self trust.

Making your way in the world, instead of the world dictating how your engage with it.

Because when you are connected to yourself and your own Source wisdom, you become uncontrollable. And when you are uncontrollable, that’s when your true power is born. You don’t get swallowed up by the waves of life, you become the steady eye of the storm.

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I recently shared a Thich Nhat Hanh quote: “When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person remained centered, it was enough. They showed the way for everyone to survive.”

I believe that our remembering and the embodiment of our remembering is enough to create the world we want to live in. I believe transformation, can be simple, and easeful, even if it’s not always easy.

Tending to your spiritual life is not a luxury. It is vital. More now, than ever.

And you don’t have to do it alone.2

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Your fellow wanderer,

Allison

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I don’t know how it’s possible that I am already writing to you on the other side of 1 year since my Mom died. Time is so… strange and malleable, since I was a kid I always had a thing with dates, to use them as little mental time machines. Sometimes a date strikes me and I think “what was I doing on this day last year” and I usually notice how utterly and completely different things were then, and then the thought of the pure potentiality of what this date may hold next year meets me with some hybrid of wonder and trembling at just how much can change in such a short distance. How many dates will be important markers to you in the future but you don’t know it yet.

I keep thinking of the adage about raising children: the days are long, but the years are quick. That was my experience of caregiving, and most certainly my experience of grief so far too.

This time last year I was in the process of clearing out my Mom’s apartment with my partner’s (truly magnificent) help. Her lease was up September 1st so there was no time to spare. I’m grateful for that. It was enough time to not feel like a complete mad dash, but not so much time that inefficiency could creep in. When I look back on the montage of this year that took me from last August 23 to this one, I see: being snapped back to New York as quickly as I was snatched out of it, suddenly walking these city streets again felt like waking up in a daze from what must have been the worst dream ever. I began the second, and final, year cycle of an artist’s residency though I’m still not sure how I even managed to leave the house in September, but thankful I did. Dancing to songs my Mom played in the car, crying on the floor, being a witness to how death brings out the absolute best in people and the absolute worst. Trying to comb through matted and long neglected hair. Being held by friends literally and figuratively. Telling stories around the table. Calls with my sister. Long aimless walks till my feet ache. Laughter. Hours upon hours at my altar. Old 90s movies. Comfort food. Learning how to put myself first, consistently, for first time in my life. Actually, so many firsts, all the firsts. The firsts you imagine - New Year and Birthdays, and the firsts you don’t - like hearing the phone ring absolutely certain it’s her calling and then remembering it all all over again. It’s astonishing how privy loss makes you to the absolute everything happening all at once. How love, passed through death makes all joy have a little bit of sadness, and all sadness have a little bit of joy. Well, is that love or is that just living more life, I’m not sure.

In fact, I’ve never felt more sure and more unsure about so much. How fulling owning what you know, and what you don’t know are both seats of power. Though our culture of expertise and authority only seems to value half of that. And it’s true, sometimes the uncertainty of it all feels fucking awful, but it also has the ability to keep you present in the most beautiful and life giving way.

From these seats of power we see - we have SO much ability to shape our lives, and not as much say as we’d like. We get to use our will force to create the world and sometimes we have to use our will force to simply face the world. In this great dance, we lead and follow. And it seems that when you get used to one you have to switch to the other. We can exhaust ourselves trying to stay in one of these lanes, or accept the ever present both. Fate AND free will. Thrust and surrender. My will, thy will.

Several years ago I had a very impressive astrology reading with a frenchman on Skype audio. That is until he told me that this life I was to learn how to let go. Can you think of anything more annoying to say to a person? I can’t. That was before I, in earnest, encountered the Eastern wisdom streams that tell you at every turn “Hey, just so you know, you’re going to lose everything and everyone you love, including all of your self concepts, because … hate to break it to you - there is actually no such thing as an inherent self anyway - you’re gonna get old (if you’re lucky), you’re gonna get sick, you’re definitely going to die, the only thing you can count on is that everything is going to constantly change. And I know that sounds heavy, but it’s actually all okay. No really, all of it.” (abridged).

It is a practice. To know what you want but still hold getting it lightly. To open fully to the depths and to the heights even though, try as you might to dig your heels in against it, or white knuckle grip to hold onto it, we don’t stay anywhere. We can’t stop the tides. We can’t stop the breath. We can only learn to ride them.

When my Mom was still in rehab and her speech was just coming back, I remember our first longer form conversation. She could express herself more but not without effort. It kind of felt like talking to someone in their second language. It’s a bit of a puzzle for both of you. You know what they’re saying but there are limitations in the way they can say it. We were laying next to each other in the facility bed, both absolutely raggedy from the last month. She asked if I was sad. I said yes and no, sad for what happened to her but happy I can be there with her. I told her I hadn’t felt ready and she asked if I felt ready now. I told her I did, I could tell there was a swell of pride or relief in her and even better, it was true. I told her when I feel stuck on something that mostly I just think of what she might do. She said:

“There are glory moments… Some things just HAVE to happen. And things come together or things fall apart and still… things are coming together. You don’t have to do anything…you have to do something. But you don’t have to do everything.”

What a contemplation. A bit of a koan. Turns out it’s good for grief too.

When absolutely nothing makes sense. For the times you have to give yourself a pep talk to brush your teeth. Or when life starts knocking on your door again, always before you’re ready. Even to do the things you want to do. When there are people to see, or your work to get back to. My sense is she was telling me that mostly it’s okay to just be present. And to trust that you’ll know what each moment is asking for. At the end of the day, my Mom’s main love language is teaching, learning, exchanging knowledge, curiosity, perspective. And maybe that’s why I still feel her so close. Why I’ve felt her hand and guidance all year. She knows how to mine every situation for gold, and that’s been my inheritance. So maybe instead of a year of letting go, it’s really been a year of showing up. Responsible for some things, but not every thing.

Messy, imperfect, heart broken, heart open, different, but here.

Really here.

You’re Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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Feel a resonance with my words? Let’s go deeper: I have space in September for The Opening (my 1:1 oracular readings) and Ignite - my small Custom Meditation Paintings.

Last week I served as the Artist in Residence for Kripalu Yoga and Wellness Center’s annual Amplify summit. Kripalu gathered together many facilitators, teachers, and wisdom keepers, in community to hold classes, lectures, and conversations to discuss and practice the many ways of: How We Heal.

I sat in on several of these sessions with the intention of creating a talisman to distill, anchor, support, and ignite the weeks activation.

This audio supports the Custom Meditation Painting from the main contemplation that emerged for me throughout the week:

The medicine of Snake.

For seekers, sensitive hearts, works in progress, those experiencing times of deep change and transition. Those feeling the discomfort of no longer being who they were, but not yet who they will become. Those ready to step fully into the next chapter.

As snaked kept swirling around me I looked into exactly why they shed their skin1 and these three answers prompted questions that feel supportive to this current lunation (and really any time of transition):

• Snake sheds skin to accommodate growth, because as they grow their skin does not. Because it’s old and worn out. They shed to repair damage, and eliminate parasites. - What am I ready to grow into, repair, release? What am I no longer willing to give my energy to?

• Snake sheds often before reproduction and after giving birth. - What am I ready to give birth to? Who am I becoming?

• Snake starts the shedding process by rubbing up against something hard (like a rock or tree). - How is what appears to be a challenge actually helping me?

Below you’ll find the painting, inspired by shed snake skin. Each dash represents the mantra and title of the painting repeated “My Release Is My Becoming.”

For the first time ever, in partnership with Kripalu, I will be releasing 50 limited edition hand embellished prints. Each print, cut to fit a 9x12in frame (including border), will be meditated upon with 300 original painted dashes. To support you with deepening into, and actualizing this intention. For your home, sacred space, or altar. As both art object, and energetic tool.2

You can purchase your print on the pre-sale page here before it’s official launch this week.

Some of what I’m shedding: Shoulds/Shouldn’ts. Obligation. Mistaking Servitude for Service. Perfectionism. Senseless doubt. Seeking external safety. But more on all that next time.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

I didn’t know just how much I was constantly doing until my life came to a screeching halt. Those of you who have experienced the acute grief of losing someone you love are familiar with the place I’m in now. After death, year 1. Month 8 to be exact - to the day, as I write this. I’ve done and am doing my best to really meet this moment. And in doing so have come to learn that it seems fairly rare to have the space and/or resources to tap out of work and responsibilities and actually, truly, pause. Part of my grief has been grieving our communal lack of access to full on, out loud, grief. On our own, or with each other. The pause has felt deeply nourishing and wildly uncomfortable. Nourishing because when I feel into what is mine to do right now, nothing feels truer than mourning my Mom. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more on purpose. And uncomfortable because I, like most of us, have learned to equate stillness with doing nothing - and “doing nothing” for too long kicks up my survival brain. How will all the things be taken care of if I’m not the one taking care of them? It requires deep trust and even deeper faith in the people around you, God/the intelligence of our system, and yourself. We may have different edges, but no one’s immune to having them tested.

This hasn’t been the kind of romantic stillness at the surface of a forest lake. More like the goopy stillness of the ocean floor. Dark, mysterious, you can feel you’re not alone, but in the way that you can’t quite make out what surrounds you, what’s down is up, and what’s up is down. It’s impossible to know which direction the shore is and no matter how fast you try to move it doesn’t feel like you’re making any headway and so all there is left to do is stop fighting with force and give into weightlessness… That kind of stillness. Grief wrings you out, which I imagine is what the puritanical stiff upper lip is meant to counter -

Grief isn’t productive but it takes a lot of stamina.

And it is essential. And ecstatic in a way. So ugly it’s beautiful. At times psychedelic. And unavoidable. Because despite how much we’re sold all the mindset hacks and manifestation techniques. There’s pain, illness, and death here (Earth) along with pleasure, vitality, and constant rebirth. We’re meant to taste it ALL. And as Martín Prechtel says “Grief is Praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses”.

Grief is holy. Because grief is a part of life. And life is holy. Beginning, middle, and end. The beginnings of things tend to be easier (mostly). If not easier, then at least what we collectively orient toward and value. The pure potentiality of what may be. The new baby. The new relationship. The new job. The new passion project. The middle is trickier because we have to contend with what is, but we still get to feel around the room for where our freewill starts and fate stops. And then there’s the ending - looking behind us into the big what WAS where you can make meaning, and your sense of truth, but you can’t fuck with facts.

And the fact is, what was, is no more. Regardless of closure, it is complete.

I suppose I’m actually talking about something beyond stillness. And that’s receptivity. You can feel the subtle difference now if you want to. Still your body… feel the pause. Not quite rigid, but a little stiff, it might feel brittle, or solid. Now take a deep breathe and feel yourself receive. You might be able to feel it on the exhale too. You become a little more porous, fluid, flexible. Much like resting back into the weightlessness that lifts you to the water’s surface. Stillness fortifies you, receptivity asks you to give in. Expand.

To the outside eye they look no different, but the inner posture is night and day.

In 2018 I created my first meditation painting1 and it was living at a small bodywork studio in Flatiron that I was also doing energy work out of. I didn’t know it at the time but it was the precursor for the work I’m doing now. It was the beginning of my very underground but public practice and I was finding my way. A woman working with another practitioner saw the painting and asked about me - I’m not sure the details but she asked if I worked remotely. Her mother was dying and she wanted to know if I would do a session with her. My first reaction was terror, I immediately called my mentor to make sense of what to do and why this came to me while I still felt so green. Not everyone is meant to work with everyone, that is TRUE. But she asked if what I was feeling was that I genuinely did not have medicine for her or if I was simply afraid. Because one of those things was about me and one was about her. I decided to not make it about me, and trust Spirit. I spent a lot of time preparing myself, to meet this with reverence and care. I was prepared to meet the heaviness of the situation. But as I sat with them, and read for them I was truly shocked by what I found.

The deepest sense of true beauty and joy.

I think we were all a bit surprised, at least the daughter and I were. The mother couldn’t speak, but her daughter told me she was smiling. A woman on her deathbed. With all the things we think that means. Everything I thought that meant. And she was experiencing something totally different. I expected grief and instead found praise.

I think of this now because I know my Mom is guiding me towards feeling pleasure again.

Not to numb or soothe, but to savor life.2 I’m out of practice so there’s a relearning happening. Often to the outside eye they look no different, but the inner posture is night and day.

And my big learning currently is around rest and receptivity.

Because I’ve been in battle mode (as the vast majority of us have been or are still to some degree). Not just last year doing my best to advocate and care for my Mom. But before that too. Surviving the litany of traumatic events we’ve been enduring since 2020 + being self employed which has it’s own traumas. The thing I keep reflecting on since the beginning of last summer is:

Survival mode robs you of life.

What a balancing act it takes to be alive. We’re so resilient and so fragile.

The cultural zeitgeist is increasingly talking about rest. Cause we tired - I don’t have to tell you that. But where and what we’re meant to rest into feels a bit more elusive. How to feel trust and safe in the resting, more foreign still. Especially since that same zeitgeist has for so long framed rest as a reward, not a basic need. The ever dangling carrot. And so when we meet the times in our life where rest is not elective it can feel like we’re getting swung straight into some abyss. It’s giving “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” and I hate that for us. Because that makes sleep feel annihilating. That’s a common fear around grief, that if we let ourselves really go in, that we won’t be able to get back out. And there is some truth to that, because we won’t get out… the same. That’s what the Venusian Mysteries teach us - Inanna, Astghik, Ishtar - and Easter too, that we are on a constant life - death - life cycle. Heaven - Underworld - Heaven. Not simply opposing forces, but sisters.

Pain Pleasure.

Forgetting Remembering.

Tears Laughter.

Immanence Transcendence.

Horror Awe.

Rigor Receptivity.

Sleep Wakefulness.

Grief Praise.

All sisters.

All providing sacred context for the other.

The deeper you know one, the deeper you may know the other. You must leave home to return home. You sacrifice innocence for wisdom, a broken heart for compassion. Becoming love is the promise.

I’m finding that’s something to rest into.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

Yeah I said the G word.

What I’m about to share may feel a little edgy so I think it’s helpful to share two foundations of my practice so it’s a bit clearer what lens I’m looking through:

Honoring Divinity without Dogma: There is a Divine Creative Intelligence that moves us all. This force is referred to by many names God/Source/Spirit etc - I, personally, find all these names fit, and all fall short. That’s the ineffable for you, and I’m okay with mystery. I believe if we spend more time building our personal understanding and relationship with this energy and less time trying to define or control other people’s concept of it, the world will be a saner place.

All True paths lead to One: I follow what I consider to be good teachings and I don’t think any one path has a monopoly on that. I continue to learn from multiple wisdom streams and lineages, I’m not promoting “dabbling”, far from it - I’ve found feeling connected to multiple ways of understanding is actually a slower path, and requires more patience to cultivate. I respect and revere these paths, and I hold them with an open hand. At the end of the day I believe what Ram Dass says, that ultimately, all methods are traps. I’m most interested in the juice, not the cup that holds the juice.

And away we go.

A lot of people feel angry at God. And being angry with God can be terrifying to face.

And I mean very specifically with, as in being open with God about it.

And, like any relationship, the lack of honesty slowly but inevitably drives a wedge.

This is a common argument I hear from atheists. “If there is a God how come there is war, and poverty, disease, so much pain. If there is a God how can they be so cruel?!” Yeah, how can S/He? There’s a lot we don’t understand about being here on Earth, and I certainly don’t have the answer to those questions. But I do see that that anger at instead of anger with shuts down curiosity. And more importantly, it can shut down the heart to engaging with the Divine Intelligence of this system entirely if you let it. If you are supposed to love me, how could you ever hurt me in any way? (Actually a compelling argument that God did indeed make man in “His” image.) and so they turn their back.

And.

This lack of honesty can also look like denial. The clinging to the identity that “I’m too spiritual to be angry at God” because if I’m angry at God maybe that means I don’t have enough faith, which might mean I’m not a good person after all. Maybe I’ll be punished for my hubris. Maybe if my thoughts create my reality I’m just feeding more “negativity” into the feedback loop of life. You know, good old fashioned spiritual bypass. Left unaddressed, this makes Spirit a friendly acquaintance. You exchange niceties, but getting to the real nitty and gritty, no way? Because what if this friendly acquaintance only likes a part of you? Could they really love ALL of you? To ask that requires real faith. Real trust. And if you’re too afraid to find out, you never quite get beyond skimming the surface. With people or with God.

I grew up Christian, I love Buddhist philosophy, I have abandonment issues, I’m a Libra rising, I’m a Black. Woman. In America - Trust me, I know what it’s like to jockey for president of the Good Guy Club.

But more than all of that, thank God/Spirit/Souce/Karma, I’d rather have the ugly truth, over a beautiful lie. And I suspect if you’re still reading - so would you.

Anger is probably my biggest demon, and mostly because it wasn’t until WELL into my adulthood that I even knew it was there. And then once you know it’s there…what do you even DO with it. I’m getting a lot of practice with this as of late.

Fires burning inside me as the fires burn the Earth. Battling real and imagined slights all over the place. Watching who shows up, and how… and who doesn’t, in this - my most vulnerable time. And, if I’m not careful, neatly knee-jerk filing people into “good friends” and “bad friends”. Promoting and demoting people, I’m watching this closely, because on a soul level this is stupid and I know it, but on a human level appropriate access is wise. Being met, is a real and sacred need. And yes, it is true, it hurts like hell when people either can’t or don’t want to meet you.

And what I keep coming back to -

There is no obligation. No one is obligated to read my mind. Or agree with me. Or behave how I want them too (this is my least favorite realization). No one is obligated to understand my experience, even though it feels really nice when they do. Just as I am not obligated to anyone else. To entertain certain behaviors even if I can, on some level, understand them. But I’m finding it feels better when the action isn’t a pushing away, but more a letting everyone off the hook.

Including myself.

With some ever-shifting balance of responsibility, accountability, and grace.

Too much responsibility leads to - it’s all on me.

Too much accountability leads to - you owe me something.

Too much grace leads to - doormat.

Too little responsibility leads to - woe is me.

Too little accountability leads to - you’re playing me for a fool.

Too little grace leads to - declaring enemies.

People don’t owe me unconditional love. The only human that did love me unconditionally is not alive anymore. And I’m lucky to have felt that. That’s most certainly a part of my grief. Relating to people requires tact, and timing.

Relating to God does not.

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Early last month, in front of my altar, I noticed I was in the longest stretch of time I’ve gone without crying. It had been several days. Perhaps my head was finally beginning to come above water a little bit? But also something inside of me felt unsettled. I haven’t done much of the questioning of: why my Mom, why this, why me… for whatever reason I haven’t really had those questions. And I have played back the tape of the last couple of years - where I could have prioritized our relationship more, how much space the dramas of being alive took up, work, busy - ness, other people. I absolutely did take having more time with my Mom, for granted. And I realized though I wasn’t railing over why it happened, I was in that moment absolutely LIVID that it happened. I mean, what the fuck. I’m so young, she’s so young, she was totally independent still. She seemed so healthy.

And I clenched. Am I giving into a poison? And Spirit, like any good true friend let me know.

You can be yourself with Me.

All of yourself. What, are you gonna pretend? For who’s sake? Are you fooling either of us? How can we ever repair if you’re not honest about the rupture. How can you expect me to meet you if you’re not giving me the opportunity to be with you in what’s actually true.

Then I got real with God, and God got real with me. I could suddenly see more truth in the situation because I wasn’t hiding truth within myself. Not as a test to get answers, holding my faith like a carrot to be dangled. Bartering with Source. No. I got real through lamentation.

I forgot about lamentation. And that lamentation is holy.

Lament is a part of grief (whatever it is you have to grieve). Lament is a part of life.

There’s so much we don’t understand. There’s extreme pain, loneliness, sickness, loveless actions, and tragedy here. Being alive will bring you to your knees. Probably the most famously known lamentation is the Biblical “Why have you forsaken me?”. In Buddhism and Hinduism it falls under Dukkha - the inevitable suffering that comes with life. And well, if Buddha and THE CHRIST are asking God what’s the deal with this place, I’m pretty sure from time to time, it’s expected that we’ll be asking that same thing too.

I think Anger is a poison, if it’s just cycling through the system indefinitely with no outlet. This is anger at. And Anger, like poison, exists. And in these (so far, very brief) moments I’ve been able to metabolize anger, express it in a way that doesn’t cause harm. It alchemizes into it’s true grace. Information. Vitality. And yes, a closer and more honest relationship with God.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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Listen, not with the mind - but as if your whole body is an ear.
Drink it in like a warm cup of tea, sip it, savor it, sink in.

For tender, aching hearts, wherever this finds you. You are not alone. We are not alone.

GOOD NEWS (and don’t we all need it). As I sit to write, it’s been exactly two months since I took my big Trustfall and I am happy to report… I. got. caught. I am thisclose (93% to be exact) to reaching my goal and I genuinely don’t have the words yet to express how it feels to have people from so many parts of my life … and complete strangers too, do what they can to make this time easier for me. Even when there is so much pulling at our attention, not least of which is that I shared that post not even a full week before the hushed tone election and the constant cacophony in general that is being alive in these times… and even still, donations came steadily in, even as I lost steam on talking about it as we entered the holiday season. The first without my Mom. Aside from the genuine relief provided by having some cold hard cash when it has been quite literally impossible for me to work - it’s also been incredibly healing in a multitude of ways which I’m sure I’ll share more of further down the road. But two things I can confidently share now:

Generosity is a life giving force.

and

Vulnerability ain’t for the weak!

I probably couldn’t have picked a more unhinged and terrible-on-paper time to ask for personal aid and attention and yet and still… here we are together, swimming in a sea of love - or at the very least solidarity. If you’d like to contribute to the last 7% you can donate here. I am eternally grateful for each and every one of you that has supported me in this way already. I’ll be sending you a more “official” thank you and an offering as I make my way back toward my practice.

One of the great gifts my GoFundMe has brought, beyond relief, is spaciousness. I have always known this as one of my deepest needs and core pleasures, even when I’m not in an acute grief process. I have always found moments of it. My beloved slow morning practices. Going for a long summer walk down brownstone lined streets, sun glittering through trees while kids squeal in the park, passing couples sharing a late morning coffee at a small and rusty bistro table on the sidewalk. Breathing in the sudden burst of a sorbet colored sky. Letting myself get lost in the city, stumbling into whatever shop or gallery calls my name. And you know, plain old rotting on the couch watching a YouTube astrology video with a bag of Salt & Vinegar chips.

Well, this is the first time in SEVERAL years that I’ve had an extended amount of truly free time. And while this certainly hasn’t felt like a vacation by any means. The space to not have to grin and bear it has been invaluable. And it’s shown me just how unaccustomed I am to this level of slowing down. How little we get taught about how to grieve or be a skillful witness to the grieving of others. It’s an endurance sport in a society that is built off speed. But speed alone isn’t good for endurance, pace is. Try as we might, no one runs fast enough to run past death. Even the sink into winter has to be reclaimed for most of us - And what is Winter but the season of death itself. The old ways honored this. Our ancestors knew. I say this as someone who previously really actually DID try to keep up with the new year new me of it all - and then as recent as last year wondered why I was totally run down by the time February rolled around. Some awareness started to come online around this then, that it just might be because January isn’t the time for running at all.

And now that I’ve been sidelined - couldn’t be in the race if I wanted to, and I assure you, I don’t. Picture me behind the metal barrier, rooting you on, holding a cardboard sign that says:

“Where are you running? There’s no where to go!”

Facing death has shown me a bit of how deeply rooted a vast majority of us have been ingrained with this constant motion. And I’m a person who isn’t even in the corporate slog. I have pretty alternative work (that I love!). I’m a person who meditates, has a spiritual practice, at this point a pretty strong one. I create with people I believe in and care about. AND I realized the two weeks after my Mom passed that it had been at least 5 years since I had taken more than two days at a time without touching into something work related. That’s right. Where I’ve fully, fo’ real “taken off” more than a weekend at a time. Yes, I’ve always still checked in with “light” work even on trips, retreats, and vacations. Many times it only took like 30 mins here and there on slower days, a sneaky way of telling myself it’s “no big deal”.

That’s on me. But it’s really insidious.

I consider myself a person with a lot of time freedom - how have I managed that and still ended up feeling cramped and claustrophobic (which had been building long before last April) without more than a sip at a time of my beloved s p a c e?

I need to create, I love dreaming - it’s a part of me, it keeps me healthy, aligned. I like working towards something. I love talking to people! Building. It helps me put my energy somewhere.

And It’s been difficult to really fully stop aside from the moments where I am simply incapacitated. But the last two months have given enough distance from the hamster wheel to see that. I recently had some body work and the practitioner shared that her teacher said every 7 days we should rest a day. Every 7 weeks we should rest a week. Every 7 months we should rest a month. Every 7 years we should rest a year. Food for thought. Doesn’t that sound some combination of wonderful, daunting, and not at all realistic? I wonder why (capitalism).

Ideas are still pouring through and I don’t have the energy yet to act on them. I can still hear the constant call and response of the creative and the commercial. But grief is a depleting energy - and I’m a constantly wrung out sponge, everytime I think there’s no water left, out comes a hidden reserve.

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Although with more resistance than usual, last month I went to my quarterly Sacred Artists residency at Kripalu - a place that’s become a true refuge and healing home away from home the past almost two years. A checkpoint of honoring seasonal and creative cycles. It’s also been a journey learning about the legacy of Swami Kripalu the teacher, yogi, adept, playwright, artist for whom the center is named. Before it was a wellness center it was an ashram based on love, practice, and service. I’ve had the privilege of talking to Ras last year in the before times, one of the few people still around from the ashram days in preparation for a Custom Meditation Painting I’ll be creating this year. And this time we all got a visit from a man named Michael. A lean, spry 75 year old with long white hair regaling us with stories (while sitting in full lotus) of his time living there when yoga was ultra counter culture, and his civilian friends referred to his beloved home as “freak mountain” - which actually, I quite like. Along with his many decades of practice, he also made films, he met his wife there, and he shared more about his experience with the man who started it all.

He spoke about an eventful day Swami decided to swim solo in the river. It was more aggressive than he realized and he couldn’t keep up, he couldn’t get out. Beating his body against the rushing currents, trying to make his way to the banks again. He fought, he struggled. He started to exhaust himself, he started to be taken under. Yet through his panic he heard the words “Stop swimming Swami”. And even though it was counter intuitive.

He surrendered.

He stopped struggling.

He got still.

And as he let go, he began to float.

As he began to float, he was swept away on the river’s course. Now being safely held in her arms instead of being swatted down by their stroke. He was spotted, caught, and pulled out by a group of people further downstream.

In so many ways the past few years have been me keeping my head above water. With some success, and even joy, but my arms have grown tired. The past few months have been more of the flail. At times nearly drowning in the loss, at times lifted up by the swell of ecstatic grace you only meet through suffering. Mourning all the different ages and versions of my Mom. Mourning the ways I’ve died too. They don’t tell you that about losing someone close to you - when they go, you do too. At least who you got to be with them. It doesn’t end with death of course, we’ve each been reborn, and I’m getting to know the new us.

So far, I like them too, but I’ll miss the old ones.

Every bit of community care I’ve received has been like a voice piercing the panic telling me “stop swimming swami”. A reminder to let myself float even in these choppy waters. And that, in fact, it’s the only way to survive them. And how does a body float? Air in the lungs. Which makes the body slightly less dense than the water it’s submerged in. In other words … internal spaciousness.

I don’t know how long this river twists and turns, or who may be there to pull me out. Or if there is an out to be pulled from. I suspect there’s not. So instead, I’m happy to settle for gentler down the stream. A bit of stillness atop flowing waters.

When I checked in with Spirit for guidance around this Winter season I heard “Tend to the Temple” I understood that as the temple that is my physical home and the temple that is my body and being. I offer this to you as a little tending never hurts anybody. In this time of profound dissolution I know a little consolidation will do me good. The contraction before expansion. The exhale before the inhale. And in case I wasn’t picking up on the subtlety of the message, I’ve also come down with a sinus infection since right before the new year. Somewhat mild - except my ear is really stopped up by the pressure. Muffling the sounds of the outside world - softening the edges of external noise and pulling me in in in. To my own ground. Quieting any voices that aren’t from Spirit, me, trusted teachers, or my nearest and dearest. Being where I am and nowhere else. Available to a lot less horizontally so I can be available to more in the vertical.

Resting in the season and space of Water - Winter, where nature shows us that death and dormancy is a part of life too - panic free. Guilt free.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

It’s been just about 2 months since I last wrote to you, and also 2 minutes ago, and also 2 years ago. I’m back in New York and in many ways it’s like I never left. Same apartment, same walks, same what’s for dinner, same bustling city with it’s mania and magic.

It feels like I’m a space traveller, and I’ve been away on a foreign planet. I’ve lived a whole life on that planet, where every day here was a year there. Now I’ve returned home, and it’s only been 6 months Earth time so nothing seems different except everything is different.

Because I’m so different.

My cells are different. My soul is different, maybe not simply different, but riper for sure. I’m battle weary and heart broken, but heart open too. I know myself less and I know myself so much more. Spiritually I’ve never felt stronger, and emotionally, mentally, physically I’ve never felt more bone tired than I do right now. Decision fatigue. Medical industry fatigue. IRS fatigue. Logistical fatigue. All the fatigues.

I’m tired of the customer service agent condolences keeping me on the phone an extra eternity.

I’m tired of saying my Mom died.

I’m tired of crying.

And I’m tired of feeling this gaping loss.

And I’m just getting started?

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel her, hear her, dance with her, and dream with her. And still.

Still.

I have been asked repeatedly what I need. And everytime I hear that question the sound of it bounces around my insides like an echo in a cave. In response, sometimes I say “I don’t know.” Sometimes I say “rest”.

One of those is true.

Two months ago, I wanted to reach out to my community for financial support. And I was advised against it. I was advised against it, and I listened. For many reasons. Because I was relieved to hand over the reins of my life to someone else for a moment. Because I’ve never been in this situation before. Because what if nobody gives? Because it feels a little embarrassing. Because it’s hard to listen to your heart when you’re so so exhausted. Because I don’t want to feel like charity. Because so many people in this world need funds. Because I’m used to working my ass off so maybe I just have to barrel through. Because of scarcity.

But all of that feels like a lot of fear, and not a lot of truth.

And if you know me at all, you know there’s almost nothing more important to me than the truth. Some might say honest to a fault, in fact, my Mom would often tell me that I don’t have to go around volunteering information. But I’ve never liked pretending things are a way they are not. I may go a little quiet. But I don’t fake it till I make it. I really try to not lie. And what I’ve done, is I’ve gone quiet, not outright lying, but omitting the truth. Because I didn’t want to say the truth out loud.

What I need, is money.

I need money in order to rest. In order to catch up and get a handle on all the unexpected bills and expenses that come with settling affairs, and closing out a life. In order to take real care of myself while I do it all on the last fumes of capacity I have left. I was going to start back to work November because I had another financial set back, and I felt I didn’t have any other choice.

My Mom’s birthday was last week, and to honor her I reshared the IG story series we did together two years back where people could ask her anything. And she was asked what she wished someone had told her about being 35-40.

She wishes someone told her there was such a thing as being overly independent.

Looks like her guidance (along with the guidance of a few dear friends) is still coming in right on time. And it’s my turn to learn it.

I am asking for support. Asking for what I really need. And while the action and ask looks like money.

What the need feels like is actually trust. Trust that I can depend on others. Trust that I am also worthy of being picked up when I’ve been knocked down. Trust that even though I know the depths of my strength - that every moment isn’t asking for that. That the people in my life aren’t always asking for that. Trust that to be in right relationship, truly interdependent, isn’t just to give, but to receive too.

Trust that I’m not alone, and never have been.

If you’d like to support me in this time please contribute to my GoFundMe. We’re in bizarro times I know, so I wanted to share here first and will share more broadly after the election. Your assist is welcomed now and then, please share and help spread the word.

Your fellow wanderer,

Allison

This is my only currently available work. I created it a little over a year ago for a film. The title is not lost on me, however, it’s not about our literal Mothers - though I see now it can be. It’s a meditation on the Great Mother • on creation, returning to the source of all things, and letting this human experience crack your heart open. A return to immanence. $2000 - reach out to purchase: allison@allisonstrickland.CO

I have no idea how to start this other than very plainly. My Mom passed away last month. I feel as though the shock of it all is just now starting to set in. Part of me feels like maybe it “shouldn’t” feel so shocking. It was not as if I didn’t think about the possibility of this moment 10,000 times since April. But I thought we were out of the woods. I most certainly would have never guessed that this is what I would be sharing the next time I wrote to you. Of course this was an inevitable something that was always coming down the road… I knew it was likely not decades away, but I also didn’t think it was right around the corner either. I’m so grateful for the time we had. And there really doesn’t seem like there’s ever enough of it. I suspect I will always be greedy for her.

She was really recovering. She washed her hair on her own again for the first time. She typed a sentence on the computer without struggle. To both of our surprise and delight she remembered her social security number again off the cuff when asked for it. She far exceeded the expectation of damn near every neurologist we spoke to at the beginning of all of this. It had become common to hear, that based on her scans and chart - the person she was, was not the person whichever doctor was expecting to see before them. She was physically strong, and though she needed a walker outside, she was getting more solid all the time. We were talking, and laughing, and crying, and cuddling. Her speech therapist was trying her best to convince her that her progress was amazing even though it didn’t feel like it to her. We were making big decisions together - like her coming back to NY with me this month when her lease was up.

And she had another stroke.

And it became time to honor the wishes she’d shared with my sister and I over the course of our lives together. The doctor told us it was peaceful. I want to tell you everything, and I want to tell you nothing. There is so much to do, and all I want to do is rest, and so am finding that I can’t really do either. I feel her and our love so deeply, and I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced a pain like this before. Beauty and devastation holding hands so tightly. Sometimes I can see it all with the bird’s eye view of an eagle and sometimes only the foresight of an ant.

My Mom would always say that my biggest issue is that I don’t know when to let go. And even though I would usually reply to that statement with an annoyed sigh and a roll of my eyes. I could never deny it. My biggest reoccurring issue is, in fact, not knowing when to let go. And I’ve never wanted to let go less in my life than in this moment. My Mom, on the other hand, in true Scorpionic fashion has always been adept at exactly when to let go. She has a natural sense for when the wind is turning, or that the party’s over. Never premature, but also never waiting until the wheels fall off. True precision.

It made her a really great gambler.

She loved playing the slots especially. Sometimes I’d go to the casino with her - for me it was fun for exactly 45 minutes, around that time is about when I’d start thinking of all of the things I could have bought with the money I just lost. She would say that gambling only becomes a problem if you don’t know when to stop. That you have to go in with a number in mind of what you’re willing to lose. When you hit that number, don’t be tempted by the lure of “one more pull”, the fun is over - it’s time to go. On the flip side, was knowing when enough was enough on the winning end of things. She’d say the other temptation is when people win, they start feeling invincible, get greedy, and end up losing their gains and then some.

She’d usually come home with something that she would then share with my sister and I.

She would mostly go with her old co-worker friends, and sometimes she’d go solo when what she called “The Voice” told her to go. On those days, it wasn’t social, she was sure to win. Afterward she’d call me up with a casual hushed tone, trying her very best to sound like she had something serious to tell me and either say “I heard The Voice today.” or “How are you doing for money? … Cause I just got back from the casino” and then I would tell her this was my favorite way to gamble.

She never stopped trying to teach me how to play the game even though I had absolutely zero aptitude for it. She would often apply the philosophies to whatever dramas were currently happening in my life, both major and minor. And then jokingly sing the hook from the old Kenny Rogers song with a fake country twang:

You gotta know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

The past several months have been an awful and awe-some season of letting go. Not a corner of my life spared from my fingers being pried open from the gripping of it. Watching everything fall away like sand - New York, my studio, my home, all manner of relationships, survival jobs, my perceived control, and now what makes the importance of all the others absolutely pale in comparison… my Mom.

One of my Mom’s values is quality of life. She has always said that if she can’t really live she doesn’t want to be here. Kept as a body just for the sake of it. She knows how to play any hand well. She’s pulled wins out of impossible odds her entire life. And she’s also been brave enough to get up from many tables where people have all but begged her to give it one more go.

Funnily enough, I never really listened to the song (called The Gambler) she so often quoted. She didn’t actually play it in the car where we listened to music most, cause that was usually filled with old soul, classic rock, or top 40. Though I vaguely remember seeing the muppet version once or twice - being the elder Millennial I am - I was really on the other side of the golden age of Jim Henson, and I’m so sorry Gen X, don’t tell anyone, but I hated The Muppet Show. Still, a couple of days ago, I woke up with it stuck in my head.

I decided to give it a real listen.

Two gamblers on a train bound for nowhere. If you’ve read all the way to the bottom of this Maquette, you can imagine my surprise when the elder of the two says:

Son, I've made a life
Out of readin' people's faces
Knowin' what the cards were
By the way they held their eyes
So if you don't mind my sayin'
I can see you're out of aces
For a taste of your whiskey
I'll give you some advice"

He goes on to share:

Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep

Before I left Seattle I told my boyfriend I wanted to hit up Muckleshoot Casino which we called “The Mucks”, because it was - if not her favorite, then the one I accompanied her to the most. It was somehow both very different than I remembered and exactly the same. Dizzying carpets. and bright computer blue light screens from every direction. The sound of fake coins clanking amongst the cacophony of beeps, dramatic sound effects, and the music of each game. I lead him to the smoking side - yes, where people still smoke indoors, not just because that was the most accurate to the times I spent there with her. But it also feels like where the real players play. A little grizzlier and rougher around the edges. Where people seem more accustomed to the rollercoaster of high highs and low lows from both winning and losing, in the casino and in life.

I found myself repeating all the rules of engagement my Mom has shared with me, as we let ourselves be intuitively guided to the machines whispering our names. As I played, or more like as I indiscriminately hit buttons at machines that felt like they meant something - a dragonfly theme, Cleopatra II, I started to win a bit - much to both of our surprise. He said “I thought you weren’t good at this.” I laugh and tell him I’m not, I ain’t too proud to chalk this up to Jean. Even though I was up from the amount I felt comfortable to lose, I started to sense the familiar wall at the 45 min mark. I hung out, watched, and coached as my Mom’s proxy while David played. Now, this man loves lions and I pointed out about 47 different machines with lion’s on them, all of which he breezed past. We were both just about ready to wrap it up. I said -

We can’t leave here without you playing at least ONE with a lion on it.

He made a quick bee line to a machine on a corner, hit a couple of buttons until the climbing sound of a jackpot hit. Neither of us actually knew what was going on. But the gruff and thin veteran gambler next to us leaned over to watch where the winning landed so we knew we were on to something.

The sound of clinking finally ended. David said “That feels like a good place to stop.” and we cashed the ticket out.

As we left the cashier we realized we had won the exact cost of the last minute plane ticket home to New York I bought earlier that day. We got in Mom’s car to drive back to her now almost empty apartment, we looked at her clock and it said 10:26…
her birthday.

The song continues…

'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
And the best that you can hope for
Is to die in your sleep

And when he'd finished speakin'
He turned back toward the window
Crushed out his cigarette
Faded off to sleep
And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
But in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep

David said “thank you, Jean.” and I repeated after him…

Thank you, Jean.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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There seems to be something about this time of (forced) presence that makes each day feel incredibly full and yet when reflected on - a fuzzy blur of vignettes. Looking back on the time since I last wrote you feels like trying to recall a dream, I remember it only in flashes - the feelings are palpable but I can’t track a plot.

See, I took a quick trip back to Brooklyn to speed clean my studio to sublet and sign paintings, finished but for some reason left unsigned (?!).

Then I was standing at the water’s edge looking at the NYC skyline and wondering if this was a see you later or if our karma was complete.

Then it was Mom’s last day at rehab and we’re outside waiting like school children waiting for my sister to pick us up.

Then I’m feeling isolated, and that my autonomy had been stripped away, raging at life for domesticating me against my will.

Then I’m laughing with my Mom, thinking how lucky I am and that I’m actually pretty good at this.

Then I’m feeling woozy cleaning feeding tube incisions twice a day.

Then we’re picking out our nightly movie to watch and - Shakespeare in Love still holds up.

And through all this I remember “Move your ass, girlie.”

There was a woman at my Mom’s rehab facility that I became friendly with. She’s mostly in a wheelchair but moves herself around. Her frame is small and frail, but her wattage is bright, with frizzy hair and a voice like Cher. She has a great name too, which I unfortunately can’t share here, ask me at a party - which I can’t wait to see you at one day. We became fast friends. She’s the kind of person that makes you feel special and singled out with her attention and then one day you walk out to the communal space and see her holding court with many of the nurses and realize she’s everyone’s favorite. I walked up and said “What are you, the Mayor of this place?” she and the nurses laughed but no one denied it. So let’s call her that.

I don’t remember how The Mayor and I first started chatting but it was an immediate dish about the place, her experience. How we all got there. She was a Beverly Hills divorce attorney. Is a Beverly Hills divorce attorney? Interesting how quickly parts of us become past tense - I can’t help but sense there’s something about removing parts of identity from our elders simply because of circumstance that feels like it contributes to their invisibility and infantilization, but let me stay on track. She’s exactly my Mom’s age, and similarly, was completely independent and living her life freely. One day she passed out, and she’s been unable to care for herself since. Her daughter brought her up to Seattle and here she will stay. We talked about the fact that there is physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy but no …therapy therapy.

No people to tend to the fact that this is an extremely shocking event.

To go from living your life a sovereign being, to a nursing facility. There are anti-depressant drugs of course, which certainly have their place, but there’s also no opportunity to speak the depression out of the body. Express it. And as The Mayor puts it “it fucking sucks.” I saw my Mom cry more in her 3 weeks in rehab than I have in my entire life combined. That’s not exaggeration. I’d arrive and the nurses would tell me “Your Mom is sad.” and I would tell them - yes, of COURSE she’s sad. This is sad. I can’t explain how dizzying it is to see the sharp contrast of how my Mom is treated now vs how she would have been treated in March before all this began. How many times I’ve had to explain that even though she couldn’t (at that point) respond, still hears you and understands. How many times I’ve had to ask fully grown adults to lower their voices as they project 3 inches from my Mom’s face as if she’s 10ft away. And don’t get me started on the baby voices. Yes. You read that correctly.

She’s still here, I remind them. And so is The Mayor. They are not a was. They are not past tense.

When I walked past The Mayor in the hallway she usually asked how my Mom and I are hanging in. She want’s me to get her a bigger room. She tells me my Mom is beautiful and that I’m doing a good job. It feels really great to hear that. I tell her we’re taking things day by day and sometimes it really is a lot. She tells me she knows, she took care of her Mom too. The Mayor often share’s little tidbits about her own Mother - that she was “sort of a witch”, and that she always knew things, and that she should have listened to her more. She told me that when she’s gone through challenging times her Mom would tell her “Move your ass, girlie”. Real cute I thought. I didn’t realize at the time that she was actually giving me a powerful new mantra. One I’ve said to myself a thousand times since.

See, although much of my life and work is dedicated to exploring the bridge between Spirit and Matter - I’ve definitely always erred on the side of Spirit. If I’m being honest, up until now, I’ve mostly flown by the seat of my pants. Treating the majority of my tasks like whack-a-mole. I’ve worked quite hard to give myself time freedom, and a sweet little bohemian life. And what I’ve built so far is partly a DELIGHT, and partly wreaking total havoc on my nervous system. This last year I had been actively trying to cultivate structure. So I could, hopefully, have a bit more delight and a bit less havoc. I knew how I was working and living wasn’t sustainable. New York is the kind of place where, in order to survive well, you must have a lot of energy or a lot of money and frankly, both were beginning to dwindle. And yet I was still trying to find some way to move through to the next level of the game while avoiding my personally most dreaded beast.

Responsibility.

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True responsibility. I’ve been a very high-functioning shirker. Buoyed only by the fact that, ultimately, I am incredibly resilient. I’ve been in the same room with this greatly feared creature for a long time. Dancing around it. Walking up to it and then running away. Except now I don’t get the option to run away. I’ve used up all my cheat codes. But this room has been shrinking around me, and if I want out - I have to go through it.

My first few days in Seattle I was riddled with every deep insecurity I had been able to mostly avoid up until this point. Sitting in my Mom’s apartment. Looking for passwords, financial, and medical information. Truly questioning if I was capable. It all felt like too too much. Too foreign. Bit by bit I showed up, I gave myself the permission and gift of presence over perfection which got me through the emotional obliteration that is watching someone go through all of the things I’ve seen my Mom go through, while my own life became more unrecognizable by the day. Just keep showing up to the moment, finally understanding in experience what sooooo many spiritual texts and teachers repeat ad nauseam:

There (really) is only now.

With no future acutely known or knowable I leaned into my personal practices, meditation, prayer, energy work, the support and guidance of other strong practitioners, friends, love in the form of car pools, and door dash, voice notes and venmos. The image that keeps coming to mind is Alice just after falling through the looking glass. Whizzing and whirling through space, as the characters of your past, present, and future pop in and out for brief pit stops on your way down, down, down. When I was young, the kids at school would sometimes call me Allison Wonderland. Now I can give it to them - it’s pretty clever, but at the time I absolutely loathed it. Perhaps my distaste for it was the accurate foreshadowing of the day it would come true.

My Mom has been home and out of rehab since the middle of June. And I’ve been with her since. Where now, after the emotional obliteration of it all, I also have to DO stuff. All. The. Time. Responsible for meds, correspondence, wound care, appointments, and laundry. I feel like I’m always cooking. And making decisions, and genuinely caring. And trying SOMEHOW to plan for many versions of tomorrow and my own needs as well.

Move your ass, girlie.

When I feel especially overwhelmed or alone I remind myself a million times that I’m not the only person who’s gone through this or that will go through this. So why does this all feel so utterly shocking? I have been hesitant to say it too loud in case I offend the “real” Moms out there, raising little ones to adulthood and facing everything that comes with transforming from Maiden to Mother in the classic sense, nurturing the life that you bring in. But I see now there are those of us who initiate from Maiden to Mother through the back door. Mother-ing the life that brought US in. It’s both poetic and disarming to be this responsible for someone else’s well being. It feels really amazing to give back in kind, complete the circle, and totally destabilizing to become a Mothering person overnight. No 40 week prep time. Just another sacred life suddenly at your door.

Move your ass, girlie.

I’m in a post-partum of sorts. Feeling all at the same time, the powerful web of the collective I’m very grateful to have sewn around me, and the devastating absence of a tribe. That is in part my own doing. I’ve always felt most comfortable one on one or on a stage. Smaller groups have historically felt inhibiting and messy to me. A nightmare for someone whose main values include spaciousness and simplicity. The Triple Jewel in Buddhism is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. I was always hopeful that two out of three aint bad.

Don’t get me wrong, in many ways I do have a sangha - a string of pearls all across the globe that by the grace of modern technology are a mere phone call away. AND there really is something to be said for the irreplaceable need for in real life, regular, human to human contact. Someone to come over and sit across the kitchen table from you. Lay on the couch. A buzzy house filled with people. Intergenerational engagement. I know I’m not alone in this. Most people I know want this too. Ache for it in fact. And to create it takes real commitment and devotion and bravery and we are all SO exhausted. Socialized to the hamster wheel of self, survival, and a general mistrust of the “other”. And above all it takes TIME - something, that most of us are very much conditioned to believe… we don’t have.

I think the scary part about maintaining community is letting people love you poorly without pushing them away. Note: This does not mean letting people harm you. But accepting that they will fall short of your desires and expectations, and you will theirs. And sometimes scarier - you have to let people love you well, without pushing them away, and give up some of your prized independence in exchange for the very real vulnerability of interdependence.

So, what do you do in the whirling dance of sometimes leading and sometimes following? Where support is out there - and no one’s coming to save you?

Move your ass, girlie.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

PS My site is back up, with a little refresh too. You can check it out here. I’ll be opening up my books again soon. More on that later.

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I think I’m maybe in a tsunami now.

The night I got the call from the emergency room, I was tucked into some shadowy concrete nook in Lincoln Center with a friend, still waiting to hear back about what had actually happened to my Mom which they refused to say on the first call. Shaking and disoriented I looked at him and said “I’m not ready.” It felt like every particle inside me was screaming those words. They echoed in my ears like someone else was saying them. I literally, physically, felt the sensation of the suction of gravity like I was going down a slide. Turns out that feeling was me being catapulted out of my life as I knew it.

There has been so much that has surprised me about this situation (understatement of the year). And one surprise is the absolute sea of questions. My questions, doctor’s questions, nurse’s questions, social worker questions, friend questions, landlord questions, family questions, my Mom’s friend’s questions, helpful questions, questions that annoy, questions that grasp, questions from care… I give some answers, I guess some answers, but mostly I have no answers.

The biggest and most helpful piece of advice from the wise ones in my life is to truly stay in the present. No 6 month plan, or weekly plan, really just stay in the day to day. And as a historically chronic future-oriented worrier. What a bootcamp.

I’ve always worried. Psychologists may say otherwise in terms of personality development but some things feel like you just come in with it. That’s worrying for me.

When I was little my Mom would say things like:

“Stop looking for things to worry about.”

“If you can’t change it, there’s no use in worrying about it because either what you don’t want is coming anyway, or what you’re worried about isn’t going to happen and then you’ve spent all this time worrying for nothing.”

and

“Keep going and you’ll be the only 10 year old with an ulcer.”

Exhibit A:

I’ve always wanted to stop - I’ve just never known how. But I think this situation is giving me a glimmer. This is my note from the field, so individual results may vary.

AND this is delicate, so before I share, I want to be clear that I’m still very much feet on the ground. I’m not using this to avoid or repress. I feel strong and clear, and sad, nervous, angry, disappointed. I flicker, sometimes rapidly, between resistance and acceptance. Hope and bitterness. But this is how I’m working with it right now - I think this is what Ram Dass meant by “grist for the mill”. What’s happened has happened, what’s here is here, what’s coming is coming anyway - but my logic is, I won’t let it be in vain. And I can devote myself to giving this ancient worry up, for my Mom, in honor of her and what she’s going through. The practice is simple but not always easy.

When I realize I’m leaning into this old shadow comfort of worry - I picture giving it as an offering to the earth like an altar. Sending it into the ground and say “I am willing to sacrifice this worry for my Mom.” and put the thought of whatever nightmare, fear, or worst case scenario I was playing, out of my mind. Some things I can give up once, and some things I have to give again and again. I’ve never been able to figure out how to do it for me, but I’m finding I somehow can do it for her, she tried to teach me the easy way all these years. And I suppose this is one I’m just having to learn the hard way.

Some questions - What’s the discharge plan? Do you still live in New York? Are you painting? There’s a lot of assumptions and projections. After all, many people are very uncomfortable with uncertainty, even the uncertainty of others. And so when crazy shit like what I’m going through happens, you aren’t only wading through your own doubt, fear, and experience, you’re also wading through the doubt, fear, and experience of others whether you ask for it or not.

And to all of it I’m practicing saying, I don’t know, and that I don’t want to make declarative statements. I don’t want to pretend certainty just to soothe myself or others. I don’t want to jump to define, name, or label. What I am, what I’m not. What this is, what this isn’t. I’ve tried to plan, believe me, I’d love one. Along with a clear timeline. And every time I try, something else happens to show me I don’t get that, maybe just not right now, or… maybe never again?

I don’t know.

But I’m choosing to trust this process. My Mom can’t speak much, but it does ebb and flow. And on one of my hardest moments, even though I try to hide them from her - I called to say goodnight (since I can no longer sleep over) and she said out of the blue “everything will fit together in time” and while trusting this process is something I have to actively choose. I already do, absolutely, trust my Mom. And even though I don’t want so many of the things that are happening - if she says everything will fit together in time. Then it will.

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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Fun thing about my Mom: She reads faces. If you have ever taught me, employed me, dated me, offered me an opportunity, my Mom has probably read your face. Let’s be real, if you’ve ever dated a close friend of mine she’s probably read your face. She doesn’t really get into people’s business or story, but she usually gives a favorable/unfavorable prognosis. All she needs is a photo where she can see both of your eyes clearly. She will share positive qualities or things to look out for, sometimes she’ll get a “meh” which is to say, not much in either direction, I’ve found this to mean, it probably won’t be a deep connection but there’s a lesson to learn. The ultimate judgement however, is when she gets “the vibe” which means do pass go. Turn. Run. She’s discerning, she can not like your energy but not get “the vibe” it’s really reserved for some secret third thing. And when it comes to “the vibe” my sister as my witness - she ain’t never been wrong. I don’t abuse the privilege. But I will still ask about people that feel like they might be significant. I noticed last year was the first time I asked her to read someone and she didn’t outright do it. She asked instead “what’s your read?” I told her and she confirmed my feeling with some added detail. I was a little surprised and she said “One day you’re going to have to learn to trust yourself.”

I wrote this the morning of Friday April 19th:

I’m in a swirl right now. It feels like I’ve been in a swirl for the past year. Like I’m being spun so hard all of my particles are expanding so that my shape is no longer recognizable, I know they’ll all spin back together one day… but into a completely new shape. That new shape is what I don’t know. The all too familiar feeling of a Work In Progress. I hesitate to show people this step because I know the finished piece will likely not look anything like this, so my hesitance is to say “don’t get too used to this” because what if you like this better and then it disappears, or maybe worse, the sketch is so rough that you can’t make out even the hope of a diamond.

And the root of this hesitance is the lesson that just keeps constantly showing up:

Letting go of the illusion of control.

The radio wave of what feels like a primal desire to command, always rippling through the air. Sometimes it’s quiet. And sometimes the antenna hits just the right angle so that the message comes in crystal clear. A voice mid sentence ringing out through the silence. There all along, but now you can’t help but hear it.

This is what is and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Let go or be dragged.

The first break came last summer. Like an AM/PM radio shift - all static, and word bites, flickering between broken melody and discordance. I was walking down the street with my grocery bags and I noticed a familiar feeling ripple through my body. I realized I was experiencing a sensation I’d felt before. I stopped, paper bag handles pulling my hands, bottoms sagging from the weight, feeling more and more like holding an hourglass as I stood there. What is this? Where have I felt this before… this ache?

The dial turned ever so slightly and a voice burst through: Codependency to addiction.

Years before, in my first serious long term relationship, I was in love with a man with a drinking problem. It was beautiful, and fun, and passionate, until it was absolutely none of those things. But because I had a taste of what could be. I held on for dear life. Watching a starving person standing next to low hanging fruit and they, for reasons I will never understand, could not or would not - just. reach. out. and. grab. it.

It’s agonizing. Truly. I can feel the wring and twist of it in my stomach now. It feels like those dreams where you’re screaming for a person’s attention or help but no sound comes out. The frustration and rage that comes from honoring someone’s free will and right to suffer even and especially when it makes no sense to you. No matter how deep the wish is for them to choose differently. Because no amount of healing in the world will help someone who doesn’t want it. Or feel they deserve it. Or trust they can have it. And in comes the devastating realization that love doesn’t always reach.

The radio cut out. Momentary silence. I’m back on the sidewalk. Staring up through the leaves of a familiar tree. Staring at the sky, while the hustle and rush of my neighbors brush past.

October. Blasted by cries of war. Feeling incapacitated by the ache of the world. Now, with what feels like 18 stations playing all at once, and absolutely zero delusion of control of the macro, I turned with extra sharp focus at the micro. I watched as my fury bubbled up at everything my loved ones did that didn’t please me, or agree with me. Things that even if slightly annoying did NOT at all warrant the physical response of the molten lava inside of me. Thankfully because of my morning practices, I could mostly not act on impulse, but it was EATING me up inside. The level of sheer pettiness was taking up so much space in my system. I was a walking volt of energy with nowhere to ground. I took it to the water. My go-to spot in Brooklyn to think. Where even though you never have a single moment of privacy, the sound of the waves, and the sunset sky create just enough space to listen.

I asked “What is the cause of this (very) specific flavor of pain. Why am I so angry with people I LOVE and don’t even want to be angry with. I heard “you’re angry because they are not doing what you think they should do … but tell me, why should they have to?”.

I couldn’t think of an answer. And the bulk of my rage flowed into the East River, cooled off and soothed for a time by her wisdom.

The new year. The time of re-evaluation whether you care about the calendar change or not. For me, this year, began ripe with dissatisfaction. Will running thin. Patience running thinner. I found myself at a friend’s apartment. Raw and tired from life and change, and lack of change. A friend I’ve been orbiting around for years, finally brought together for real through an artist residency. Meeting on this day for tea ceremony and much needed sisterhood. We caught up, and settled in, her young pup, round and all muscle, excited and bounding. She told me tea would be an experiment because her dog was a covid baby and still being socialized and learning to be around people. Learning to regulate the mix of excitement and anxiety - can’t we all relate. We sat on floor cushions to begin. Soft music playing, incense lit and calming. Hot water ready. Pup with chew toy.

Pour water. Dog runs by. My friend feeling bad for me at the distraction. Me feeling bad for my friend because I really don’t mind but don’t know how to fully express the truth of that. We ignore. We settle in further. We drink. The dog rests, then runs, sometimes inspects and bumps into me. I so deeply want to make this okay, make this the experience I believe my friend wants. Make it the one we expected. I think maybe if I drop further into my center - or be still, or give some love and attention, or maybe if I was REALLY dropped in - spinning spinning spinning. With all of the things I could be or should be doing to make this better, or help, or I don’t know - make this situation different than it is. Tears started to flow uncontrollably down my face. In this cyclone of feelings, both made up and true - I realized something very simple.

This is not my dog.

Suddenly I was flooded by ALL of my fixing, and tactics, and well-meaningingness, and ultimatums, persuasions, manipulations, bargaining, pleading. All to avoid the painful truth.

Sometimes we are powerless.

Often times we are powerless. Powerless in circumstance. Avoiding the only place we are powerFULL. Our response. Our attention. Our participation. Our presence. Using (wasting) our energy trying to change what we can’t. Spreading pain out into eternity with the dull throb of pretending, rather that taking the full acute shot of: this is not what I want. And so now what?

And so now what.

I ended there.

I went on about my day, thinking I’d step away and send the next morning. I was on the phone with a friend when my Mom called. I clicked over.

“Did you call me or was that a butt dial” she asked.

I told her “I definitely didn’t call you cause I’m already on the phone, but I’ll call you back as soon as I’m done.”

We have a way of being put together like that, but I didn’t know how meaningful this time would be. We hadn’t had a proper catch up since I came back from Colombia, she wanted to hear all about it, and I wanted to tell her. I also wanted to integrate, and I was busy and overwhelmed. Or she’d call just as I was about to sit down for dinner. And I’d keep saying let’s talk soon.

I called her back, and we had a proper long talk. I talked to her about all the things that had been weighing on me and some of the magic from the retreat. She told me I should come home a while and get clear. Something she very rarely, if ever does (confirmed by my sister when I told her later). My Mom doesn’t impose her beliefs on people, even if those people are her children. Deeply socratic at heart she stopped guiding us with explicit instruction pretty young, her MO is mostly asking questions and watching us make our own decisions, I can’t think of another time I’ve heard her say what I “should” do - there have even been times where I’ve WANTED her to tell me exactly what to do and she’d either tell me what she might think about as she was figuring out a solution or flat out say “that decision is yours to make”. Toward the end of the call, she mentioned she felt a sharp pain go through her head. Weird but not unheard of. We talked a bit more and got off the phone.

I went to see the final dress rehearsal of my friend’s play about life, death, hope, endurance. And afterward, standing next to the fountain at Lincoln Center I was called by the emergency room.

My Mom had a stroke.

When I began writing this that morning, I thought I knew what it meant to be blasted apart.

Now I actually know.

After a month of essentially living at the hospital with my Mom and sister, and now that she’s thankfully at rehab, I’ve caught just enough air to come back to this, and you, now. And if anything has become crystal clear, it’s that now is all there is.

Your fellow wanderer,

Allison

If you’ve made it this far let me leave you with a fun moment I remembered. I was 17 and my Mom and I were in the car, the radio DJ announced there was going to be a dance-a-thon that day at the Supermall (yes, the Supermall). There was a cash prize. My Mom loves dancing, she auditioned for Soul Train when she lived in LA but didn’t get on because “you had to know somebody” - some things never change. I was dancing professionally at the time. We figured why not, and made our way there. The dance floor was crowded, I’m not sure how they were judging but they’d quietly tap out different couples. Hours passed, and numbers dwindled. We were getting excited because we knew we really had a chance. When my Mom got extra tired, she would slow down and I would do turns and leaps around her. This is literally cracking me up thinking about it. Groovin’ on mall tile outside of some Spencer’s Gifts or something like that (for the old heads). 6…7…8 hours must have passed. We wanted to give up but we had made it too far for all those earlier hours to be for nothing. It was down to us and a ballroom team. They played one last song for each pair to give it all we had. A friend of my Mom’s came down to watch because she’d heard them announce there was a Mother/Daughter dancing and told us later she knew it had to be us. We got second place. Although we swore up and down the screams from the crowd voted our win. We rolled back to the car with not a single bone in our legs, disappointed by the injustice, tired, but laughing.

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Housekeeping - I was updating my site and took it down the 19th (I really love to pack things into a day) thinking I would put it back up the Monday. Obviously that hasn’t happened. So if you’ve reached out to let me know, thank you. It will be up again at some point.

I’m back from guest facilitating the Ceremony Of Life retreat in Colombia an annual exploration led by Mariana Rittenhouse rooted in tea ceremony, Earth based reverence, ritual, and creative practice.

I was out of my comfort zone in all the best ways: Recalling my deeply rusty Spanish. Beginning the trip in an open treehouse. Bugs, birds, monkeys, and who knows what else. The general blend of awe and vulnerability that comes with sleeping in a jungle. A healthy reminder that while I’m not quite a city kid by nurture, I definitely would not survive outside left to my own devices. Bumpy climbs zipping up a zig zag mountain road on the back of a motorbike, trying my best to remain calm and remember to breathe, all the while my thighs clenching the drivers hips like a vice grip, doing everything in my power to not vocally give away my distress. Reminding myself he does this 50 times a day, and really my fear is what’s elevating the danger here so chill the fuck out and don’t fight the curves. Thankfully, there are some understandings people find without language, and he very graciously let me off early on his own accord, and was probably also tired of having his pelvis crushed.

And this was all before the retreat started.

I was also in my comfort zone in all the best ways: Thankful to be in ceremony again with a sister I met in an apprenticeship so many years ago. Our paths swirling back together again after a time of taking us apart. Feeling the rungs of the spiral, that bring you to the same place, but different, deeper, easier, and more yourselves. Witnessing how powerfully the roots of her practice have grown, and being witnessed, trusted, and believed in in return. Being in circle with a group of people who somehow grow, after one short week, into faces that will be etched in your mind and heart for the rest of your days. Open heart connection. Time out of time. Constantly barefoot, deliciously hot, and kissing the sea every morning to start the day.

I feel like I lived about 6 months in the month since I last wrote you. So where do I really begin… I feel a bit like this is akin to serving a stew first day. All the ingredients are there, and it’s edible, but it’s going to be so much better tomorrow when all the flavors of experience have had time to merge, develop, and unify.

And this possibly premature share is in part what the painting journey I offered was about - Process over Product.

What does creative practice look (and feel) like when we create for the sake of creating, tuning ourselves as a instrument FOR creative energy (Spirit….Love), rather than trying to be the conductor of it. What happens when we allow ourselves to create without judgement? Immediate value assessment… ego? And I say here, as I said there - this is not necessarily about craft, which unequivocally has it’s place. It’s where a lot of the fluency of our unique creative language can emerge. And sometimes we can get so caught in the math of the music we forget how to let ourselves simply dance to it. How to hear what it’s asking of us, that can only be heard and responded to honestly in the now. This is the essence of what we explored.

And as you might have suspected... This wasn’t about paint.

This is a way of life. To be truly creative. To express what can only be expressed through you, no matter the medium. To give it enough breathing room to get to know it without critique of what it should be before you get to meet it as it IS. To let go. Listen. And respond. Simple, though not always easy. This is how I talk with the ineffable, the unseen. Call it Love, call it Spirit, call it Consciousness, call it Divine. And it’s not that I’ve been graced with some magical ability. If anything, the grace is in not entirely forgetting that it’s possible, and how. That along with the practice of trusting it. Well trusting myself to receive it clearly - and it is indeed a practice in a society that trains us to forget and doubt. Lucky for us, life seems to be committed to our full remembering. You have this in you too, right now, whether you can actively see it, feel it, trust it, recognize it in this moment or not. Because that’s just the kind of animal we are.

Helping people reconnect to their own channel and instrument has been one of the foundations of my work for a long while. However, there’s something about a concentrated container that reflects back what’s there with such precision. I feel it in my body with a new clarity. In a practice that goes beyond making beautiful objects, and into creating a beautiful life. A life that is, and can only be uniquely, and completely yours. Releasing the ever elusive drive to find THE way, into finding something so much more interesting and fulfilling - your way.

This was so brilliantly mirrored by the highly diverse ecosystem of the land, and by the Kogi people - your way supports my way, and vice versa. When we each play our role, every being thrives.

The Kogi.

Being on the sacred lands that they tend, can only be described as some cellular shift transmitted by and imparting simplicity, honor, and truth. Our guide arrived to greet our translators and we waited for who would give us the welcome speech - a man with smooth skin and calm face, wearing what appeared to be the standard white Kogi dress: pants, tunic, mochila … and a fresh black Yankees cap. New York really makes her mark everywhere. It felt like a wink, as over my trip, I also had my 9 year anniversary of being in this city that very quickly became my home.

It feels a little strange and inappropriate to commit the experience into writing, or to try to distill it, at least for now. But what I will say is - being with people who escaped colonization made louder the question of what is conditioned in my mind (maybe probably… EVERYTHING). I found myself wanting to observe them without objectifying them. Respect without deifying. And most importantly, I found that when you meet eyes and exchange a smile with a little girl anywhere every imaginable difference immediately falls away.

One of the women on the retreat (and Colombiana) really brought forward the duality of the place. The danger and trauma that she and the people there have been through. The reputation of the place that she’s met with everywhere else she goes. And the grief so many of us feel of our own old ways being obscured if not totally lost, even while feeling grateful for the convenience and “advancements” of our current time and culture.

So it feels important to name that while I did very much have a gentle and frankly, magical time there. I understand it’s not even close to the full picture.

And.

I sat for tea in silence multiple times a day. Gave offerings to the elements. Learned. Met with people who collectively honor what they call Aluna - the Great Mother. Remembered that New York City is nature too. Got to share practices that mean so so much to me. Nibbled a fruit I was surprised to learn was cacao. Looked with fresh eyes and held by new arms. Caught and sipped freshly wrung out sugar cane juice in a small carved bowl and passed it hand to hand like communion you’re allowed to giggle though.

And I got my first hypnotic taste of why Colombia is called “The Heart Of The World”

Your Fellow Wanderer,

Allison

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Want to work together? Books will re-open soon for custom meditation paintings Books currently open for one on ones.

Always starting again. I find myself sitting here staring at this blank page, nothing written, waiting for me to fill it. Looking at a new interface (hi Substack!) that has the clunky mystery of all new things, nothing on auto pilot yet, and I realize just how familiar this feeling is. Like the beginning of a painting (at least how I work) - there’s a sort of perfume in the air of what wants to be created, I feel a ripe possibility. A magnetic pull inviting me in.

Like showing up for a blind date, you’ve messaged a few times, they made you laugh, you’re filled with anticipation, and even a little hope. And you walk into the bustling restaurant and realize you forgot to ask what color shirt they’re wearing. Your eyes look around searching for someone else’s eyes searching for yours.

Like taking a break from your morning practice because it’s winter and still dark and the body wants to sleep longer, and the warmth and weight of the comforter feels just too good to let go of for the chilly morning air. For the first couple of weeks it feels good to give in to the mush until you realize that the mush starts to bleed later and later into the day and finally you admit, it’s time to get back at it and and and… tomorrow, you decide, will be the day.

I find myself facing now, what I face each and every time I begin a painting. This desire to start off STRONG. Decisive. I want to feel like I know what I’m doing. I am creating THIS THING. Born into crystal clear perfection. And my god, does (my) creativity not work like that. At all. And each and every time I have to remind myself this will not end how it began. Sometimes there are small glimpses of the underpainting. The first brave marks. And sometimes the last mark is so entirely different than the first that I can’t even recall it’s birth. It having returned again to that ephemeral scent… a top note wafted away to reveal the full body base that only develops with time.

and speaking of….

This time of year carries the same weight of the blank canvas, waiting to be filled, asking questions of resolutions, goals, accomplishments Q1, 2, 3, and 4 - and those questions are helpful, visioning is helpful. However, when you are trying to catch the wave of a creative practice, of closing that sometimes daunting gap of what wants to be with what actually is, right now. I’ve found the only way I’m really able to start, is to just dive in. And I wish I was talking about the sleek and technical high dive cutting through water like a knife, but usually, for me, it looks more like clomping into the ocean from the shore, moving sand gripping my feet, a little too cold for my liking, and some blend of sloshy kneel and plugged nosed baptism.

Get in where you fit in. Grab the first color you’re thinking of and just move the paint. Maybe a soft yellow… slap it on. Whew. The seal of beginning is broken, and now the deeper practice begins. The practice of trust, trust in your ability to listen, and respond.

The trust that all creation is actually co-creation. Co-creation with your chosen material. With your ever fluctuating mood and energy levels. With the city sounds and distractions. With the creative undercurrent orchestrating all of these things into whatever this symphony of ever-changing movement we call life, is. Trust in my lack of control. Not only trust in my lack of control, but actually the belief that my willingness to be surprised will make everything I do infinitely better. I wish I could say finding this balance has become easier, honestly, it hasn’t, but it has gotten faster, and my tolerance for it, higher.

So if you’re new here, welcome. I have no idea what this newsletter will become (although I can catch a couple whiffs of the perfume). I have no idea what paintings I will paint. I’m not entirely sure what will be shared here. I have no idea what these eyes, looking at the screen, will have seen by the end of the year. All I know is that I’m excited to create it all with you.

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The Meditation Painting I’m Contemplating…

If you’re new to my work Meditation Paintings are intention based artworks used to call in desires and transformation. Each dash represents an intention repeated. Similar to other meditative objects like Mala beads or Rosaries, each dash represents the mantra, blessing, or affirmation repeated to infuse the piece with the intention. The classic size that started this series (shown here) has 300 dashes. In some systems of numerology 300 is considered to be a number of transformation and creativity.

You can work with them in many ways, one way I practice contemplation is akin to putting a record on at a dinner party. You know you love this album, it’s supporting the general vibe of the evening, sometimes it’s drowned out by a conversation that has you rapt, or hidden by the table’s laughter so you forget it’s playing at all, and sometimes everyone goes quiet all at once and you notice the melody underpinning the night, or your favorite part of the song comes on and you can’t help but sing along.

The mantra: Ease Is My Center, Ease Is My Choice.

I’m noticing where I tend to choose complexity, and making things harder than they need to be. Sometimes simply because it feels familiar. And sometimes it’s perfectionism, or fear of moving forward (blank canvas), but my engine’s revved and I’m set up to go, however, instead of going forward, something in me decides it’s much less scary to go around in circles. But you can only do so many donuts in the parking lot before it’s time to hit the road.

There’s a million reasons to not make the first mark, press publish, get my ass out of bed and meditate. And all the stakes of doing it, or not doing it, are basically made up by me. So why not choose ease as an internal posture, knowing that while I don’t control the entirety of my circumstance I can control the grace with which I dance with it. To listen to today and respond, and let the painting reveal itself. Each movement a wash of yellow, to be covered by the next movement green, then blue. I’ve not decided the ending, I’ve only decided to start again.

Your fellow wanderer,
Allison